Purple Heart recipient shares combat story *graphic*

[Music] [Applause] I guess I was just never convinced that my anxiety attacks and depression were linked to military service or or maybe I didn't want to or thought that I don't know foreign [Music] when I was a little kid to be able to say my grandpa was in World War II we had all these books in my Elementary School library about World War II and I would I would hang out there all afternoon flipping through these books and it was always something in the back of my head it was just a matter of figuring out which branch the reason I chose infantry was I figured why join the military if you're not going to actually go do the fighting I may as well put myself on the front line so yeah I was assigned to Second Infantry Division uh two two three got real close with guys I was living in the barracks and our platoon we all lived you know on the same floor and the same end of the hallway we like to have fun and goof around and then as the date got closer and closer to deployment we definitely partied pretty hard drank a lot because we're like we're going on a 15-month deployment this is the last a little bit of fun we're gonna be able to have and then that day when we're leaving and everyone's saying goodbye yeah a little bit of a sense I guess you could feel it that people were possibly saying their final goodbyes and unfortunately for some of them it was um there was definitely a kind of a somber solemnness and I was glad that I didn't have family there when I left because I think it would have made it feel real a way where it might have made me actually made me kind of scared and worried I don't like a long drawn out goodbye I want to make it like a Band-Aid let's rip it off get those emotions out bury them and then turn to the mission so we first deployed to Baghdad most of our missions were primarily OverWatch where we're kind of watching roads or places where there's kind of where there's a lot of activity suspected the first time I guess we really made contact was at night we were in a an abandoned house I was up on the roof on one side things were pretty quiet all of a sudden on the other side of the roof where a couple of the other guys were just they just started firing that's that was the first time anybody in my platoon shot at people so that was a kind of a shock real quick like oh okay this is for Real the first Kia was in Baghdad it was uh our buddy Joel it was on June 23rd remember the date it was Daylight and it seemed like we were just doing a mundane ordinary thing that we'd all gotten used to doing it wasn't even a real you know Mission Combat Mission it was full insecurity for for whoever and we had stopped somewhere while we were out out of the the striker Joel got shot in the head by a sniper you know he dropped and the rest of us took cover real fast and a couple guys grabbed Joel evaced him real quick my adrenaline was running pretty high at that point because we were up there we were searching for you know a sniper so I was kind of just in that mode and it didn't kind of sink in until I guess that night when we finally went back to the fob and it was kind of surreal oh we'd have a memorial service we went to we had a lot of those in our company or in our Battalion a lot of those I remember you know a couple of the guys kind of tearing up and crying a little bit I felt like I kind of wanted to but I also you know had that kind of dumb mentality where I can't show it so I guess it in some ways it's it's better that way because you know because yeah the reality was like hey we still have you know another x amount of months so you just can't dwell on it in Baghdad in the city the contact was more quick and sporadic once we moved got it got more rural out in the geola province it was a lot more these small little Villages dirt roads and little Creeks where guys can be hiding you have no idea they're there it was definitely scarier out there than it was in Baghdad [Music] it's about eight months roughly into the deployment November 13 2007. the objective was to go after some high value targets that were supposed to be at this in this house and we got there to discover that the targets had left just recently there is still literally you know warm food there so we search these houses that one house it was an abandoned house we found a like a weapons cachet in the front yard so we were gonna walk to the strikers to pick up some explosives C4 we were just going to blow the weapons cachet there as we were walking down that little dirt road that's when the IED went off hit us all of a sudden just everything went gray and brown just like the everything was filled with dirt I'm pretty sure I heard uh like small arms fire I think some of the other guys were engaging and I went to pick up my weapon but the front end just kind of my arm I couldn't my arm just kind of folded underneath the weight of the weapon that's when I looked down and my arm was just all mangled and bloody and disbelief that like I got hit a minute or two after the blast I guess the shooting had stopped me and or PL atoon leader he and I went and sat kind of back to back together with my weapon and my right hand my good hand and just kind of had my other arm I could feel it and I knew it was pretty jacked up but I didn't want to look at it because I thought that would make it all the more real I don't think I ever really looked at it the entire time I didn't just didn't want to see what it looked like and uh so I just kept my eyes up a cigarette and at this point we're stuck on this little road we got several wounded one dead there were two uh helicopters waiting to Evac us and then finally I got into this ER Trauma unit or tent so I guess the blast had pretty much blown out it looked like basically a a shark bite like I'd just taken a big chunk out of my arm and then I was just coming out of being on anesthesia so like our my first sergeant and I think company Commander they penned a Purple Heart on me while I was there the Purple Heart metal and just kind of talk to me for a little bit eventually I guess it was probably about two weeks after I got blown up I was at Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio that's where they did the kind of reconstructive surgery on my arm so you're in this what they call the Warriors transition unit that's basically where all the guys that that were wounded you just go to your doctor's appointments and it's strange I didn't really feel like I was in the Army anymore I was but after I kind of got stabilized and moved into the barracks there kind of felt like then I was just kind of on my own so it's strange almost about half my my time in the military was spent at in a hospital like the whole time I was there my unit was still you know deployed like I feel like I only did one deployment I didn't even finish that one deployment so I feel I feel like I didn't do enough sometimes I probably should have started processing all those feelings or just understanding what had happened [Music] but I don't think I ever really did I think I just kind of you know pushed it down I didn't feel like I had these those classic PTSD symptoms I didn't have flashbacks I didn't have well what they call I guess survivor's guilt foreign so a few months after all this stuff happened you know I was in the barracks I started you know started drinking pretty regularly it didn't feel like to me at the time it had anything to do with PTSD or trying to like drown my feelings or anything like that I felt alone so I just started drinking a lot getting blackout drunk most nights and I couldn't remember hardly anything and that is scary because you're like I don't know what the hell happened I don't know where the [ __ ] my car is I don't know where I am and I did develop you know like started having like anxiety and panic attacks I was in a just a rut a bad pattern so I wanted to to go somewhere where I could just break all that because I didn't think I could do it on my own I went to a VA rehab facility in Bonham Texas in 2014. and I was there for about three months about a year after that was when I finally walked into the gym and fell in love with CrossFit and trying to better myself and actually started thinking through some of this stuff and completely turned everything around it's amazing how how much less anxiety and depressed you feel when you're pointed in a positive direction exactly where you're going or what you're doing but you know [Music] you know it's the right way [Music]

Channel: The Hive

Views: 405,443

Keywords: Purpleheart, Infantry, army, military, combat

Id: q8kvAeLRdcc

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 26 2022