One of the many things that my time in the Army, and more specifically, the time I spent deployed to Iraq has taught me that has never left is to be keenly aware of my surroundings. Whether I’m by myself or walking next to someone its a pretty safe bet that I’m not really paying attention to anything in particular because I’m usually looking around and trying to take in everything that’s going on around me. I’m not really trying to ignore people, but I usually am. Not purposely so, but I can’t help it. The other day when I was at work I walked into the bathroom and as I was minding my own business and abiding by men’s room urinal etiquette when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that someone had left a coffee thermos on top of the towel dispenser and my heart skipped a beat. I know it’s a highly unlikely scenario, but my mind immediately went to, it’s a bomb, because that is what was conditioned into me in the Army. If something looks out of place, it’s probably not an accident.

It’s a startling feeling to be standing in the bathroom in a rather compromising position and suddenly have your mind think there is a bomb behind you because there isn’t much you can really do in that situation. The reason I bring this up is because after I made it safely out of the bathroom I decided to go for a short walk to settle myself down a bit and I started thinking of the very first time I was exposed to direct enemy combat and the similar feelings I had that day about something just not being right.

We were in our Stryker vehicles, and as a machine gunner I was out of one of the four hatches in the vehicle as we were driving down a road that we had driven down a few times prior to that day. Every time we’d driven down it there were people out and about and going about their day. They usually didn’t mind us being there because by that point in time we were just part of the scenery, but that day the street was completely empty, not a single person. I was pretty fresh at this point so it seemed strange but it didn’t click right away that the people in the area were basically in hiding. Later in my deployment I would have gotten a bit lower in my hatch and waited for the chaos to start, but at this point I was just wondering where everyone was.

Just about the time I was thinking it was going to be a nice quiet day someone threw a grenade off the top of building and it exploded somewhere behind us on the road. Just as this was happening roughly 6 or 7 guys popped up on the roof and started shooting down onto us with fully automatic AK-47’s. It was more of a reaction at this point but I just started shooting back. Before we deployed we had done a lot of training and qualification shooting, and I was pretty happy with myself because I qualified as an expert with my machine gun, but I quickly learned that there is an astronomical difference between shooting at paper targets and shooting at living people who are shooting back at you. There is a big difference between being a good shot, and being a good combat shooter. That day, I was neither, but this was negated by the fact that we were able to just shoot enough to get out of there with no damage. Being on a street with multiple people shooting down at you from on top of three story buildings is no place to stop and fight since we were at a significant disadvantage from the get-go.

I know it’s a bit of a stretch to compare walking into the bathroom at work with driving down the streets in Iraq, but the training and conditioning I received in the Army left me with the same feeling. This isn’t the first time something has jumped out and startled me like that, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I guess the silver lining is that if someone ever does decide to leave a coffee cup bomb in any bathroom that I walk into at least I’ll be prepared or know enough to take my business elsewhere.