Level of Anxiety Increased

It got to them near the end. Day in day out for seven months it really got to them and when we’d get our orders in the evening or whenever you could just see their faces. They were just like when is this going to end? I just want to go home, you know. Their anxiety was just like hardly, you had a hard time sleeping, everybody had a hard time sleeping because your nerves are just shot. We were rocket attacked every night. We stayed outside the wire. So we had Kandahar airfield and then the four operating bases. So we stayed in the four operating base called Masum Ghar, MSG for short and we were rockets every night. So you know you lay down and try and get some sleep and all of a sudden the alarm goes off. So you are always amped and then it takes its toll on you and guys just had a hard time at the end dealing with it.

One of my closest friends, so one of my roles was in our vehicle, the LAV III vehicle. I was the crew commander so I commanded the mobility of the vehicle. I command the weapons platform and the crew. So one of my closest friends was my gunner and I mean it got to me too. I’m not superman so some evenings me and Mike, we would just sit down and we would, you know, I would talk to him about it because I was in a leadership role so I couldn’t go to anybody else and show them that okay now I am struggling here but with Mike we could talk to each other. And he got me through it and got me through a lot of the hard stuff that we had to face. I think it’s because of him I was able to hold it together and help our team, our section get home safely. So we all came home. That’s what did it for me.

You know you’re living with these guys day in and day out. You don’t get no freedom unless you go to the shower or even then you’re not. So you just develop this thing and this friendship and you get on each other’s nerves and you fight like brothers and sisters and cats and dogs. But it’s there because you know outside of that wire you don’t trust a soul so those 8-10 guys that you live with constantly you trust them with your life. You have to and in return they do the same thing. So it builds that camaraderie up and after it’s over you could go a couple of years without speaking to these guys right because they are gone separate ways but then you will see them one day and it’s like you were talking to them five minutes ago. I mean it’s always there, it’s there for the rest of your life.