Food for Thought on National BBQ Day

Last year was the first time Memorial Day really affected me. 

I’m ashamed to admit that. 2012 wasn’t my first year with military association—my mother served in the Army and deployed to Saudi Arabia when I was seven. It wasn’t my first year as a veteran myself, or my first year with a connection to a military comrade killed in action.

Memorial Day 2012 was, however, the first time I gave the holiday the consideration it deserves.

Previously, I’d bounced between opposite ends of the spectrum of observance. Before I served in the military, I flitted past the final Monday of May without much thought. There are so many distractions in civilian America: work, family, friends, school, health, groceries, cleaning, sports, hobbies, politics . . . With holiday weekends come travel, traffic, sun (or complaints about rain), relaxation, barbeques and beer . . . It’s easy to overlook the meaning of the holiday; or to simply acknowledge, but not honor the purpose.

In the military, it’s impossible to forget. Reminders are everywhere, every day of every year.

My base in Afghanistan had a memorial wall with portraits of each of the 17 fallen comrades of Paktya province. I stared at those photos daily; proud faces of young men who had died in the space where I lived and worked. My base in Florida had names chiseled into a memorial outside the base chapel. There were plaques in the airpark commemorating those lost in aircraft crashes. Streets shared names with fallen Airmen. I attended memorial services; I wrote profiles on their subjects. Every day was Memorial Day.

I don’t remember how I spent Memorial Day 2011, my first year out of the military. Maybe I was stuck in limbo on that spectrum—at once too separated from the military, cozy with my family in my childhood home in Seattle; and too close, my war still fresh and raw and unprocessed.  

As Memorial Day approached last year, my mind went back to the faces in Paktya and the names at Hurlburt Field. It lingered for a long time with memories of Randy Voas, Ryan Hall and JD Loftis. I didn’t tell my mind to go there, but I didn’t try to redirect it either. I let those names and faces and memories form a backdrop to my time with family, to my sun and relaxation, food and drink. I toasted them. Then for one minute on Memorial Day, at 12:01pm Eastern Standard Time, I closed my eyes and cleared my head of everything but the names and faces I knew, and the countless others I didn’t, who made the ultimate sacrifice.

On some level, those names and faces are always with me now. They are part of who I am as a veteran. I can already feel them pushing a little harder as Memorial Day weekend approaches, and like last year, I won’t push back. I will again bring them to the forefront for a minute of silence this Memorial Day, and I hope you will do the same.

12:01pm EDT Monday: #GoSilent for one minute to honor the men and women who have given their lives for our country.

Then enjoy your weekend. That’s what they would want.

Today, I cry

Sometimes I look at old pictures. Sometimes I listen to songs – you know the kind, the ones that “take you back.” Sometimes I grab a pint of ice cream and a box of Kleenex and put on the saddest movie in my chick flick collection. Sometimes, like today, I dig through articles and watch videos honoring men who died too soon.

Because sometimes I just need to cry.

Sometimes they keep me up at night – spiraling memories and should-have-beens. Sometimes I shut them out, tuck them away again on the other side of Sometime, and drift into happier dreams. Sometimes I summon them, to trace the outlines of a friendly smile, an eye roll, an early morning jog, a final salute to a passing hearse.

Because sometimes I’m afraid that if I don’t remember, no one will.

Sometimes I write. Sometimes my pen hovers over blank pages. Sometimes the words flow freely – into a tribute, a memory, the everything and nothing I can give.

But sometimes, it’s never enough.

Sometimes I just need to cry.

This Memorial Day I honor:

Maj Randy Voas, KIA Oct 8, 2010

Capt Ryan Hall, KIA Feb 18, 2012

Lt Col JD Loftis, KIA Feb 25, 2012

And all those who made the ultimate sacrifice

Maybe someday I’ll be able to remember without being sad. Maybe I won’t. But maybe that’s okay.

What I think about when I think about running

Yesterday was farthest I’ve run since my knee injury three years ago.

To say it felt good would be an understatement . . . and a lie.

Of course it felt good! I conquered a milestone! I was also supporting a good cause: the 8th Annual Pat’s Run in support of the Pat Tillman Foundation, which provides scholarships to veterans and military spouses.

The run also felt like crap. It was hot outside, and though my knee was surprisingly pain-free, the rest of my body protested the entire 4.2 miles.

I know what you’re thinking (other than that I’m a total stud): Why 4.2 miles? The 4.2 mile course is in honor of Pat Tillman, #42 when he played football for Arizona State, who walked away from a lucrative NFL contract to become an Army Ranger after 9/11. His patriotism inspired a nation. In 2004, his friendly fire death in Afghanistan shocked a nation.

Every year, to remember the man behind the media storm, Pat’s Run is held in Tempe, AZ, finishing at the 42 yard line of the ASU Sun Devils Stadium. The race draws more than 30,000 people annually and has spawned 25 “shadow runs” across the country, including here in Boston, where yesterday nearly 100 participants – veterans, ASU alumni and supporters – came together. To remember.

I used to run to forget.

I ran to drain my mind of my stressors and worries, to get lost in the rhythm of my feet. In my job as an Air Force public affairs officer, where a ringing phone could signal an emergency at any minute, where nothing was predictable, I relished the consistency of running. Left, right, left, right, left, right. Breathe in, two, three, four; breathe out, two, three, four . . .

A part of me wishes I could still run this way. I wish I could run faster, because my demons are closer now. I wish I could run longer, to try to outpace them.

In a lot of ways, running still feels good – mentally, if not physically. But when I run now, I can’t help remembering how it used to be. My easy stride, my breath flowing deep and natural. So powerful. Now my legs and my lungs strain with every step.

I remember maintaining a 7:27 pace for a 4-mile race in my prime. I held steady at just over nine minutes for 26.2 miles around Houston in 2009. Yesterday, just under nine minutes for 4.2 would have to do.

When I run, I remember dawn in Indiana during pre-deployment training: the scatter of loose gravel as my unit started our morning run, the swish-swish-swish of my Air Force warm-up pants, and the first stabbing pain in my knee. I didn’t wonder how I would make it through a nine-month deployment with an injury. I wondered how I would make it through nine months without running.

I remember falling into a jagged rhythm on the loose, sticky belt of the treadmill in our Forward Operating Base’s gym. Staring into the white tent wall dripping with condensation, my iPod transported me back to the beach in Florida, or to the 1990s, or any time or any place that wasn’t a rickety treadmill in Afghanistan where my knee wouldn’t let me run any further.

Yesterday, after about a mile, I didn’t want to run further. But then I remembered that I could – it was a beautiful day in AMERICA and my body was working, at least for the moment. And I remembered those who could no longer enjoy beautiful days in America:

Maj. Randy Voas, Killed in Action, April 8, 2010
Capt. Ryan Hall, Killed in Action, Feb 18, 2012
Lt. Col. JD Loftis, Killed in Action, Feb. 25, 2012

So I kept running, for them.

My breath was ragged. My muscles pulsed with the effort of each footfall. Left . . . right . . . left . . . right . . . I’m sure my face was contorted into a sweaty, tortured expression that could scare small children.

But watching the line of red t-shirts – #42 on the back – snake along the Charles River; knowing I was part of something bigger than myself, I felt powerful again.

Complicated emotions over a complicated situation

I know it seems awful to say that when I heard about the alleged massacre of 16 civilians by a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan on Sunday, I felt relief.

It’s an inappropriate emotion, a sibling to guilt, but undeniable. Relief that it’s not my mess to clean up.

“A mess” . . . another inappropriate – at least crass – description. But in the world of public affairs, that’s what this is: a terrible, horrible, tragic mess. Personally, a mess of explaining the unexplainable. Of responding to inquiries and issuing statements that never tell the whole story because telling the whole story is impossible. And, on a larger scale, a tangled mess of unraveled efforts and relationships.

I remember cleaning one of those up in Afghanistan. (But to say I cleaned it up would be a generous exaggeration. Messes like this can never be completely scrubbed clean.)

It was Feb 12, 2010, and it was the worst day of my life. The night before, there had been a Special Forces raid on a house in nearby Gardez City. Somehow, five civilians, including three women, were dead. The details were hazy. This is what they call the fog of war. Fog is thick in Afghanistan. Bodies were moved, cleaned, hooded and prepared for burial before investigators arrived, leaving them scrambling to connect an ever-shifting set of dots. The local anger swelled, and we watched, horror-struck, as eight months of relationship-building were undermined in a matter of a few chaotic minutes.

At the center there were five lives, the collateral damage, buried in the fog of war. There was absolutely nothing we could say. But we couldn’t remain silent, couldn’t leave a void to be filled by rumor, speculation and insurgent propaganda. So we said what we could. And it wasn’t enough. It’s never enough.

Another emotion: understanding.

I understand why the soldier did what he did.

This is not to be confused with condoning his actions. Nothing could ever justify murder. That’s what this was: murder. But it’s not all this was.

Anger is easy. Blame is easy. Denouncement and apology are easy. But they don’t tell the whole story. The truth is, nothing can.

WAR IS NEVER BLACK AND WHITE. Like I discussed in my last post, war is a human experience, and humans are never black and white. Especially humans who have been to war.

When humans go to war, they change. There is no denying this. Whatever the individual experience, no one remains the same. I would go so far as to say that some people actually become two distinct people – a war-induced schizophrenia – split into “soldier” and “demons.” (Hell, go ahead the throw a third person on there, too. Soldier + demons + regular person with a regular life and a wife and two children at home.)

I have demons. Sometimes they act on their own, independent of me. They’re buttons that, when pushed, can send me into a Hulk-like rage or a tailspin of sadness. My demons are mild compared to many. While in Afghanistan, I never directly experienced death. I never got blown up. I never had to point my rifle at a person. I never had a person point a rifle at me. If I had experienced any of these things, I can’t comprehend the strength my demons would have.

The accused U.S. Army sergeant has been to war four times. God only knows what he’s seen, what he’s done, the demons he carries. It would be foolish, it would be outright wrong, not to blame, at least in part, those demons for this act.

That is not an excuse for murder. It is not a complete explanation. But it can’t be ignored.

Another emotion: anger.

Yes, it’s an easy one and I’m guilty of it, too. I’m angry at the sergeant for the mess he created. But I’m also angry at the rumors. I fume over articles chronicling this incident from the “Afghan perspective,” over the locals’ explanations of what happened and how. I want to believe them, to pity them for what they’ve endured, and on some level I do. But on another level I know that in Afghanistan when a car backfires the Taliban will claim an attack on a U.S. convoy that killed eight soldiers. I know that on Feb 12, 2010 villagers claimed that U.S. aircraft had bombed the residential compound where the raid took place. I know they claimed specific high-level government officials had been killed – government officials who were sitting in meetings with our unit’s personnel, very much alive, as the claims were being made.

Truth is elusive, especially in Afghanistan. And that makes me angry.

I’m also angry over apologies. In a statement Tuesday, President Obama pledged to take this situation “as seriously as if this was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered.” Maybe it’s my demons talking, but I want to know, on the flipside, where was the apology when I was in Afghanistan and a man dressed as an Afghan Border Patrolman sneaked onto one of our unit’s Combat Outposts and blew himself up outside U.S. soldiers’ sleeping quarters? Where was the apology when a “trusted informant” killed seven CIA agents at a base gym in the neighboring province? Where was the apology last month when, in indiscriminate retaliation for the Koran burnings by U.S. troops, my friend, JD Loftis was shot at close range. Murdered.

I want to know, after ten years, 1,900 deaths, more than 15,000 reported injuries, and millions of demons, not to mention billions of dollars, why are we always apologizing.

Another emotion: what feels very sad but can only be described as hope.

Lots of hope. That this doesn’t create more anger. But that’s a foolish hope, so I hope that the anger is managed, that it doesn’t manifest itself in more indiscriminate retaliation, in more meaningless death and suffering, in more widowed wives. Hope that these unraveled threads aren't irreconcilably tangled. Hope that the actions of one soldier and his demons don’t overshadow the work of thousands of other men and women over the last decade. Men and women like me. And JD Loftis.

And I hope that justice – whatever that means – is served.

Another Good Man

I am in shock . . . so much violence, so many names, so many families broken.

Every time, a part of me hopes the names are unfamiliar, even though another part of me realizes this means I’m wishing tragedy on someone else. I hate myself for that. No one deserves this kind of tragedy. But I suppose to some extent it’s natural. Self defense.

In the military, everyone knows tragedy is an occupational hazard. You have to accept that, make peace with it, distance yourself from it. Or you’ll go crazy. When you see the names, you grieve because you have a connection; because, on some level, you understand. You imagine they were good men and women - like so many you know - dedicated to a cause they believed in. And you grieve for the loss.

Then there are the times you know they were good. You know they were dedicated. You see the names and remember.

Like Ryan Hall. And now JD Loftis.

It was March, 2009. In a couple weeks, I would report for pre-deployment training and head off to do a job that excited, but terrified me. I didn’t know anyone where I was going. That scared me the most.

My phone rang. On the other end was a kind voice, belonging to Major JD Loftis. I’d never met JD. He also worked at Hurlburt Field, but our paths had never crossed. They may never have crossed, except that he saw my name on a list, saw that I, like him, had been assigned to serve as an Information Operations Officer on a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan. He would also be reporting to training in April. He called to tell me that I wouldn’t be alone; that even though we’d never met, he’d be there to talk if I wanted to.

I don’t know if I ever told JD how much that phone call meant. I hope I did.

I hope he knew how I admired him. For his kindness, of course, which oozed out of him because that’s just the kind of person he was. It oozed through the phone line that day in March and into pre-deployment training, where we met the first day and I felt immediately comforted by his presence. Kindness followed him to Afghanistan, where we shared stories and ideas from across the country. He was never too busy to check in, to see how I was doing. Nine months later back at Hurlburt Field, JD's kindness continued. I still have the note he sent congratulating me on my military separation and wishing me luck.

I admired JD for his intelligence. He spoke fluent Pashtu, which allowed him to interact directly with the Afghan population rather than working through interpreters like the rest of us mere mortals. I witnessed his skills at training, saw the way the “role players” raised their eyebrows, impressed. But he wasn’t out to impress. JD was eager to learn all he could about Afghanistan and Pashtun culture. He wanted to understand the locals, wanted to help them understand us. He wanted to make a difference. That’s why he volunteered for the deployment.

I admired him for his dedication, too.

We had been back from Afghanistan for a while when JD called me again. He told me he'd been assigned a position with an elite group of senior military and civilian advisors focused on understanding the language, culture, and complexities of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I don’t remember if he volunteered for the position, but he was excited. And he was perfect for the job.

It was a job that placed him in the Afghan Ministry of Interior in Kabul last Saturday, where, in the wake of protests over American troops' burning of religious materials, an Afghan man shot JD and Major Robert Marchanti at close range. Both men died of their wounds.

In a time like this, there are no words. No logical explanation for how JD’s passion and dedication, his commitment to making a better world, could result in his death. Nothing to offer his wife and two daughters other than thoughts and prayers. Nothing to comfort the Hurlburt community, which, as home to Air Force Special Operations Command acknowledges a greater risk of tragedy than most, but still feels the stabbing pain of every loss – and has been stabbed five times this week.

Perhaps it’s human nature to jump to political conclusions, to make lofty statements that "we shouldn’t be there" and "it’s time to leave." To get angry that the only discussion of war in the Presidential campaign is its impact on national debt.

But JD and his fallen comrades deserve more than that.

Remember them for the men they were: good men, dedicated men. And so much more.

UPDATE: 
On Jan. 17, 2013, a radio station in Qalat was completed and dedicated to JD.
On Feb. 25, 2013, the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School dedicated the Loftis auditorium in honor of JD.

Two reminders of the legacy of a great man.

In Memoriam:
Lieutenant Colonel John Darin Loftis and Major Robert Marchanti
Killed in Action, Feb 25 in Kabul, Afghanistan

Never Forget:
Capt Ryan P. Hall, Capt Nicholas S. Whitlock, 1st Lt Justin J. Wilkens, and Senior Airman Julian S. Scholten
Killed in Action, Feb. 18 near Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti