Iraq vet comes clean: “I miss the war”
posted at 6:30 pm on March 26, 2007 by Allahpundit
I’ve heard of war nostalgia, but this is the first time I’ve seen it described in connection with Iraq. It reads like the confession of someone discovering he has a fetish — which, I guess, is what it is. He misses the war, is disgusted with himself for missing it, and keeps on missing it all the same. Good reading, needless to say.
I’ve been home from Iraq for more than a year, long enough for my time there to become a memory best forgotten for those who worried every day that I was gone. I could see their relief when I returned. Life could continue, with futures not so uncertain. But in quiet moments, their relief brought me guilt. Maybe they assume I was as overjoyed to be home as they were to have me home. Maybe they assume if I could do it over, I never would have gone. And maybe I wouldn’t have. But I miss Iraq. I miss the war. I miss war. And I have a very hard time understanding why…
For those who know, this is the open secret: War is exciting. Sometimes I was in awe of this, and sometimes I felt low and mean for loving it, but I loved it still. Even in its quiet moments, war is brighter, louder, brasher, more fun, more tragic, more wasteful. More. More of everything. And even then I knew I would someday miss it, this life so strange. Today the war has distilled to moments and feelings, and somewhere in these memories is the reason for the wistfulness…
After watching the Internet videos, I called some of my friends who are out of the Army now, and they miss the war, too. Wells very nearly died in Iraq. A sniper shot him in the head, surgeons cut out half of his skull — a story told in last April’s Esquire magazine — and he spent months in therapy, working back to his old self. Now he misses the high. “I don’t want to sound like a psychopath, but you’re like a god over there,” he says. “It might not be the best kind of adrenaline for you, but it’s a rush.” Before Iraq, he didn’t care for horror movies, and now he’s drawn to them. He watches them for the little thrill, the rush of being startled, if just for a moment.
McCarthy misses the war just the same. He saved Wells’s life, pressing a bandage over the hole in his head. Now he’s delivering construction materials to big hotel projects along the beach in South Carolina, waiting for a police department to process his application. “The monotony is killing me,” he told me, en route to deliver some rebar. “I want to go on a raid. I want something to blow up. I want something to change today.” He wants the unknown. “Anything can happen, and it does happen. And all of the sudden your world is shattered, and everything has changed. It’s living dangerously. You’re living on the edge. And you’re the baddest motherf**ker around.”
Any of our military readers willing to cop to similar feelings or has this guy’s adrenaline addiction taken an unusual, unhealthy turn?
Blowback
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Come again?
John on March 26, 2007 at 6:35 PM
I was not in combat, but I can cop to missing being deployed. I can cop to lamenting that I did not get shot at while providing securiy for convoys. You train for combat, you expect combat but when you do not get combat you can feel a little hollow. *shrug*
When my enlist was up I missed the Marine Corps very, very, much. Just writing this makes me nostalgic, commercials make me want to call a recruiter…
Theworldisnotenough on March 26, 2007 at 6:36 PM
I mean no disrespect by the exit question. I’m just asking if this is par for the course or if this guy is an outlier.
Allahpundit on March 26, 2007 at 6:37 PM
Yup. I hear him.
There is something to it. I have been home 2 years now (1st CAV–Taji, Iraq). I started feeling it was time to go back at the end of my two week leave and then when I was back for good, it took about 4 months, but I started really feeling like I needed to be back there. I nearly volunteered for duty in Afghanistan last spring just because . . . well, you feel it.
I’m not a psychopath or anything. My everyday job is as a wildlife biologist. I have a graduate degree. However, there is something to being in the Army and the feeling of the unit, and being in that environment, and the danger as you run from indirect fire as well as bullets flying overhead.
I’ve got another 10 years at least. I HOPE to go again.
thomashton on March 26, 2007 at 6:37 PM
I walk through the valley of death and fear no evil, for I am the baddest motherf****r in the valley.
Theworldisnotenough on March 26, 2007 at 6:40 PM
Not if Nancy Pelosi has something to say about it.
Rick on March 26, 2007 at 6:41 PM
We do turn these men into killing machines ( not a bad thing in war) and once you turn in on in some people it is hard to turn off.
djohn669 on March 26, 2007 at 6:42 PM
Killing machines? Hardly. If you want to see a killing machine try AK wielding 10 year olds in Mogadishu.
Theworldisnotenough on March 26, 2007 at 6:44 PM
I wouldn’t call it unusual, and I wouldn’t call it unhealthy. Unhealthy would be if this gentleman were to act upon these desires. Healthy is to talk about it. He chose that job, and ostensibly, he was good at it. The very instincts and abilities that made him good at it are healthy in origin, albeit taken to an extreme in a time of war. That the same instincts would remain in place after his term of service is over makes sense to me.
Certainly, some of the life and death issues might have inspired a kind of god complex in him, but that’s no more unusual or unhealthy than a doctor doing the same, and I know a number of doctors that have the same attitude in varying degrees. It’s just part of the job, and it’s something that is best dealt with by talking about it.
I’m proud of him for talking rationally about what he’s struggling with. I’m only afraid that this will lead to some whack-job Hollywood writer making a movie/mini-series about Iraq war vets losing it in middle America.
spmat on March 26, 2007 at 6:52 PM
I think this fellow may have “Embraced The Suck” just a little too much.
Ed Driscoll on March 26, 2007 at 6:53 PM
I feel the same way for many of the same reasons. You gotta remember that most Infantrymen are of the A-type personality variety. I’m a detailed recruiter and I’m chomping at the bit to get back into the game. Most of my fellow 11B’s are just as eager to get out of recruiting.
I hesitate to say that war is fun. It is not. But it is exhilarating in a way that nothing I have found here in the States is. Adrenaline is the most addictive substance known to man, I fear.
JasonG on March 26, 2007 at 6:56 PM
that’s some scary **** and frankly is hte kind of statement that plays into the Michael Moore “our soldiers are ignorant savages”
Defector01 on March 26, 2007 at 6:58 PM
Yannow….fireworks are legal in South Carolina.
Perhaps he and some buddies should head out to the woods ‘n blow up a few tree stumps.
Even better….try joining a Civil War reenacting group. Here in California, we’re able to use pretty realistic-looking ground charges at our events. One can only imagine what they’re able to use in SC.
Anywhoo….just a thought.
The Ugly American on March 26, 2007 at 7:00 PM
Nope. Don’t miss it at all. My time in Iraq was simultaneously the hardest and most satisfying job I’ve ever done, and I enjoyed meeting with the Iraqis citizens, and the comradery with my fellow Marines was a pleasant and unique experience, but missing war?
Not for a hot second. Glad I went, but no desire to go back.
There’s a broad range of feeling coming back that varies widely from individual to individual. While this guy’s feelings are at the other end of the spectrum from mine, IMO it’s not unatural.
Kadnine on March 26, 2007 at 7:01 PM
Just read the entire thing and I don’t retract my comments. True.
After two weeks there, an anti-tank rocket landed 15 feet from where I was sleeping. I saw the fire, heard the explsion, and felt the concussion all at the same time. It was like laying in a dark room with your eyes closed and someone turns on the lights on. You see the light through your eye lids, but hear and feel it at the same time.
I have all my limbs and my life because some idiot terrorist didn’t know how to arm the rocket properly and it didn’t fully detonate.
The other day, I re-read the entry about that day in my journal (some 400+ pages from that year). I had forgotten, I was the first Joe in the bunker. When I read that, I laughed. Sure, I almost bit it, but the humor of me waking like that, and only taking enough time to say “Holy Shit” before running like crazy is funny. It’s that kind of thing a soldier and Marine misses.
thomashton on March 26, 2007 at 7:03 PM
I’d say about half of the guys in my Civil War group are veterans…some having served in combat.
They love the smell of gunpowder in the morning.
The Ugly American on March 26, 2007 at 7:06 PM
When I went to see 300, there were a bunch of Marines on leave in the row behind me.
Something kept poking me in the back of the neck the entire movie.
‘Sall I’m sayin’.
fusionaddict on March 26, 2007 at 7:07 PM
I’d imagine you’d get much the same explanation if you interviewed a few honest anti-war protesters.
Jim Treacher on March 26, 2007 at 7:11 PM
Be careful, its not that they enjoy war, its adrenaline. Someone who races gets hooked on the feeling and they want to continue doing it. A paramedic gets hooked, a fireman, a policeman. I don’t believe these guys are war mongers, they just get hooked on the adreniline.
Sven on March 26, 2007 at 7:13 PM
I’ve got a SEAL friend like this. He can’t function without being in constant danger. He wanted to go work as a mercenary even though he’s been out for about 15 years. He was in central America in the 80s.
PRCalDude on March 26, 2007 at 7:27 PM
Scarier is how the Islamos are hooked on the same thing, and how very encouraged it is. The glory of etnernal jihad. They have to blast their own just to get a fix.
laelaps on March 26, 2007 at 7:29 PM
Well-put. We need to addict them to something more productive, like pissing their pants.
fusionaddict on March 26, 2007 at 7:32 PM
The thing you miss when you are out of the miltary for me isn’t so much the adrenaline high, because after a while what used to scare the shiite out of you becomes routine therefore the adrenaline rush subsides also. It is the variety of jobs that you can do. Once you become a civillian just like he says it is the same thing everyday and in my experience trying to step outside of the box your job puts you in causes abrasion. I find it incredibly ironic that the same people who think military folks are automatrons are the first to take umbrage if you take iniative and try to do something not in job description. You want a better example. Watch any “reality” show and you will see that the person perceived as being a leader or the Alpha male is the first one weeded out of the tribe.
So for me it isn’t the adrenaline rush I miss, but rather it is the camraderie and the ability to experience different things and learn different things. I could not imagine doing 20 years at a place like GM putting the same part on a vehicle for 8 hours a day.
I was Infantry for 20+ years and in that time besides being all of the positions in the Infantry from rifleman to 1SG I spent time in recruiting, it sucked, assigned to an MI battalion, working S3, G2 and instructor. Granted I was never in a situation as long as OIF which has tours of a year, but hey that is because during my time we kicked ass and came home. Except for Somalia where it was never intended for us to do anything but guard UN food shipments.
Just my 2¢s;
LakeRuins on March 26, 2007 at 7:32 PM
You are forgetting a key element here. Yeah, the adrenaline and the speed rush is special, but its also the sense of accomplishment. You go out, do your job and get back alive. Then you get up in the morning and do it again. Do you remember the comments of the UPI reporter saying that a major told her he felt like he was pushing a little girl out of the way of a bus every day?
Why does a police officer or a fireman gets hooked to “the job”? The results
rarbolay on March 26, 2007 at 7:36 PM
I did my year over there as EOD, and I have to admit, it’s not uncommon among those I know to feel the same way.
I’m now a single dad, full time with two children, so returning is out of the question. I do have to confess to a desire to return.
It’s not simply an adrenaline rush for me, however. Over there I had clarity of purpose. I was saving lives, fighting to bring something to people that had been oppressed for so long that nobody knew life without the threat of arrest and torture. I was there fighting for something I believed in, and with my experiences there, felt was absolutely the right thing to do. I saw the faces of the Iraqi people on a daily basis, and could honestly say that we were doing something they needed. I would reflect on the things I saw there, and the devices that were placed with zero regard for civilian casualties (often they were placed with the intent to kill innocents). I firmly believe that if this isn’t stopped there, my children will be seeing those same devices on our streets. If you think landmines are horrors, you need to see what they’re doing with IEDs in Iraq. Landmines are stupid and indescriminate, these IEDs are mostly command-detonated, with willful destruction of human lives in the bomber’s hearts.
Returning home to find people so out of touch with what is going on outside our protected shores, finding the most important thing in their lives is what underwear Britney Spears doesn’t have on, or who will be the next American Idol, I (and many of my fellow soldiers) are wondering just how important our sacrifices are to America. Our politicians are playing games with soldiers lives in order to prove how far they’re willing to go to prove that we can’t win this war.
In Iraq, these things are meaningless. What means something is the ability to depend on those standing to your right an left, your experience and dedication to ensure that everyone gets home alive, your ability to out think the guy who built this IED that is designed to kill you, hopefully gathering enough information to bring the builders down.
Despite the fact that they have no connection to the rest of the world, I’m also out there so that the rest of America can go on worrying about Justin Timberlake’s hair, and protesting that they’re against this war (mostly because they’re afraid of being asked to go themselves). I firmly hope that my daughter grows up in complete ignorance of just what kind of damage a man strapped with a few pounds of Semtex can do in a crowded café at lunch time. I’ll go for as long as necessary to ensure that.
I know that I’m needed over there…
RustMouse on March 26, 2007 at 7:39 PM
When you go overseas, in any work, and especially in hardship or hazardous duty stations, the tension level is high, everything is work – even buying food. The camaraderie is fanatastic. People drop a lot of pretense when they’re afraid, when they need each other. You discover who’s reliable and who isn’t. A simple thing becomes a treat – say, a shared candy bar after a month. Back to the US. The supermarkets are overwhelming – you walk in and walk out and haven’t bought a thing cause your mind shuts down. Too much input, too many choices.
Yet, the daily life in the US seems bureaucratic, slow and predictable. Instead of the fun of cribbing together some tv satellite gizmo to get some fuzzy game at 2 am, with a huddled group of buddies, in the US you flip on the remote and have 200 boring channels to pick through.
In the military and in humanitarian aid, the individual, especially in hardship posts, is given much more responsibility and freedom than that same person would be given in the US. It’s hard to come down from that.
It is a let down returning to the US, even if one isn’t military. For example, Peace Corps Volunteers are told to expect at least a year to re-adjust. After a war zone or a hardship duty station, or living in a mud hut for while, to listen to Americans whine about the stupidest things is grating.
Plus, some people are born for the military. That’s what they’re good at, just as some other people are good at being doctors. It doesn’t mean anything. A doctor unable to practice medicine would be irritable and clumsy in another field. General Ulysses Grant was completely lost managing a general store, but could sit down, analyse a battle situation and write out a series of remarkably astute and coordinated multi-page orders at one go. Genral Patton was a bundle of nerves between the Wars (WWI & WWII) but once under fire, he was in his element, making order out of chaos and formulating strategies to defeat the enemy on any terrain (He came ashore in North Africa, fought ashore in Sicily, then arrived in France and drove the Third Army across the European continent, then asked to be sent to Asia to fight the Japanese, but was stalled to do what he wasn’t good at – administering the Germans.)
The Left has made military a dirty word and everything military suspect. A secure nation needs a certain number of people who are talented at soldiering because not everyone makes a good soldier, in fact, most people do not have what it takes. Unlike the Left’s favorite smear, soldiers do not want wars, nor do they make them – they know better than anyone the sacrifices, but they’re willing to take the fight to the enemy when there is a war.
naliaka on March 26, 2007 at 7:49 PM
Well people missed M.A.S.H. when it was over.
- The Cat
MirCat on March 26, 2007 at 7:55 PM
I’ve heard a few vets comment on similar feelings on other blogs/sites.
It’s a “high” of doing awesome (in the original sense of the word) stuff with your buddies.
Kai on March 26, 2007 at 9:37 PM
It is the variety of jobs that you can do
People have no idea how much freedom and responsibility young people get in the military. It’s unrivaled in the civilian world with the exception of maybe being a real entrepreneur (even that to a pales in comparison given what’s at stake.)
In Iraq, these soldiers are doing something worthy as best described by TR:
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
These men and women are in the arena.
TheBigOldDog on March 26, 2007 at 10:02 PM
While more so for them, I don’t think these feelings are restricted to vets. I know exactly what he’s talking about with the horror movies for example.
It’s because “real life” is pretty boring, especially to these guys who’ve been in such an exciting (though bad) environment. Imagine you were a skydiving instructor or scuba instructor or anything else exciting, for 5 or 10 years, and then you suddenly had it all taken away and you were working in a gas station. You’d be depressed because regular/real life is generally pretty boring.
I think we all have some of this in us, but it’s exponentially greater for those who’ve been in the war zone. It’s not that they like the death or violence, it’s the excitement. I think that’s what some may not understand about this. (Or maybe that’s just my interpretation, and the death and killing is involved, but I doubt it)
RightWinged on March 26, 2007 at 10:08 PM
Wow! This is an awesome thread! A big huge gigantic thank you to all who have served, you represent maybe 1 percent of the population, of which 100 percent are free because of you. And it’s because of you that my little baby girl will NEVER have to wear a burka, nor will she be taken hostage by islamoscum terrorists.
So many excellent comments on this topic! This is why I love HotAir, everyday I learj something new. Personally, I think these guys live for the sense of purpose, knowing that what they do makes a difference in the world, and for the better. If their job was to kill puppies, I don’t think it’s have this effect on them. They know that they’re protecting their *own* country by fighting in someone else’s and that they have a noble purpose and mission. To come home and be an insurance adjuster or paper salesman just isn’t gonna cut it.
Tony737 on March 26, 2007 at 11:23 PM
Cav! Not a better bunch in the Army. Troopers! My son shares your speciality. Thank you son! Thank all the sons and daughters!
Limerick on March 26, 2007 at 11:23 PM
This is the dangerous problem that keeps all war going: only the survivors write the stories.
You never hear from the guy blown in half and BLEEDING TO DEATH, CHOKING ON BITS OF HIS OWN JAWBONE AND TEETH, LOOKING DOWN AT HIS VISCERA SPILLED ONTO HIS MISSING TESTICLES AND WATCHING RED, EXTRUDED ORGANS THROBBING SLOWER AND SLOWER, THINKING:
“Christ, if only I had one more day to taste water and rest on a soft bed and kiss my girlfriend…” aS his life fades away like piss into parched sand.
Those guys are gone. Their hard truths are lost.
Wilfred Owen (killed in the last week of WW I) put it best in his posthumous poetry:
“…an ecstasy of fumbling…”
I’m glad I served when combat was Cold.
profitsbeard on March 27, 2007 at 12:34 AM
What Profitsbeard wrote is probably true.
But theres something I’d like to point out. These vets are not addicted to war!
They’re addicted to living through it; to living life on the very razors edge and making it through alive!
No soldier likes war. We train for it because that’s our job. However, once you’ve tasted the constant adrenalin associated with being in combat you want more. It’s like being a racecar driver or doing extreme sports like base jumping. You live for the thrill of doing the thing, not the actual thing itself.
Please don’t mistake these
kidsmen for war mongers. They’re not!V5
(For the record I’m a veteran of both Operation Just Cause (Panama), Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and a former civilian SWAT officer, so I know where they’re coming from.)
V5 on March 27, 2007 at 1:40 AM
I’ve got to feel that some of this is because of how they’re treated when they get back. Over there, they’re heroes. Here, they’re just average people, if even that.
Reading his story gives me the impression that returning home is like leaving a leading role in a comic book. Many of us will never do something even half as important as what our soldiers do over there. I can imagine that would be difficult to give up.
Esthier on March 27, 2007 at 9:23 AM
What a truly beautiful, breathtakingly honest piece of writing. Even ugly truths can be beautiful when the soul is sufficiently bared.
What he is describing is not only not unique, it is a common experience – and always has been. The only thing that makes his emotions unusual is his enormous talent for expressing them. He is a gifted writer.
Warriors – amateur and professional alike – have always felt this, and the civilians have always sensed it, usually with discomfort.
The massive popularity of “300″ wasn’t an accident. Nowadays, war movies have to be so entirely anti-war that they’ve become unrealistic. The reality is, as always, between the two extremes: war is ugly and beautiful, horrifying and thrilling, something to run from and something to run to.
It is the core of history and the essence of our humanity. Call it evil, call it noble. But it’s us.
A movie like “300″ – so reminiscent of movies of earlier eras that acknowledged both sides of war, including the honor and nobility – strike something in all of us.
What was Leonidas line? Something like: “Remember this day, for it will be yours forever.”
Had he survived, he would have missed that day.
2500 years later we’re still talking about that day.
The only difference between then and now … is that once upon a time, such emotions could have been acknowledged without a shudder and recoil from the horror of it all.
Thank you, Allah. Reading that was a remarkable experience. I thank God that in every generation, there are those who step up for those who won’t.
Professor Blather on March 27, 2007 at 9:30 AM
This 30 second vid sums it up.
Kevin M on March 27, 2007 at 10:26 AM
Miss it every day. Wish I was healthy enough to head back.
E5infantry on March 27, 2007 at 11:36 AM
So are you Professor. Indeed. Thank you,
Entelechy on March 27, 2007 at 1:00 PM
I’ve never been to war but I have flown fighters as a navigator so perhaps I’ve felt the same rush in very diluted form. The thing is, the military loads you up with an important mission, expensive equipment, detailed training, and heavy responsibility. When you get over the hump to the point where you are performing well, it can really fire you up, give you a deep sustained thrill like you never knew. It is an awesome thing to be given superhuman powers, flying above the clouds in chariots of fire, far above the puny mortals below, and flinging down fire on the Earth. Yeah, buddy, it can be good. Really, really good. And the harder it gets, the better it feels, pun intended.
There aren’t many civilian jobs that come with that kind of high. Mostly, in the business world, you are pushing paper or beating a keyboard, answering to a mediocre manager, pursuing a mediocre mission with little risk in an undisciplined environment with poorly trained and often unprofessional coworkers. It’s natural to miss the times way back when you were given real power and real responsibility to do a real job of real importance among people you respected.
Tantor on March 27, 2007 at 5:16 PM