Brothers

They call it survivor's guilt, and from everything I’ve seen, it’s aptly named. It’s the name they used to describe my condition when they told me I had a classic case. It was a symptom of the PTSD they diagnosed me with after I got home from serving overseas. I didn’t have, by traditional definition, a TBI, a Traumatic Brain Injury, from a roadside or other kind of dirty bomb, been shot in the head, or suffered some kind of other physical head injury. I only had the misfortune to witness and survive the sights, sounds, smells, and calamities of war. So, was my brain injured? Yes and no. I say yes, but the VA, not so much. It was not wounded physiologically, but it was greatly affected psychologically after having been through a war zone. A TBI can likely manifest symptoms of PTSD. However, PTSD can be present and show physical or functional changes without suffering blunt force trauma to the brain. I’ve always thought that those of us who’ve been diagnosed with PTSD should be, in some ways, viewed the same as those who have a TBI.

I say this, of course, as someone with no medical training and from a layman's point of view. They could classify them, as an off the top of my head example, the same as patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Both types are diabetes, but they are different, requiring treatment in different ways.

The medical community has already broken TBIs into 3 levels: mild, moderate, or severe. PTSD is broken down into 2 types: Immediate and persistent reaction to trauma. This means you can have a post-traumatic stress reaction without having the disorder. Either way you look at it, your brain is injured and requires treatment if you ever want to live a normal life again. A physically injured brain resulting from trauma is one thing. A prolonged psychological reaction to traumatic events is another. Those with either condition have difficulty returning to a normal life without help. Many of them never will. They may have to relearn how to do almost everything in some cases. You’ve seen them if you’ve ever paid attention. They can't do much of anything on their own anymore, and many of them end up in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. Yet others are walking around the world like anyone else with their conditions hidden away. It’s a shame, but they’re alive and still very much the soldiers they were before the injury. They are strong-willed men and women fighting for every breath. They use every ounce of strength they have left to get better, live better lives, and return to their families. But the definition of normal is redefined for them. Many of them are permanently disabled or missing limbs. Be it if they are bound to a wheelchair or they have changes in their personality and demeanor, they have been altered as a result of their duty to the country and deserve our profound respect.

I remember once, where I used to work, there was a new guy they had hired; his name was Pete. Some of my idiotic co-workers seemed to have something against him and decided it was in their best interest to make fun of him. They ridiculed him every chance they got. I never understood why they did that. When I asked them about it, they told me he was slow, you know, not that bright. Okay, I thought. But was that any reason to humiliate him? Did they really need to make fun of him and make him the butt of their stupid jokes? I’ll admit I should have done more to get them to stop screwing with the guy, but I was a nobody, and they weren’t listening to me.

He was a young guy, probably around 25 or 30. He looked normal enough; he stood about my height, had an average build, and was appropriately dressed for the job. He didn’t walk or talk funny. He didn’t seem like he was angry at the world or put on some tough guy persona. By all accounts, he was just another guy who came to work with us. I spoke with him a bunch of times here and there and got no inclinations as to why my co-workers were screwing with him so badly. The only thing I noticed was the job he applied for. It was a home improvement retail business, and his job was to help customers if they needed help loading their vehicles and bringing the shopping carts back into the store from the parking lot where the customers would leave them.

Okay, simple enough. He was a lot guy. We had other lot guys there that no one picked on that I was aware of, so why him? Based on our brief interactions, I thought he was capable of more than that. Finally, I asked him about it one day when I was leaving work for the day, outside in the parking lot. He was leaving, too, so I thought I’d try to have an actual conversation with him. I was a delivery driver with a CDL at the store with a good working knowledge of tools, hardware, and lumber. I cherish working outdoors and having the freedom of the road at my fingertips. So, I asked him if he’d be interested in working in the delivery department. He should apply, I said, to which he promptly dismissed with a flat-out no. He told me he couldn’t do that. He had other issues that would prevent him from doing that. That gave me the opportunity to ask him about his, what he called, “other issues”. Would they explain why some of the guys there made fun of him? He said he wasn’t like other people after his injury. Injury?

He said he had a TBI from his time in the Gulf War. A roadside bomb went off under the Humvee he was riding in. Two of his brothers were killed in the blast, one more was dismembered, and he was left with, among other things, a pretty extensive brain injury. He was the lucky one, but it changed him in ways he had never expected. He wore two well-concealed hearing aids because his hearing never came back like it was, and he had a lot of trouble processing his thoughts. I never saw the hearing aids; his hair had grown over his ears, but I did notice his responses to my conversations with him were somewhat hindered, like he had to think about what I said before reciprocating. I thought, so what? I do that, too. I always try to think about what I’m going to say before I say it. I do it all the time. He told me he had a pretty severe case of PTSD, for which he was also being treated. He had to relearn how to do a bunch of stuff for himself afterward, he told me, which left him needing the help of doctors, therapists, and counselors at the VA. It was a long road back, and this was his first time trying to work again. At that point, he had only been out of the service for about a year. They thought it might help restore some sense of normalcy in his life. But he didn’t expect the disrespect he got after starting his job at the store.

At work, they didn’t know anything about him or that he was a Veteran. I’m going to guess the office knew about it when they hired him from his application, and they did give preference to Veterans. They were good like that. But he chose to keep all that to himself among his coworkers. He didn’t want the attention it could bring him. They just saw some guy who wasn’t what they considered normal. I looked at these clowns and wondered, where is the respect for this guy as a man? They may not have known he was a Veteran, but geez, show some common decency for crying out loud. I thought, who the hell are these guys to make fun of a coworker like they were doing? I mean, every single one of them wasn’t exactly a Ph.D. If they stopped to look around, they’d realize we all work in the same damn place doing all the menial work that made the owners millions of dollars every year. They might be the only smart one’s here, and they’re not screwing with the guy. They hired him; they hired me, too, and all of them. Even before Pete came along, I thought some of these guys were dumber than a box of rocks and didn’t deserve a job there. I wouldn’t hire them to pick up garbage in the park.

I asked him what unit he was with over there. What he told me blew me away. He was with the 75^th Ranger Battalion. He wasn’t just a soldier; he was a freaking Ranger. The guy had to have been a total badass. He had been with them for five years when he was injured. The Gulf War was his last deployment, but he had been on dozens before that one. But that one did him in, in a heartbeat. He not only lost his friends, but his life changed forever in the blink of an eye. In the time it took to take a single breath, his world was destroyed before he could exhale.

Now, though, hearing all the dumb comments and being smart enough to recognize the sarcasm when he heard it, he just had to let it go. He was bigger and better than that; then he said something that surprised me. He said to me, “Besides, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They have no idea what they’re saying. They don’t know me, and I can’t hold on to that stuff,” he said. “They don’t have a clue or could even fathom what I did, and sacrificed, for that matter, for them so they could have the right to make jokes at my expense. I don’t like what they say, but I’ll always defend their right to say it. It’s just how I’m built. I’m more than what they make me sound like, but I won’t confront them with their stupidity. I would probably end up breaking somebody's legs. So, I’ll keep it to myself and maintain my dignity, you know? I know who I am, but they don’t deserve to know.”

His words left me dumbfounded. This man, who was probably far superior to any of us in physical strength and mental capacity, wouldn’t hurt a fly. His intellectual strength far outweighed their childish banter and transgressions meant to get a rise out of him. He would not be broken by any attempt to demoralize him. He said he felt sorry for them for being so ignorant. I reached out my hand, shook his, and told him I’d have his back from now on. I tried to reassure him that I wouldn’t allow the disrespect to continue if and when I knew from whom it was coming. He said I didn’t have to fight his battles. He can take care of himself. It was then that I told him I was also a Veteran who suffered many years with PTSD and other injuries after my deployment was over in the Gulf. It was before his time, but it was the same war in the same country. “We both left blood on the same field of battle. We both engaged the same enemy, and that made us brothers, too.” And I knew for a fact that his Ranger’s Creed was the same as mine as an Engineer. “I won't leave my brother behind.” We weren’t on the battlefield anymore, but I’m not going to let him fend for himself against the ignorance that’s proven every day by a bunch of jack-asses at work. No, I will have his back whether he wants me to. I will defend him and confront them if I have to.

He told me he had no idea I was a Veteran too. I told him I had spent 11 years total, 4 Regular Army, and 7 in the Reserves. All of it was with the Corps of Engineers. I was a 21 Bravo Combat Engineer and qualified as an 89 Delta, EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal). So, I could build him his house and swimming pool in the backyard, then know how to blow it all to smithereens if I wanted. I told him jokingly that I’m no terrorist, but I could send his tormentors to kingdom come if he just gave me the word. He laughed but looked at me weird. “I’m just kidding,” I said. “I would never do that, but it’s not like they don’t deserve to have the fear of God put into them for how they treat you.” “Agreed,” he replied.

He asked me why I worked at the store, didn’t use my experience elsewhere, and made much better money. “Hey, I said, I learned how to drive a truck in the Army. But I, too, had my own “issues” to deal with. My PTSD was another story. I still have some pretty maniacal nightmares and memories of a war that I’d much rather forget but can’t. But at least now, I can ignore them to still function in society. It was years before I could go to a fireworks show on the 4^th of July; all the big booms triggered me for the longest time.”

I remember walking through the employee parking lot and seeing a Disabled Veteran license plate with a Purple Heart Decal on one of the cars. I never found out who it belonged to until the day we had that talk. I asked him if that was his car, and he replied “yes, it was.” So, I told him he didn’t have to answer me if he didn’t want to, but I asked him what happened the day he was injured. “How did it happen?” He said he was still under orders not to talk about it. But he could tell me one thing. He was responsible for getting his men, 12 in all, from where they were west of Baghdad to where they were going in Fallujah. He was the ranking NCO, so he picked the most logical route for them to travel and still not be seen. It was at night, and the Humvees were in blackout lights only. They were a convoy of 3 vehicles traveling a distance of about 15 miles in rough terrain. About halfway there, his convoy came under attack, and they suddenly found themselves dodging enemy fire. They held their own in near-total darkness and fought with a vengeance, 50 calibers and M-4s going off like the personal harmonic symphony of the Grim Reaper while still moving the convoy along. “Before I knew what had happened, the Humvee exploded from underneath my feet, lifting it ten feet in the air and crashing back to the desert floor in a fireball. From there, it was chaos. Men screaming, the smell of burning flesh, and blood. The blood was everywhere. The sound of gunfire had stopped in my head,” he said. “But that was because the explosion blew out my eardrums. My head was bleeding bad.” The battle they found themselves in raged on for another hour until it stopped. Just like that, it was over.

When they assessed the damage, two of his men were dead, and two were wounded. He was one of the wounded. I could tell by the way he was talking, looking straight ahead of him with a blank stare, that he was back there again. He looked over at me and said. “Those guys were my brothers, and I let them down. They’re not here today because of me, and I have to live with that. I don’t know how to do that to this day. I deeply connected to these guys and appreciated their loyalty to the Rangers and me. For years now, I haven’t been able to get past the fact that I am the one responsible for their deaths. My intel put us on the trail where we got hit. Now they’re dead.” His eyes began to tear up as he looked into mine. “Pete, you didn’t kill anyone. They died in the blast from the bomb placed on the trail by the enemy insurgents you were there to fight. You can't take responsibility for that. You had no control over what happened.” I said. “They were my men, my responsibility,” he replied, his lips quivering. “I’m sorry, man; I don’t mean to get all worked up like this at work. That’s why no one here knows anything about me. I can't do it. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anyone here about our little conversation.” He asked. “Pete, don’t even think about it. You can trust me; I’m not telling anyone anything. You are my brother, too. But I want you to know you can always talk to me anytime. I lost guys over there, too. So, you’re not alone.” I said. The one thing that got me through it was trying to imagine what my dead comrades would think if they knew what I was putting myself through because I was the one who got to live. They’d tell me it was all right to continue to live on. They made the ultimate sacrifice because it was their job. There is no greater sacrifice than to give up your life for a friend or a brother.” In his case and mine, it was an honor to serve with men with such a profound affection and devotion to their country and brothers. “They’d be happy we survived, so we got to tell their story.”