The End Doesn't End

The CBS Evening News featured a spot from Sunday's upcoming 60 Minutes last night that features "Operation Proper Exit." The mission is intended to provide wounded soldiers the opportunity to meaningfully confront their wounds, both intellectually and emotionally.

This segment highlights, for me, what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is to our soldiers ~ a crippling burden that usually has direct impact on every facet of life, especially to spouses and family members. I hope many people watch this clip and the full program, because the 310 million citizens of the United States need to see and understand what sacrifice has been borne on their behalf by an unlucky few out of the less than 1% that serve in the nation's armed forces.

Lessons on Combat Stress from World War II; the "Accumulated Blur"

I've been watching the PBS documentary The War by Ken Burns, and, although not quite as good as his The Civil War, is still very well done. If The Civil War was an A+, then The War is an A-. Both are highly watchable, gripping, and informative.

In the 5th episode, "FUBAR," Burns describes the latter part of 1944 in Europe as Allied forces pushed the Germans back across France and Belgium.

By that time several units had fought in numerous engagements for several consecutive months after the June 6 invasion. Journalist Ernie Pyle (who died near Okinawa in April 1945) wrote of an "accumulated blur" that characterized soldiers and marines who had been exposed to relentless deadly combat.

Additionally, The War provides hard data: 1/4 of those evacuated from the front suffered some form of neurological or psychiatric disorder. Army planners determined that the average soldier could mentally withstand no more than 240 days of combat.

This last point is especially interesting when one considers that in the US Army, the biggest issue has been that of "dwell time," or, the time spent deployed versus the time spent at home. Most US Army units are about 1:1 (or, one year on, one year off), some are even worse than that (i.e. helicopter aviation). Admiral Mullen was talking about a goal of 1:3 and 1:4 in 2007...which never happened.

It's safe to say that the "accumulated blur" is finding its way into today's soldiers - as evidenced by the extraordinarily high suicide numbers.

September 11th, Iraq and Running

I was still at senior at West Point, roughly 50 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River, on September 11^th, 2001. I was in a course on Chinese politics, about to listen to a lecture from U.S. Defense Attaché to China, when my professor turned on the television in time to watch the second tower go down. Quietly, he said that we wouldn’t hold class that day and that if anyone was interested, an informal prayer group was forming outside. Instead, I chose to dart across campus back to my room to make phone calls and send emails to family and friends.

Everything changed after that. West Point, like all military installations, went into airtight lockdown. Cadets asked relentlessly to go down to aid the recovery effort only to be channeled by the chain of command into a drive to collect socks for first line responders. Rumors surfaced of early graduation to fight in Afghanistan, as earlier classes had done in time of conflict. President George W. Bush’s commencement address included his famous “doctrine of preemption,” which those awaiting diplomas correctly interpreted to mean that war was soon coming. And so I joined one of the first units to fight in Iraq.

September 11^th and the several years following in Iraq comprise a sort of dizzy, harried few years that have taken many years for me to reflect on. My first thought about this period is that, it was, to appropriate a line, the best of times and the worst of times. I felt at many points that this was the most rewarding endeavor that I have ever been a part of. I led a group of committed, professional soldiers in a dangerous environment and held my own. Self-confidence grew. Although I’m certain there were better officers there, I think on balance my guys would say that they thought I did well given the circumstances, and that they had faith that I would do what was best for the mission and them (in that order). We helped people that had experienced the horror of a brutal, authoritarian regime and an entirely lawless society. In some moments I wish I could go back, because – when else have I mattered more to humanity than I did then?

Then, reality sets in: I’m married now with a newborn. That fact is what draws me back into remembering the negative things embedded in my psyche from that time. I took human life several times, which one never, ever forgets. We lost good people in strange ways: our unit’s first death was a tank driver that drowned when his vehicle tipped forward responding to a civilian distress call, his turret stuck in a desert stream. We lost good people that were close to me: at some point nearly every day since then three faces from the first deployment jump into my mind’s eye. My first maneuver commander was killed a few weeks in; the college classmate from another unit I saw in passing just before he was killed in action; one of my soldiers whose helicopter on the way to morale leave was shot down. Their faces are frozen in my memory and I think of them often.

The worst moment came soon after these. My younger brother’s unit was stationed a few hundred miles away, so we never had the chance to see one another. But we exchanged a couple letters, and found one another’s unit phone number and tried to arrange a phone call. It didn’t work as we were on opposite and largely variable schedules. One day after my unit had moved from Fallujah to the western desert, I was walking somewhere with some fellow officers, when a Private came to me with a message: my brother’s unit had called and that I needed to call them back “immediately.”

I asked if it was my brother himself that had called; the Private was insistent that it was his unit and not Rob. I asked if it was just a run-of-the-mill message; the Private said that it was not and he repeated the word “immediately.” I left my friends and jumped in the truck back to headquarters, all the while wondering what I would say to my Mom if the worst had happened. All I could think about was an image of myself sitting next to my brother’s flag-covered casket on a flight home to Minnesota. This was the low point of the war for me and the knot that I had in my stomach nearly doubled me over.

When I arrived, the message had indeed been ordinary and my brother and I spoke a few days later. I told him as best I could about the mistaken message, editing out (of course) the less-than-tough-guy sentimental parts.

After my second deployment, I found myself in a deep emotional valley. I lost a significant relationship, which had led me to leave the active component of the Army, and generally felt as if I had lost the concept of “fun” forever — as if my twenties had been taken from me. I looked around at my friends from home and dwelled on all that I had missed while deployed. I was alone, without a job, and felt lost. September 11^th and Iraq had broken me.

I started running. At first I ran because I could: I had a bad knee injury in college that stopped me from doing so for three years, but at the tail end of the last deployment I found I could do it again. It felt good to be out in nature, alone with my thoughts, or, from time to time, with some good music. I would run more and more until I raced my first marathon in 2006 and I was hooked. I sought new places to train, new events to sign up for, which gave me a renewed sense of energy. I got healthier physically and felt better emotionally.

There was one race in particular that I desperately wanted to enter, but didn’t have the money: the TransRockies Run, a 120-mile, 6-day stage race in the Colorado Rockies. A family friend and Air Force veteran, Tom Cocchiarella, organized some veteran-friendly businesses to sponsor me, and off I went. After finishing the race, I thought to myself: if Tom was willing to do so much for me, to help me along to get back to “normal,” why can’t I do the same for others that are worse off than I? Why can’t I help those that have both emotional and physical scars?

So I asked Tom for his help in “paying it forward,” and, on Veteran’s Day 2008, Tom and I launched “Team Minnesota Wounded Warrior Project.” We dedicated ourselves to raising money and awareness on behalf of the Wounded Warrior Project, a nationally lauded non-profit organization dedicated to honoring and empowering the most severely wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. To motivate potential supporters and demonstrate solidarity with the physical challenges these wounded American heroes face daily, I have run in hundreds of miles of ultra and distance running competitions. Since we began, Team Minnesota WWP has raised just over $130,000, become the organization’s top individual fundraisers, I was named the U.S. Army’s Athlete of the Year in 2009, and Tom has expanded our local support through some generous help from the Saint Paul Vulcans. We’ve been amazed at our journey’s longevity, considering our initial goal was $25,000!

But, for me, it’s been about much more than that. Like many others, September 11^th altered the course of my life, and the new trajectory arced toward a difficult and unhappy end. Running was the catalyst that redirected it; Team Minnesota WWP augmented its growth. Both gave me renewed faith that I could have a positive impact on the world. They brought me into a community of people that continually inspired me toward my better angels and instilled a sense of hope, where hope had, for a time, become forlorn (to paraphrase General MacArthur).

I really felt like I had come full circle, when, at a Vulcan-sponsored event this past year, a young veteran who had been shot through the knee came up to Tom and I. His stiff leg produced a bobbing tilt to one side, and you could recognize his difficulty from a distance. Tom introduced him and as I shook his hand he said, “You know, sir, if it wasn’t for this, I’d have been the athlete of the year!” I jokingly shot back, “Not a chance, kid.” When he walked away, I smiled, and was proud to have had a small part to play in his post-injury confidence, knowing how difficult that transition can be. I also wondered if he really could have taken my title.

Then I started drawing up a plan to get to $200,000.

32 Army Suicides in July 2011

I don't have anything interesting or unique to say on this subject, other than to respond to the bare fact that Time magazine (Aug 29, 2011) is reporting that there were 32 suspected active duty and reservist suicides recorded by the Army in July 2011. This is the "highest monthly toll on record."

This is frightening, principally because we are continuing to wind down combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. One might think that as the specter of deployment decreases, so ought suicides by soldiers involved in those deployments. However, the numbers appear to be trending upward. What if they continue to go upward? How long can they continue to stay this high?

Retired LTG Jack Keane, as recorded in one of Bob Woodward's books on the Iraq War (and "Surge"), famously said to President Bush that "sometimes wars break armies." His point was important to note, in that, from time to time, a national commitment to combat necessarily pushes its ground forces past a breaking point. Wars can do this in different ways. Civil War battles often took 30% casualties. General Grant, at Shiloh, sustained more casualties in one battle than all other previous U.S. wars combined. Even more than at Waterloo ~ and there were 20 more Waterloo-equivalents to come. These more recent wars are different in that it is the grind and repetitive nature of deployments. This seems to be what is breaking the Army.

The difference, of course, is that the force now is not drafted ~ is is recycled and reused. This means the long term physical and mental health of soldiers is at a higher premium than during the Civil War, arguably ever (considering the small percentage of U.S. citizens currently serving in uniform).

We can't keep losing soldiers this way, both from a national strategic perspective and the fact that each one represents a family tragedy. That said, I'm saddened to write that I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. I hope I'm wrong.

Great Naseby Water Race: 50 Miles in 7 hours, 43 minutes!

So, this is what 50 miles looks like ~ a very squinty eyed, salt stained expression of semi-agony. It took about 3 hours for the blood to come back to my arms and hands, as it had become fairly settled in my legs over the past 7 hours and 43 minutes.

The time was off my goal, but still kept me in first place overall at my distance. I wanted to keep to a nice even 9 minute pace, but the record snowfall from the previous few days left the course about 1/3 covered. And, of course, that meant that when the sun came out to play (as it did that morning) ~ the snow would turn the ground into mud.

This picture and the one just below it are from just after the finish line ~ you can see the mud that's developed. So I had to come off my pace in the second half. My first half was rock solid, 3 hours, 40 minutes ~ right on my goal.



The second half, however, was a lot slower due to the mud and slick conditions. As the day progressed I eased up to run about a 4 hour, 3 minute second half (9:30s and 9:40s per mile). Although I wished I could have run a nice 7:20 overall, I'm glad that I ran as well as I did considering the conditions. Life is lived in the real world, which is full of friction and distractions; races are run that way too, and mud is a natural potential obstacle.

You can see my nice green shoes got coated ~ I had to chuck them; casualty of the day!

Also, I love this photo because you get to see my gorgeous wife smiling at my finishing in first place (or is it that she's excited that after a day of shirking my parental responsibilities, I'm finally able to take care of Grace and give her a break?).

Below are a couple more photos from the event: me passing a guy in the afternoon and Rach and a sleepy Grace at the Queenstown Airport, with the Remarkables mountain range behind them (from the Coors beer ads!).