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  The Iraqi troops hadn’t been getting supplies for a long time. Not only were they short on fuel, they were all skinny because they weren’t even getting enough food. An armored division, 1/64 or 2/63, went up and secured the airfield with their M1s while we were still fighting and mopping up Objective Brown.

  And that was the whole ball of wax. That was it for combat. Admittedly, a lot of the units that went into Iraq for Desert Storm never even fired a shot. I seem to be a bit of a bullet magnet, always in the right place at the wrong time. That said, I left the States in August and came back the following July. I was gone for a year to fight for 100 hours. That sucked. A lot. We didn’t come straight home, we went back to Saudi Arabia first and actually stayed in the Khobar Towers, which are famous for being destroyed by a truck bomb in 1996.

  Before we came back, we spent some time destroying Iraqi vehicles. They were all stacked up in a line and we shot them and blew the breeches on their guns and burned them, because we didn’t want to leave them for the Iraqis. We soaked rolls of toilet paper in diesel, lit them, and threw them inside next to their open fuel cells, mostly, and that worked real nice. Well, little did we know, General McCaffrey had put those vehicles aside. He was going to bring those back as show vehicles and put them on display. Nobody told us. Boy, was he pissed. You look up conniption in the dictionary and there was a picture of his face when he found out what we did.

  But anything I’d done, on purpose or by accident, up to that point paled in comparison to what happened when I returned to Iraq in 2003.

  CHAPTER 5

  LOVE AND MARRIAGE, ARMY STYLE

  After Desert Storm I left the 197th Infantry Brigade and went over to the 2nd ACR (Armored Cavalry Regiment). The 2nd ACR was involved in the Battle of 73 Easting, the biggest tank battle of Desert Storm, so those guys had a much bigger part in the war than I did. When I showed up in Amberg, Germany, I helped them refurbish all of their vehicles and do the turn-in process.

  From there I went up to Vilseck to the Bradley Transition Team. That was a teaching assignment. The ADA (Air Defense Artillery) guys were moving from the old Vulcan cannons and 113s to Bradleys with Stinger missile pods. They needed people to transition them over to those vehicles, and I became a gunnery instructor.

  They had no idea about the Bradley or anything else. We had to start from scratch—go out to the range, teach them dismount tactics, everything. I was an instructor for about a year and a half. After that I switched over to Platoon Gunnery Training. This was a new program the Army developed that used the UCFT (Unit Conductor Fire Trainer), which was a first-generation computer trainer. The unit was designed for one vehicle to shoot in simulated battlefield scenarios. They had computers in that bastard bigger than Coke machines, and you had to have about twenty of them to run what we run now on an iPhone.

  I was one of six guys selected in Germany to help General Electric with this simulator program in Daytona Beach, Florida. I was picked because of both my gunnery ability and the fact that I’d seen combat. I’d shot Distinguished, which means shooting a score of at least 900 out of 1,000, in many gunnery exercises, including multiple 1,000s. So I headed down there on TDY (temporary duty assignment) to help them work the bugs out.

  We were working on a plan to have four of the platoon gunnery trainers tied together so that the guys could come in and work with their wingmen. More than one unit meant they could help each other maneuver, engage targets on the battle line, screen, or do route reconnaissance. The programs were pretty detailed, following existing maps and everything.

  It was down there that I met my wife, Amy.

  Actually, I’d been married once before, and I like to joke that everyone needs a practice marriage before they settle down for the real thing, but the fact of the matter is I was just too young. I got two great kids out of it though, Daniel and Janise.

  When we met, Amy was with her friend Robin, and I was hanging with a guy named Dave. He was part of what I like to call the Alcoholic Infantry. They don’t have their own MOS (military occupation specialties) yet, but they should, because there are enough of them.

  We were at a bar in Daytona. The Atlanta Braves were playing the Toronto Blue Jays and I remember seeing Amy. She had on a white dress to about midthigh and it had a red flowery pattern on it, maybe roses. She has blond hair, but that wasn’t what grabbed me—I can remember seeing her blue eyes from across the room. I knew that night that I wanted to marry her.

  Amy and I traded phone numbers, but everything was casual, at least on her part. She said she was going to school and wasn’t interested in dating anybody. Well, soon we bumped into each other again, and I said, “Hey, you know, could you just show us around town? I’ll take you out to a nice place to eat or whatever. We’re not familiar with the area.” I ended up taking her to a Japanese steak house. This time Amy and I hit it off for good. This was in fall 1992.

  I was stationed in Daytona for close to three months. It was only supposed to be thirty days, but it wound up being longer than that because they kept extending the project, as the test wasn’t ready. Then it was back to Grafenwoehr, Germany, for me.

  Not too long after I headed back to Germany, I flew Amy out there. I took her all over the place, showed her the sights—and asked her to marry me. She didn’t really need any convincing. We just had that connection. I guess we felt we deserved each other.

  At the time I was doing the Bradley instructing thing as a Master Gunner at Grafenwoehr. I was back transitioning ADA gunners over to the Bradley. We had a three-day weekend, and I took a so-called whether pass—as in, you take off whether you have a pass or not. I called my boss and said, “I’m going to be up in northern Germany doing blah blah blah.” He didn’t have a problem with it, so I left that Thursday after work.

  This wasn’t a surprise. I had already talked to Amy and told her to get everything organized. Well, I arranged as much surprise into the situation as I could, which wasn’t much. I picked out the ring at Service Merchandise and called Amy and told her she had something to pick up there. When I came back to the States she already had her wedding dress and everything was set up. We got married at a place called Chez Paul’s. Her friend Robin, who’d been there when we’d met, was the maid of honor. Amy’s brother was my best man, but none of my family or friends were there. That’s life in the Army for you.

  That day my boss called and told me, “Hey, one of the guys is sick, you’re going to have to work tonight.”

  I told him, “Look, I’m up in Bremerhaven, and there’s no way I’m going to make it back.”

  He told me, “I’m going to have to write you up.”

  “Whatever, I don’t care.”

  We got married that weekend and flew back to Germany. Surprise, guys, I’m married! We lived in government housing there. She started working for Northrop Grumman in Hohenfels, and we’d been there about two years when we had our son Jaycob.

  Jaycob was born prematurely, and we knew something was wrong with him. We had him at the German hospital in Rosenberg. The doctors kept telling us, “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s fine.”

  We took him to see the Army doctors at Wahlsburg and they also told us there was nothing wrong with him. We told them, “Are you sure? It’s hard to put a diaper on him; his legs are tight together and he always keeps them crossed.”

  The doctor over there told us, “Yeah, it’s no problem,” but we knew something wasn’t right. So when we took him home on leave, we got him checked out in the States.

  As soon as the doctor saw him, he asked, “Have you guys started any therapy or anything for his cerebral palsy yet?” We were floored. We knew there was something not quite right, but cerebral palsy? We had no idea.

  The German doctors failed to diagnose it. The Army doctors failed to diagnose it. When Jaycob was born, we didn’t think that he was going make it, and that was a tough time. And then we find out that he has CP. Amy was upset and I was really upset, but I couldn’t lose control becau
se she didn’t have any family there. I had to be the strong one, be supportive. It was a hard time.

  The Army was going to send us back to the States on TDY so we could start getting Jaycob the treatment he needed. They were going to get us out of there in something like three days, handle everything, fly us back, move our things, and put our furniture in storage. However, the Major who I was working for thought it would be a good idea to do a “compassionate reassignment,” instead. It turns out that compassionate reassignment takes anywhere from a year to three years to do. So, in effect, by putting us in for compassionate reassignment, he put a stop to us going back and Jaycob getting treated. A week would go by and I would call the Pentagon (again) to find out my status, or call the VA (again) and beg to be reassigned, and they’d go, “Oh, well, we’re still reviewing it,” or “Your case hasn’t gotten here yet.”

  So a month went by and Jaycob wasn’t getting any treatment or anything else. I actually contacted a congressman in hopes of fixing the situation. I had to get Congress involved to contact the Colonel—that’s how ridiculous the situation got. And you know what? My regular rotation came up, a PCS (permanent change of station) to Fort Bragg and the 82nd Airborne Division, before I ever got the compassionate reassignment. Some things the Army does great, but as far as taking care of their people when it counts, they suck.

  The 82nd Airborne didn’t have any use for armor that couldn’t be dropped out of a plane. While, theoretically, you can drop anything by parachute if you’ve got a big enough chute, planes can only carry so much weight and still take off. For most of my time with the 82nd I commanded an M551 Sheridan, which is a light tank. The Sheridan was designed to be dropped by parachute and to swim across rivers. It weighed just 15 tons, compared to the Bradley’s 32 tons, in part because most of the vehicle was aluminum, except for the steel Commander’s cupola. We called it the chicken box.

  The main gun on the Sheridan is a big 152 mm designed to fire both conventional tank rounds and missiles. When the M1 Abrams main battle tank fires its 120 mm main gun, the whole tank rocks a little, and the Abrams weighs 60 tons. The first time I commanded a Sheridan and we fired the main gun, the whole vehicle rocked back until we were balancing on our last two road wheels. When we fell back down, I smacked my face on the turret. When I looked down, there was smoke coming out of the vehicle.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!” I yelled. I thought the breach had failed. “Everybody out. Un-ass the vehicle!” The rest of the crew poked their heads out of their positions and looked at me in confusion.

  “What the hell are you all looking at me for?” I said.

  “What do you mean, Sarge? We just fired the main gun.”

  I stared at them. “You mean it does that every time you fire it? The breach didn’t fail? Holy shit.”

  To reduce the number of broken teeth and concussions, I learned to brace myself against the rear of the cupola. However, that didn’t work out so well. One day during training I had my ass pressed against the rear of the cupola. The main gun fired, the cupola flexed, and both my ass cheeks were pinched between the steel cupola and the aluminum vehicle body. I started screaming, “Cease fire! Cease fire!”

  Nobody knew what the hell was going on, but they rushed to my aid. My coveralls and my ass were stuck, and my crew had to push the cupola up for me to get free. I ended up with a huge blood blister across both cheeks, like a long purple line. It turned into a scar that lasted for years.

  If you’re in the Airborne, that means you jump out of planes when you go into combat—or at least you need to know how to. It takes five jumps to get “jump qualified.” On my first night parachute jump I came down and landed without a problem, but I didn’t know the landing area. As I was walking around, trying to get oriented, I started kicking and tripping over tank parts.

  “Dammit, they should brief us that there are going to be tank parts on the ground out here, we could get injured,” I said to one of the experienced 82nd guys nearby.

  He looked at me, and said, “Buddy, that’s your tank.”

  The chute never opened, and my Sheridan burned right in. That’s why you jump separately from or after your armor.

  The Sheridan was armed with a Shillelagh missile, which we fired out of the main gun. The actual range was about 5,000 yards, but they called it an infinity missile. It was an IR (infrared) missile, and it would pick up any IR signal—like a garage door opener. So we were out at the range, I launched this bad boy, and it was tracking toward the target—and then it hit a little berm. The missile bounced, and then it picked up the IR beam coming back at me.

  My gunner started yelling, “Hey, the round’s coming at us!”

  I screamed back at him, “Dump the gun! Dump the gun!”

  He was still tracking the laser, and we had a missile coming back at us. A Shillelagh missile, a 152 mm round, coming right for the vehicle, and my gunner panicked and was trying to get out of the vehicle. So I had to take the Commander’s override, which doesn’t really work very well, and dump the missile. The missile hit about 20 feet in front of my vehicle, bounced in the air, and landed behind us underneath the First Sergeant’s Humvee. Luckily it was an inert training missile, so it only blew the wheels off the Humvee. Nobody was hurt. If it had been equipped with an actual explosive warhead, the First Sergeant would be dead, and so would I. Hell, our troop had one land in a housing area, and another fly through a drop zone with paratroops jumping. Crazy ass missile.

  Part of the rotation with the 82nd Airborne was being assigned to South Korea. I tried to get out of that, due to having an “exceptional family member” (that’s the military term), but that did not work out. Part of my lack of success was the fact that I wasn’t part of what I call the 82nd Airborne mafia, guys who had only ever been in the 82nd and treated everybody else like shit. Inspector General (IG) complaints were filed, because I wasn’t the only person that this had happened to. I was told it was just a personality conflict, when in fact some of my paperwork was deliberately mislaid. There’s no such thing as a personality conflict. Some people are just assholes. My Platoon Sergeant was one of them.

  When I left for South Korea, Amy was pregnant with Max, my youngest. To add insult to injury, right before I got orders for Korea we had a rat in the ceiling of our house. He chewed some wiring or something, and one day when both Amy and I were at work the house, which we owned, burned down. So the house was torched, we’re living in a hotel room, and I get orders to go to Korea. Insert profanity of choice here.

  All my efforts to fight the system through the IG went nowhere, so I told Amy, “The hell with this. I’m going to get us a house and move you close to your family.”

  We had a lot going on with the insurance company rebuilding the one house, trying to find another home in Florida, and me getting ready to head to South Korea, but somehow everything worked out all right. I was able to go home on leave to be there for the birth of my son Max, but I wasn’t stateside for very long. The flight is eighteen hours each way.

  Tours in Korea are supposed to be longer, but I was only there for a year. In 2000 we were on a training mission against the 3/15 Infantry. I was climbing up on the back of my Bradley, and my driver saw a guy out on the ground with a flashlight. He thought that was a signal to move forward. So he took off and hooked my right leg with the track. The track dragged my right leg down the side skirts of the Bradley. My right ankle was crushed, and my tibia and fibula were in bad shape. They had to take the track apart to get my leg out. I was air-evaced out of there and then spent three weeks down in Seoul with my leg up in traction, pins and other hardware in it.

  At the time I was in 4th Squadron, 7th Cavalry, Apache Troop. A little after July of that year, I had orders to go back to Fort Bragg and flew back to the States. I’d had enough of the bullshit with that unit, though. I was in Daytona Beach on leave and I just drove to Fort Stewart in Georgia. I went and talked to the Cav Sergeant Major there and I said, “Hey look, here’s the deal. I’ve got an
exceptional family member. We’re already living down here. He’s going to see the doctors out of Winn Hospital, and I’d really like to be a part of this unit.”

  The Sergeant Major was no dummy. He said, “You’re still on leave?”

  “Yeah.”

  He said, “Just sign in off of leave here.”

  So I signed in off leave a week early to the 3rd Infantry Division. They sent in the paperwork, informing my previous unit that I was now with this new unit. The sergeant who had caused me all those problems at the 82nd did everything he could to get me back under his boot heel. Finally, my Squadron Commander called down to the officer in charge of the assignments and said, “Look. We’re keeping this guy here. He’s a good dude. We want to keep him.”

  The officer said, “There’s no problem with him staying there, why is there an issue coming up?” When it was explained to him, he said, “I didn’t know anything about it, and that assignment NCO—well, we’re replacing him because he’s got some issues anyway.”

  So I was able to stay with the 3rd ID, and that was the best damn unit I was ever in. But I wasn’t at Fort Stewart very long. I was only there for about six months before I did my rotation in Bosnia.

  We returned to the States—to Fort Stewart, Georgia, specifically—from Bosnia in November 2001, and we immediately started spinning back up, hitting our training hard. We went to Fort Irwin NTC (National Training Center) and Fort Polk JRTC (Joint Readiness Training Center), doing everything that needed to be done. We knew that we’d be heading over to Iraq, or rather Kuwait. We just didn’t know when.

  At that point we were pretty sure the war in Afghanistan had already started, but we didn’t know anything more about what the Special Forces were doing than anyone else, until it hit the news. But there was almost no doubt we’d be going over to Iraq. We could see which way the wind was blowing. And we knew the Iraqis had a lot of tanks and APCs, and you don’t fight armor with Special Forces—you fight armor with armor. That meant us.