Battle Buddies
Dec 13, 2011 16:04:34 GMT -6
Post by Moderator on Dec 13, 2011 16:04:34 GMT -6
Author ... Landon Steele, a U.S. Army Combat Medic who served in Iraq
Written on December 11, 2011 and posted with permission
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Battle Buddies
I think we are at a turning point. With troop withdrawals and military downsizing we face a homecoming as never before seen and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. For many warfighters we will come home to an empty and unwelcome home, whether that be an actual house, job or country. We have not been fighting a year-long tour or a four year campaign, we have been thrust in and out of two different worlds for a decade. A world back home where we are, in the minds of those who knew us before, the person before the wars and the person we have had to become in order to fight deployment after deployment after extended deployment.
I think it’s funny how civilians back home who knew us say that we come home “kind of empty and different”. Not so, says I. We have come home heavy. We have come home with an extra person inside of us, a person who can pass out candy to foreign local children one minute and shoot those childrens’ neighbor the next should we have to, lose a brother or sister in our arms a few seconds later and go right back on mission the next day. We come home with that person and no one back home knows how to talk to them. That person inside of us can’t communicate with civilians because we speak a different language. It’s the person who sits on the “TC” side of our girlfriend's car and says “Clear right” at a stop sign, it’s the person who at Thanksgiving dinner when everyone says Amen at the end of the prayer accidentally replies “Hooah”, the person who doesn’t see a bag of trash on the side of the road as trash but a 155mm shell in a black plastic bag. The person we come home with inside of us walks different, talks different and most assuredly feels different.
Lord knows that “coming home” (if we really ever do) is the hardest battle we have ever fought and many of us simply return to combat as a soldier or, like myself, as a private contractor because we feel at home in war. The fight to fit in, in the U.S. is a lonely one. In combat I never felt tired or weak for very long because when I was there was a brother to my right and one to my left and their shoulders were broad and strong, we were there for each other. Not so much back home! We come home to a VA health system that most days, as a healthcare provider myself, I think is doing its upmost to kill us and a society of “Occupy Whatever Street” filled with people who have NO F’ing clue what it means to occupy anything more or less a hostile country. We are home but the person we brought back with us, the warfighter inside, is not.
Warfighters, we have made a huge strategic error. When you were in Basic Training if a TI or DI or Petty Officer or Drill Sergeant ever caught you by yourself what did they ask you? “Hey dumbass, where the hell is your Battle Buddy?!!” Am I right? Well where are our Battle Buddies? We must be our brothers and sisters keepers. We were losing 18 veterans a day to suicide and with thousands of troops getting out and returning to a world where they feel they have no purpose we must reach out to and sometimes carry our Battles’. We didn’t leave each other behind on the battle fields so it would be a damn shame to leave each other behind now that we have come home, and as long as we have each other, it is home.
Written on December 11, 2011 and posted with permission
------------------------
Battle Buddies
I think we are at a turning point. With troop withdrawals and military downsizing we face a homecoming as never before seen and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. For many warfighters we will come home to an empty and unwelcome home, whether that be an actual house, job or country. We have not been fighting a year-long tour or a four year campaign, we have been thrust in and out of two different worlds for a decade. A world back home where we are, in the minds of those who knew us before, the person before the wars and the person we have had to become in order to fight deployment after deployment after extended deployment.
I think it’s funny how civilians back home who knew us say that we come home “kind of empty and different”. Not so, says I. We have come home heavy. We have come home with an extra person inside of us, a person who can pass out candy to foreign local children one minute and shoot those childrens’ neighbor the next should we have to, lose a brother or sister in our arms a few seconds later and go right back on mission the next day. We come home with that person and no one back home knows how to talk to them. That person inside of us can’t communicate with civilians because we speak a different language. It’s the person who sits on the “TC” side of our girlfriend's car and says “Clear right” at a stop sign, it’s the person who at Thanksgiving dinner when everyone says Amen at the end of the prayer accidentally replies “Hooah”, the person who doesn’t see a bag of trash on the side of the road as trash but a 155mm shell in a black plastic bag. The person we come home with inside of us walks different, talks different and most assuredly feels different.
Lord knows that “coming home” (if we really ever do) is the hardest battle we have ever fought and many of us simply return to combat as a soldier or, like myself, as a private contractor because we feel at home in war. The fight to fit in, in the U.S. is a lonely one. In combat I never felt tired or weak for very long because when I was there was a brother to my right and one to my left and their shoulders were broad and strong, we were there for each other. Not so much back home! We come home to a VA health system that most days, as a healthcare provider myself, I think is doing its upmost to kill us and a society of “Occupy Whatever Street” filled with people who have NO F’ing clue what it means to occupy anything more or less a hostile country. We are home but the person we brought back with us, the warfighter inside, is not.
Warfighters, we have made a huge strategic error. When you were in Basic Training if a TI or DI or Petty Officer or Drill Sergeant ever caught you by yourself what did they ask you? “Hey dumbass, where the hell is your Battle Buddy?!!” Am I right? Well where are our Battle Buddies? We must be our brothers and sisters keepers. We were losing 18 veterans a day to suicide and with thousands of troops getting out and returning to a world where they feel they have no purpose we must reach out to and sometimes carry our Battles’. We didn’t leave each other behind on the battle fields so it would be a damn shame to leave each other behind now that we have come home, and as long as we have each other, it is home.