[7] What It Felt Like to Come Home
CHAPTER 6: Nangarhar to Manhattan in 15 Days
(A writing exercise in several parts, each composed in 60 minutes and posted without edits)
Part VII – Chapter 6: Nangarhar to Manhattan in 15 Days
The busiest time for soldiers in Afghanistan tended to be the Spring. That was also my experience. I will emphasize once again that most of the insurgency we fought there was led from, succored in, and manned by fighters from, Pakistan. In a comfortable range between the mountain passes on the border being closed by winter snows and the punishing summer heat the months from March until June saw many of the largest battles in the East. For those interested in notable battles of our post-invasion Afghan campaign you can read about the battles of Wanat and Kamdesh (COP Keating). The battle at COP Keating was made into a decent Netflix film: The Outpost (starring Scott Eastwood). One of the officers who rode with us on several missions (CPT Swenson) would receive the Congressional Medal of Honor (the highest award for valor in the military and one that is consequently mostly awarded post-humously) for a battle which happened the year that we departed. There was plenty of opportunity for valor to go around in the East.
In trying to identify the factors which made Vietnam vets so prone to PTSD it has been observed that they-unlike WW2 vets, for example-didn’t see heavy frontline combat as often but were always in a state of heightened epinephrine-driven arousal. They spent a year doing patrols, never really safe from a booby trap or a VC ambush with no easy way to distinguish friend from foe.
Another important factor was the general social stigma vets encountered upon returning home. During WW2 combat was viewed with admiration and approval in the wider society. Men who were legitimately unable to enlist because of medical conditions famously took their own lives so great was the shame. It’s hard to imagine such a reaction among today’s citizens, to any war. American society threaded the needle fairly well when it came to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in my opinion. While criticism of the wars grew after the first year (with justification) it rarely shaded into criticism of the people fighting them. Our military is an all-volunteer force, which is ideal for morale and recruit quality but less suited for generating a populist military. The vast majority of Americans have never served in the military and many of them don’t know anyone who’ve served in the military. In many families (as it was in mine) military service is a family trade, passed down from father or aunt to son or daughter. People without any exposure to the military’s standards and risks often have outsized views of the dangers while discounting the benefits entirely. I’ve talked to many people who were begged not to join by mothers or forbade their own kids from joining because of the distant (and in most jobs pretty nonexistent risk of battle, so they stayed home and stagnated. They protected themselves from the risks of war by foregoing the discipline, camaraderie, travel opportunities, and education resources available aplenty in the military and they ended up losing in the final account (from where I was calculating).
I remember many dreams about combat that would have me waking suddenly and I’ve been told that I would cry out or clutch (even choke) or push people out of bed during nights’ sleeps but I don’t recall those time for the most part. I can honestly say that the spectre of PTSD (the only thing most Americans associate with combat these days) was not foremost among my thoughts as we flew home.
We had done pre-deployment training in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina in early 2008. One quick note: Ft. Bragg’s name will change to Ft. Liberty by the end of 2023. Lest those skeptical of the utility of name changes and iconoclasm object I can say that the renaming of confererate-memorializing installations has already had a drastic effect on inequities in the US. Education gaps have closed, sentencing disparities have disappeared, and the average share of wealth for the mean black family in the US has risen apace until it’s nearly as much as the mean white family. All that was required during the past decades was apparently some cosmetic modifications to language and nomenclature to make our society just and equal at every level. The bottom line: changing Ft. Bragg’s name will help millions of black Americans in a real and measurable way, which is good news for everyone.
Since we departed from Bragg (Liberty) we returned there. The experience of Vietnam vets of flying out of the combat zone and arriving home, alone, and immediately hiding their uniform and heading to the bar was somewhat instructive to the VA I guess. This, then, is the third component that can affect war trauma: the nature and length of risks during the deployment, the social acclaim or stigma assigned to combatants in the wider society, and the existence (or lack) of a transition period. The fourth component (which I will explore if I have time) is social support upon returning: medical and social and psychological resources accessible to veterans.
We had a short window (around ten days, if memory serves) to spend time with our buddies before we were released back to civilian status. As a national guardsman I had been attached to active duty units as spare rifles, basically: first the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and then a Brigade Combat Team assembled from 101st Airborne and spare officers/NCO’s who had trained up and shipped off out of Fort Riley (Home of the Big Red One-The First Infantry Division). I hadn’t even seen many of these guys all year and most of them had guarded the gym or the perimeter of larger bases. A few had gone downrange like we had-Khost, Nagarhar, Kunar. One in particular (CS) had been deployed to the Korengal valley, which is the setting of films like Restrepo and was frankly one of the most disputed and dangerous places on the planet during those years. He was thinner and more weathered than I remembered him but still his old self.
We hung out in a typical two-story barracks building. I think we had medical appointments and briefings on traumatic brain injury and VA benefits but I don’t recall those clearly. The army rarely lets guys sit around for long stretches, even when there’s objectively nothing to be done, but we had plenty of downtime. We joked around, smoked, cigarettes, and planned our glorious return.
I remember this being an unusually happy week or two. I was still with my brothers but there was no danger or hardship, and the future appeared a bright and open vista. Here in this interstitial space between the threat of combat and the total dissolution of structure I felt deeply content.
We flew back to New York and took a bus to our armory, a massive brick and concrete building on Lexington and 27th (if I recall…). There were banners draped across the walls and my parents were there waiting. JK was waiting for us, as boisterous and clownish as ever, and sprayed me with a bottle of champagne. It would be the last time I would see him.
A strange new sensation gripped me: I felt anxious. For the first time since returning I battled my nerves. I looked around at everyone and the guys were all huddling close, often with arms over each other’s shoulders. We were edgy and huddling for comfort like children at a new school. Those with wives and kids were overcome with clear joy but even many of them had been plagued by jealous delusions (a fairly normal development for many young couples during such a long and distant separation) or feared feeling out of place in their homes. They were learning to live with families who had barely seen them for more than a year, and re-learning the ways and habits of children who were now older, different. many would battle alcoholism or prescription drug dependency in the coming years. None of those reservations or founts of sadness were on display in that first burst of reunion but I knew they were just below the surface.
I had no wives and kids and was overjoyed to see my family but I realized that my return to ‘the world’ meant a farewell to my buddies and the loss felt visceral. I had grown irritable and combative with the same guys day after day and, except for the remarkably easy-going amongst us, we all had. Now, though, I didn’t want to part ways. It was never acknowledged by any of us. Perhaps I’m the only one who felt that way. I can say that despite the joy and relief of my homecoming and the optimism for the future that day was one of the hardest goodbyes I’ve ever had to make.