Soldiers, what is an experience you have never shared with anyone? r/AskReddit | Reddit Jar

serious [ __ ] soldiers on reddit what was something that you saw or experienced that you never shared with anyone made a throwaway for this I've never been able to tell my loved ones about this sometimes you want to spare them the knowledge of just how much darkness there is inside of you I'm not sure how I feel about telling complete strangers either but it's been burning a hole inside of me for some time now I made the mistake of falling in love with a fellow marine we kept it a secret of course for professional reasons we deployed together and still no one knew we never touched each other made eyes on each other or ever did anything that would be inappropriate during the deployment which was torture in and of itself a few months into the deployment we were passing out food candy and other supplies to a village it was part of the whole hearts and minds thing a little girl walked up to get some candy from the man I was in love with she couldn't have been more than six years old she was holding a doll that someone had given her with an IE D sewn into it as soon as she took the candy from his hand the IE D detonated it blew both of them apart instantly injured three other people I couldn't scream I couldn't cry I just remember watching it happen I don't even remember hearing anything I think the worst part was picking up the pieces of him afterward picking up his arms that had held me but were now in shreds I don't even know how to describe what it felt like it's so cliche to say but a big piece of me died that day had a father bring his kid in who had got caught in crossfire he brought his pillows his blankets everything to make him comfortable we got him off the helicopter and just knew he wasn't going to make it bring him to the FST work on him he's not coming back I look over and he just staring at her sobbing huge gasping sobs you don't need to speak a different language to completely see absolute heartache and pain I'm not a father but that F kidney up a bit no one should have to bury their children I've only told my wife my therapist and my mother what happened I'm lucky I had someone there to save my life but I resent him sometimes I'm highly medicated for severe depression and anxiety disorder I have no friends no job and some days find it hard to even get out of bed I might leave the house once a week if I'm lucky I can't enjoy the fourth of July or New Year's I'm feel like I'm less of a human being because of what happened I know other people cope with it better I don't and I hate myself that I can't cope better and be normal unfortunately I feel like my family is paying the price my respect to all of you have been through a traumatic experience S&R moving along with life I'm trying everyday and we'll keep trying because I don't have an option I have to use a thrill away because I'm disgusted with myself I pray to God every day that my family never finds out what I did on patrol in Baghdad My partner and I encountered a group of men beating a woman in the street at the time there were many riots breaking out and we were instructed by our CEO not to intervene unless there was the clear and present danger to ourselves we walked away I'll never forget her screams they were pouring scalding water on her face I wanted to kill them all but I couldn't her skin was coming off I still see it in my dreams I'm not a soldier but my father served two tours he told me I'm the only person he ever told this to he's a helicopter mechanic him and his company often did something the military calls their force checks when they didn't completely understand the manual it's when you go to one helicopter see how it's set up then compare it to another helicopter and see if everything matches up one day the chopper him and his crew were in charge of something malfunctioned and they crashed and they all died he said it will always want him that he didn't double-check the aircraft that he didn't do something that could save those young men's lives there was no enemy no fire no explosion something just malfunctioned and they crashed and died he only ever brought it up once when we were taking a walk together and has never spoken of it since I don't blame him I saw one of my good friends who was going through an awful domestic issue to be divorced an Iraq strangle or cat just to cope with the issue he was a nice family guy at one point and eventually returned to that he ended up going to jail when he got back because he tried to pull the gun out of an officer's holster I should have checked him into the psych ward days before that happened an early morning salvo of three rockets blew a tent near might be hard to bits while I was in Afghanistan I ran over to the Hesco bunker in my sleep after I had come to a little bit I was checking what I had with me this is the part that I've never really shared with anyone else but I didn't notice for a minute I only had on my combat shirt Kevlar and weapon and then was completely nude from the waist down and number 3232 and number 3232 I was porky pigging at wala sh t was blowing up around us it's all I could think about I felt really awkward about it even though I've seen and been seen naked by everyone there I think I just really didn't want to be caught up in a fight without pants it was racing through my mind if there's a perimeter breach I need to get to my footlocker first and get some pants on I was rehearsing it in my mind Hannah luckily the laundry tent took the brunt of the attack but that really put us back on clean clothes for a bit convoy was stoped in some dirt village Sun was starting to go down all the kids and females went into the building about 15 yards to my left bunch of pickups came into the village full of military age males who then went into the fields pulled up long boxes and broke into groups then scattered around various covers and buildings with said boxes gee I wonder what is about to happen man I'm glad the rules of engagement won't let us do Jackie about this just as the Sun Goes Down low and behold an ambush from the West with rockets and RPK fire gunner is pointed west to the right and doing what Gunners do at times like this as the Sun sets in Twilight turns to doubtful on star wars mode is engaged tracers everywhere the first component attacked when the Sun touched the ground from the West second wave hit us from the east when the Sun disappeared guy came out of the building to my left where the rocket kicked open the truck lor and put my optics on the guy's chest to see a kid's face completely terrified kid's face don't know if I shot I know the fire support with a 30 millimeter chain gun did it blew them away in 4 X zoom along with the small building they came out of sometimes I wonder about the stories my maternal grandfather who was drafted at age 17 in to finish me must have they sent him to Stalingrad all I know is that they told him to take the rifle of the guy he was following should he die in that issues were too small costing him tutors he was imprisoned in a Siberian mine and says he only survived because elder prisons fill in saying at least the kids should be able to one day go home when he did finally returned after 5 years his own mother didn't recognize him at the door for all the weight he had lost my little brother once asked him if he had killed anyone he cried at the dinner table I haven't had the guts to ask him about the war he's still alive aged 86 now and I loved him dearly I guess I never really tell anyone anything unless they were directly involved I'll try to keep them short and sweet my engineer unit was tasked with clearing a road that had been black status for seven years Midway and we get ambushed by a whole village on both sides we nearly ran out of crew-served ammo that day what really gets me about it is that just minutes before it all went down a mother and her child ran to safety in a nearby building and to my recollection there wasn't a single building we did and hit with either mark 19 or polish strikers we taught that village to pieces when it was over it doesn't really bother me but I do wonder how much more harm we did than good on a lighter note in basic training one of my battles was really chafing on his ass he couldn't quite get the baby powder in his crack he must have really trusted me because he asked me very discretely and I obliged so there I am shooting baby powder into another guy's ass I took part in 78 separate attacks from hostile forces around Mosul in 2005 lots of bad [ __ ] but the one thing I ne'er is at one time I was in the turret of an M 1114 hmm WV behind rm250 machine gun doing convoy security and I looked in a vehicle as we cruised by and there was a little girl probably eight who had a healed up gunshot wound to the face she was missing an eye she was smiling broadly at me and waved at me emphatically I just waved back that little girl had the weight of the world on her shoulders and was smiling I've never had a bad day since there was also a kid that was cut deep to where his thumb was barely hanging on to his hand I was in the turret again that day and the kids ran alongside the truck making a rapping motion with this hand I tried to get my first-aid pouch opened so I could throw him my sterile bandage to wrap up his hand but the old button Vietnam Mir a piece of [ __ ] wouldn't come on snapped the little dude ran next to us for a yoghurt a minute while I f ked with it finally I just slipped the Ally's Clips tugged it off my vest and tossed the whole thing to him he was smiling the whole time too and was very happy for the packet it's like f ck man we really F catched t up over there why couldn't we have done more really good stuff instead of escorting commander Dow a bag and the whole f king PR team to a school just so they could get some f king photo ops with the poor kids to put in the newspaper back home my very first patient in Afghanistan was a 10-month girl the father brought her to our gate asking for help we checked her out and she is literally missing all of the skin from shoulder blade to waist on her back left side burn to the bone dad tells Terp that she tripped and got cut up by gravel clearly she is burned I can smell it still today I can remember the screech she made the charred skin I had to remove and that our sole just sat in the corner nothing I can do to right the situation other than do what I can for her that single moment definitely set the tempo for the following nine months the feeling of not feeling anything after killing someone is crazy it's not like you're stone cold no emotion but think of it as you're a waiter at a restaurant and you serve your customers you don't think anything of it when it's happening you just do and carry on it doesn't hit you until later and you're like [ __ ] I just did that the emotion of everything is so bland when it happens but so raw when you take a step back whenever you have a buddy that gets killed yeah it's scary but it doesn't hit you until later every moment in that person's life had led up to that moment it's concluded over done every first kiss every Friday night football game every person they ever had any contact or relationship with everything they ever said every plan they atlatl memory they had created came to a conclusion in a single moment that ended their entire existence TLDR life is precious don't take it for granted I served in the military here in Finland as required by law and there was this guy who changed smoked a lot and we called him score stone Swedish for chimney his father had killed his mum and then hung himself whilst corsten was young score stone was always depressed but he got along and we were good friends then five years after we got out I get a message from an army friend who says that score stone had hung himself because his girlfriend had left him for another guy I've accepted that there was nothing I could have done but it still haunts me sometimes when I go out for a smoke I still remember how he would ask me for a cigarette because he had misplaced his own so our lightest Guerette for him and place it on the side of the ashtray that's my way to remember him edit a big thanks to all who replied you made my day hell you made my week close bracket joking answer a [ __ ] ton of dicks seriously infantryman are like little kids always running around butt-naked serious answer we were ordered to shoot bayonet any bodies we came across because the militia had a habit of playing possum only to kill coalition troops later well in a rocky summer heat after a few days of laying there the bodies will puff up they get super bloated and just nasty overall but you can't always tell especially if they're all covered up well when you shoot ban it kick a bloated body they tend to pop and out comes the nastiest smell and a disgusting liquid past you Jesus nothing smells that bad and the glucose gets all over your boots or uniform or I fall or god help you your mouth much vomit was spooned forth many memories cemented forever edit 9 times out of 10 it was easy to tell they were dead after being hit with 105 millimetres 40 millimetres 25 millimetres false start 57 62 556 or 9 millimeters rounds there usually wasn't much left what was left was also food for the fleet of feral dogs that followed us so if we came across an intact body it was either alive and waiting or had been passed over by the dogs posting this on a throwaway account long story short killed an entire family during the Vietnam War without showing a single emotion we were insensitive to even the most guttering things you could ever imagine a father mother and two daughters our commander didn't give a sh t if it had been nothing but schoolchildren in that house everyone had to die they were accused of harbouring weapons for the Vietcong I have nightmares every night whether you volunteered or were drafted I'm sorry you were put in that situation I can't even imagine reading this threat has been a serious reminder that the cost of war is much greater than the money spent and the soldiers who died using a throwaway because I've never told anyone before and I don't think I ever could on a motorcade patrol in Afghanistan our point vehicle struck an ie D my best friend was thrown about ten yards from the wreckage and impaled through the chest with a piece of metal his face was blown half off I'll never forget it I recognized half of his face and the other half was charred bone he died in my arms about two years later I finally got stateside and went to see his family they told me he wrote to them every day and when the letters stopped coming they knew he was gone his five-year-old daughter asked me how her daddy died I didn't know what to say there was a dead Iraqi guy on the ground halfway covered with a blanket after we shot him I saw a pack of smokes in his shirt pocket and I remember reaching in there and taking them so I could hand them out to the guys I even gave some for the other Iraqi prisoners we were watching at the time it was one of the weird moments thinking about it how strange would it be if your dead body was laying there and some guy came out and took your pack of smokes out of your shirt pocket that morning like most mornings you put your smokes in your jacket and go out to face the day you die and then some guy from another country casually takes them from you as your rot in the Sun weird I once did the recovery of some guys that had crashed their airplane into a shallow lake we got their bodies out and put them under the only shades we hired one of those pop-up things so hopefully they wouldn't stink too bad before they could be carried off it was hot out so we also stood under the shade around the bodies then food arrived that our captain had ordered for us sir we stood there and ate our lunch a few minutes in I realized how weird of a situation this was these guys an hour earlier had been flying around happy as could be now they are dead and I am eating lunch over them like nothing is wrong but I was hungry and they were dead not much else to be done otherwise a junior officer in my unit beat his wife to death then nearly decapitated her with a blunt hunting knife sharp ones were around her son was in the next room over and heard it all but the officer sent into school the next day anyway he was used to hearing his mum get beat up by this and all her previous husbands so he didn't think anything of it I had to go in after and catalogue all of their possessions he used a 300 magnum to kill himself and his brains were in two corners of the room pieces of his scalp clung to a nearby mirror and skull fragments were in the ceiling the wall behind their bed looked like a Jackson Pollock painting one day I accidentally kicked a piece of his skull with my boot it was on the floor and I hadn't seen it at that point it didn't bother me anymore I had to call for over two weeks for people to come in and clean up the mess by that point the blood started to ferment and smell sweet just so many f ked up things all wrapped into one back in 2004 the first people I killed were a teenage girl and a young man who were in close proximity to each other the guy was armed but the girl wasn't but I was on the 240 G machine gun and felt like it was a pretty good chance that I'd get her too if I shot at him I was right and I hit them both what was really weird for me right then was I had this kind of sickening moment of total clarity where I thought I've killed a woman before I've slept with one I didn't really feel different after but everything was different I was 19 at a time I didn't have that same kind of nothing is different but everything is different sensation again until I actually did lose my virginity which was a shitty thing to remember your first time being naked with somebody else for years I'd flash to that moment right at the end of say it still happens sometimes not me an old co-worker not even sure if true anyways it's a great story so I'll tell you all about it I guess my coworker was leading a patrol in Iraq during what I think he said was the Gulf War while out on patrol the guy up top on the gun spotted something quite odd in the binoculars and told them he was seeing the golden arches of McDonald's thinking the Sun was baking his mind he told him to come down and take a break but the gunner insisted he take a look so he obligated and sure as hell there they were as if they were back in the States naturally the plotted out where it was on a map and to their surprise it was just over the border in Saudi Arabia now they were on strict orders not to go into Saudi Arabia but the men couldn't resist getting their burger on so he radioed the trucks in his company to convey on the mcdonald's when they got there i guess no one spoke english so they ordered by pointing to the pictures and then retreated back to iraq to have a feast needless to say i guess every man that gorged themselves that day got sick from eating their first junk food in months to this day I have no idea if the story is true or not but his fun to hear and think about how a company of men invaded Saudi Arabia for McDonald's suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded restaurant 40 people dead instantly 150 wounded due to the fact that it was a civilian matter we were ordered to let the Iraqis deal with it they had no ability to in the slightest and we watched as they bled to death of simple injuries I I remember a child watching me from about 20 feet away as he bled out I saw father cradle in his son who had taken the full force of the blast and was nothing more than a leaking sack of charred meat worse I saw Iraqis just not care I lost my faith in that war right there not a soldier myself no but my grandpa was in Korea for a while as a tank gunner he didn't talk about it much but sometimes he'd just bring it up out of nowhere one day we're talking about football or some [ __ ] and he looks out the win from his chair in front of the TV and says that one time he and his guys were on one side of a deep ravine and they saw a person in the woods on the other they knew North Koreans were in the area so they were going to shoot the person and keep moving but before they could shoot the person turns and they see she has a kid riding on her back she pulls the kid off and threw him her off the side of the cliff then she jumped after it he doesn't talk about the war much only people that know this are the ones in my unit while I was in Iraq out on convoy I'm the convoy commander so I'm in a gun track block hating traffic it's night comes at us at high speed gunner shines his spotlight flashes it then takes his m16 and shoots a bunch of tracers past the car dude doesn't stop I tell him to light his ass up now dot fifty calories opens up shoots out his engine guy finally stops no kaboom we go in and find out it's a taxicab drivers foot has been shot off passenger is a woman with a baby thank the gods they were fine never did sort out why he didn't start even after we fired tracers past his car same convoy we got hit by insurgents firing RPGs and machine guns I called in an airstrike seven insurgents taken out oldest was 18 youngest was 14 still have nightmares about that convoy my unit came under fire trying to protect a medical facility in Iraq the insurgents had us surrounded and we had to choose between taking cover for ourselves or hold position and wait for backup we held the position three of us took position behind a vehicle and engage the enemy we couldn't see who was firing on us I remember aiming my weapon at their position and pulling my trigger I was the only one of the three of us to walk away from that battle two men who died next to me were good soldiers and good men both of them were better men than me I'll never understand why I survived later on I discovered that some of the enemy firing on us were children I never found out whether or not I had killed a kid at the time I didn't care now it kills me this wasn't me but my great-uncle he had a journal at this story which kept in and no one knew it had happened until after he passed away he was stationed in Vietnam and there was a young girl maybe 10 or 11 that always used to spend time with the soldiers they would give here treats and drinks and stuff like that one day they were at their base and the girl showed up this was a little unusual since he usually saw her off base on this day she was wearing a backpack my uncle was with his commander while she was coming closer he was yelling to stop in fear of what was in the backpack she got closer and closer smiling the whole time the commander ordered to my uncle to shoot her my uncle refused to do it and the commander shot her right in front of him in the backpack they were colored in pages from a coloring book that she was going to give to the soldiers along with some other toys my uncle carried that insight for his whole life my dad was in Vietnam he was one of those young punks who had to choose between war and prison so he thought he choose the easy way huh , and went into the Marines he was a seriously f ked up man growing up and probably a sociopath to some degree that war mentally killed him he would tell us stories at that time when we were still tiny my mom had to leave him for all of our safety when I was five he spent most of my childhood in San Quentin the story that sticks out most to me isn't any of the ones he told me but the one my grandma told me when I was an adult at some point he came back home from three years in Vietnam with a full-blown addiction and what can only be severe PTSD he couldn't function above the level of a five-year-old mentally for months so he stayed with his mom and she took care of him one night after a particularly bad nightmare he told her about the rural Vietnamese girl he dated there she had a daughter his the Vietcong took the baby and courted her live in front of the mother the mother brought him the body and he gave her money for a funeral I can't confirm if this is true or not but from what my grandma told me he certainly believed it to be true I forgave him for a lot of sh t after hearing that poor [ __ ] Iraq we were called out to go retrieve a downed bird we jumped into our el mtv's and rushed out to get this aircraft along the way we saw a dead animal alongside the road we didn't think much of it and kept on a truck him then it hit the first blast than the second one two IEDs would trip wide together in a dead animal the truck in front of us was hit with the first one the second one us everyone in the front truck was completely filled with nails broken glass metal you name it but nobody was killed thank God two of the three soldiers lost body parts and we had to retrieve him the explosive that hit our truck was too strong so we walked away with a bent bumper and blown tire but this was a traumatic experience for me being 18 and on my first deployment I'd never experienced anything like the hole I felt when I saw that first truck get hit when you're running over to it thinking you have three dead friends brothers that you will have to watch be put into the ground it's a scary world out there and people do sick things I was on one of the first teams into Afghanistan in 2001 we were out pretty much an hour and the majority of the time we were in country and had multiple standoffs I had RPGs pointed at me lots of ak's not to mention the stink-eye from quite a few people one time we were given targets by our warlord and had a bunch of FA teams overhead waiting to drop bombs we served over 3,000 Afghani 's at a makeshift clinic we helped dispose of a bunch of unexploded ordnance mortar rounds artillery rounds etc , after a truck blew up in town under questionable circumstances I share a lot of my stories with people but the thing I rarely share is that we never dropped a bomb I never fired a shot and never killed a soul and the memory that actually sticks with me in slow motion is of having my weapon on fire and having a guy in my sights ready to kill if anything went down it is weirdly kind of embarrassing that going through all of that I came home with all of my rounds I may be late but this isn't my story but my dad's my dad was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War and was in a crew that was in one of those c-130 Hercules planes that carried supplies and fresh soldiers to frontlines deep in the jungle and would bring back the wounded and dead from the front lines during one supply run with about 100 plus fresh out of boot camp soldiers he meets some guys that he had grown up with and gone to school with they chatted it up and talked about meeting after they got back to the States the plane landed and dropped everything off picked up some dead soldiers and head back the main airport about five months later my dad and his crew went on a supply drop to a different place and the plane had to take back about 50 - 70 dead soldiers while loading he noticed one of the guys he chatted with on the supply dropped five months ago and asked him how he was doing the guy was obviously shaken up according to my dad the guy then said that the unit he was in was ambushed only two guys made it out none of the guys my dad grew up with made it out my dad had to load the bodies of the three guys he had just talked to five months ago you [Music]

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Id: nrCKXwlMJyQ

Length: 30min 45sec (1845 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 01 2019