Thoughts and Prayers and Thank You For Your Service

I watched the 9/11 terror attacks on an eight inch black and white television in the Fort Drum Ammunition Supply Point office. One of the civilian workers was watching her morning shows when the first plane hit and I was annoyed because we were already running late and I needed one of the employees to sign off on my paperwork so I could leave. So a plane hit a building? So what? Shit happens. A B-25 hit the Empire State building once.

Then the second plane hit.

Almost fourteen hours later I sat with two of my soldiers and a civilian employee crammed four abreast in the civilian's truck in the gravel parking lot of a dark ammunition storage area listening on FM radio as President Bush addressed the nation. By then we knew our country was at war and we knew we would be going, just not where, or when. That night a Private with a magazine in his M4 carbine stopped me at the door to my barracks and demanded to check my ID before allowing me to enter. I laughed, partially because he knew me and I was in uniform, and partially because I knew his weapon was unloaded. After all I was the ammo sergeant and I hadn’t yet signed over any ammunition. Eventually that would change. Nineteen days later, after all of our civilian belongings were locked away and all our gear was packed we learned our destination as we waited to board a C17.

Afghanistan.

I never made it into the country. On October 9, 2001 at roughly 0200 hours local I was crushed between the front bumper of an Army LMTV and the rear of a 500 gallon water trailer that we called a water buffalo. The spout on the back of that water buffalo hit me in the ass and tore almost all the way through me. It ripped out the muscles in my sphincter, dislodged my prostate, caused a 3mm break in my urethrae and severed an artery. I should have died. If the same accident happened in my driveway I probably would have bled out before an ambulance could arrive. But I was lucky that night, my accident occurred less than a hundred yards from an Air Force surgical tent and the staff there were already awake.

I spent eight days deployed. I never loaded my rifle. I never stepped foot in Afghanistan. Yet when I came home some people, strangers, called me a hero.

Being a “hero” is a motherfucker.

I was the first service member hurt overseas. Only time in my life I’d ever been first place at anything and it was fucking up, but I’ll go down in the history books as a footnote, numero uno, and at the time that was a big fucking deal. I got quite a few VIP visitors when I was in Walter Reed. Some, like General Eric Shinseki, left a lasting, positive impression. He and his wife sat with me for an hour talking with me and my father in that shitty windowless room between ICU and Ward 68. He answered questions and told me about his own recovery from wounds and I will always appreciate the time that man spent with me. Others were unimpressive, like when Donald Rumsfeld stopped by to shake my hand and scowl and not answer questions. Others were downright intrusive, like when the Secretary of the Army barged into my room despite a do not disturb sign on the door and found me naked from the waist down, bleeding, and high as a kite in the middle of a dressing change. (There’s photos of the incident but I won’t show them here.) Others, like the Sergeant Major of the Army and a legion of lesser medical corp Generals would have been easily forgotten if they hadn’t each pressed a challenge coin into my hand. Six years in the Army and I’d only won one challenge coin, a consolation prize for not getting an Army Achievement Medal after spending an entire Mountain Thrust exercise tracking down lost lieutenants and leading them safely back to the Battalion Staging Area. But in the hospital I received dozens, all I had to do was live through fucking up.

If the military leaders and VIPs were a mixed bag, civilians proved to be worse in almost every way.

I was soon bombarded with cards and letters from strangers. Thousands of them. Whole elementary schools mailed “get well soon” cards filled with the most deranged sociopathic shit a gaggle of eight year olds could come up with. “Glad you didn’t die!” “Hope it didn’t hurt when you were shot!” “How many terrorists did you kill?” All scrawled in crayon on brightly colored construction paper and accompanied by hand drawn flags, tanks, airplanes, and bloody stick figures with “x” eyes representing the dead and dying. At first reading them offered a diversion, some were genuinely funny, but they didn’t stop coming and the more I read the dirtier I felt because these deranged children kept using the word “hero” and thanking me for my service. I knew damn well I wasn’t a hero. I hadn’t done anything but fuck up. I was home and my guys were still in Afghanistan. But you can’t stop reading the cards because it’s rude and you can’t throw the fucking things out because it’s rude, so they sat in a plastic bag, mocking me.

Adults were little better. Get well cards poured in from half remembered third cousins and friends of friends of my mom. The plus side was the penmanship was better and the messages were a little less deranged, mostly anodyne and boring. “Get well soon.” “Thank you for your service.” On the downside the art sucked. Grown ups never think to draw pictures of cool tanks on their get well cards. But I grew up in a religious family in the deep south and most of these adult letters came from a Sunday School class somewhere and included a prayer request.

Jesus Fucking Christ the miserable shitty prayer requests. At the time I didn’t recognize what was happening with them but I’d soon learn to loath the phrase “I’ve been praying for you.”

There were yellow ribbons tied to the pine trees and welcome home signs hung on the front gate and stacks more cards and letters when I finally arrived home. My newly assigned home health nurse intentionally hurt me that evening during my intake visit. I asked her not to yank on my catheter but she did anyway, telling me it needed to be cleaned, and I threatened to kill her if she ever touched me again and the company was forced to send a different nurse the next day. Afterwards I fell asleep in my father’s recliner in the living room because it hurt too bad to lay in my bed and I stayed there for what felt like months, mostly alone with basic cable and an aging Dachshund and pain to keep me company.

At first it was nice not to have nurses waking me every few hours. I sat in the recliner. I watched television. I snuck a dip of snuff when my parents weren’t looking, picking up the habit again out of boredom and stubbornness. I was an Infantryman by God and if I couldn’t fight, fuck, or drink then I may as well have a pinch of Copenhagen. Days and weeks passed slowly. The welcome home signs came down. The yellow ribbons faded. “Friends” from my parents church visited, peeking into the living room long enough to utter the hated phrase “I’ve been praying for you” then retreating to the kitchen to gossip and drink my parent’s coffee, leaving me alone. My High School best friend, a fellow Infantryman, called. “Hey heard you were in town wanna grab a drink?” He sounded bummed when I explained why I couldn’t. He wished me well and hung up the phone and never called again. An old girlfriend, one that I truly cared for and who I believe truly cared for me, called when she somehow heard the news. I don’t remember the conversation. I guess it hurt too much.

Which is odd because I can remember the accident clear as day. I can remember the red headed nurse in blue scrubs. I can remember fighting the intubation tube and puking. I can remember the black man with a gray beard who pulled that hated thing out of my lungs. I can remember how people would treat me as I began to get out of the house. How strangers always started with “Thank you for your service” but immediately turned the conversation back toward themselves and how they felt. I remember my moms co-worker who pivoted from my injury to the injustice of her son in law, a National Guardsman, having to guard a nearby nuclear power plant. It was a tough gig. He had to eat MREs every day for lunch and only got weekends off.

I remember the polite grandmothers who always made such a big deal about how upstanding and Christian “the boys” were and I couldn’t help but smile knowing that our third platoon moved a stripper into the barracks on a four day weekend and the last man to sleep with her married her. I remember the well meaning civilians who started with “Thank you for your service” and ended with “but I would never let my child…” Or worse, the “would’ve joined but” college frat boys who swore they would have knocked a drill sergeant out. I learned to loath the “good” “christians” who opened with “I’ve been praying for you” and then sat back and smiled smugly, waiting for me to thank them. As if they had done something. As if their prayers alone had saved me and not a barefoot, black, teenage medic and an Air Force Forward Area Surgical Team.

I remember so many painful, fucked up, things, but I don’t remember much about the first anniversary of September 11.

I know I was still hurt at the time. It would be another year before the hated suprapubic catheter was finally removed and my pain mostly ended. I don’t know who called to request I attend the local commemoration ceremony but someone suggested they would “honor” me. I remember not wanting to go. Maybe I said it out loud, maybe I’d learn to mostly keep the thought to myself, but I knew I didn’t deserve to be honored. My guys were still deployed. My brother was deployed. I’d just spent the last year watching Oprah and bleeding. But my dad, a veteran himself, talked me into it. He explained in good faith that my presence would represent every one of my comrades who couldn’t be there and he wasn’t wrong. I know he didn’t mean to cause me pain. They lied to him too.

I remember I couldn’t wear Class A because the tighter trousers brushed against the catheter and caused pain, so instead I wore BDU. I worked hard to make them look right. I took hours to starch and properly iron them until the creases were crisp enough to cut. I spent a day spit shining a borrowed pair of combat boots. I ran a lint roller across my beret and wiped the smudges off my regimental crest and when I put it all on I looked like a proper Infantry sergeant and it felt good to wear the uniform again.

My mom drove me. I don’t recall if it was because she wanted to attend or if it was because I still couldn’t drive. Probably a bit of both. The event was held at the Mandeville lake front, the stage was set in the shadow of Spanish moss covered live oaks with Lake Ponchatrain as a backdrop. It was a beautiful evening, sunny, warm, and clear.

I remember the stage was very high and the stairs were very steep. I struggled to climb them and each step pulled on my catheter causing pain to shoot like sparks through my bladder. I think we brought the issue up. If I remember correctly my mom requested an accommodation. I don't know why no one cared and I don't remember their excuse for forcing me to climb the stairs multiple times.

Not that sitting was much better. The chairs on stage were folding metal and they hurt for me to sit on. Not that there was much sitting scheduled in the program. After climbing the stairs I’d stand for the presentation of colors, the National Anthem, and a prayer, then again once the speakers were done and we reached the end of the ceremony.

The sitting and standing were agony. It was impossible to not put pressure on my catheter and impossible to discreetly fix things while sitting or standing at attention on a stage in front of thousands of people. But the finale was worse. They planned to have school children gather at the foot of the stage and while the crowd sang some patriotic tune they would light candles, and I was supposed to bend over to allow the kids to pass a flame from their candle to mine. The stage was four feet off the ground and bending was nearly impossible for me. The stairs, the sitting, the standing, were NOTHING compared to the agony of trying to bend over to reach a child standing at the foot of the stage.

I know I brought it up. I know I told them that it hurt to bend over. I don't know why they didn't care or how they talked me into doing it despite the pain. Maybe I was trying to be stoic and brave, to pretend to be a hero. Maybe I was pot committed and couldn’t bring myself to be “rude” enough to just abandon them with an empty chair. Maybe I was afraid I would embarrass my mother. Fuck I don’t know. I just can’t remember. Maybe I didn't advocate for myself at all. Maybe they never knew how bad it hurt. In the end, when the time came I did everything that they asked. I marched in agony up those steep stairs and I stood at rigid attention with a Sheriff’s Deputy to my left and a fire fighter to my right and I saluted at the appropriate time despite the pain shooting through me. I sat at perfect attention in that hard metal chair even though it was agony and I fucking listened to every word of every speech.

I might not remember many of the details but oh I remember the speeches.

While they talked I realized with cold fury that despite everything I’d been through to be there and everything I was promised I was nothing but a backdrop to these people as they spoke long and loud about where they were the year before and how it affected them. They never spoke my name. They barely mentioned my buddies who were still in Afghanistan or my brother deployed to Cuba. They lumped us all in with the local cops and fire fighters who’d watched the events of September 11 on television from 2000 miles away and then returned to their regular shifts. They generically thanked all of the service members and first responders then the keynote speaker talked about how he’d been in lower Manhattan just the week before the attacks. As he talked about how that coincidence affected him, how that near miss changed his life, I realized that no one there beyond my mother gave a fuck about me as a person. All of it, the flags, the songs, the prayers, it was all a show for “them”, the faceless masses who’d been terrorized when Regis and Kathy Lee got preempted. The ones who would’ve served but. Like the lake and the moss shrouded live oaks and the flags, I was just backdrop, a piece of the setting.

I hope I kept it hidden while I was on stage. I hope that crowd didn’t see how much I hated them in that moment as I sat sweating, hurting, and bleeding on that hard fucking chair for their amusement. I pray they didn’t see what happened next, when they started singing and the children gathered around the foot of the stage and I bent over to let them light my candle and my catheter pulled just wrong and I pissed myself. Urine flowed around the catheter and out of my torso, soaking my crotch and the right leg of my BDU trousers and pooling in my boot. And all I could do was stand there at attention and hold a stupid fucking candle while a thousand people sang a patriotic tune and stared at my piss stained uniform.

I know some of them saw my melt down in the parking lot. I can remember their faces, disgusted at my tears and scared of my angry curses. I know I hurt my mother. I know she couldn’t understand my pain that day and probably never will. The piss slowly dried as we drove home in angry and hurt silence. The next time someone called to ask if I would attend an event we declined and my father didn’t bother trying to talk me into it.

I don’t know that I ever trusted “Thank you for your service.” I’d seen how far it went in 91 when it was my dad deployed and they took me out of my 7th grade class so a local reporter could ask me questions and then they misquoted me, a child, in the local paper. I’d been in the Army since 1996 and I knew about the con artists and used car salesmen who preyed on young soldiers. I knew what people thought of soldiers on 9/10/2001, that we were suckers, too dumb for college and too lazy to make real money.

Soldiers and dogs stay off the grass.

After September 11 they painted over all of that in red, white, and blue. They made us Time Magazines people of the year. They honored us with fly overs and five percent discounts and free meals but just like those cards and prayer requests and that fucking anniversary ceremony none of it was really about us.

Since 9/12/01 “support our troops” and “thank you for your service” has been hollow. It’s a sham. Then it was masturbatory self soothing for people who had to justify sending young kids in harms way. Now it’s a mantra to calm their guilty conscience for ignoring the longest war in our nation's history and then throwing a fit when it was lost. Since that Wednesday morning in early September 2001 all the “support” and jingoistic “Never Forget!” was always about how “they” the vast civilian masses felt and that’s not fucking okay and I don’t know if I will ever forgive them for it.

But I pity them. I feel genuinely sorry for all of them with their yellow ribbon stickers and “would’ve served but” excuses because I experienced something else during those dark days, something I will never forget and that they will never experience for themselves.

When I was at my darkest point in the hospital, hurt, disgusted with my own body and afraid of the future, too scared and weak to care for myself, a twenty three year old Army medic, a single mother with a GED came into my room and locked the door behind her. We were friends, she and I, both of us served in Hawaii at the same time and we had mutual acquaintances so she didn’t beat around the bush. She looked me dead in the eyes and told me to my face that I was being a pussy, her words not mine, and I needed to man up and learn to take care of myself. Then she taught me how to change my own colostomy bag. Before I left the hospital she also brought me a stuffed monkey, a gift from her kid to keep me company. It’s my kid’s now because thanks to her I got over my disgust and fear and started working to get better.

There were the nurses and medics who would visit my room after their shift was over, hanging out for a half hour or so just hanging out and talking, letting me be a 23 year old for a moment instead of a patient. A year later another medic risked UCMJ action to sneak Copenhagen snuff into the hospital for me and another buddy who was wounded in Operation Anaconda. We’d sit in his hospital room dipping snuff and watching Telletubbies while high on morphine and for just a moment we got to be dirtbag twenty something Infantrymen again. The Louisiana National Guard gave my dad months off to care for me and for years his Army buddies from the first Gulf War would stop by to trade tales. The guys that are still my friends today all made the long drive out to the sticks to visit me, often dragging along their girlfriends. Imagine caring enough about someone to interrupt a date to visit them at home.

Among the visitors and VIPs that stopped by my room during my stay at Walter Reed there were two strangers, young Specialists new to my battalion and on rear detachment. I don’t remember their names or why the Army sent them to Washington DC, what I recall is that on their day off, instead of seeing the sights or hitting up a Georgetown strip club they put on a uniform and came to visit me. We didn’t know each other. We’d been in different companies and if we’d ever met it was in passing but they found me somehow and they came. They came for the same reason the former chief of staff of the Army came. They came for the same reason that medic read me the riot act. They came for the same reason those medics and nurses hung out after hours or smuggled in contraband. They came for the same reason my dad’s old Army buddies came. They came for the same reason my friends made the long drive out to the sticks. They came because I was one of them, a comrade, a brother and that will always mean more to me than the nameless, faceless, “they” will ever understand.

That’s what people who “would’ve served but…” don’t get. That’s what the faceless crowd will never understand. Real comradeship, genuine love and care can never be replaced with “remembrance”, prayer requests, yellow ribbons, patriotic songs, dinner discounts, and “thank you for your service.”