been so far the greatest loss I have ever felt in my existence and still is to this day. I became uncontrollable, full of anger and hate. I didn’t play well with others after this, I lost 2 men that day, Shawn and the man that killed him. No one talks about what really happened that day, it was sealed and boarded like some secret never to be found, men were debriefed and we went back to missions. Fratricide is not an easy thing to discuss, there are many factors in it that are hard to understand and or even see. It took me years to keep going over and over the whole few days before leading to that day to try to begin to understand how it happened. The man that died was my soldier, the man that killed him was my soldier, trust me when I say it was a terrible accident.
The killer was thrown into the darkness by the Army and defaced publicly back home, divorced from shame and guilt he crawled into the darkest of holes. I could tell from his pictures on FaceBook that he was out in the deepest of waters without a sail, drifting into the storm on the horizon. I reached out, calling other members that were in War with us to please reach out to him and tell him it was ok and to move forward. I had lost one soldier that day, I didn’t want to lose another because of shame. The right thing to do was to help him resist the storm, pick up the paddle and come back to land. Some people may not understand why I would reach out to save a man who killed another man, but when both men were your soldiers, people you love and care for, it becomes so complex that you become so critical about all the information entailing the accident that nothing escapes. You find out humans make terrible accidents, this one just happen to be fatal.
After years of tearing this apart I found that life is precious, and in an instant it can all change. We are not perfect and terrible things happen in wars. Shawn Pahnke was my kryptonite, the armor I so strongly wore, never flinching, never questioning authority and never feeling pain were all broken that night. Into chaos I slipped, questioning everything and everyone, as if I were Job from the Bible, questioning my God, taking no direction from any man no matter what his rank. My real quest had begun and I didn’t know it, my quest to understand compassion. It has not been an easy road for me, but being broken down to understand compassion is the best way to grasp the deeper meaning behind compassion, self healing. Shawn died just a few months in and it was just the beginning of a string of death that lasted another 10 or so months, other battles who didn’t make it home, compounding the hate and dead enemies who fueled my rampage of revenge trying to bring back the dead.
Coming home was a mess. I worked at a receiving dock for a while. I left that job and started construction in North Carolina where after 2 years my brother found me in a pile of booze bottles after not showing up to work for 2 weeks. This started the beginning of my Veterans Affairs claim process which, if you know anything about this process, it is a total disaster for 99% of people trying to get help. Initially, I immediately received 70% and then 100%