Finding Peace
“When I came home from the war, I was angry and untrusting of people. Years later, I would be diagnosed with PTSD.”
In 2011, I deployed to Afghanistan. I was an Infantry soldier about to participate in a special mission. My squad would be attached to a Special Forces team to take part in what was called VSO (Village stability operations). Our job was to link up the local Afghans to the big government in Kandahar. At the time, I was a team leader in my squad. None of us had ever deployed before. Needless to say, I was excited but also a tad concerned.
The briefings we had been getting from our Special Forces counterparts had said there would be a lot of fighting. Taliban fighters had been particularly active in 2011. My squad had been training for months to be ready for this deployment, and now it was time to go. Upon arrival, the first thing I noticed was all of the sand. The airbase in Kandahar had soldiers from many countries, and I had never seen anything like it.
My squad’s stay at Kandahar was brief. We jumped from base to base until we were in the middle of nowhere. Our home for the next year was what I liked to call the “Mud castle.” A compound that had been taken from the Taliban converted into an American outpost. Surrounding us was incredible mountains as far as the eye could see. We left home in November. By the time we got to our post, it was full-blown winter. Snow had made it incredibly hard to go out on missions for the Taliban and us.
Little did I know my anger was what woke me up to wanting to get better.
As soon as the snow started to melt, the Taliban made their move. One of the first tragedies of the deployment came when a local police checkpoint had been ambushed. It was the middle of the night when the gunfire started. Our people rushed to the roof to check out the situation. After hours of waiting to hear from our Afghan counterparts, they broke radio silence. They told us they had wounded police officers and needed medical assistance.
My team prepared for incoming wounded. We had no clue as to what was about to happen. Multiple trucks arrived with the beds filled with wounded people. Our medical area was small, and we could not hold all of them: fifteen injured and one dead police officer. In the military, we call this a mass casualty event. I rolled up my sleeves and did my best to help the wounded. Hours went by treating all the injured. Eventually, helicopters came to pick up the wounded and take them to a field hospital.
That was just one experience I had while in Afghanistan. When I came home from the war, I was angry and untrusting of people. Years later, I would be diagnosed with PTSD. When I left the Army, I thought maybe my problems would get better. But they didn’t. I had more free time to remember how sad and angry I was. Little did I know my anger was what woke me up to wanting to get better. I started reading about Buddhism. A religion about ending suffering was just what the doctor ordered.
Learning how to meditate and to love people again saved me from myself. Understanding the mind takes patience; patience helped me calm down. Overwhelming anxiety was soothed through sitting and finding silence in myself. Every day becoming more loving and peaceful was my practice. My life has become a dedication to finding peace and sharing it with others. Everyone suffers, this is taught in Buddhism, but we can all do something about it. Finding peace is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and others.
