I’ve been out of the Army for about 4 years now. While there were many memories I’ll never forget and wouldn’t want to in my time, there were definitely some I would want to forget. One in particular was made even harder to forget because of not only the injuries and casualties that happened, but the fact I was awarded a Bronze Star with V device. That’s right, from a day some of my friends never came back alive or came back needing a wheelchair - I was given a medal.

Survivor’s guilt. That’s what the therapists have called it over the years, along with PTSD. At first the nightmares were all too frequent, now at least it’s only maybe once a week. Therapists and some of their recommendations have helped over time, along with exploring new skills and interests. Which is where this comes in. Doc says my next step is to write about that worst day. I don’t have to necessarily tell the story to someone directly. But write about it and post it online. The kicker is, I have to claim it as real. I can’t try and pretend it was a fictional event. So I have to be as accurate as I can be and as detailed as I can remember. So ... here goes: let’s start with some background.

At this point in my career I had 15 years in and was serving as the 1SG for my company. In case those reading don’t know, that’s First Sergeant. Meaning I’m the enlisted advisor to the company commander (a Captain). Promotions tend to come quickly in SpecOps, after all we’re put in the heat of things and you usually either wash out, die, or survive some scary shit that definitely helps seperate you from your “competition.”

The deployment we were in had us up in the mountains of Afghanistan. We were getting some of the big assignments and pulling them off well. Granted, part of that was what you’d expect from a unit like ours. We were the elite, the best - and had the swagger to go with it sometimes, too. That could also be part of the problem though. When you’re good and have a record of showing just how good you can start to take it for granted. It stood to reason didn’t it? When you’ve gone months without any serious casualties and no deaths that should continue, right? It didn’t help that we were due to ship home in a month. Complacency and cockiness could be as dangerous as the enemy.

We had a convoy mission. Move personnel and trucks from base A to base B. It was something simple and that we’d done countless times. We knew the route, we knew the area, and intel told us we had the bad guys backed up and reeling. We owned the area we thought. With that in mind the commander and I hammered the point home during the convoy brief. Sure, we knew we owned the area. But the enemy didn’t get that brief. The brief the hajis got was that they needed to be pressing, moving forward and doing something bold to knock us back onto our collective heels.

That was the mindset we had as we mounted up. Woe be it to the haji who tried something. With the brief finished we split up as was SOP for convoys: company commander in the forward truck and me seperate in the rear truck. Theory was that would prevent the leadership being knocked out in any one hit. But say what you will about the enemy: they aren’t stupid and they learn our tactics just like we learn theirs.

We were about two hours drive into the convoy and had just cleared through a village when we came upon a traffic accident. It hadn’t been too many years ago we’d have just pushed through ... literally. Lay on the gas a little extra and “help” the vehicles out of the way so we could continue on mission. Now though more of the emphasis was on winning the hearts and minds of the people here, so instead of going through them, we went around. It wasn’t more than a quarter mile into our detour around the accident that we heard a quick outburst over the radio “Contact 3 o’clock!” It only took seconds for the crackle of rifle fire to make it back to my truck. Each driver and crew reacting instinctively, our training being that small arms attacks were a minor threat with our uparmored trucks. So that meant each truck accelerating to clear the rifle fire while the 50 cal gunners pivoted to make them regret the decision to open fire. There was one problem: the rifle fire was only a distraction to lead us into the IED trap.

The next thing that I remember was having to clear my head. The explosion had rung my bell good, but a quick check showed everything was in one piece, just hurting. Soon though my sense of smell was assaulted when the acrid scent of fire filled my nostrils. It wasn’t just fire though, there was the mixed stench of smoke, burning fuel, and even worse: burning hair and flesh.

The assault on the senses wasn’t just with scent though. There were others. Sounds: my ears were ringing but despite that I could still hear screams, a couple scattered explosions from grenades or RPGs and the crack of rifle and machine gun fire. The last thing was pain, the pain of being jostled around when the explosion hit my truck, the last in the convoy.

It didn’t take long to figure out the convoy had been hit with an all too well-placed IED ambush. Triggered to create a funnel. I would later find out the lead vehicle and trail vehicle (mine) were both hit simultaneously. This was meant to trap us in place, as the middle vehicles would be forced to stop and defend the lead and trail trucks. Obviously we were hit by some type of triggering device instead of a pressure plate, at least for my truck: the three preceding trucks had driven over the same ground. That fought against our tactic of having devices that were supposed to counter triggers, something had failed us there. Not that it mattered right now. Rifle fire from the sides of the trucks revealed we were still actively being targeted. A quick check of conditions showed me that the driver was down hard, truck commander (TC), and gunner as well. Each of them unconscious and bleeding, but still alive, at least for now. The truck itself was still mostly upright, though the tilt would prove at least some tires were either flat, blown off, or both.