Re: Re: How d'yall deal with the bad memories?
  By: Alan Ianson to Damon A. Getsman on Sat Nov 14 2015 11:46:24

 AI> That is what I wanted to quote.. :) Iraq/Afghanistan might make other
 AI> things less important.. as long as it doesn't tear you apart that is.

  Oh I'm pretty sure that if I would've gone to one of the combat zones
(especially being as I was reclassed into the Infantry MOS prior to my
discharge) I would've been ripped apart.  I ended up getting off really easy,
being only in OEF- Operation Enduring Freedom, which was backfilling the bases
in europe that were depleted from their garrison units while everybody was
downrange.

 AI> My hat is off to those brave souls who have to take part in something
 AI> they probably don't want to have any part of.

  Mine too.  At least the ones that are doing it for the right reasons. 
There's way too many in there that aren't, but such is the 'boots on the
ground' branches of the military.
  I think that if I would've gone downrange I probably would've gotten a
dishonorable or less than honorable discharge for not following orders,
actually.  Maybe not if it'd been my first deployment, but as my second
deployment I would've had some serious problems.  I'd already learned far too
much about the falsified reasons for the war, and some of the crimes that were
happening downrange, while getting to know soldiers that'd already been
downrange and were now back trying to put their lives back together.
  I had to try to protect a few of those people that came back and couldn't
handle what they'd been through.  There's one of those bad memories that I'd
like to avoid...  One of the men that I saved from whatever fate he had out in
the forests where I was stationed had gone to kill himself, but I found him
first.  I had been classed as Military Police for that particular mission
(amazing that they'd do that, knowing my history).  Anyway, his commanding
officer came to take him back to the barracks while he was still highly
inebriated and going through some seriously bad states that reminded me of ones
that I'd been in before.
  I knew that he wasn't safe to release, and that something bad was going to
happen with this lt. colonel coming in all high and mighty and saying that he'd
just put him up in the barracks that night.  I even followed him out the door
with his soldier, to ask if he wanted me to follow just in case something
happened.  He didn't allow me, and I was painfully close to insubordination at
that point myself.
  The man had been faking how trashed he was.  When they got to the gate at the
base where this soldier was stationed he jumped out of his commanding officer's
car.  He grabbed the pistol from the rent-a-cops guarding the base (why the
hell do they put untrained people like that in situations where they have
military on base, anyway?).  The commander jumped out and got his finger
between the trigger and fingerguard before the soldier could pull the trigger
with the muzzle against his head.
  Then the first sergeant or SGM under the commanding officer jumped out of the
car to solve the situation like any high ranking combat arms troop would.  He
relieved the rent-a-cop of his nightstick and beat the man that was trying to
kill himself, to prevent it.  Unfortunately, as he was not an MP, he didn't
know that you're supposed to stick to certain parts of the body to avoid
killing people.
  My roommate was an MP, too; he was going on shift right as I was coming off. 
He told me about the mess that he'd had to clean up right when he got off of
shift.  The man that I'd known was going to have something terrible happen to
him was killed by that sergeant, accidentally.  My roommate had the pleasure of
cleaning the fluids up from the gate.  At least I escaped that bit.
  There are many more parts to this story, but there's no point in bringing up
the most painful bits of it, really.  I did my duty, and nothing would've
stopped that officer from taking his trooops.  I would've been arrested if I
would've put up any serious fight to it.  The UCMJ does not stutter on this
particular issue.
  So yeah, there's one haunting.

  -D

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