Greetings,
We will be talking Tuesday with two cutting edge researchers on the American Heroes Network about Moral Injury: PTSD and Suicide in the U.S. Military. This term is not often heard, but the stark truth written below may help with greater understanding of our troops' sacrifices and invisible injuries that linger after they return home. This story was written in 2005 and rings true today (link: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0615-08.htm.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
--by Sgt Zachary
Scott-Singley
It was still
dark. I got dressed in that darkness. When I was ready I grabbed an MRE (meal
ready to eat) and got in the truck. I was going to go line the truck up in
preparation for the raid we were about to go on. The targets were three houses
where RPG attacks had come from a few days prior. Sitting there in that
darkness listening to the briefing on how we were to execute the mission, I let
my mind wander from the briefing and said a prayer. "Just one more day
God, let me live one more day and we will go from there..." It was the
same prayer I said every day because every day I did the same thing. I left the
base. With a small team I would go out each day on different missions. I was
their translator.
There were different people to meet each day. There were some who would kill
you if they could. They would look at you and you could see the hate in their
eyes. I also met with people who would have given me everything they owned. People,
that were so thankful to us because we had rid them of Saddam. Well, this day
was not really much different from all those other days so far. After the
briefing we all got into our assigned seats and convoyed out to the raid site.
I was to go in directly after the military police that would clear the
building.
The raid began without a hitch. Inside one of the courtyards of one of the
houses, talking to an Iraqi woman checking to see if her story correlated with
what the detained men had said, I heard gunfire. It was automatic gunfire.
Ducking next to the stone wall I yelled at the woman to get inside her house,
and when the gunfire stopped I peeked my head around the front gate. I saw a
soldier amongst the others who was pulling rear security by our vehicles. This
soldier I saw was still aiming his M249 (a fully automatic belt fed machine
gun) at a black truck off in the distance. His was the weapon I had heard.
I ran up near his position and overheard the Captain in charge of the raid
asking what had happened and why had this soldier opened fire. The soldier kept
his weapon aimed and answered that he was sure he had seen a man holding an
AK-47 in the back of the black truck. I was amongst the four (along with the
soldier who had fired on the black truck) who had been selected to go and see
what was up with that truck.
We were out of breath when we got to the gun-truck nearest to the black
civilian truck (a gun-truck is a HUMMWV or sometimes called a Hummer by
civilians, with a .50 caliber machine gun on its roof). There was a group of
four Iraqis walking towards us from the black truck. They were carrying a body.
When I saw this I ran forward and began to speak (in Arabic) to the man holding
the body but I couldn't say a word.
There right in front of me in the arms of one of the men I saw a small boy (no
more than 3 years old). His head was cocked back at the wrong angle and there
was blood. So much blood. How could all that blood be from that small boy? I
heard crying too. All of the Iraqi men standing there were crying and sobbing
and asking me WHY? Someone behind me started screaming for a medic, it was the
young soldier (around my age) who had fired his weapon. He screamed and
screamed for a medic until his voice was hoarse and a medic came just to tell
us what I already knew. The boy was dead. I was so numb.
I stood there looking at that little child, someone's child (just like mine)
and seeing how red the clean white shirt of the man holding the boy was
turning. It was then that I realized that I had been speaking to them; speaking
in a voice that sounded so very far away. I heard my voice telling them (in
Arabic) how sorry we were. My mouth was saying this but all my mind could focus
on was the hole in the child's head. The white shirt covered in bright red
blood. Every color was so bright. There were other colors too. The glistening
white pieces of the child's skull still splattered on that so very white shirt.
I couldn't stop looking at them even as I continued telling them how sorry we
were.
I can still see it all to this very day. The raid was over there were no
weapons to be found and we had accomplished nothing except killing a child of
some unknowing mother. Not wanting to leave yet, I stayed as long as I could,
talking to the man holding the child. I couldn't leave because I needed to know
who they were. I wanted to remember. The man was the brother of the child's
father. He was the boy's uncle, and he was watching him for his father who had
gone to the market. They were carpenters and the soldier who had fired upon the
truck had seen someone holding a piece of wood and standing in the truck bed.
Before I left to go back to our base I saw the young soldier who had killed the
boy. His eyes were unfocused and he was just standing there, staring off into
the distance. My hand went to my canteen and I took a drink of water. That
soldier looked so lost, so I offered him a drink from my canteen. In a hoarse
voice he quietly thanked me and then gave me such a thankful look; like I had
given him gold.
Later that day those of us who had been selected to go inspect the black truck
were filling reports out about what we had witnessed for the investigation. The
Captain who had led the raid entered the room we were in and you could see that
he was angry. He said, "Well this is just great! Now we have to go and
give that family bags of money to shut them up..." I wanted to kill him. I
sat there trembling with my rage. Some family had just lost their beautiful
baby boy and this man, this COMMISSIONED OFFICER in the United States Army is
worried about trying to pay off the family's grief and sorrow. He must not have
been a father, otherwise he would know that money doesn't even come close... I
wanted to use my bare hands to kill him, but instead I just sat there and
waited until the investigating officer called me into his office.
To this day I still think about that raid, that family, that boy. I wonder if
they are making attacks on us now. I would be. If someone took the life of my
son or my daughter nothing other than my own death would stop me from killing
that person. I still cry too. I cry when the memory hits me. I cry when I think
of how very far away I am from my family who needs me. I am not there just like
the boy's father wasn't there. I pray every day for my family's safety and just
that I was with them. I have served my time, I have my nightmares, I have
enough blood on my hands. My contract with the Army has been involuntarily
extended. I am not asking for medicine to help with the nightmares or for
anything else, only that the Army would have held true to the contract I signed
and let me be a father, a husband, a daddy again.
