Maybe Tomorrow

by Wes Lee

Soldiers from 1st Cav Div in Fallujah, 2004, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Photo by SFC Johancharles Van Boers, Wikimedia

I stepped out of the truck and scanned my immediate surroundings. There was a security cordon in place, so the area had already been cleared, but these checks were so ingrained in my mind that they were second nature, regardless of my level of trust in the personnel present.
         Nothing appeared out of place. The Southern Iraq sky was hazy with a mixture of smog and sand. The ever-present stink of dust and oil filled my nose, so thick I could almost taste it. The air itself was still and hot—over 110 degrees—and drier than a Mormon temple. It was quiet outside, but not unnaturally so—there was so much fighting going on in the city at this time, and if there was, we were usually involved.
         Everything was as it should be.
         We had been here before. Not here, symbolically, as in a situation such as this. Here, literally. This street. This house. This family.
         The first time, we had been conducting a random patrol through the neighborhood. The intel guys liked to meet-and-greet, so we got to spend yet another day in the sun with one hundred pounds of body armor, gear, ammunition, and weapons strapped to our bodies while they did so. Good times.
         We met the entire family as we passed through. The homeowner was a merchant in one of the local souqs, or markets. He had a wife and sixteen-year-old son. They invited us into their home and gave us chai—real chai is delicious, hot, sweet, and syrupy, and we would have been idiots to say no. Our patrol leader spoke with the husband while the son asked about our gear and trucks with a spark of real interest and told us of his plans to join the military. Overall, they were genuinely kind and happy we were there.
         This time, which as about two months after our first interaction, the husband had requested a visit. He had some sort of information he wanted to share. No way in hell were the brains in the Head Shed going to pass that up. They were suckers for information. Gobbled it up. Picture the Cookie Monster.
         Naturally, the Army Special Forces intel guy and Senior Chief, the fellow in charge of the Navy SEALs we were working with, waited outside as we prepared to enter the home. They would come in after we had made sure it was safe. This was standard practice.
         There were two armored SUVs in the street in front of the house, and Humvees with 240B machine guns in the turret blocking each end of the street, with soldiers pulling security everywhere you looked. As usual, the U.S. military was larger than life and our presence was obvious. The homeowner and his wife were already standing in their open doorway, waiting. Their son was not around.
         Nine of us approached—one squad—and the husband and wife backed into their family room as we filed in behind them. Our squad leader, one of the Special Forces soldiers we were attached to, greeted them in Arabic while we filled the space.
         I remembered the layout from our previous visit. The interior of their home appeared exactly the same as it had the last time we were there. Nothing was changed.
         Everything was as it should be.
         The squad leader and two soldiers stayed in the family room with the husband and wife, standard procedure when clearing a house; residents must be secured, regardless of how kind they were the first time we met. Not only did this heighten our safety, but it also gave our leader a chance to make a quick assessment: were they distressed? Nervous? Irritated? Watching us closer than they should be? Any of these would have been a sign that something was amiss.
         They were fine. Nothing was amiss.
         Everything was as it should be.
         Two more soldiers moved into the kitchen area to clear it while the remaining four of us entered a hallway. There were two bedrooms on the right and a bathroom on the left. Past the bathroom, the hallway turned to the left. After the turn, there was a small utility closet on the right, then the last bedroom at the end of the run.
         The bathroom door was open; both bedrooms doors were closed. We could not see past the turn.
         As the team leader, I was the “hall boss.” I controlled all movement, directed the choreography of who went into what room and when, and secured our front while all of this was happening. My eyes never left the area ahead of us that had not yet been searched.
         I instructed two men to break off into the first bedroom. We were gentle. This was routine. No reason to be aggressive. We knew these people. They invited us here to give us information. Therefore, the third man opened the door by twisting the handles as the first two entered. Then, he turned back into the hallway and peeked into the open bathroom. Soft. Smooth. As unobtrusive as possible.
         I moved past those two doorways, but not past the second bedroom. Only someone with a death wish passes a room that has not been cleared.
         I did not have a death wish.
         We had done this many times before. Our search and clearance procedures were about as fluid as it gets at this point. Like a cold beer on a hot day. And we were not looking for anything specific. We were just making sure no one was going to jump out and blast the intel nerd and Senior Chief later. The whole process was faster than the time it takes to put these words on paper.
         When the two men exited the bedroom, they got in the back of the line. The last man moved forward at my command and opened the door to the second bedroom. The next two in line entered, and the third turned back into the hall with me. Like a dance. Or musical chairs.
         Everything was as it should be.
         We were confident, bordering on cocky. Some people on base called us assholes. Infantrymen sometimes had an air about them that smelled like, “I’ve kicked in doors on bad guys and lived through it.” It came with the territory. We were good at our job, and we enjoyed doing it. One might have said we love this shit. It would have been a true statement.
         We had also been here before. This street. This house. This family. We knew them. And we were more than four months into the deployment. We liked to think we had developed a pretty good feel for things. Perhaps it made us slightly complacent.
         From my position, I could partially see around the turn. Everything but one little pie-slice in the left corner, which included the last bedroom door. This meant that should anyone open that last door, they may be able to get their barrel around the corner and fire a few shots into the room that my men were in.
         I was not a fan. Because of this, I took the corner to secure the rest of the hallway while my guys were still in the bedroom.
         The son was mashed into the little pie-slice in the corner that I had been blind to.
         We were four feet away from each other.
         He held a loaded AK-47.
         Everything was absolutely not as it should be.
         Don’t ever let anyone tell you that nothing happens in slow motion like in the movies. This is bullshit. I’ve experienced it myself.
         Time slowed down. Seconds turned to hours. All the Hollywood stuff came true. Sudden blasts of adrenalin do funny things to the brain. In an instant, I took in every single minutia of information presented to me and combined it into a coherent picture.
         It did not look good.
         His face was flushed. Even in the dim lighting, I could tell he was pinker than he should be. There was a throbbing vein sticking out on his forehead. It told me that his pulse was raised. I felt like I could count the beats. He was sweating profusely—in particular, I noticed it beading up on his upper lip, trapped in the wispy beginnings of a mustache. His eyes were wide, like a spooked cat. Or like someone who had unexpectedly found himself in a standoff.
         And—the most obvious sign of trouble—his finger was on the trigger, and the barrel of the AK-47 was rising toward me.
         Fuck.
         Now it was a race. A slow-motion race. Who could get their rifle barrel up first? Mine was already almost there. I was trained in close-quarters combat. A professional. He was not.
         I tried to get out a quick, “Don’t—” but this was a slow-motion race that I could not lose.
         So, I won.
         Pop. Pop.
         All hell broke loose.
         Now we were no longer relaxed. We were no longer complacent. We no longer knew these people. This was no longer routine.
         Now we were loud. We were fast. We were aggressive. We were angry. We were controlled chaos, embodied.
         As the combatant toppled to the floor at my feet, my men were storming out of the second bedroom. I could already hear the squad leader and four soldiers in the other half of the house yelling, “Get down. Get the fuck down! On the fucking floor!” and roughly pushing the man and wife down onto their stomachs. The rest of the squad had no way of knowing what exactly was going on yet, but they were intimately familiar with the sound of an M4 firing. One of us had just initiated combat with enemy personnel. Until we knew what was going on, everyone was a potential threat and must be treated as such.
         At the same time, I kicked the AK-47 away from the person lying in front of me and screamed, “On me! On me! Door front,” instructing my team to fall in behind me so that we could assault the closed door ahead.
         They did not hesitate. It was Go Time, and in an instant, they were ready to lay waste to anything in our path. We could not afford to be gentle any longer. The switch had been flipped. Violence of action was key. Anything could be on the other side of that door.
         I kicked it as hard as I could, just beside the doorknob. It splintered and flew open, slamming into the wall as we rushed in behind it.
         As the first man in, I took the path of least resistance—straight ahead. Whatever was in my way got kicked or crushed. Fuck the family photos and Dad’s favorite lamp. I didn’t want to get dead. The second man in button-hooked to the right, screamed, “Door right,” and pushed into a nook that served as a closet. The third man followed the path of the second, but did not enter the tiny space, instead turning to face the room’s center. The fourth man stayed in the doorway, facing the person bleeding out in the hallway.
         The entire time we cleared the last room, I could hear the enemy I had shot dying. It was not like on TV, where people die instantly when they get shot in the chest. That’s not real life. In real life, they lie there, trying to breathe, gasping and making gulping “huh huh huh” noises that sound like a goose with a sinus infection, wide-eyed, fingers scrabbling on the floor, until their brain finally runs out of oxygen.
         The man in the nook spun back out and shouted, “Clear.”
         The last room in the house was now secure. It took six seconds.
         I shouted, “Friendlies coming out! One E-KIA,” to make sure no one in the family room got trigger happy and shot us when we left the room, and to let the squad leader know we had downed an enemy fighter. I was not yet positive he was KIA, but with two shots to center mass, I knew he was going to be. There’s no saving someone with a destroyed heart.
         I then sent two guys down the hall—the squad leader would give them additional direction. I kept one man with me so I could search the downed fighter.
         The father was chanting loudly in the living room. “Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.” This was to be expected; it was only a prayer.
         His wife was wailing, “Nooo, no, no. My child, my child…”
         Thankfully, they could not see us when it happened. No one deserves to witness their own son being shot. Hearing it was bad enough.
         My soldier pulled security while I searched the guy’s body. Once I determined he was no longer a threat—he had nothing that could hurt or kill us—I assessed him as a casualty.
         Sorry for the delay, Mom and Dad, but our safety was priority numero uno.
         The outcome was obvious. His eyes were open but unfocused, he was not breathing, and I was kneeling in what seemed like a lake of blood and piss. I checked his pulse anyway. Geneva Convention regulations required us to render aid to any wounded combatant.
         He was already dead. KIA confirmed.
         Finally, all of my essential duties were complete for the moment. I could take a breath. And it was like my body knew this fact because the level of adrenalin in my blood dropped like a rock and what just occurred hit home.
         I had just shot and killed a boy. A teenager. A kid.
         As it turned out, he had become radicalized between our visits. Fell in with the wrong crowd, or maybe a convoy ran over his kitten. No one knew why, and why didn’t matter to us. His family was unaware. This was unplanned. A spur-of-the-moment decision to go into his parent’s bedroom, get the family AK, and stop his father from giving intel to the filthy infidels.
         “What the hell, man? You all right, Sergeant?” one of my guys asked as we joined them in the family room.
         “Yeah, I’m good,” I answered. “And I dunno, bro. That came outta nowhere.”
         But I lied. I wasn’t good. I might never be good again.
         Sure, he had a rifle. Sure, he was going to use it. And sure, it was me or him. Blah, blah, blah.
         That doesn’t help.
         Nothing helps.
         Only some of a war takes place in the physical realm. That’s the easy portion—the brutal, bloody, scream-and-pull-the-trigger part. The other half takes place in one’s mind. That’s the part that people talk about when they say, “War is hell.” Because sometimes, when the bullets have stopped flying and the bombs have stopped removing limbs and your heart rate has slowed and it’s all over, the physical body of the warrior is the only part that leaves the battlefield. The mind stays behind, reliving the events of the past in both wakefulness and in dreams, so much so that it feels like the present. And when these problems are ignored, left unaddressed, and unmanaged in the proper manner, they are dealt with on one’s own, usually in much more harmful and destructive ways. For those that were already damaged, however unknowingly, before finding themselves in combat, the devastation can be even worse.
         Now, when staff ask me how I, as a seemingly “normal dude,” ended up in federal prison, my answer is always, “Unchecked PTSD led to poor decisions.”
         I could have sought help. I know that I should have. But at the time, part of me was in denial, unwilling to admit there was a problem. I was a soldier, after all, strong and able to overcome any challenge. These things didn’t happen to people like me. Another part grudgingly acknowledged the issue but knew that with a PTSD diagnosis I would be labeled as “broken,” whispered about with glances from the corners of judgmental eyes and would no longer lead the soldiers who relied on me. Instead, I found an addiction that allowed me to escape the pain in my heart and mind. The addiction, as they so often do, spiraled out of control, and I careened down a dark path that I would not have otherwise traveled, a path that ultimately terminated with the destruction of relationships with those I love and a 22-year prison sentence.
         Some doubt my simple answer to their question. Those who do obviously never encountered situations in life that required them to do the things that I’ve done.
         People say that adverse events can make one stronger. And others who know this story (of which there are few, other than those who were there—not even my family is aware) tell me that one day it will be better.
         Every morning I wake up still locked in a prison of both body and mind and stare at the ceiling of my eleven-by-seven cell and think: Nope. Not better yet. Not today.
         Maybe tomorrow.