by Derek Farwell
Columnist

Since my time in the Army, and more specifically, my deployment to Iraq in 2006 and 2007 I’ve had a lot of time to think. At first it left me with a lot more questions than answers, and now that it’s been six years since my deployment, I really don’t have a whole lot more answers but I’ve more or less come to terms with everything we went through. I’m of course not the only veteran to have asked such questions of myself, and I definitely can’t answer questions for other people since I’m not positive I can even adequately do it for myself.

When I first got home from the Army I walked around under the assumption that I knew everything. I didn’t really give much thought to my deployment, I was happy to be home and happy to be alive. It didn’t take much time for that to pass and thoughts about what I’d experienced to come back. There were the obvious thoughts about my friends that didn’t make it home. While we were deployed, not much was said when one of our friends were killed. There was just no conceivable use in spending time dwelling about it. While stationed in a city, each company was usually assigned a specific area in which to conduct their missions, so we would always come back to the same area. This meant that when a soldier or soldiers were killed, we wouldn’t leave. They were put in body bags, and transported out while the rest of us stayed. We’d come back to the same buildings, and walk down the same streets where the day before one or more of us was killed, and we’d go back day after day after day. When a soldier was killed in Iraq, the standard practice in my unit was to have a formal sendoff, where all of the rest of us stood in formation while the soldier, in his body bag, was carried by, placed inside a helicopter, and flown to Baghdad International Airport to begin his journey home to be buried. During the worst of the fighting, between my unit and the other unit on our base, we attended about three of these memorials each week.

Something else that I know changed in me during my military service is that I slowly became desensitized to what would have otherwise been awful events. When I had gone into the army the most gruesome event of my life was cutting my finger with a box cutter while working as a roofer with my brother. When I came out of my deployment I’d seen hundreds of deaths. Young children no older than 10, murdered for playing soccer with their friends in the wrong neighborhoods. Decapitated bodies, massive and all too often fatal trauma wounds from shrapnel, gunshot, stab wounds, and victims of torture that have really caused me to rethink a lot of my personal views on human nature and religion. I could never, and still can’t comprehend how one human being can do such unimaginably horrendous things to another. However, these physical injuries and mutilations aren’t the things that have stuck with me the most. It’s questions like, how can I see something like that and not bat an eye at it? How can I watch a human being die a violent death and turn my head and keep going? These are questions that I don’t think I’m aged enough to have a reasonable answer for, so what I came up with is, sometimes s**t just happens. There is no rhyme or reason for it, and trying to give it one will drive you insane. Not everything in life makes sense. It’s not the best answer, but it’s satisfied me for now.

Nowadays I would like to think that I’m a slightly better person for having gone through all of that. It’s certainly illustrated to me how important it is to not worry about every little thing that goes wrong in life. I suppose I might be seen as borderline apathetic by some people, but that’s only because I’ve learned that there isn’t anything to gain from worrying about all the little insignificant problems. There will always be greater tragedies in the world, and life will inevitably go on. At least I’m here to see it.