Throughout the fifteen months of my deployment I had a number of close calls as far as being seriously injured or killed. The first time it happened it was startling, and it always gave you a shot of adrenaline but it seemed to become less and less significant. It became just another unpleasant part of the job we’d all chosen and actually became something you could joke about. At this point, I probably don’t remember all of the occurrences but some of them are still pretty vivid.

Not once, but twice I had rocket propelled grenades shot specifically at myself. One time I stood as it flew over my head and hit a wall a little ways behind me, the other one hit about two feet away from me but I was shielded from the majority of the blast and just got peppered with rocks, a little shrapnel and some sparks. There were three or four times where someone was on top of a building and threw a grenade over the edge with the intention of it landing inside of our vehicle. Twice it bounced off the top of our vehicle which was right next to me as the machine gunner and bounced off to the ground and exploded and a couple times it just missed and blew up on the ground. There were a number of incidents where an ambush was initiated by machine gun fire or sniper that was close enough to me to feel the bullet go by, or hit near me. I was also involved in an IED attack that resulted in getting my Purple Heart and destroyed all of my personal belongings.

As the reality of what I was a part of sunk in, my fear of death became less and less. I stopped thinking in terms of ‘If I die’ and started thinking more like, ‘when I die’. It was impossible not to think that. Thirty one of my friends were killed and dozens more were wounded. We couldn’t get replacement soldiers fast enough to keep up with the guys we were losing. I can still remember the moment in time where I accepted the fact that I was going to die, and it took me some time to make peace with that fact, but after I did, the whole thing didn’t seem so scary anymore.

I’m admittedly not a very religious person. I’m not an atheist; I don’t think people with strong religious faith are wrong or silly, but due to my own personal feelings and views I just can’t seem to convince myself to buy into it because of some experiences and feelings that have really raised too many questions for me. I mentioned before that I made peace with the fact that I was going to die. I didn’t make my peace with God as some say, I didn’t pray and ask for guidance or protection. I made peace with myself, and more importantly with those I loved. Not in the form of talking, but with writing a letter that luckily never got sent. I think that one of the main points of religion is to give people a map by which to live their lives, and basically it boils down to this; live correctly, try not to sin, be good to others and try to do right. I feel like that’s just part of human nature and the vast majority of people do that naturally, at least I feel like I do. I don’t need a book to tell me to do what I already know I should do, so I didn’t feel the need to make peace with my religious scruples. And I found that when I had come to terms with my own death, then whatever happened was going to be ok. I had seen my friends die. I’d seen absolute devastation of some of my friends. I’d seem them die from gunshot wounds, I’d seen them get blown up in the most violent and destructive fashion, I’d seen them burn to death trapped inside a burning vehicle and more. It was some awful stuff, but it taught me in a hurry that death most surely is a part of life. Death was final and uncompromising. No matter how you got there, or what you looked like after you were dead didn’t matter, because the result was the same.

Even six years out of my deployment, leaving that state of mind behind is very difficult. I’m still not scared of death though I’d be a bit less accepting of it now that I’ve moved on and have other reasons to want to stick around a bit longer.