SSGT. Edward Brzychcy
U.S Army – Infantry
Al Iskandariyah, Haswa, Al Amarah Iraq
Jun 1999 – May 2011
U.S Army – Infantry
Al Iskandariyah, Haswa, Al Amarah Iraq
Jun 1999 – May 2011
Ed was born in November of 1980 in Rahway, NJ. Ed’s father passed away when he was 9 and that thrust his mother from stay-at-home mom to the role of bread winner. She relocated with Ed and his younger brother to Massachusetts. His mother had a master’s degree in chemistry and landed a job. She advanced to the role of lab manager but found that was not for her. In a complete career change she became a middle school math and science teacher. Yearning for more education she went to night school and eventually passed the CPA exam. Ed inherited her genetic and mental makeup which would be important later in life.
Ed grew up Rockport, MA as a latch key kid in the 90’s while his mother was providing for the family. Ed developed a rebellious streak and underperformed at Rockport High School. He had the second highest SAT score in his class but the 2nd lowest GPA. With the help of a guidance counselor who saw Ed’s potential, he was able to graduate on time. Rockport had a graduating class of 40 and Ed said “it was a great little community to visit” but Ed wanted to see more of the world.
Ed spent a semester at North Shore Community College and found himself bored to tears. During this time the Army Recruiter called and asked if Ed had ever considered joining the Army.
Ed found he could get out of his mom’s basement, have a job and get college paid for. He decided to try it for four years. “It’s probably one of the best decisions I ever made. It gave me that purpose and direction and self-discipline. I needed a Drill Sargent (DI) up my ass at 19.”
Ed signed a four year contract, took the ASVAB, scored in the highest percentiles and entered as an analyst in Military Intelligence. Ed reported to Fort Jackson in South Carolina for 9 weeks of Basic Training. “That was life changing. I found myself singled out very early.” Ed remembers at the end of boot camp being pulled aside by a DI along with several others and the DI told them they had the right attitude, but they needed to focus their energy. No one had ever given Ed that kind of advice and he took it to heart. “That was a really big conversation.”
His first deployment was in 2003 with the 4th Infantry Division. They were the second wave leaving from Kuwait and their ultimate destination was Tikrit, Iraq. It was an eye opening experience. At night they would be attacked with SCUD missiles and had to wear full chemical gear in the blazing desert heat. Eds unit stood up the base and conducted operations. Ed set up the operations center as part of the Intelligence function. It wasn’t a good experience and Ed realized he didn’t want to be a part of this group. When his contract was up for renewal he elected to leave the Army.
Ed had married early in his military career. When he left the Army, he returned home to a strained family relationship. He tried to make it work but found it was beyond repair. His entrepreneurial spirit started to surface, and he attempted to start a business repairing computers. That didn’t work out and he decided to re-enlisted.
He reclassed over to an infantry division and went to Fort Benning for 14 weeks of Infantry School. Upon completion he was assigned to 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. Ed and his unit went through the workup for the deployment, and they shipped out the week before Thanksgiving in 2005.
When they arrived in Iraq his unit moved into FOB Kalsu and their areas of operations were 30 miles south of Baghdad in Al Iskandariyah and Haswa. “That was intense. That was a rough year.” The insurgency was just beginning, the insurgents had been pushed out of Baghdad and Sadir City and they headed south. During the first six months there were numerous raids and daily patrols that consisted of high intensity clearing. The clearing operations focused on finding and clearing IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) and EFPs (Explosive Foreign Projectile). The EFPs, made in Iran, were a type of IED that released molten copper slugs which could penetrate a tank. Once the insurgents understood the US troops meant business they quickly scattered. “We lost a lot of guys and we saw quite a bit of action.” The last six months of the tour were remarkably low key compared to the first six months.
I asked what it was like when the US troops interacted with the Iraqi population. “It was a mixed bag. 99.9% of them were just people who wanted to get on with their daily lives. They want to put food on the table, have a roof over their head and take care of their kids. But by then we had worn off the welcome.” While the farmers wanted to farm their land, the local militias would offer them $2,500 to plant an IED on the road in front of their farm. That was more money than they had seen during their lifetime. It was difficult to know who to trust and the distrust came through making it difficult to win over the Iraqi’s. “The political battle was brutal” and the rules of engagement seemed illogical and put the US troops in more danger. “We were an all-male unit, and we weren’t allowed to search the women and they knew that. We’d conduct a raid, and they would hide all the weapons under their burqas.” They stored weapons in mosques because the Americans would not enter. The call to prayers would often describe the location and movements of the US troops. Ed talked about most raids being “dry holes” because many of the informants working for the US were also filtering information to the insurgents. One of the interpreters working with Ed’s unit become a detainee after U.S. troop found him on the radio at nights providing information to the enemy and compromising missions.
I asked Ed about what if felt like on the daily patrols and if they were packed with tension. He said, “you’re trained, you knew what you were looking for, you trusted your equipment, you trusted the guys you were with, and you were in your zone as you moved through the patrols.” The tension didn’t hit until the mission was over, and the troops were back at the FOB. That is when they had time to relax and think about the events of the day. He described the countryside as having poor soil, daily temperatures over 100 degrees and generally dusty and gritty. There were numerous canals and the Iraqi’s tried to keep the water flowing for irrigation. The Iraqi’s were subsistence farmers with little to look forward to – war or no war.
Around Thanksgiving of 2006 Ed’s unit returned to Fort Hood. In early ’07 Ed was assigned to the 27th Cavalry. By early 2007 Ed had two surgeries to reconstruct both ankles. Too many miles and too many pounds had taken a toll. During the workup for the upcoming deployment Ed reinjured his ankles. Despite this he deployed for a third time to Al Amarah in southern Iraq. His recollection of the tour was, “I was a personal mess. I was a wreck”. His family situation was rapidly deteriorating, and the cumulative PTSD was raging. He was assigned to run the Tactical Operation Center (TOC) and was responsible for 12 drivers. He did his job, but his mental state was so bad he remembers few details of the deployment. The tour was low key compared with the previous two tours which was a blessing considering his mental and emotional state. Ed is unsure of the dates of deployment and return other than it spanned 2008 and 2009.
When Ed returned, he was contemplating what to do with his military career. Having just passed his 10 year anniversary he thought he could continue with the Army, but he needed to get away from the infantry because of the daily intensity. Ed decided to get off the ground and he applied to be a helicopter pilot. However, the flight physical exam uncovered his PTSD. He remembers being asked if he slept and his answer was laughter. They told Ed flying was out of the question and they would recommend he be medically retired. “That was pretty painful.” By this time his PTSD was uncontrollable, he had suffered several concussions from blasts, had a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), there was constant pain from both ankles from failed reconstructive surgery, his divorce was especially nasty, he was unable to sleep, and now his career was over. “It was pretty wild at that point.”
I asked Ed to describe the symptoms and effects of PTSD. “I couldn’t even say. It is insidious and creeps up on you. You are out of touch. 2008 through 2012 was an utter and complete blur for me. I know I was a wreck. I know I was angry and short fused. The career was over. I was getting medically retired which is a brutal, long, bureaucratic, nasty process of hurry up and wait. My unit wasn’t particularly supportive, and I was treated like an absolute shitbag, and I probably was, because I was not cooperative.”
I asked if he thought there was any PTSD after his first tour. He said there wasn’t a focus on it then and if there were any effects, they were much milder than what was to come after his subsequent tours. “You don’t go through those types of experiences and not come back changed.” Ed said PTSD has been around for as long as there has been war. “The whole story of Odysseus in the Odyssey is about a soldier returning from war and what he experiences.”
I asked what the return from combat to the states was like. Ed said the process of winding down a deployment, the right seat-left seat (handover) and stepping back on US soil is approximately two weeks. Two weeks is not an adequate time to decompress and become mentally prepared to reintegrate into society.
Ed discussed the divide between civilians and combat veterans. Listening to Ed it was clear to me that the divide is not antagonistic or hostile or created through distain or feelings of superiority. However, combat significantly alters the outlook of anyone who has experienced it. “It’s almost impossible to put words to. I have seen in the exact same moment the absolute worst that humanity can do to one another and the absolute greatest acts a man can do for another in the same exact moment. Where people have dehumanized you to the point where they are willing turn you into something akin to chunky salsa and somebody else is willing to step in and say, “no, let me go first.’ There is no comparison anywhere for that type of experience.”
From the shoes of a civilian I interpreted that to mean there is a connection that develops from the exposure to the intense and extreme sights of combat along with the shared suffering and hardship that create a fraternity that cannot be joined by those who have not endure the same experiences, no matter how hard they try to understand. With the passage of time the separation becomes less intense but never fades away and that can be seen with the veterans of World War II and Korea.
Ed’s adjustment to civilian life was difficult. He returned to Massachusetts and attempted to work with the doctors at the VA to address his PTSD but to little avail. The medications he was taking made him feel worse. He attempted to enter the job market with little success and was considering another shot at school as a last resort. Ed said, “everything had failed miserably.” The downward spiral continued until one day in 2012 Ed woke up, looked in the mirror and decided he couldn’t keep traveling the same road. He looked at all the drugs he was prescribed and dumped them in the toilet. He picked up the phone and called his psychologist at the VA and told him “I’m done and I’m not doing this anymore. I need to try a different track. This medication is turning me into an absolute zombie, I’m not getting anywhere in my life, this sucks and I need to do something different.” Perhaps it was the determination that he inherited from his mother that helped him to try to find a new direction to deal with his PTSD through understanding its root causes rather than glossing over it with medication. “It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done…….to try to find that new direction. To try to understand what’s happening and try to figure it out rather than just glossing it over with some medication or counseling.
Ed went back to North Shore Community College for a semester and then transferred to Salem State. He received a lot of help from the various Veterans Administrators. “They were amazing!” He enrolled in Business because he thought it would be the most versatile background for moving forward with life. Two and a half years later he graduated Suma Cum Laude with a major in small business and entrepreneurship and a minor in economics. “I finally had purpose. I finally had space to take action and improve myself and using that as a tool to reconcile all the mess that was going on in my head.”
It's worth noting, when Ed returned to school, he was a 31 year old freshman. “After my first semester I bought a 19 year old bottle of scotch to celebrate my success because it was more mature than my classmates.” Salem State had a very active Veterans Organization and Ed was able to connect with other veterans which helped. He helped to raise money to build a veteran’s center on the campus. “That was our space on campus.”
Ed was happy with his progress academically and decided to continue on to earn an MBA. He was accepted to Babson where he focused on entrepreneurship.
Ed is now teaching at Babson, and he lets his students know about his background, which is remarkably different than theirs. The students ask questions about his military experiences, and he answers them and tries to convey some lessons learned. “Experiences are what you make of them. Resiliency is a personal choice and its one of the most difficult choices anyone will have to make. You physically and mentally have to choose to forge personal armor that will prepare you for your next challenge. I don’t know what tripped in me that one morning that finally turned that switch, but it was like turning a switch.” Ed said he checks back with the VA every six months, but he has never missed the medication.
“Understanding how we form our thoughts and how we can train our brains to form thoughts. The more you train yourself to think positively the easier it becomes but if you default to negative thoughts your brain will be wired to think like that.” Ed described PTSD as being exposed to traumatic situations and your mind becomes wired to hyper awareness to help you survive those moments. But that hyper awareness lingers after you are removed from those situations and your brain needs to be retrained. That retraining is very hard but over time the personal armor can be built.
“I’d do it all over again. As hard as everything has been I wouldn’t be where I am at right now without it……I wouldn’t be doing the things I’ve been able to achieve without going through those hardships and learning from them. If I took that away, I don’t know where I’d be. I don’t know what I’d be doing…..It has become a central part of me.”
I asked Ed, what veterans who have experienced combat think of Americans saying, ‘thank you for your service’. Ed commented that such a small percentage of Americas were directly impacted by Afghanistan and Iraq that it is hard for the average American to truly appreciate the American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. “It’s nice to hear and I appreciate your gratitude, but most people don’t understand why that gratitude should exist.” He thought a better expression of gratitude could be “Thank you for the sacrifice and the effort you put in. Thank veterans for going through that and coming out the other side.”
Ed recounted an experience that he thought was a meaningful thank you to veterans. He saw a woman in the gym with a tattoo of a Combat Infantryman’s Badge on her arm. He thought that was an odd place for a tattoo of that badge, so he decided to ask her about it. She said, it was in memory of her grandfather who was in Vietnam. He had just passed away and she got it to honor him. Ed said, “that was really cool…..those little things matter a lot. It’s much more impactful.”
I asked Ed what he would like everyone to know about the U.S. time in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said, “We did the right thing by going over there. We didn’t have enough of a follow-up plan to do it well. There was no clear consensus on what victory would look like.” He also said, “enemies exist, people who despise our way of life, they are out there. If you think we are immune from other people’s hatred, no, there are a lot of people who are jealous about the way we live life here and they are willing to try and take it from us. Those enemies absolutely exist. To think otherwise is the height of foolishness.” I asked Ed about the real face of evil. “TV is dramatized. The real piece of it is so insidious and wears that human face on top of it all and you never recognize it until it’s too late. The scariest part of it is, people want to accept it that as ‘just the way they feel’……If you give them an inch, they are going to take a mile.”
Ed, we are all happy that you bested the demons of PTSD. We thank you for all that you and your brothers and sisters endured to protect our way of life. We also thank you mother for passing along her tenacious DNA to you.
Ed grew up Rockport, MA as a latch key kid in the 90’s while his mother was providing for the family. Ed developed a rebellious streak and underperformed at Rockport High School. He had the second highest SAT score in his class but the 2nd lowest GPA. With the help of a guidance counselor who saw Ed’s potential, he was able to graduate on time. Rockport had a graduating class of 40 and Ed said “it was a great little community to visit” but Ed wanted to see more of the world.
Ed spent a semester at North Shore Community College and found himself bored to tears. During this time the Army Recruiter called and asked if Ed had ever considered joining the Army.
Ed found he could get out of his mom’s basement, have a job and get college paid for. He decided to try it for four years. “It’s probably one of the best decisions I ever made. It gave me that purpose and direction and self-discipline. I needed a Drill Sargent (DI) up my ass at 19.”
Ed signed a four year contract, took the ASVAB, scored in the highest percentiles and entered as an analyst in Military Intelligence. Ed reported to Fort Jackson in South Carolina for 9 weeks of Basic Training. “That was life changing. I found myself singled out very early.” Ed remembers at the end of boot camp being pulled aside by a DI along with several others and the DI told them they had the right attitude, but they needed to focus their energy. No one had ever given Ed that kind of advice and he took it to heart. “That was a really big conversation.”
His first deployment was in 2003 with the 4th Infantry Division. They were the second wave leaving from Kuwait and their ultimate destination was Tikrit, Iraq. It was an eye opening experience. At night they would be attacked with SCUD missiles and had to wear full chemical gear in the blazing desert heat. Eds unit stood up the base and conducted operations. Ed set up the operations center as part of the Intelligence function. It wasn’t a good experience and Ed realized he didn’t want to be a part of this group. When his contract was up for renewal he elected to leave the Army.
Ed had married early in his military career. When he left the Army, he returned home to a strained family relationship. He tried to make it work but found it was beyond repair. His entrepreneurial spirit started to surface, and he attempted to start a business repairing computers. That didn’t work out and he decided to re-enlisted.
He reclassed over to an infantry division and went to Fort Benning for 14 weeks of Infantry School. Upon completion he was assigned to 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. Ed and his unit went through the workup for the deployment, and they shipped out the week before Thanksgiving in 2005.
When they arrived in Iraq his unit moved into FOB Kalsu and their areas of operations were 30 miles south of Baghdad in Al Iskandariyah and Haswa. “That was intense. That was a rough year.” The insurgency was just beginning, the insurgents had been pushed out of Baghdad and Sadir City and they headed south. During the first six months there were numerous raids and daily patrols that consisted of high intensity clearing. The clearing operations focused on finding and clearing IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) and EFPs (Explosive Foreign Projectile). The EFPs, made in Iran, were a type of IED that released molten copper slugs which could penetrate a tank. Once the insurgents understood the US troops meant business they quickly scattered. “We lost a lot of guys and we saw quite a bit of action.” The last six months of the tour were remarkably low key compared to the first six months.
I asked what it was like when the US troops interacted with the Iraqi population. “It was a mixed bag. 99.9% of them were just people who wanted to get on with their daily lives. They want to put food on the table, have a roof over their head and take care of their kids. But by then we had worn off the welcome.” While the farmers wanted to farm their land, the local militias would offer them $2,500 to plant an IED on the road in front of their farm. That was more money than they had seen during their lifetime. It was difficult to know who to trust and the distrust came through making it difficult to win over the Iraqi’s. “The political battle was brutal” and the rules of engagement seemed illogical and put the US troops in more danger. “We were an all-male unit, and we weren’t allowed to search the women and they knew that. We’d conduct a raid, and they would hide all the weapons under their burqas.” They stored weapons in mosques because the Americans would not enter. The call to prayers would often describe the location and movements of the US troops. Ed talked about most raids being “dry holes” because many of the informants working for the US were also filtering information to the insurgents. One of the interpreters working with Ed’s unit become a detainee after U.S. troop found him on the radio at nights providing information to the enemy and compromising missions.
I asked Ed about what if felt like on the daily patrols and if they were packed with tension. He said, “you’re trained, you knew what you were looking for, you trusted your equipment, you trusted the guys you were with, and you were in your zone as you moved through the patrols.” The tension didn’t hit until the mission was over, and the troops were back at the FOB. That is when they had time to relax and think about the events of the day. He described the countryside as having poor soil, daily temperatures over 100 degrees and generally dusty and gritty. There were numerous canals and the Iraqi’s tried to keep the water flowing for irrigation. The Iraqi’s were subsistence farmers with little to look forward to – war or no war.
Around Thanksgiving of 2006 Ed’s unit returned to Fort Hood. In early ’07 Ed was assigned to the 27th Cavalry. By early 2007 Ed had two surgeries to reconstruct both ankles. Too many miles and too many pounds had taken a toll. During the workup for the upcoming deployment Ed reinjured his ankles. Despite this he deployed for a third time to Al Amarah in southern Iraq. His recollection of the tour was, “I was a personal mess. I was a wreck”. His family situation was rapidly deteriorating, and the cumulative PTSD was raging. He was assigned to run the Tactical Operation Center (TOC) and was responsible for 12 drivers. He did his job, but his mental state was so bad he remembers few details of the deployment. The tour was low key compared with the previous two tours which was a blessing considering his mental and emotional state. Ed is unsure of the dates of deployment and return other than it spanned 2008 and 2009.
When Ed returned, he was contemplating what to do with his military career. Having just passed his 10 year anniversary he thought he could continue with the Army, but he needed to get away from the infantry because of the daily intensity. Ed decided to get off the ground and he applied to be a helicopter pilot. However, the flight physical exam uncovered his PTSD. He remembers being asked if he slept and his answer was laughter. They told Ed flying was out of the question and they would recommend he be medically retired. “That was pretty painful.” By this time his PTSD was uncontrollable, he had suffered several concussions from blasts, had a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), there was constant pain from both ankles from failed reconstructive surgery, his divorce was especially nasty, he was unable to sleep, and now his career was over. “It was pretty wild at that point.”
I asked Ed to describe the symptoms and effects of PTSD. “I couldn’t even say. It is insidious and creeps up on you. You are out of touch. 2008 through 2012 was an utter and complete blur for me. I know I was a wreck. I know I was angry and short fused. The career was over. I was getting medically retired which is a brutal, long, bureaucratic, nasty process of hurry up and wait. My unit wasn’t particularly supportive, and I was treated like an absolute shitbag, and I probably was, because I was not cooperative.”
I asked if he thought there was any PTSD after his first tour. He said there wasn’t a focus on it then and if there were any effects, they were much milder than what was to come after his subsequent tours. “You don’t go through those types of experiences and not come back changed.” Ed said PTSD has been around for as long as there has been war. “The whole story of Odysseus in the Odyssey is about a soldier returning from war and what he experiences.”
I asked what the return from combat to the states was like. Ed said the process of winding down a deployment, the right seat-left seat (handover) and stepping back on US soil is approximately two weeks. Two weeks is not an adequate time to decompress and become mentally prepared to reintegrate into society.
Ed discussed the divide between civilians and combat veterans. Listening to Ed it was clear to me that the divide is not antagonistic or hostile or created through distain or feelings of superiority. However, combat significantly alters the outlook of anyone who has experienced it. “It’s almost impossible to put words to. I have seen in the exact same moment the absolute worst that humanity can do to one another and the absolute greatest acts a man can do for another in the same exact moment. Where people have dehumanized you to the point where they are willing turn you into something akin to chunky salsa and somebody else is willing to step in and say, “no, let me go first.’ There is no comparison anywhere for that type of experience.”
From the shoes of a civilian I interpreted that to mean there is a connection that develops from the exposure to the intense and extreme sights of combat along with the shared suffering and hardship that create a fraternity that cannot be joined by those who have not endure the same experiences, no matter how hard they try to understand. With the passage of time the separation becomes less intense but never fades away and that can be seen with the veterans of World War II and Korea.
Ed’s adjustment to civilian life was difficult. He returned to Massachusetts and attempted to work with the doctors at the VA to address his PTSD but to little avail. The medications he was taking made him feel worse. He attempted to enter the job market with little success and was considering another shot at school as a last resort. Ed said, “everything had failed miserably.” The downward spiral continued until one day in 2012 Ed woke up, looked in the mirror and decided he couldn’t keep traveling the same road. He looked at all the drugs he was prescribed and dumped them in the toilet. He picked up the phone and called his psychologist at the VA and told him “I’m done and I’m not doing this anymore. I need to try a different track. This medication is turning me into an absolute zombie, I’m not getting anywhere in my life, this sucks and I need to do something different.” Perhaps it was the determination that he inherited from his mother that helped him to try to find a new direction to deal with his PTSD through understanding its root causes rather than glossing over it with medication. “It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done…….to try to find that new direction. To try to understand what’s happening and try to figure it out rather than just glossing it over with some medication or counseling.
Ed went back to North Shore Community College for a semester and then transferred to Salem State. He received a lot of help from the various Veterans Administrators. “They were amazing!” He enrolled in Business because he thought it would be the most versatile background for moving forward with life. Two and a half years later he graduated Suma Cum Laude with a major in small business and entrepreneurship and a minor in economics. “I finally had purpose. I finally had space to take action and improve myself and using that as a tool to reconcile all the mess that was going on in my head.”
It's worth noting, when Ed returned to school, he was a 31 year old freshman. “After my first semester I bought a 19 year old bottle of scotch to celebrate my success because it was more mature than my classmates.” Salem State had a very active Veterans Organization and Ed was able to connect with other veterans which helped. He helped to raise money to build a veteran’s center on the campus. “That was our space on campus.”
Ed was happy with his progress academically and decided to continue on to earn an MBA. He was accepted to Babson where he focused on entrepreneurship.
Ed is now teaching at Babson, and he lets his students know about his background, which is remarkably different than theirs. The students ask questions about his military experiences, and he answers them and tries to convey some lessons learned. “Experiences are what you make of them. Resiliency is a personal choice and its one of the most difficult choices anyone will have to make. You physically and mentally have to choose to forge personal armor that will prepare you for your next challenge. I don’t know what tripped in me that one morning that finally turned that switch, but it was like turning a switch.” Ed said he checks back with the VA every six months, but he has never missed the medication.
“Understanding how we form our thoughts and how we can train our brains to form thoughts. The more you train yourself to think positively the easier it becomes but if you default to negative thoughts your brain will be wired to think like that.” Ed described PTSD as being exposed to traumatic situations and your mind becomes wired to hyper awareness to help you survive those moments. But that hyper awareness lingers after you are removed from those situations and your brain needs to be retrained. That retraining is very hard but over time the personal armor can be built.
“I’d do it all over again. As hard as everything has been I wouldn’t be where I am at right now without it……I wouldn’t be doing the things I’ve been able to achieve without going through those hardships and learning from them. If I took that away, I don’t know where I’d be. I don’t know what I’d be doing…..It has become a central part of me.”
I asked Ed, what veterans who have experienced combat think of Americans saying, ‘thank you for your service’. Ed commented that such a small percentage of Americas were directly impacted by Afghanistan and Iraq that it is hard for the average American to truly appreciate the American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. “It’s nice to hear and I appreciate your gratitude, but most people don’t understand why that gratitude should exist.” He thought a better expression of gratitude could be “Thank you for the sacrifice and the effort you put in. Thank veterans for going through that and coming out the other side.”
Ed recounted an experience that he thought was a meaningful thank you to veterans. He saw a woman in the gym with a tattoo of a Combat Infantryman’s Badge on her arm. He thought that was an odd place for a tattoo of that badge, so he decided to ask her about it. She said, it was in memory of her grandfather who was in Vietnam. He had just passed away and she got it to honor him. Ed said, “that was really cool…..those little things matter a lot. It’s much more impactful.”
I asked Ed what he would like everyone to know about the U.S. time in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said, “We did the right thing by going over there. We didn’t have enough of a follow-up plan to do it well. There was no clear consensus on what victory would look like.” He also said, “enemies exist, people who despise our way of life, they are out there. If you think we are immune from other people’s hatred, no, there are a lot of people who are jealous about the way we live life here and they are willing to try and take it from us. Those enemies absolutely exist. To think otherwise is the height of foolishness.” I asked Ed about the real face of evil. “TV is dramatized. The real piece of it is so insidious and wears that human face on top of it all and you never recognize it until it’s too late. The scariest part of it is, people want to accept it that as ‘just the way they feel’……If you give them an inch, they are going to take a mile.”
Ed, we are all happy that you bested the demons of PTSD. We thank you for all that you and your brothers and sisters endured to protect our way of life. We also thank you mother for passing along her tenacious DNA to you.