Why Soldiers Miss War

Why Soldiers Miss War
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Authors
Army Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey Martin parked the truck outside
the concrete slabs arranged in a defensive perimeter
around the tactical operations center at Forward Operating
Base Shank, Afghanistan.
A layer of fine brown dust hung in the air. Out in the
distance, high, snow-capped mountains ringed the
combined U.S.-Afghan base. C-130 transport planes and
Apache helicopter gunships roared overhead at regular
intervals.
You wanna see where the rocket landed? he asked me.
Yeah, of course, I replied.
How you doing? he asked, knowing what was in store for
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me later.
Im fine, I replied automatically, not knowing if it was a
lie. Im sure itll sink in later.
He said nothing.
It was December 2013, and I was embedded with the U.S.
Army in Afghanistan as a foreign correspondent for United
Press International. Due to the frequency of Taliban
attacks, at the time FOB Shank was jokingly called rocket
city by the U.S. soldiers stationed there.
Hills and urban areas dotted the enormous bowl valley
within which the base sat in Logar Province, offering
plenty of places for Taliban militants to hide and lob
one-off rocket and mortar shots.
Consequently, the place was constructed like a medieval
castle. Reinforced concrete and rebar bunkers lined with
sandbags and stocked with first aid kits were never more
than sprinting distance away.
Two Choices
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When the air raid alarm went off, as it did several times a
day, you had two choices.
If you werent near a bunker, you just dropped to the
ground, covered your head with your arms and prayed
silently that the incoming round didnt hit anywhere near
you.
You kept your eyes down and stared at a seam on the
plywood floor of the room you were in, or at a pebble or
blade of grass in the field into which you dove.
You focused on the sound of the alarm and waited for
evidence of the exploding Taliban weapon, hoping that it
was a distant thud and not a flash of red and white and
heat and then darkness. Survival is reduced to a few
seconds of waiting and pure luck.
If you happened to be near a bunker, then you went for it.
You stopped whatever it was you were doing and got your
butt under cover.
The entrances to the bunkers were open to the outside,
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with another vertical concrete slab a few yards away,

ostensibly to block horizontal shrapnel.
You usually could see blue sky out the entrance, though,
which always made me wonder what would happen if a
well-placed mortar found its way into the little space
between the open entrance and the protective shield a few
feet away. Such a scenario would turn the bunker into a
death trap.
But the odds of that happening were low.
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U.S. troops at an observation post in Afghanistan. (Photo:

Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)
Martin and I left the truck and walked over to a

3-foot-wide crater in a gravel clearing about 20 yards
beyond the walls of the Army compound.
It was mid-afternoon, and we had just eaten lunch. A
standard meal from the DFAC (a military acronym for
chow hall) of some indescribable meat and soggy
vegetables, topped off with a few Rip-Its for an afternoon
caffeine kick.
Jesus, Martin said as we looked at the charred crater
where the destroyed Taliban rocket had hit the earth.
Were so [expletive] lucky to be alive.
Hes Long Gone
As if on cue, we both looked up and in the direction of the
rockets flight path. Along that line of sight there was a tall
radio antenna inside the Army compound, about 100 yards
from the crater.
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A few hours prior, Martin and I had been standing

underneath the towering steel structure, chatting while we
sipped on Blue Monster energy drinks. When the attack
came, we survived by diving into a concrete bunker that, as
luck would have it, was only a few feet away.
Farther out in the distance behind the antenna, slightly
obscured in the valleys eternal brown haze and well
beyond the base perimeter, was a low bluff covered in
typically drab Afghan buildings. Apache gunships still
patrolled the skies above this area.
That must be where they [expletive] shot from, Martin
said. Although they always put the rockets on timers and
run away before they shoot. Dont know why theyre still
looking for him. Hes long gone.
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The author, Nolan Peterson, interviewing an Afghan National

Army general at FOB Shank in 2013. (Photo: Nolan
Peterson/The Daily Signal)
Martin estimated that the Taliban militant had aimed the

rocket at the radio antenna, since it was an easily
identifiable landmark at that distance. It was a good shot,
he said.
The rocket might have hit the tower had it not been shot
out of the sky by the Phalanx Close-In Weapons System
that guarded FOB Shank from indirect enemy fire.
We killed off most of the experienced Taliban fighters
long ago, Martin said. That one obviously had pretty
good aim, so hes probably been around a while. It also
means he knows how to disappear, because were very
good at killing whoever shoots at us.
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That Was Close

That was how Martin convinced me that I probably wasnt
going to die in a rocket or mortar attack when I first
arrived at FOB Shank. The Taliban didnt live long enough
to get very good at aiming its rockets or mortars, he
assured me.
The Taliban refilled its ranks quickly, he said, but lacked
experience.
I felt so relieved.
After the attack, we inspected the exterior of the bunker
within which we had sought shelter and found it
pockmarked by nickel- and dime-sized shrapnel holes. Any
one of those supersonic, molten metal bits would have
been lethal.
It was a miracle that Martin and I were alive, and the
gravity of our near-death experience was beginning to
weigh on me. My head was spinning as if I were
drunk; time and emotions operated at some other speed
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than normal as I dealt with the what-ifs and the nauseating

reality of how close I had come to dying.
That sound, Martin continued, referring to the laser
Doppler sound that bullets or shrapnel make when passing
overhead, similar to quickly running your fingernail down
tightly stretched nylon. I know that sound. That was
closetoo close.
Its a distinctive sound that, once youve heard it in the
context of combat, will trigger the primal part of your brain
that guides reflexive life-and-death responses.
Surviving on Autopilot
Thats probably why Martin beat me inside the bunker that
morning by several seconds. As a veteran of two wars and
eight combat deployments, he had been under fire a lot
more than I had.
They say that when youre faced with a life-or-death
situation, your training kicks in, and you dont think about
what youre doing anymore. Its all muscle memory. You
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operate on autopilot.
Thats true, to a degree. Training, after all, is just a safely
repeatable replacement for near-death experiences.
In his book, Outliers, journalist Malcolm Gladwell makes
the case that becoming an expert at a skill requires 10,000
hours of practice. Perhaps thats true. But one near-death
experience has a similar effect to those 10,000 hours,
ingraining in your memory every action, no matter how
minute, that kept you alive.
And when any portion of that near-death experience is
recreatedthe sound of an air raid alert, a car backfiring,
the Doppler sound of passing shrapnel, the pop of
miniature sonic booms as bullets pass overheadthe
unthinking responses that saved your life are triggered
automatically as if they had been forged by 10,000 hours of
practice.
As a former military pilot, Im aware of this phenomenon.
In pilot training the instructors would put students in
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simulators and subject us to unsurvivable situations again

and again. We would emerge from the simulator dripping
in sweat and with our hearts beating out of our chests.
Even though we were just sitting in the simulator working
the controls and flipping switches, our bodies responded to
the effort as though we were doing back-to-back Ironman
triathlons.
Why Time Appears to Slow
But thats the point. The hormones released by high-stress
situations instruct the brain to imprint memories more
deeply.
Evolution taught us that trick: The caveman who could
best remember how he escaped a saber-toothed tiger
attack had a statistically better shot at surviving the next
one.
Thats why time appears to slow down in a car crash or
while youre getting mugged. The adrenaline coursing
through your veins triggers your brain into hyperactive
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memory storage. Your mind and senses go into overdrive,

absorbing every sensory detail with superhuman lucidity
and completeness.
Because of this, an event that might only last a split second
occupies as much mental storage space as a week or a
month. Years later you can recall details, feelings, colors,
smells, and sounds more vividly than you can remember
this mornings breakfast.
More than 2,300 U.S. military personnel have died in

Afghanistan since 2001. (Photo: Nolan Peterson/The Daily
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Signal)
Two years later, I can remember with perfect detail

Martins facial expressions when the rocket exploded
overhead. I specifically recall a spot of whiskers on his face
that he had missed shaving that morning.
In Ukraine last September, I had a Kalashnikov pointed at
me at a separatist checkpoint. Today I can recall the vein
pattern on the hand of the soldier.
This hyper-alertness often extends beyond the actual
experience that sparked it. For hours, maybe even days
after you evade death, life just seems, well, better.
You laugh easier. Things smell better. You notice little
details in places and things you have seen countless times
before. You want to talk about what happened, you want to
tell friends and family that you love them. You live harder
and truer than you ever have before. And it feels good.
I Feel So Alive
The evening I returned to Florida after my time in
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Afghanistan as an embedded journalist, I drove across the

Everglades at sunset.
I pulled the car over on the side of the road, stretched out
my arms and felt the suns warmth on my skin. I closed my
eyes and could see the glowing red of the fading days light
through my eyelids.
I feel so alive, I remember thinking. I wish I could live
my whole life like this.
That is PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Its the inability of normal life to ever match the amplitude
of living that you achieved in war. Its the letdown of
survival, and the worry that normal life is just a countdown
to a gentle fade-out.
Ask most combat veterans to name the worst experiences
of their lives, and theyll probably tell you it was war.
But heres the confusing part. When you ask them to
choose the best experiences of their lives, theyll usually
say it was war, too.
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This is nearly impossible for someone who has not been in

war to understand. But the lesson to be gleaned from this
confusing truth is essential to understanding the
experiences of the 0.75 percent of the U.S. population who
are in the military and the 7 percent who are veterans.
No Pity Required
Contrary to the steady stream of Wounded Warrior
Foundation commercials on TV, combat veterans are not
broken, and they are not victims.
They should not be pitied or looked at with a sad shaking
of the head or some reflexive Geez, what a shame. Pitying
them belittles their experiences and misrepresents the
challenges they face after military life.
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A U.S. Army soldier in Afghanistan. (Photo: Nolan Peterson/The

Daily Signal)
Combat veterans have experienced a spectrum of emotions

whose breadth supersedes by a number you cannot
imagine the emotional fluctuations of civilian life. Thats
why its hard to care about normal things when you come
back. Ask a combat veteran about this; its a common
feeling.
Normal life, whatever that is, seems silly and pointless. Its
a gray rerun that leaves you feeling hollow. You live on a
razors edge, only skipping across the surface of life, never
returning to the heights or the depths of what you felt in
war.
But PTSD isnt nostalgia. Nostalgia is really just forgetting
the bad parts of a memory. You never forget the bad parts
of war. The pain of losing a friend or the images of the
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dead reflect in everything you see and echo in everything

you hear in peace.
Yet, even in times of comfort, you find yourself missing the
hardships of deployments. The tough times at least made
you feel something. And thats what you miss the
mostfeeling truly alive.
You say things like: I was happier living in a plywood
hooch in Afghanistan with my worldly possessions reduced
to whatever fit into a backpack than I am now, living in this
apartment, where everything I could ever want is within
my grasp. Thats from a veteran who now works on Wall
Street.
Reflections of War
How does that make sense? Why do the fantasies that
sustained us through the toughest times of our lives seem
like such a disappointment when we come home to live
them?
Maybe, for those who have been to war, the metric by
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which you measure pleasure and pain is permanently reset.

Youre not sad. Youre just flat. You start to lust for the
feelings to which you didnt realize you were addicted, but
required the worst experience of your life to achieve.
You grow resentful of those who go about their lives
indifferent to your experiences and the sacrifices of the
brothers and sisters with whom youve served. The little
pleasures and achievements that drive most peoples lives
and the challenges they claim to have overcome all seem
inconsequential.
You see reflections of your wartime experience in every
part of life, and you wonder, knowing what you know now,
how those around you can live the way they do.
That is PTSD.
Combat veterans arent damaged. They are enlightened,
complicated souls forced to live life by a set of rules and
expectations that can make pursuing true happiness feel
like chasing the moon.
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And for those who ultimately descend into a darkness from

which they cannot save themselves, it was not war that
broke them.
It was the peace to which they returned, but never found.
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