I spoke with Tim O’Brien after his talk at VMI, before any of my future deployments became reality. He signed a first edition hardcover copy of The Things They Carried that I had purchased. One word: “Peace.” At the time, I had no real concept of peace. I was training for war. I agreed with the sentimentality — I would sit in the quiet and devour the Beatles. Love is all you need. I had a hippy heart and a warrior spirit, always drifting between what might be and what is. I didn’t know yet what that word would cost me to understand, or what it left out.
I have carried more than gear and orders. I have carried the past and the present in my soul, not always believing the future could be mended. It can be.
I did not deploy once. I deployed four times. Each one added something that the previous one didn’t.
At FOB Kalsu in 2005 — the Triangle of Death — my MMT of six Marines ran mobile Air Traffic Control and airspace services from a makeshift tower atop stacked ISO containers: plywood walls, plexiglass windows. Spring brought pools of thick mud from heavy rain, and the summer heat choked every breath. The mortars were constant. One day, they struck our tower. Fresh shrapnel holes dotted the plywood, letting in rays of light. Corporal Kramer was hit. Colonel Cyr, the MACG-28 Commanding Officer, and I got him down and carried him to the medevac helo. All the while, my team maintained services and launched the Quick Reaction Force. What I remember most is that I wasn’t thinking — not properly. It was only: what is the next best action? What do I need to do to ensure mission accomplishment and team welfare?
In 2007, with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, I carried two burned pilots off a Huey. I did not fully know what I was looking at or what had just transpired. Sergeant Josh Anderson and I only knew what to do next — hold them together so they could be mended. I did not know then that my own soul would need the same.
Then came the CAOC at Al Udeid — cold, sterile, seemingly perfunctory. I was the direct line to SOF operators for final approval before giving the “cleared hot” to drop ordnance. I knew what it meant every single time. I could appreciate the weight of it after the Triangle and the MEU. Then, a month-long tour of Afghanistan as the C3 representative from MAWTS-1.
In the brief moments I allowed myself measured introspection, I worried that I was a fraud. That perhaps I was the wrong man for the job, and I would let my Marines down. I trusted them to be experts at their craft and stood as the steady advisor who let them shine. The interior I didn’t show them was something else entirely. When the towers fell on September 11th, I raised the question in my Marine ROTC class — that hopefully we would respond and attack the right opponent. My comments thudded against an audience of peers and instructors who didn’t understand why I would dare say such a thing. Those misgivings didn’t impact my day-to-day actions or what I said amongst my Marines, but they were always at the back of my mind.
Where was God in all of that? It’s not that I stopped believing. In that kinetic environment, there is no time for academic what-ifs. Those questions come years after the deployments have ended. When you live in a heightened state for months on end, year after year, you learn to live right now. God was there through all of it — seen and unseen. Not there in my active mind, but no doubt always weaving the tapestry of events together in ways that a finite being can only minutely imagine.
After my end of active service, I was adrift. My final assignment was at MAWTS-1, the Marine Corps’ premier Fighter Weapons School. Then I got out. After a year with Hewlett-Packard, woefully mismanaged, leading a meaningless work life. A botched MBA attempt. I now shuttle my daughter to and from school, do my part with household chores, and search for my creative writing muse. I feel like a trespasser in my own home, caught between two worlds that will never let me fully belong to either. What helped me keep going was just refusing to quit. I reached out in my own ways but didn’t know where to turn. There is support out there, but nothing ever seemed to fit or really speak to me.
I had grown up attending Baptist church three times a week. I dove deep into the nuances of theology. We made sure our kids had a Christian education and always placed God as the ultimate authority. My father briefly served as an Assistant Pastor before his final job as an LCSW with the VA and his ultimate suicide. He was a broken man in many ways, like me, and I judged him too harshly in his life. I wish I could have him back. For years, I pleaded with God to bring him back so we could fix everything. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s where I was. My soul longs.
In my hours of deep depression, five years after my exit from the Corps, I cried out to God in my oft drunken state. Why am I still here? I held a loaded revolver to my temple and pulled the trigger halfway. The only thing that stopped me was the pain my father’s suicide had etched into my soul. I couldn’t do that to my kids. Every day was a battle to keep living. After ten years of debilitating self-inflicted torture, I finally said: Enough is enough. God didn’t put me on earth to live in defeat. I am a son of God, and He who lives within me is stronger than my troubles. Finally, being able to say that, and believe it, turned the page.
The military encourages faith, or whatever helps you be resilient and combat effective. It does not much care what you believe, as long as it aligns with the current mission. That is not faith. That is faith instrumentalized. The church sometimes seems to offer only ceremony and words that may not reach into your heart. Civilian culture offers therapy that renames the wound without answering it. When the mission ends, and the country moves on, what remains is a man looking for something that was never meant to be useful in the first place.
O’Brien signed my book “Peace.” I agree with what he got right: we should have peace in our hearts. Not hate. Even as combatants, we cannot lose our humanity. The Things They Carried captures that truth with unflinching honesty. But peace is not the whole answer. What O’Brien left out is redemption and the grand purpose. Peace without redemption is just the absence of war. Redemption requires something to move toward.
My wife, Rhonda, saw it all and stayed. Two Baker acts. A month in jail. Her soul hurt because of me. Now, my kids are seventeen and nineteen. Our eldest, Owen, starts at Hillsdale College this fall. Audrey is a voracious reader and is so full of life. My soul aches with the pain I’ve caused. Yet, God is good. Always. I’m still here. I still have my family and the love of a woman who has seen it all.
The revolving door of past traumas and the present moment continues to spin through my mind. Fragments of the past poke into the present without warning. I don’t deny them. I let them sit for a beat, then press on. I don’t know where I’m going or how I’m going to get there. But I must take one step forward at a time. It is a long walk, but a good walk. I don’t make it alone. There is a guide who lights the path, and that is enough.