Veteran "Nobody F’n Important" on PTSD, the Iraq War, and Writing as Survival
Editor’s Note: This essay contains unfiltered combat trauma, substance use, and language that doesn’t apologize. It’s raw and real. Proceed accordingly.
Creative Perspectives: Survival
Why do I write? Fuck. Where do I begin?
I never wanted to be a writer.
I’ve just always had this thing inside me that would never sit still. It’s always twisting and turning until I let it out, letting it out like a machine gun, popping off at the mouth. For the longest time I thought it was a curse. I was constantly getting into trouble for smarting off, for my unique brand of sarcasm and cynicism. I was constantly getting suspended and nearly expelled from high school because of it.
My parents hated it. My teachers hated it. My sergeants hated it. And all my ex-girlfriends really hated it.
I’ve always had a creative mind. Much the same as a painter’s color wheel, those creative thoughts are always spinning. My earliest memory of it was from elementary school, when we were tasked with finding objects in our yard and around our house to create a scene on a poster. I found a stick to use as a fishing pole, a rock to make the reel, red yarn to make the string and a paper clip to create the hook. I colored in some water with a blue crayon, glued fresh grass on it and the fishing scene was created.
I’ve always had a fascination with drawing people in using an assortment of creative ways the same way I drew in a speckled trout using an assortment of different lures and bait while out fishing off the west coast of Florida when I was a kid. But I didn’t grow up in a household that gave much thought to the creative arts. My family was a bunch of rednecks. We hunted, fished and rode four wheelers through the Ocala National Forest. My brother and I were pushed into playing baseball and football. He was an all-star. I was an all-star fuckup. I really did try though, putting the creativity wheel on the bench, relegating it to the dugout as I put on a baseball and football helmet and went head first into it. To the dismay of my father however, it went nowhere as I was mostly a benchwarmer, relegated to the dugout on game day.
After barely graduating high school, a bunch of Middle Eastern men in man dresses decided to fly two airplanes into the twin towers. That’s when my journey into the Army began. I put on a kevlar helmet and went head first into the Army Reserves to do my part for the war effort against the terrorists in Afghanistan. Once again that creativity wheel would be beaten down below the surface, beaten down into a fox hole and left behind.
A year after basic training, I was deployed to a war in 2003 that had nothing to do with September 11th or terrorism. A war called Operation Iraqi Freedom. There I witnessed the horrors of war, from witnessing the physical and verbal abuse of my battle buddy by the MPs in our unit who became pissed off after he applied for consciouses objector status to surviving over 26 enemy attacks from mortars, RPGs, car bombs and small arms fire to seeing tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison to transporting dead Iraqis who were shot and killed by our MPs to sitting through a memorial service for a soldiers killed by an IED right outside our base.
But the biggest bomb that was dropped on my 21 year old mind was the truth about the Iraq war, how it had nothing to do with 9-11, how it had everything to do with greed, how it had everything to do with Halliburton/KBR and every other civilian contractor getting billions of US tax dollar to perpetuate a pointless war for profit, how the WMDs that were found had U.S. markings on them from when the US Government gave chemical weapons to Saddam in the 80s to use against the Iranian people during the Iran/Iraq war.
When I finally left that hell hole, it felt as if the mother of all bombs was dropped on my chest, the weight of it all, the pressure pushing down on my psyche like a psychological thriller, pushing me so deep down into that foxhole I could no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel. That’s when that thing inside me really couldn’t sit still. But this time it felt as if I drank a bottle of gasoline and swallowed a lit match, turning it into a fire tornado as it twisted and turned everything within me. I tried for years to drown it out with black label Jack Daniels and Blue Vicodin 500 and yellow Xanax bars and powdered cocaine, which helped for a while to take the edge off of the hyper sense awareness, it helped for a while to make me forget about all the horrible shit I’d seen, it helped calm the thing inside me…for a bit.
But that voice wouldn’t sit still for long. It never does. I had to put the vices on the bench. I had to relegate them to the dugout. It was all killing me inside. I had to let this thing burning inside me out into the wild. But when I tried to tell people the truth about that war, no one wanted to hear it, no one would listen, no one wanted to face the truth. They only wanted to hear the glorified Navy Seal stories. They wanted the heroic propaganda bullshit being made into movies by the Navy. They didn’t want the antihero. I felt like a ghost trying to talk to people about it, screaming and waving my hands, but no one could hear me, no one could see me.
That’s when I decided to seek professional help. But the VA didn’t believe me. They didn’t want to hear what I had to say. They just tried to keep me buried in that foxhole, burying me underneath a pile of pills.
That’s when I decided to turn to that old friend, my only true friend I’ve had since childhood: that creativity wheel spinning around and around, just sitting there patiently waiting, waiting for me to take that ride with her. That’s when I embarked on a journey through college. That’s when I graduated from the University of Florida’s journalism program. That’s when I graduated from the University of Tampa’s Creative Writing Program. That’s when I found people who were willing to listen. And eventually, that’s when I found Running Wild Press …who accepted me and all the madness. And now the time has come, the time is right, to let this thing inside me out… to run wild forever...
Book Excerpt:
“Creeping Death”
A hook hangs down from the ceiling of our jail cell where we sleep inside Abu Ghraib Prison, located just outside Baghdad, Iraq, far from the safety of the Green Zone. The U.S. Army’s new forward operating base is right smack in the middle of the most dangerous place in the world called the Sunni Triangle.
Saddam’s guards used the hook to hang prisoners from as examples to deter other inmates from disobedient behavior. And sometimes, according to local rumors, his son Uday Hussein would use the prison as a sadistic playground to take pleasure in torturing soccer players who lost international matches. The human guinea pigs were beaten, whipped, and hooked up to primitive electric-shock machines until the pain became so intense, it knocked them unconscious.
And for some other unlucky bastards, they were tossed into the prison’s septic tank and forced to swim in a pool full of piss and shit; with the taste of liquid horror flowing into their nostrils and down into their throats with the same devastating force as the great Mesopotamian flood, drowning out any hope for humanity.
Multiple torture chambers were discovered inside the prison soon after we invaded Iraq last year in March of 2003. One room still had the hot plate that prisoners were forced to stand on while having to make the gut-wrenching decision of allowing their bare feet to burn or pull the handle that released the floor, dropped the plate, and tightened the noose around their neck, until death did they part.
The corpses of nearly 1,000 Iraqis have been found buried throughout the compound, giving the prison a paranormal chill that gives my 21-year-old brain an uneasy feeling every time
I walk through its frigid hallways. Dripping rainwater sounds like a heart beating as it pumps the blood of the dead through the cracks in the concrete ceiling and splashes down onto the floor into a pool of nothingness. And sometimes late at night, there is a ghostly wind swirling through the prison that sounds as if it’s trying to whisper secrets to me in some ancient Babylonian language that this private first-class soldier can’t quite translate with his basic high school diploma. But it doesn’t take a fancy PhD degree to make an educated guess as to what it might say if it could speak English to those of us still living on Earth.
I bet if the cold-concrete walls could talk they could tell tales that would make Steven King stories sound like nursery rhymes.
There is something about the history of the hook’s brutality that reels me in as if I am a largemouth bass being caught in a small Florida lake. I often find myself treading water in an aquarium size fish tank of despair as I lay on my cot, looking up at the hook, focusing on its paint peeling like an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake shedding its old skin. That’s when the wondering, and the pondering of the probability of a mortar round blasting through the roof and ripping me out of my own skin begins to take hold.
The thought sends an electric shock through my chest as if I am the one hooked up to Uday’s homemade torture contraption. And knowing it’s only a matter of time before life drops that hot plate from beneath my feet, I can feel the noose getting tighter around my throat as the days go by. Living here does that to a person. It gives you the not so funny feeling that it will soon be your turn to eat shit and die in this septic tank of a prison.
It’s torture to think about the reality of death at such a young age. I should be out partying with my friends in bars all around Tampa for my 21st birthday, clinking our shot glasses together as we toasted with cheers to good times and bad decisions. Instead, I am out here getting shot at in some dried-up desert hell hole on the edge of the world that’s far more sobering than living in one of those dry counties back home in the bible belt. Cheers to making it out of here alive assholes.
CIA reports have stated thousands of prisoners we call EPWs (Enemy Prisoners of War) are coordinating their riots with Iraqi insurgents on the outside to overthrow the base and free everyone inside. There are even reports that the enemy has built wooden ladders to scale the compound’s reinforced concrete walls. The terrorist has been unable to penetrate it with modern technology such as rocket propelled grenades and car bombs, which is bad enough to deal with, but now we have to worry about something as primitive as a fucking ladder breaching our gated community, and no doubt leading to our modern military’s downfall.
Every time an attack is about to kick off, thousands of prisoners begin rioting and roaring in Arabic with the same intensity of a soccer stadium full of drunk fans during the World Cup after the home team scores a goal. And it’s not long after that when the enemy’s offense unleashes a mortar bombardment that comes thundering down on our position, with the Grim Reaper always just an arm’s length away… waiting to pull us across the wire and into his realm at any moment.
Mortar rounds are different than small arms fire, especially the 120mm variety. Even the anticipation of one hitting will put the fucking fear of God in you. The saying is true, there are no atheists when your position is under attack. Especially when you see the rocket-propelled grenade’s red glare or feel the rattle beneath your feet as those air-burst mortars go bursting in the air. You start praying to whoever out there will listen; God, Allah, Buddha, Zeus, Apollo, Mother Teresa, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny; it doesn’t matter who your flavor of the week is, you just pray like hell someone out there in the afterlife will hear your all-points bulletin over your brain’s secret electromagnetic radio wave and bless you with another day on this giant rock that is floating in a big empty space.
It wasn’t until experiencing this phenomenon in person that I fully understood why they called it shellshock during WW1. Mortars shock you to your fucking core… mind, body, and soul. It causes young men to have the eyes of 80-year-olds. I try not to let it get to me, so I always stand next to the blast craters like a tourist and take a photo of the aftermath while throwing up a “W” with my fingers to signify this is WAR. It’s my way of making light of a heavy situation.
To Purchase “No Fucks Given”: Amazon / Barnes & Noble
Kuwait
Saddam's Palace
Saddam's Palace
The Great Ziggurat of Ur
Baghdad
Abu Gharib
Author Bio:
Served as a mechanic in a Military Police unit at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq with the Army Reserves. Made the rank of Sgt with the Army National Guard Infantry. Graduated from the University of Florida with a BA in Journalism. Graduated with a Masters of fine art in creative writing from the University of Tampa.
