1/10/2024 0 Comments Castmaster bullets![]() It’s hard enough to kill a human enemy it’s even harder having to kill an innocent person in order to do so.Īt one point, we were stuck on a raised roadway on highway 28 to the southwest of the city. They played dirty, using human shields as they fired their AK47s on full auto while resting the weapons on the shoulders of women who were bleeding from their ears from the sound. We had outpaced most of the Division, so the fighting largely rested with us. Samawah would be the first time I had to fire a weapon at another human. The biggest problem we had was getting our vehicles through the rugged terrain. We had a few small skirmishes, but no damage or injuries were sustained. It was apparent the Iraq military never thought we’d head that way. We raced northwest to Al Salman, then made the sharp right turn towards As Samawah. Our task was to perform a hook maneuver and scout ahead of the division. It had been six years since I was attached to 3/7 Cavalry in the 3 rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) for the main assault into Iraq on the evening of March 19, 2003. And my wife couldn’t have been more supportive. I’m forever grateful to my commander at the time, who understood and supported what I was doing. “I have to be willing to get help myself.” “If I’m going to stand up here and tell you it’s okay to get help,” I told them. So, with a heavy heart, I gathered my troops around and tearfully explained to them that I was stepping down as First Sergeant. General Chiarelli assured me the Army was changing the way it looked at PTSD. But I believed that this was just the old-school thought process. I was one of the fastest promoted Master Sergeants in my field and I didn’t want to ruin it. I was a First Sergeant at the time on a glide path to earning Sergeant Major rank. Seeking help was a difficult choice for me. To paraphrase John Stuart Mill, “PTSD is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.” Failing to seek help by those that are afflicted, and mocking those have it by those that don’t, are worse. During that conversation, I made a conscious effort to challenge his assertion and began my journey to healing. We talked at length about his efforts to reduce or remove the stigma associated with a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In 2009, I had the opportunity to interview then-Vice Chief of Staff Peter Chiarelli. Posted at 12:11 PM in Afghanistan, Iraq | Posted at 12:14 PM in Afghanistan, Iraq | I am grateful for the friendships made here. To all who contributed, thank you, for your service and your words. ![]() The Sandbox has been one of the most satisfying projects of my 35-year career as an editor. (Please let me know if/when there are other titles to add to this list.) When I Wished I Was Here: Dispatches from Fallujah, by Derek McGee Kaboom! : Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War, by Matt Gallagherįire and Forget: Short Stories, Edited by Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagherįire in the Night: Creative Essays from an Iraq War Vet, by Lee Kelley Welcome to Afghanistan: Send More Ammo The Tragicomic Art of Making War as an Embedded Trainer in the Afghan National Army, by Benjamin Tupper In the fall of 2007, the publishing arm of Doonesbury's syndicate published this anthology of Sandbox writing, which contained posts from the first 42 contributors: Garry Trudeau announced the launch of The Sandbox with this Doonesbury strip:Ī few months later, he followed up with another Sandbox strip: In future we hope to add the capability to search by author. You can also navigate around using the calendar links in the right margin. These offer one way to begin exploring the site. Some of the posts from the last few months were written by longtime contributors in response to our LAST CALL, and at the end of each of those are links to older posts by the same writers. You will be rewarded for roaming and exploring its depths. It is a vast body of work - the equivalent of three-and-a-half Lord of the Rings trilogies. The Sandbox contains over 800 posts by more than 150 contributors. Some continued to weigh in long after their return home, chronicling the transition back to civilian life, including in some cases dealing with their wounds and losses.Ī major goal of this project was to help connect people on both sides of the gap described in this 2007 post: THE CHASM. Some contributors only wrote one piece, others contributed dozens through multiple deployments. Throughout its run The Sandbox was a combination of original writing sent directly to us and posts gathered from existing milblogs. Email: as a milblog (military blog) by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau in October 2006, for seven and a half years The Sandbox served as a forum for service members stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan (and a few other GWOT locations), and for veterans who had returned, their spouses and caregivers.
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