There are a lot of things throughout life that really make an impact on someone and stick with them for as long as they live. Things that when they happened were so impactful, or out of the norm that they never go away. Sometimes they’re good things, but I think that unfortunately, more often than not its bad memories that tend to stay with us most vividly. I’m no exception to this, and because of some of my experiences in the military I think I may have a few more bad memories than I’d care to have, but such is life I suppose.

Andrew J. Higgins, born 5 October 1978, died 5 June 2007. Andrew was the Forward Observer that was attached to my platoon and his primary responsibility was to call in map coordinates when we needed artillery or bombs to be dropped from airplanes, which was often. I first met Andrew when I arrived in Fort Lewis out of basic training in Fort Benning. He had already been on three combat deployments, two of which were with the Army Rangers. Because of our jobs during our deployment we spent a lot of time together and I’m very happy that we became good friends. He was the seasoned veteran that always had advice and something to teach, not only me, but anyone who would listen. But when he talked, I would listen, and he taught me a lot. My best memories of Andrew were the many nights we’d spend sitting on rooftops. During multi-day operations we would always set up a small combat outpost, usually in somebody’s house. We usually stayed on the roof because that’s where my machine gun needed to be and that’s where he needed to be to call for coordinates if we needed it. After several days of trudging through heat and humidity, smelling burning garbage, getting in firefights, IED explosions, and whatever else could possibly happen, it was nice to sit down on a roof as the sun set and just talk to someone.

The night before he was killed by a sniper, I sat on the roof with him and one of my best friends, and once again we listened to him tell us how it was. How the Army worked, his past experiences and how they related to our current situation. We sat there not moving, and just talking for about 6 hours. He said something that night to us that took up about 3 hours of that conversation that I have thought about every single day since then, and more often than not it’s something that gives me a lot of trouble. It had to do with the human nature of self-preservation. What he said was, “No matter who you are, or what your situation is, when you see someone die there is that tiny little voice inside you that says, well, at least it wasn’t me.” The next day I saw him die from a single gunshot wound to his head from a very high powered sniper rifle. It’s a sight that I can still see. It’s a sight that I constantly see in my dreams, and it’s a sight that I’d give anything to never see again, as unlikely as that wish is.

I’ve never once said or thought that what he meant was, better that person than me, but rather, at least it wasn’t me. And as hard as it is to write it, he was right, there always was that tiny little voice, and in this case, the only thing between where he was shot and where I was walking towards the roof was one flight of stairs. I crawled the rest of the way up the stairs because of the ambush that had just been initiated. All I could see was my dead friend laid out on the roof right next to the door that I had to go through. I could hear bullets hitting the building, breaking glass and snapping as they flew overhead but it didn’t matter at that moment. This quickly escalated into another full-on firefight that lasted a couple of hours and ended with a couple of laser guided missiles killing the culprits.

I can distinctly remember the exact moment of that exact day when my mindset changed. I stopped thinking “Am I going to die?”, and I started thinking, “When am I going to die?” And when I made peace with the fact that I was going to die, things didn’t seem so scary anymore, things didn’t seem to matter anymore. For those of us that did survive, those of us that gave up but then somehow made it through, we were left with this: Why him and not me? Why that time on that day and not another time when it would have been me? I miss my friend more painfully and more than I can explain in words, and I can’t help but judge myself based on what he would think of me today.

I just hope I’m doing good enough!