25+months served in iraq, 14 in baghdad 2006-2008, the rest in kirkuk iraq 2009. I was just diagnosed as being alcohol dependant this morning because I was honest on a pre deployment required health survey about all kinds of health issues, alcohol being one of them... Apparently 68oz. of india pale ales a night is taboo... anyway....
So I was in baghdad where all this madness happened in the time frame i was present... Lots of explosions, exchanging bullets fairly often with random insurgeants dressed in civilian attire. A good friend got shot in the head by a sniper who used children as a distraction. He miraculously lived despite a bullet making a clean hole through the middle of his brain. Havent spoken to him since. Flies... They pretty much erk me the hell out, cuz i remember having to identify burned, and shot up bodies in a morgue. I dont know why, but in this morgue the iraqi's hacked off legs below the knees on many carcasses and just threw the limbs into a big yellow bin that just sat by the door, being swarmed by flies. I was forced to shoot at whoever came near our convoy if they didnt yield to hand and arm signals, and yelling at them, sometimes killing them out of the fear of all the suicide vehicle bourne IED's "bomb cars" the insurgeants were utilizing. I still look back, and dont quite know what to make of all that, because there were instances wherein there simply was no time to give enough warning in my oppinion before being forced to fire rounds...
On more then one occasion I had bullets hum right on by my head, or spit up dirt at my feet. Had IED's go off 50 meters from me, thankfully no injury other then tinitis, and hearing loss. I've seen US soldiers burn inside of vehicles with no way of saving them. I've had to carry friends bloody uniforms to turn into the chain of command, only to be told to go clean the blood and brainmatter out of the humvee next because nobody else was mentally sound enough at the time. I think the first time I realized i had been mentally perverted was when i found it funny watching friend sprint back to a humvee with his pants around his knees because he got shot at while taking a **** 20 feet from the truck. On my 21st birthday rather then drinking and partying it up with the guys back home, I got shot at. By shot at I mean 3 rounds missed my face by five to six inches. Literally as the clock turned from 2006, to 2007 that january morning at 12:01am I was detaining 2 insurgeants who had just murdered an innocent iraqi with a 9mm pistol, and were in the process of turning his body into a bomb on the side of the road for us to "find" later on.
I have seen a counselor, but never been able to really cough all of this up, it makes me uncomfortable to think of it all, and I've tried in the past to talk to the wife, or a counselor about it all, yet there is just so much i wouldnt even know where to start. I've had waking nightmares that involved me running into things, IE doors... Though not latley... Whenever I have tried to talk about any of this i break out in sweats, and just simply put, cant find the words to say. I've grown extremely short tempered, and the one time I did express that i thaught i had ptsd i pleaded with the doc not to put it in my medical record so they treated me for "anxiety adjustment disorder" instead with a drug called Effexor XR, which I quit taking during my second deployment. BTW, thats a horrible drug. When I stopped taking it i swear to god i was having sensations of my brain being electrocuted.
I'm probably comming off as that crazy veteran nobody wants to listen to, but oh well. I figure if i cant find the words to say, maybe i can just type, right? My current counselor told me she doesnt think i have any ptsd but then again I have never really spoken to anyone about all of this. Over halfe of my team in that deployment has claimed PTSD, with several of them being discharged as a result. One cant even talk straight anymore. He mumbles and studders. Docs said his nerves are shot from what he said.
Thanks for reading,
Ken