All Secure

We drove the roads of Iraq like Bedouins with bigger sheep, aimlessly following the trucks in front of us and hauling things that weren’t worth our lives. Our beds were on empty flatbed trailers, in blown-out airport hangars, old schools, purpose-built structures, tents, and any matter of improvised covering. After each mission, we rolled with the dawn into some obscure base and longed for hot—or lukewarm—chow and somewhere we could lay down in relative safety and close our eyes.

The Rip Its and Mountain Dews that kept us alert and alive now made us crash—hard. Tent flaps kept out the wind but weren’t as good at stopping mortars, but the thing is, when you’re dead tired, it doesn’t matter if you die in your sleep. Would you even notice? Security was more a state of mind than a matter of fact.

I now sleep with a fan and a sound machine to quell my hypervigilance. The noise helps me cull out the other sounds. The ones that don’t mean me any harm. The sounds my brain sometimes can’t decipher as safe—even though they’re mostly benign. I don’t often sleep well. When I say I have nightmares or just weird dreams, most people assume they’re all war dreams. That’s rarely the case anymore. Those occur occasionally, but my brain has other creative scenarios to torment my slumber. I’m not even sure the war was the original source of my anxiety and insecurity. It’s as good as anything to blame because pointing fingers elsewhere would cause more problems than it’s worth. Let’s just say those roots run deep.

I’ve spent the last five Wednesday nights from 7-8:30 pm in a writing class for veterans. It’s been very fulfilling. This isn’t a class about craft or even one to make me a better writer. The intent is to get us writing. It’s brought up a lot of memories. The beauty is that we read our stories to one another as people feel led, and then we encourage each other based on what was read aloud. It’s truly beautiful. There are veterans in the group ranging from Vietnam through the global war on terror.

I love the wide array of perspectives and talents in the virtual room. I’m both affirmed in my feelings and challenged by recounting not just the events but how they made me feel at the time. Hearing a common thread of service and not feeling as if we gave enough—despite giving more than most—has been the biggest takeaway so far. This group has been giving me life, and I’m thankful for it.

Every time I swear off writing about the war or my military experience, I remember some obscure story or detail. I think about a convoy to Al Asad, Iraq, and how a lamp’s foot switch could have ended my life or the lives of my friends. Whether by providence or incompetence, we got stuck in a bottleneck in no man’s land because a zealous Lieutenant Colonel wanted a photo op. When the convoy stopped and the tires were watered, a buddy of mine discovered the pressure plate with wires running to the edge of the road. It was connected to three 155 artillery rounds buried off the road. I spent the next few hours on the periphery of the kill zone, looking for secondary explosives and enemies, waiting to ambush our stalled convoy.

There’s a dangerous freedom standing in a gun turret behind a .50 caliber machine gun. You don’t put faith in scriptures or ancient texts in those moments but in the headspace and timing of your weapon and repetition of your training. Muscle memory creates proficiency, and proficiency creates false security. Sometimes, that tiny bit of self-confidence is enough to convince yourself that you’ll be just fine. Even if you’re not. In the end, it always works out, mostly.

The waiting was always the hardest part. There were many times while on that deployment when the convoy would get stopped in the danger zone. We’d be at the mercy of mechanics or directionally challenged officers. Sometimes, acts of God would strand us. If you’ve never experienced a dust storm, let me be the first to tell you it’s a weird kind of fear. The world turns brown. You can see it coming for miles. It engulfs everything, and then you can’t see more than a foot or two in front of you. It becomes impossible to drive, and your only option is to wait it out.

We’d all heard stories of soldiers getting lost and snatched out of their vehicles. The waiting was brutal. You had to fake being tough and act like it didn’t bother you, but deep down, we were all terrified of the creeping death that may come with the storm. Thankfully, that same dust kept our enemies pinned down, too. After a few tense hours, we rolled on back to relative safety. We shed our gear and were lulled to sleep by the cyclic rate of fire of machine guns and the constant hum of generator motors.

The threats to my life are no longer imminent. Sure, we all risk our lives on the highway or perhaps by way of criminals with violent intent, but in most cases, life is relatively safe and easy. Security is a state of mind. Living in a pressure cooker of violence and insecurity for a year—almost twenty years ago—has surely warped my mind, but it has given me the gift of vigilance.

I became someone who notices everything. Attention to detail isn’t just something I put on a resume; it’s something I practice because I had to as a matter of life and death. It’s often hard to flip that switch back off. I’m sure I skate the thin line between hypervigilance and paranoia at times, but at least I’m self-aware. The adage stands true, “prepared, not scared.” If I can control the variables, I can control the outcome and, by proxy, my emotions. If I can’t control the variables, well, I’ll figure it out. Security is a state of mind and not always a matter of fact, but I’ve survived everything so far, and I’ll cling to that.

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IED detonated by EOD and the light switch pressure plate that would have detonated it had we hit it

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