Extra long one incoming. Another piece that will go in the book in whole or in part.

I'm mad, because this tab got closed when I was 85% done. I hope this re-write does the original justice. I lost a lot of work and I am salty as fuck. I have to quit writing on reddit directly. Lesson learned. Lyrics from songs on the two albums mentioned provided the inspiration for this piece. I love you all.

When I deployed to the Kingdom of Saud in preparation for Desert Storm, I had no idea that it was going to turn into a nearly six month deployment. Iraq. psshft. Really? They can't stand up to us. Ancient Soviet equipment. Pretty much a third world country. A top down authoritarian and fascist government that doesn't allow NCOs to think independently. We will be home in a couple of weeks. Let's go free the Kuwaitis and call it a day.

As I've written before, when we started to get briefings about the Iraqi army being the FOURTH LARGEST IN THE FUCKING WORLD, we started listening and taking it more seriously. Quantity CAN beat quality if used properly. It is one of the reasons why NATO developed tactical nukes. Holy shit. The idea of a massed tank battle or trench warfare both sounded unappealing.

So, I packed my TA-50, a Nintendo Gameboy with three games and some batteries. An extra pair of boots. Two extra uniforms and sets of underwear/socks. A couple of books. A Sony Walkman with two cassette tapes. They were Pink Floyd: Animals (My favorite band) and Faith No More (The Real Thing.) Both were (and still are) absolute bangers of albums. I would have taken more entertainment had I known it was going to be so long. My TA-50 included my M-16A2 rifle with a M203 Grenade launcher. The M163 Vulcan I drove had two FIM-92 Stinger surface to air missiles (my MOS), a vest for of smoke, flares, high explosive and white phosphorus grenades for the M203, two fragmentation grenades, two AT-4 anti-tank rockets, and over 3,000 rounds of 20 MM HEITSD rounds. (High Explosive Incendiary Tracer Self-Destructive)

Our currency is flesh and bone

Hell opened up and put on sale

Gather round and haggle

For hard cash, we will lie and deceive

After learning how my grandfathers fought Japanese, Italian, and German fascists in WWII, fighting Iraqi fascists seemed like a good idea. Despite all indications to the contrary, I am above average intelligence, but it took me a few weeks to realize we were there to stabilize oil prices, nothing more. Giving the Kuwaitis back their country was a side effect of that. I mean, that was nice for them I suppose. Our flesh and bone was being put for sale to lower oil prices. That's it. Hard cash - it always talks.

One world, it’s a battleground

One world, and we will smash it down

One world… One world

Not quite the same as WWI or WWII by any means, but there were over thirty nations in the coalition against Iraq. It sure seemed like the whole world was there in the desert with us at times. I worked directly with the French. I met Special Forces from New Zealand while I was in the hospital. I watched coalition aircraft from several nations bomb targets. Units from the the Czech Republic ultimately helped prove Gulf War Syndrome was real.

Surprise! You're dead!

Guess what?

It never ends

Layin' face down on the ground

My fingers in my ears to block the sound

My eyes shut tight to avoid the sight

Anticipating the end, losing the will to fight

I'm sure that is how the Iraqis felt after 42 days and nights of bombing. The prisoners we took were damn near all shell shocked for sure. The thing is, it felt the same for us. That entire time, we were DYING to get over there and fuck some shit up. It isn't that we wanted to kill anyone (although wartime bloodthirst crept in), it was that we wanted to go home. Killing those guys was the path home. (And I was going nuts listening to the same music over and over.)

All you have to do to have a war is this: Deploy two groups of men and draw an imaginary line; then tell both groups that they can't go home until the other group is dead. This is how the powerful stay in power. Dumb grunts like us don't learn that lesson until it is too late, and we have passed the curse of PTSD on to our kids.

Invisible transfers and long distance calls

Hollow laughter in marble halls

Off topic, but anyone remember the Panama Papers, where absolutely nothing happened to anyone? Those marble halls still echo with laughter.

One world, it’s a battleground

One world, and they're gonna smash it down

One world… One world

This is the problem. Some humans want dominance over others, some want to just co-exist peacefully with others. After taking lives in a foreign land, I'm ready to settle down and embrace my brothers and sisters in love and acceptance. I'm a lover now, not a fighter.

But we have to end the hate first. An unfortunately, that means some more fighting first.

Surprise! You're dead!

Guess what?

It never ends

Since the hate doesn't end, the killing won't. Imagine a world where no soldier follows orders. Every single one of us just says "fuck it" and goes home. Let the rich and the generals kill each other off. What a concept.

My life is falling to pieces

Somebody put me together

This is how it ends for a lot of us. Whether they want to admit it or not. War changes you, even if it is just a few days of direct conflict. The nightmares. The hyper-vigilance. The survivor's guilt some experience. Those who are actually injured get to carry that around as well. Not one single person comes home unchanged from seeing combat.

"You haven't seen enough combat to have PTSD."

A Veterans Affairs psychologist to me, in roughly 1993.

Lol. I saw maybe a thousand or more bodies strewn across the desert. I drove into a fucking minefield. I was almost killed by a fucking tank. I watched destruction of men on a scale hard to imagine at the road to Basra. I came home physically and emotionally disabled. I wish I could go back in time and kick that headshrinker's ass. I got my rating and back pay eventually though, so fuck him. It took several years of fighting to get it.

Between, My love and my agony

You see, I'm somewhere in between

My life is falling to pieces

Somebody put me together (between)

Somebody put me together

Somebody put me together (between) oh oh my life is falling to pieces

For those of us that don't get help, it gets worse. I got MUCH worse after I got home. It was a long, hard road back to sanity for me. Iraq fundamentally changed me, as it did a lot of us. My mother would said she would not have recognized me when I rolled off the plane in a wheelchair except for the fact she knew I was not able to walk at the time and that I was in uniform. I didn't look anything like the kid that she saw six months prior. As she testified to the VA, my personality was entirely changed. It was made harder by the fact that my Dad didn't really get it either. He didn't understand at first how such an easy victory fucked some of us up. I think he gets it now, but for a while I think he was comparing his year in Vietnam to my four days and not seeing what my issue was.

But tell me something new. Soldiers have been dealing with that for thousands of years. Being changed. Being alienated. Not getting the help they need. Being blamed for their issues. I really hope one day we have no more soldiers from any nation needing to greet their mothers that way, should they be so lucky to come home.

The coalition of nations operating under a United Nations charter lost 292 service members in the course of the conflict, half to accidents and half to enemy action. The Iraqi army lost 20,000 to 50,000 men. I don't think Saddam had any idea what a huge food chain gap existed between the 30+ nations against him and his military. That is certainly a hell of a kill ratio.

A lot of people found out the hard way that we didn't have it as easy as we thought. Although we didn't lose nearly as many to direct enemy action, over 250,000 of us came home exposed to all kinds of shit, and a lot of us ended up sick. All that death and killing for lower gasoline prices. And I'm done with it. No more fighting or me. Love, peace and acceptance as much as possible from here on out. I'm just happier this way.

Because as it turns out, the Dogs of War are not just the rich that sent us off to fight for oil. The Dogs of War are also us who do their bidding, whether we realize it or not. It's a funny thing to be both proud of your service and at the same time feel like it was entirely based on lies. Then to be denied earned benefits and called a liar yourself...people wonder why veterans flip their shit.

OneLove 22ADay Slava Ukraini! Heróyam sláva!