Transcript
- Anytime a helicopter went over.
That affected me very much because
I saw some guys die in a helicopter.
Well, actually two helicopter crashes in Vietnam.
- There was a burn pit out behind somebody's house,
and all of a sudden I started smelling
the burning plastic, the burning garbage
and it was hot outside and while driving,
it immediately took me back
to walking down the streets of Baghdad
or riding in a vehicle in Baghdad.
- I do have a lot of nightmares.
They have to do with what happened out there, most of ‘em.
- My nightmares were all about being attacked
and being followed
and it was really difficult
for me to do much of anything.
- Before going to Iraq,
I really didn’t understand what road rage was.
- Back in the days when I was going through
what I call my Chernobyl period,
I slept one or two hours every other day.
And I never slept without a loaded gun
and a survival knife near me.
- I wouldn’t know, you know, if a car backfired,
if I wouldn’t hit the ground.
And then, you know, people they'd look at you
as if you were goofy or, you know,
they didn’t understand it.
- I picked the table and the chair
that I could comfortably sit in and eat dinner
with friends with my back to the wall in the corner
with a full view of all windows and doors.
- I worried about being ambushed.
For some reason, I couldn’t leave Iraq where Iraq was.
- There are absolute places that remind me of my trauma.
There are people that remind me of my trauma
and I would avoid those at all cost.
- I tried to avoid being around children
because seeing them or, more or less,
hearing them would cause me to remember.
- When I first came back I couldn’t even walk in Walmart.
I had a real hard problem going to Walmart.
I’d hear people talk from a different language
and it put me on edge.
I would literally back up against the aisle,
and the wall, and watch the aisle down
until they passed, if they were behind me.
- I even avoided my friends that I went to Iraq with
for a very long time because I knew
that if I started talking to them,
I would start having flashbacks
or remembering things that happened.
So basically I wanted just to be alone.
- I don’t want to have to try to explain it to people.
And I didn’t want to have to go over my experiences
every single time, to try and let somebody know
and so it’s much easier just not to have friends.
- The emotional numbness I think is the most,
it’ll just tear away all of the relationships in your life.
- The things that I liked to do,
that I had put a lot of effort and time into before
weren’t as important anymore.
- I trusted no one.
Absolutely zero trust, even in my own family,
my own sons, my immediate family.
And friends that I had, lost total trust in my friends
because I just, I felt like, if I trusted somebody
and somewhat opened up, I was gonna get hurt.
- Everything I did was wrong.
The war in Vietnam was my fault.
Anyone who died there,
I might as well have pulled the trigger.
It was my fault so therefore, I wasn’t worth,
probably wasn’t worth helping.
- I didn't have hope that anyone would ever love me
the way that individuals should love another person.