MY MIND WAS MY ENEMY: PART TWO |

Name: The Afghan Battle Fox
Returned from: Afghanistan
Hometown: Clyde, Ohio
Milblog: Afghan Battle Fox's Blog
Email: lambmommy@gmail.com

 

Read Part One here.

Even in my tent, for the first two weeks or so of going on missions I would jump at the slightest of noises, a person’s touch on the shoulder, or even an unannounced figure standing beside me.

My stomach nervously churned every time I climbed up in my truck to go out. Feeling conflicted, I would toss my assault pack in, climb the metal stairs of the back gate of the uparmored vehicle, fasten my seatbelts, and wait helplessly to arrive at a destination. Unlike the hum of a car engine when I was a young child, the loud low hum of the vehicles engines did not comfort me. With every bump in the road I bounced around, held only slightly in place by the harness that kept me strapped me to my seat. I feared that one of the bumps in the road might hold an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and that a blast was imminent. I would create panic within myself to the point of a cold sweat.

I fought with myself. In part, I was excited and eager to see new places and to photograph this new country that surrounded me, but the pit feeling I had in my stomach often made it hard to be optimistic about each day’s journey.

When we rode through the city, I would look out the side window of my uparmored vehicle and watch Afghan women in blue burqas walking along the dirt road beside us, headed toward a market. I would gaze at young Afghan school boys in their blue shirts and Afghan girls in their white shamaughs on their way to school. I observed older Afghan men working in their road-side shops and younger Afghan men driving carloads of people up and down the paved roads of the city.

Like a lightbulb on a dimmer switch, two things slowly began to occur to me. First, these people were going to the market, to school, and to work -- just like I did back home! I was watching people who were, in these respects, no different from me, my friends, and my family.

Secondly, I realized that nothing hazardous was happening when I went out on my missions. The Afghans were going about their business and I wasn’t even a concern to them. Heck, most of them didn’t even look up at the convoy when we passed them, and the ones that did were waving at us like we were a parade. Waving -- and smiling! Threatening people don’t do that!

I hadn’t lost my sense of awareness, but with each mission I started to feel less and less uptight. The fog created by my fear was beginning to lift, and with my new clarity I was seeing people, not threats.

I grew tired of feeling a constantly exhausting state of nervousness and I knew that I had several months in Afghanistan ahead of me, so I decided that I had to let go of some of my fears. If something was going to happen, it was going to happen, with or without my worrying about it. I wasn’t going to be able to anticipate a negative event, so why stress myself out over it?

It took me nearly a month of missions to ease up on my tension to where the nervousness didn’t exist. As a Soldier, I continued to be apprehensive and cautious. Whether inside or outside the wire, I just didn’t trust anyone, save a couple of close American friends there. I wasn’t like that before I joined the Army. I don’t like that I had changed to become who I was at the beginning of my deployment. I’m actually ashamed of the misconceived thoughts I had about the Afghans.

Threats of violence do not come from an entire population, I told myself. One bad person in a photo or on a video is not indicative of an entire country of threatening people.

Comments

[Chris Saulnier]

"...and the ones that did were waving at us like we were a parade. Waving -- and smiling! Threatening people don’t do that!"

Unless they are politicians...

My cynicism filter couldn't hold that one back ;>)