Episode 1: Transcript
This podcast reflects only the views of its hosts and guests. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the Department of Defense or the United States government. This episode contains strong language and stories detailing direct and indirect experiences of War including suicide. Listener discretion is advised. For suicide prevention resources, go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org or call 1 800 273 TALK
Hello Mav Nation, welcome to the Face of War Podcast. I’m Jesse, and I’m Barbara and today’s episode is going to talk to you about war through the eyes of a veteran, you’ll hear from Harley his combat experiences and you’ll hear from Nick and Jacob. Stay tuned.
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HB: Hello Maverick Nation, I’m Dr. Harley Barmore, I’m the Director of the Military Connected Resource Center here at UNO, and I’m a combat veteran, and I am absolutely over the moon to introduce two other combat veterans, who are joining me today. I’ve got with me, Jake and Nick. Jake, why don’t you go and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.
JM: Yeah, so I’m Jake Marshall, I was in activity Marine Corps for four years. A year of active reserves and then did the rest of my inactive. I got out of active duty as an E4, I was infantry marine 0341 by trade which is a mortarman. With that being said, because of obviously the way that the Rules of Engagement have changed, I was cross trained as a machine gunner. So, the 240 Bravo was my baby. I got out in 2017. Finished my inactives up in 2021 and here I am a full-time student at UNO.
HB: Over to you.
Awesome.
NM: Yep, my name is Nick (McCrabb) I’m a faculty member here at UNO, I come with the perspective of remote combat operations. I’m an Air Force intelligence officer, veteran of Operation Inherent Resolve, otherwise known as the fight against Isis.
HB: Great. Well, I want to thank you both for being here and I know this isn’t something that I was completely looking forward to, but it’s something that I’m really excited about this. This project in general. So, I want to really thank you for being here and I appreciate your time. The way I see this little vignette here, which will develop into perhaps part 2, is kind of seeing the conflict develop in front of us. Whether it be on TV or as part of an Intel brief, we get in a squadron or a platoon, to prepare followed by the actual process of going over there and how we handle that and package that up for our families. And then we’re actually there followed by the monotony of being over there which we’ve all talked about before that, which is, which I think will be interesting for our audience. The aspect of going home, then after home and then what we’ve already talked about and our little sidebar as we were prepping, the after, after going home.
NM: And then the after…after, after going home.
HB: That’s right. It seems to kind of continually iterate, right? So let’s just start off with how we see conflict, how we see war, what was it, like for each one of you and I’ll let whoever wants to jump in first. Go ahead and see just kind of describe emotions, perceptions of what that was like to unfold.
JM: So, I think the biggest thing for me going over there, I thought I was going to be prepared. We were told what to do we trained for months and months and months, we get the call and like, Hey, we’re going like, okay. We have about two more months before they decide to kick us out and hit on the road. I remember, we actually got the call. It was eight o’clock at night and we had an emergency formation. There are 100 of us going And they needed has gone by that night. I think that was probably the most nerve-racking as far as work ups and like the initial push and to the location that I was heading.
HB: It just wasn’t what you were expecting or it just…
JM: I thought I knew what I was getting myself into and I thought I knew I was ready. Like I said, I was an infantry Marine. I was taught to do one thing, one thing well, and it just it kind of seemed like, even though I was prepared to do my job, I wasn’t prepared to do my job at a location I wasn’t already at
HB: How about you Nick?
NM: Yeah. So preparing to go to go into war deploying for OIR is a unique situation because we my mind wasn’t and over the night notification, right? I got notified and I want to say, December of the Year prior, so like December of 14 for a July 15 departure. So I had quite a quite a bit of time to actually think through what Know what’s going to happen and I was pretty green. I was I want to say a brand-new first lieutenant or maybe first lieutenant for six months and when you hear aircrew saying things like, hey I’m going to do everything I can to either get out as an Intel officer providing that briefing for them to go out the door. . I sleepless nights thinking about how do I how do I make sure that doesn’t happen, right? When we’re friends with the people in the Squadron were friends with spouses and Kids…it just it changed my perspective. And so that while wasn’t it over the night reaction? Hey, we got to go deploy. It was an extended kind of slow, burn of what do I do?
HB: Hey, I found that nerve-racking as well. My perspective is a little bit more to the left temporally speaking in that I watch 9/11 happened while I was in flight school. And so I was a month away from graduating. We actually graduated in October and I thought we were going to come down to the Squadron and have our orders ready for us on September 11th. I put my uniform on and went in, I had an afternoon Sim and I was actually surprised that we were delaying our training program because of 9/11 much like the Annapolis graduating class of 1942 that came down in December 41, obviously, after Pearl Harbor, the graduating class, they had their orders to go to the Pacific sitting on their breakfast table. I was expecting something like that, it obviously it didn’t happen and it would take almost another year before I would experience combat. So I was my claws were sharpened, my teeth were ready to go fangs were out. But it took a while it was, it was very uncomfortable for me too because I was, so eager yeah.
NM: Isn’t that interesting? That we kind of look to our most entertainment or movies to get that perspective were like, oh man, crazy scene happened in the movie and the note c-17s waiting for you to get up and go in reality, it’s much different it and sometimes for some people. I
HB: t certainly is and even to to go back to the, almost the urgency of your situation. That’s got to be equally, equally frustrating in some aspect. Did you have a family that you were preparing to go? Some loved ones?
JM: I mean, my like I was pretty young. I was 21.
When I first had an over, I didn’t have a girlfriend, didn’t have a wife or anything like that. So it was really just my brother, my sister, my mom and my dad. Those are the only ones I cared about. My mom typical mom super upset but I think at the end of the day, their support kind of outgrew like anything that I could prepare them for. So I’m pretty lucky that that they were the way they acted during that whole phase of my life.
HB: How about you?
NM: Yeah. So no kids but wife and that. We had just gotten married six months prior to departing and I take that back, sorry, one year prior to departing. So she listens to this podcast. I’m sure she will correct me anyway, regardless. Yeah, so that…
HB: In your defense. It’s pretty stressful in here, we’re talking about some pretty emotional stuff.
NM: Yeah. I mean within a year of getting married it was gotta say, goodbye, ? And, and that’s I’d already said goodbye to my family because I was on active duty, and , while I’m sure they were worried and I know they were worried. I didn’t have to worry about that that goodbye, there was no Band-Aid or rip off right of. Hey, we’re standing in front of the Squadron and this is I get on that bus and I head out to the flight line and I’m out. And so, I vividly remember that and I think to myself about it kind of on the way over here there is part of me where you want to just get through that and you don’t want to say the goodbye. You don’t want to go through the kind of rigmarole of looking him in the face and saying, I’ll see you in seven months or a year or whatever comes to. And I feel guilty saying that a little bit. I was so ready to get the mission done that. I didn’t want to be, I didn’t want to go through the goodbyes.
HB: Yeah, it seemed like a downer for me as well because I was really excited to take to get over there and get to it and obviously our taxpayers a lot of money into training all of us and I was ready to put that to use. I also had a spouse, that relationship deteriorated as a result of constant deployment, but I always looked at it, as am I lying to you by saying, I’ll see you in six months. I’ll see you in a year because I wasn’t sure and I promise that I do my best and I hope that I would behave great in combat if I was ever faced with something, but I didn’t know it was completely unknown to me. So I felt like I was kind of lying or maybe I’m gonna, I’m gonna put the I’ma write the check up front. Please don’t cash it till after I get back, kind of mentality. How did you guys do? Did you have a similar experience with that?
JM: I mean, goodbyes are always the hardest part and I didn’t want to lead my family on. I kind of expected the things that were going to happen as they played out, Eventually did happen, but I didn’t want to go up to my family be like, hey I’ll be home seven months or I’ll be home nine months if we get extended, or, whatever the case may be, and then it turn around and be a lie because I was already stationed for like 24 hours if I drove for my family, so it made that bit just a little bit harder to even want to think about it.
HB: That’s it. That’s a good point. When I think back my experience, I had everything packed at I needed for the mission. They gave me a checklist. They had everything in a bag and we’re getting ready to rock and roll. We even took our own airplane over. So that whole side, the right side, the military side was good to go. Now the left side, the side that I was leaving my family, I left phone numbers, we had our account set up access. I’d like, I hope, fingers crossed that works. I don’t know if the hot water heater goes what’s going to happen. So that big unknown was over there on the left with my family. But the right side the yin the yang, that’s all squared away. I know they’re not going to let me fail.
NM: And you just want to lean to the side that , is good.
HB: It’s almost like a, like a campout you’re going a boy’s weekend where my closest friends that we’ve trained together we’re going over and who knows what we’re going to get into, but we’re at least gonna be altogether. It’s a known factor versus the unknown. And I guess you can play that both ways on both sides.
NM: Yeah, there’s another point. I want to bring up to the preparation part it kind of goes back to the length of time knowing that I was going and the particular operation that we were going to fight was so televised. every night oh my goodness, Isis is taking more territory. Oh my goodness reporters are being killed and all that stuff was coming up in the news. And that just gave more opportunity for family, friends, to say questions like are you going to be okay? Are you prepared? And I’m like, man, I don’t know. How do I won a first lieutenant and to like, younger 20s, right, early 20s. I have no idea. Like, I’m just trying to get over there and not mess up the mission. Like I’m not thinking years in advance on how to get back in process whatever we’re about to go do that and that hindsight really frustrated me a lot
HB: Jake, how young were you when you went over there for the first time?
JM: The first time I went, I was 20. I was two months away from turning 21 so I was, I was pretty young but I was actually the older of my peer group, so and I went over there with a bunch of 18 year olds like just out of high school.
HB: So let’s fast forward a little bit where they’re where, they’re wearing a place where ever it is. Sometimes we can talk about it, sometimes, we can, which is really interesting when you have a new wife at home and you can’t tell her exactly what time zone to expect a call from or where you’re at sometimes. So let’s talk about, we talked about in the, in the lead-up, to this, the boredom that is being in a combat zone, followed by moments of sheer terror, the up, and then you’re trying to get back down, so you can sleep and relax and worry about things like self care, but you’re so up that you just wait to crash to get back down to that boredom phase again, I’ll start with you Jake. Describe your process, describe what it was like for you, you’re there.
JM: So we did a lot of post standing when I went. That’s just kind of how it laid out my day-to-day. I would stay in my post, six hours, I would be on an off-post cycle for six hours, and then I would have my relaxation time. My relaxation time was the only time we’re obviously, you’re supposed to be like code yellow. You’re supposed to be aware of your surroundings, but you shouldn’t be worrying about it. I think that’s when we worried about it the most. Like I was very fortunate to have a really nice gym. They had a really nice defect that we could go to because I was I was in an embassy
HB: And real quick, a defect for our older audience members, who have been around the block much like me, that’s a chow hall and I’ll never call it a defect. But defect it is
JM: Well, we had Chow halls but because this was not a Marine Corps thing. It was a defect and it was very, nice. I think, I think the biggest issue I had was walking to and from the location. So, we would leave the room not even 10 seconds later we would have sirens going off. Sirens going off. I mean, it could be anything obviously. It’s just detecting something in the air, whether it be mortars, whether it be rockets and sometimes even gunfire, they would just fire up in the air that for those who don’t know, that is just sometimes they it for celebration, so I could be walking down to the chow hall or down to the gym, and then you’d have to go into this giant concrete bunker and hunker down until the sirens stop basically, which could be anywhere from one minute to 10 minutes, . And you never really know where it hit until after when you got briefed, if you were to get briefed. But that was I think that’s the biggest, the biggest worries I had was just walking to go attempt to settle myself in a normal life while I was there for the seven and a half to eight months
HB: And Nick that’s a little bit different than what your experience was. Go ahead and contrast that.
NM: Yeah, in contrast. , it was a very fast and furious as a word, I would use, right? Our deployment, the, the aircraft I supported dropped significant amount of weapons and as an Intel officer, it’s our responsibility to track that weapon system footage. And so that takes each individual in weapon impact. We have to make a video for and make sure that the weapon went to where we’re supposed to go and that created, I mean, long days somewhere between 16 and 18 hour days for the majority of the week. So I didn’t necessarily have that feeling of monotony and so I can’t necessarily relate to that but at the same time you get to the point where your body just like physically, can’t function, right? If you’re if you’re working on four hours of sleep for a week straight or whatever it came to it, it was a lot. It’s not like we were just sitting up for 18-hour days and kind of talking to each other. I like these are significant events that were happening and to your point you brought up earlier not being able to adequately, tell your spouse, what’s going on, but they see it on your face when you eventually get to FaceTime and that is contrasted with whatever news agency, reporting on whatever weapon strikes of whatever Isis Target, right? Like it’s not that difficult to correlate, my face, the lack of communication between us and what’s on TV with what actually happened and my wife knew way before I knew that I had some things to deal with resulting from this deployment.
HB: One of the interesting Dynamics with the trio that we have here in the booth today is the fact that Jake saw it live. Where as Nick, watched it on the footage that came back and I heard it and I didn’t get to see much of it. But we all have a different sensory input on how that affected us and none of us are belittling, or I’m definitely not going to yuck any of your yum on what your experience was, but I know hearing it affected me and I use my imagination for the rest, which was almost impossible to turn off. I can’t imagine what she went through and I can’t imagine you seeing it the way that you described it to our audience. And that’s, that’s an interesting takeaway. We briefly talked about the factor like walking to the dfac, walking to the chow hall and just not knowing if that was going to be your day. Not knowing myself If out of sheer quiet, we were going to get struck and obliterated. What is what is that like for all of us that not knowing if this is your day.
NM: So I want to contrast that point go is both of you to your perspectives in the aircraft very much threatened, right? Vulnerable, they’re very much threatened, vulnerable. , I’m at a remote location and not remote like in theatres this could get bad. But remote like removed from the battlefield and there were times and I hate that I feel this way but there were times where I was like God damn it like I just want a missile to hit here so that the other supporting this mission that I see every day that , they’re going to the dfac to then go to the pool afterwards…I’m working 16-hour days…I had so much resentment for everybody on base that didn’t understand the war we were fighting and clearly hindsight, like I’m glad missiles didn’t hit our base, right. I’m glad I was safe. But in the moment the frustration like I can’t explain. I don’t know how to explain that. It’s probably like When you guys are coming into a base like where I was to get your R&R in, you’re looking at us like what in the actual? What are they doing, right? Like what mission are they supporting? I’m trying to get some rest because I got to go back in the shit like…
JM: , it’s funny that you say that and yeah, I’m very sorry you feel that way. Like being on the ground all the time and we would never get to see any of the cool missions that happened hundreds of miles away, we just got to hear all the aftermaths. And that was something that I was always so jealous of, . I, dumb Marine, I like big booms. That’s that was my thing. I was there for one purpose and I wanted that purpose to be done. I wanted to be complete to where I could go home. I didn’t care if I went home, it’s just my guys to left and right but with that being said is I can tell you for myself and all my friends were super thankful, for even if even if you were just sitting behind a computer for 12 hours a day, we’re super thankful that you did what you did and that goes for any the listeners or anybody, it doesn’t really matter, I can tell you firsthand that we are we may give you crap sometimes because obviously again dumb Marine, but at the same time at the end of the day we’re super thankful for anybody and everybody who’s ever supported us in anyway.
NM: Well I appreciate hearing that and that is definitely a something that took me forever to process. Right. Because I I never felt like I was living up to person like you, right, who was being shot at and had Rockets shot at their base are like I would always talk down on what I did and that’s just not a healthy way to go about your life, but in the moment that’s that’s how I felt. I was like, man. I’m what’s going on here? , I couldn’t have words. I didn’t have words to articulate how I felt certainly.
HB: And we all struggle with the concept of a adequacy to certain degree. I know I have the big thing for me was how I was going to behave when I face the enemy didn’t know what that enemy look like, but how I was going to behave. So yeah, certainly and fun fact as an Air Force, guy myself, our first standing order is if we ever got into a firefight, find the nearest Marine and give him all your ammunition us.
JM: Well, I, I would like Say that I haven’t heard that before, but I have been told multiple times with all the guys that have come and train with us. That’s the first thing they said. Okay, I’m going to stick to your hip and it’s like, okay, we’ll give me six feet and then stick to my hip.
HB: Yeah, please. Alright, let’s talk about the monotony of being over there in combat. Were there, we’re in a rhythm we got our ups and downs. We recognize what they are. All right, we’re sneak into the dfac, we’re on a schedule. We know what to expect, talk about the general mundane things or give me a funny story about just being just hanging out mundane bored as hell.
JM: Well, I’m, I’m kind of hesitant to tell the story just because I know the active audience that we want to reach, but for those who might happen to listen in, you’re not supposed to drink the bottled water, or any water when you’re in whatever country. I mean, you need to make sure that it’s purified and very much reasonably so. W ell my buddy, we accidentally swapped, and I don’t mean like on purpose, but we swapped water that we used to bathe with versus the water that we would drink on the pallets when they were unloaded because they came in boxes, you couldn’t tell them less you read and do the symbols because it was in a foreign language. Well, my buddy happened to drink the water that was supposed to be used for baths, and we went to the gym 30 minutes later. Yes, in the middle of squatting, he absolutely made a mess of the entire gym and that is one thing that I’ll never, never forget.
HB: The horrors of War. That’s fantastic. Do you have a story?
NM: Yeah. We talked about monotony in the time. So we did get to relax, looking back we lived in this building where it was hardened structure, but it had access to the roof and the CD guys didn’t have the roof locked and so we rightfully so, claimed it as our Lookout Point to just kind of hang out and a couple times we would go up there and smoke cigars on the roof at sunset, and sunset in the Middle East, man. I don’t know how to describe how big the sun is in the sky. I closed my eyes and I can see, I can hear the music We Were playing like Zac Brown Band and smell the cigars and as an Intel officer we…doesn’t matter who you talk to you, right? The feeling is we want acceptance, right? We want acceptance in the flying unit and the fact that I was the Intel officer up there with my flying buddies. Yeah, I look back on that moment is just the greatest moment in the world. I’m in the shittiest, part of the world, doing this mission that just sucks but my left and my right cover down. Great. And I’ve never felt that much acceptance in my life of a part of a team or organization,
HB: Ccertainly that that camaraderie that that teamwork, the family stuff. There are still some, some vets that I was great friends with flying that, I’m still friends with today and as we go through ups and downs, or I can always reach out to them and and likewise them time it to me and I were constantly helping each other out because of that bond. That is just, it’s really hard to describe. We were there together. The monotony for me was you can only work out so many times. You can only eat so many times. You can only take a shower so many times after that, we were playing video games and we go have a dip in the Smoke pit. Maybe we have a cigarette, I don’t know, people would go and they quit smoking in the desert. I never really understood that but that time together when we were, like we’re bored now what I think one point in time in the chow hall we were coming off a night shift. We had breakfast, we were so bored. We were watching TV in the chow hall that they It’s serving lunch and we just got up and rolled right into luncheon date again, without even the chow hall. That’s how mundane sometimes this this gets especially for a flyer when your airplanes check right across the street and everything you’re kind of doing the same Mission over and over again with minor adjustments. Okay! So you get the word, maybe your CO your commanding officer or somebody higher up. Says it’s time for you to rotate out. You’re going back home. What’s that like? We’ll start with Nick this time.
NM: It’s interesting because your we were so full throttle. It’s as soon as you take your foot off the gas it’s like what how do am I buckled in? Like am I ready to ready for this? And you just don’t know. I mean thank God. We were with like we had such a tight Squadron I couldn’t imagine doing a onesie twosie deployment where you’re by yourself and your full speed for Six months or seven months and then you’re saying, okay, time to go home, we had a good…I was fortunate that we had a good amount of time a week to kind of decompress. The sorties had stopped. We as a unit were done and that relief the Vuitton was to the next. And we couldn’t mess anything up anymore. I like, just sit your lunch, eat your breakfast, eat your dinner, and, and then a few wake-ups. You’re going to, you’re going to be home. So, Oh yeah god all was kind of a blurb but it’s almost like after you finish your last final but before you graduate that feeling of I’m still here, I’m still in my community but I haven’t totally left. I don’t know.
HB: That’s good. Jake?
JM: I’m going to be honest; I probably felt the exact opposite of any way that a normal person would feel. I felt anger. I felt hate. I was spiteful to leave. But a lot of that has to play with, on October 27th of 2014 before we left. I actually…my best friend…I say best friend he was family, was my brother, I walked in, after my normal shift to watch him, commit suicide. If I was just a split-second sooner, I probably could have stepped in they say look for the signs but there were no signs. This guy every night would howl at the moon just like normal. He was just an 18 year old kid fresh out of high school from Riverside California and I thought the world of this kid, but when they told us that we were packing up and leaving, I refuse to because I wasn’t able to bring everybody home. I was, I was so upset that I had to leave. He did have his body flown back in, he was given a proper burial, which I’m very thankful for, but I was so terrified to leave knowing that I didn’t bring him home. I didn’t want to.
HB: That almost quintessential American value of not leaving anybody behind. Certainly resonates with me buddy. That’s horrible. And I think we’re going to see an uptick and in veteran suicides. We’re trying to crack that nut but it’s very difficult, very difficult problem to solve and it’s stories like that at that drive at home, that there is something out there lurking. You have a you have a population of people who are dedicated to serve you and to serve unquestionably and would do it again without skipping a beat. But yet, we’re so programmed to not ask for help because that’s almost a sign of weakness. That when it comes time to realizing that we might need help. It’s probably too late. So, yeah, that’s something that we should probably discuss in further episodes so that I know that we’re all kind of struggling with and I’m sure Community Partners and those that are listening in that are relatives or loved ones, or even just supporters, be maybe people who have questions about that that are also asking those similar questions. Yeah, we’re all struggling and we don’t know why crap, I’m a PhD veteran and I haven’t cracked the code so it’s very complicated. Thank you for sharing that, I appreciate it and then, so what’s it like? Okay, you’re home. So now you’re home. I mean you walk through the door, everything is so weird, like that’s so weird. I remember landing and everything was so green, the green, the color green just blew my eyesight out. The greenness, the air conditioning, the humidity in the air. My kids had aged just enough to notice there was a routine that I was interrupting at home…
NM: That such a…almost like overstated, but understood, if that even makes sense, right? Like yes, we know there’s a routine and when we get back we jack that up, but until you like it, in the middle of it, there’s absolutely no way to actually tell somebody who doesn’t understand what that means.
HB: Like, I came home there was obviously a routine, everybody gave me. Hugs, Daddy’s home and then it was okay, we got ballet and 15, are you coming or would you like to stay and have a beer? And I was like, well, of course, I want to go to ballet. But do we have to like, oh, everything’s on this…there’s a routine as definite pace that I was obviously interrupting that I felt really bad for that. But at the same time, I kind of kind of got admire that a similar experience with you.
NM: Yeah, I mean we don’t didn’t have any kids but it doesn’t mean my wife didn’t have a routine and didn’t get in a routine for chores and groceries and things that I would take care of when I was before I deployed and like getting things done around the house, like that sounds really simple but man, that’s a way to start of an argument. You’re doing the dishes or I’m doing the dishes? Or you’re doing laundry? I’m just like, man, that is tiring as hell. Yeah.
HB: How about you Jake? What was it like?
JM: I didn’t have a family to come home to. My family, was the family that I took with me. So I don’t understand the feeling of interrupting a routine. The biggest thing for me, and I think this is where, where my struggle really hit rock bottom was our routine because we got a month where we didn’t do anything. That’s our cool down period from the deployment. So, every day at the second, we wake up, we wake up about you. 10 a.m. you get to sleep in a little bit and have our formation and then we start drinking. So I’ve seen a lot of really good people and including myself and I’m not saying I was a great person, but I could tell that I took a pretty big hit coming home and I was, I was very, very alcohol-dependent. So my, my routine if it was interrupted, I became again, very violent, very angry. And I never been an angry or violent person up until this part of my life.
HB: yeah, I found alcohol. It helped me as well. To the point where I would get a little bit twitchy or almost nervous until I got that drink in my hand and it didn’t need to be a lot but it was just comforting and it allowed me to kind of kind of relax and think about things. But I had a friend with me like a security blanket and in that it took a little bit of the edge off and it made it a little bit more so I could push it to the side and kind of digest everything that was happening around me without actually doing with the problem which I think is at the heart of probably, some of the things that are going on with all of us.
JM: I mean, my, my biggest fault is…I’m thankful for all my friends, they tried multiple times, obviously, to hang out with me, get me out of my comfort zone to give me to do things. We’re in Twentynine Palms, California. So I live two and a half hours from Vegas. They wanted me to go to Vegas, but I was still so hateful at myself for my inability to bring home my brother that That I cast myself, aside, I refuse to let people get into my circle.
HB: So I think that’s a good segway to what would be the last little section here: the after the after or the after the after the after we get home and I think what you’re describing and I’m not, I’m not an expert here but that would be a survivor’s guilt. Have you heard that before?
JM: I absolutely. In fact, I was forced to talk to multiple therapists which I casted all six of them away. I hated talking to every single one because they didn’t understand. They said they did, they said they were listening but they didn’t know what I felt. They didn’t know how to talk to me because they didn’t go through what I went through because they didn’t know my brother so survivor’s guilt, played a huge, huge part of my life up until even…I got out in 2017 and my first relationship failed because of it. , it’s the after after home for me was a lot of self-recovery that I felt like I was alone but the more I hung out with people outside in like a veterans group, like a community that I was in California. I struggled with the after after home.
HB: How about you Nick?
NM: Yeah definitely struggled with the after after home. So I returned in January of 16 and I can honestly say today, I turned a corner last fall. Right, so do the math. Yeah, it’s just I’m sorry. I’m trying to figure out about this one and two words. , that got home I remember the first day getting home, I woke up and I got bacon in the refrigerator, and I’m making omelets and bacon. And I distinctly remember that day, and that was like, the end of the honeymoon, right? Every day after that was I was kicked to the spare bedroom because I was waking up at 2 in the morning like twitching and and I don’t remember any of it. But apparently, I was like having night terrors, right? So, in my mind, it wasn’t matching because again I compared myself to people who were pulling triggers, I’m like, what the hell? I’m not supposed to have these problems, right? Like I’m not deserving to have these problems of , PTSD and depression and anxiety like, no. And so I spent a good chunk of that time period, just ignoring it. And I did exactly what you did with isolation and I don’t want anybody in this circle. I don’t want anybody because they don’t understand, right? Nobody understands. And so, I don’t know, I don’t know how I got to where I got like I don’t know. Can you put a finger on when you can? Because I can’t?
JM: No, I mean, for me like I said, just the thought of leaving something that I had behind, as far as your situation goes, I mean, I’ve had the pleasure of talking to hundreds if vets when I get out because I ran and I helped run a veterans community resource when I was in California at one of my colleges. I mean I don’t know if it’s it’s clearly still a guilt. I mean, we all have guilt you, come home. You have this huge package to burden and aside from the people that you were doing this job with who else can carry this other than yourself?
NM: Exactly. I mean forever, I would be doing dishes, or I’d be folding laundry or whatever, and in in the back of my mind, I use this analogy, like if you’re watching a projector screen with the light on, right? So you see everything around you but that projector screen…you can you see a video playing in the background that video? For me is the weapon system video scurrying around the desert, right? Trying to find a Target and I would find myself like zoned out doing dishes thinking about, okay? And watching this like and then I’m thinking In about different airstrikes and different things, and now consumed my life for years, right, up until last fall. And so to the listeners out there, if those are those of you who are maybe having the same situation as me, or are you Jake like that? Just keep at it. Right? Like I don’t I don’t know when the corner gets turned but you will find somebody, you will find something that helps you get to where you need. It’s a great feeling to be on the other side and I’ve also been on the side where you’re like, I don’t…nothing can help right now.
HB: Really is a frustrating thing and hopefully this podcast will shed some light on that and maybe bring some awareness to this and a whole bunch of issues that are affecting us out there on all sides of the spectrum. And so with that, I think we’ll bring this podcast to an end. I want to thank both of our panel members today, both Jake and Nick for sharing. Obviously, if you’re out there, I’m sure you’re picking up on the fact that this isn’t an easy topic to broach, and it comes with a lot of memories and a lot of joy, but also some some difficult feelings to get over to. And that’s what we want to share with you. At the end of this podcast, we’re going to provide you some room with some resources if you’re experiencing some of the same things that we’re experiencing here in this booth or if someone or if you’re just curious about what’s going on. You and a friend of yours is life or a family member, that’s going through some similar experiences. Or if you just have a question, comment or maybe a suggestion for future podcasts, we’re going to connect you with those at the end. We’d love to hear from you and I want to thank everybody out and Maverick Nation for tuning in and we’ve had a fun time bringing this to you. So Jake Nick thanks I want to thank you both for your service. I appreciate you and we’re going to call it quits today. So stay tuned for the next series in our podcast. And thank you for joining us.
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We’d like to thank the following for making this podcast possible: the Department of English, Criss Library and the Creative Production Lab, Military-Connected Resource Center, Center for Afghanistan Studies, School of Communication, Department of Political Science, Counseling and Psychological Services, MK Projects, LLC, and all our students who volunteer their time to participate in this podcast series.