physical pain – CONUS Battle Drills

Never Surrender

Since I started CONUS Battle Drills I’ve had many people send me resume’s to review, ask me tips on handling headhunters and recruiters, and even helped proofread some college papers, but I was really unprepared for the conversation I had last night (even though I probably should have been).

A battle buddy of mine that I used to serve with gave me a call to talk about a friend of his that is getting out of the army (Let’s call him John). John suffered a combat injury that has left him with chronic pain, and that pain has led to many more issues to include substance abuse, marital problems, and depression. John is also getting out of the Army soon and doesn’t seem to have a plan for what he wants to do. My battle buddy gave me an open-ended question asking for advice on how to handle this situation or what advice to give to his friend.

Now if you follow this page at all, you should have noted that John is on the path noted in Dark Night of the Soul and is exhibiting many of the risk factors for suicide. If John doesn’t make some changes, there is a very good chance he is going to become another statistic and through his surrender, another family is going to be broken.

If you’ve read the book, then you know that one of the objectives of CONUS Battle Drills is to prepare guys in such a way that they can address some of these risk factors and get on the path to healing and success. I am not qualified to help John through many of his problems, and neither is my battle buddy, but together we are the first line of defense and can get him the real, professional help that he needs.

Surrender

My heart breaks for guys like John, but he is surrendering. It’s easier to get up and ring the bell during hell week than to continue to suffer. It’s easier to quit in mountain phase of ranger school than to endure another two months of pain. It’s easier to drop out in selection than to continue to roll in the log pit filling your pockets with vomit. The hard part, and the part that makes it all worthwhile, is to fight on, push past your limits and succeed in your goal.

Gentlemen, getting drunk and high, divorcing your wife, losing your job, that’s surrender. You know what’s hard? Fighting an addiction, repairing a marriage and building trust, getting promoted, even apologizing. I’m not going to marginalize John’s problems, however, and just say that a change in attitude is going to fix everything because it’s not, but he needs to make a commitment mentally to get off the path of least resistance, get back on azimuth, and start working towards what is important in order to find healing and satisfaction.

What is Important to You?

The second big question is to understand why you are getting out. We have explored that extensively and even argued about whether that needs to be the first big question instead of the second. Understanding what is important to you is very similar to the why because it becomes the overarching goal in which all other smaller goals will fall.

Using my earlier examples, the guys who eventually earn the SEAL Trident, Ranger Tab, or Special Forces Tab went to that school with the mental attitude that no matter what, they were going to achieve that goal, but they also compartmentalized their problems and challenges and created a series of small goals that were attainable that fed into the overall goal: Pass the PT test, don’t fall out of the run, find the next point in land nav, get over this obstacle, don’t quit. Even though surrender was an option at every turn, they avoided it because it didn’t fit into their overall goal.

So let me ask the question, What is most Important to You in Life? Think about everything that you could lose, which of those things would be the absolute worst? To me, it’s my family. I can lose my job, my house, all my things, but all of those can be replaced, my family can’t. Therefore every action I take, every decision I make, I ask myself whether or not that action or decision is helping to preserve that which matters most to me. If the answer is “no” then I need to correct my course, get off the path to surrender, and move back towards my objective.

Paying the Small Debts First

I’m a big fan of Dave Ramsey and his Financial Peace University. In many cases of soldiers that I work with, financial strife is the first problem that they face and things snowball from there. Dave Ramsey gives counseling every day to people sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and his advice always starts with paying the small debts first. This gives us the opportunity to take some weight out of our rucksacks a little at a time, develop good habits, and prepare us to take on the biggest monsters because the ankle biters have been taken care of and we can laser focus on the bigger issues.

In John’s case, however, finances have become a symptom or a consequence of his initial injury that drove his addiction. Now he’s facing a major life change by getting out with no job, no career goals, and no focus. This is compounding problems in his marriage, making him want to quit. In John’s case, finding a job is his smallest debt.

Let me put it this way: John isn’t going to wake up tomorrow and not have pain. He isn’t going to wake up and not have an addiction. He isn’t going to wake up and not have any problems in his marriage. There is no action he can take today to make those problems go away. In fact, he will be fighting those battles for many years to come, BUT he can wake up tomorrow and have a job! He can take a single action this afternoon and tomorrow wake up with a career; it’s a small victory and one he certainly needs in his life right now.

John also needs to get off the path of surrender and do the hard task of asking for professional help with his addiction, managing his pain, and repairing his marriage. Gentlemen, going to a mental health professional doesn’t make you weak. It’s hard to admit that you need help, the mistake is thinking you can do it alone.

Conclusion

I know a lot of you are suffering like John is, and too many of our brothers out there are quitting life because they can’t handle the enormity of their problems. I want you to know that there is help, there is healing, and you are not alone. One of the pillars of my strength come from God, and I encourage you to seek Him out. Even if you don’t believe, joining a men’s group where you can talk openly with other men facing the same problems will give you great strength just like your battle buddy did in combat. Please don’t surrender, there are people in this world that are counting on you, and to them what you have done in your life makes you their hero. You can do this and there are people that can help.

God Bless every one of you!

-LJF

Getting out of the military is hard! Don’t make it harder on yourself by not being prepared! Buy CONUS Battle Drills: A Guide for Combat Veterans to Corporate Life, Parenthood, and Caging the Beast Inside!

Warriors Who Do Violence

Being a warrior that does violence is different than being a violent man; a warrior has empathy.

All throughout history societies have looked to men who were willing to do violence and written their stories down. Warriors have developed new and unique ways of fighting which we call art forms. Entire cultures centered around their warriors: the Spartans, the Huns, the Samurai, the Maori, the Vikings, the Knights Templar, the list goes on. In all ages, all regions, warriors have found their place among their fellow man.

I’ve come to believe that being a warrior comes as a predisposition, much like extroversion, You can train someone to be a soldier and do soldierly things, but only a few are actual warriors.

The warrior doesn’t fear death although he doesn’t yearn for it. If it comes, so be it, but better it be the enemy.

The warrior can measure his violence, but ask him and he cannot identify the maximum amount of violence of which he is capable.

When doing violence, the warrior is concerned only with eliminating the threat. He will not think about home or take the time to be afraid or sad. He is singularly focused and as the threat increases, his self preservation instinct decreases. If eliminating the threat requires his life then he will give it, if eliminating the threat requires he expose himself, then he will do it.

A warrior loves to do battle, but not against the weak, that is an act of a coward.

Finding someone predisposed to being a warrior is difficult, some even think they are until the threat presents itself and they come face to face with death.

Once a man discovers he is a warrior, once he has seen the world and the evil in it for what it really is, it is impossible to turn that off. Every situation, every environment, every moment he is analyzing threats, developing courses of action, and identifying weapons for his use. Always.

When I was just a boy, my family went to Madrid, Spain for a new years celebration. There were large crowds and I could tell my father was uncomfortable as he held my hand. Most of the group we were with were happily enjoying their time when a man dropped his keys in between my father’s legs. The man fell to his knees and started to feel around. Dad’s hand squeezed mine tighter as he began to back up. The drunk stood up, showed us his keys, and began to walk off when in an instant my father released my hand, grabbed the dude and slammed him violently against a nearby wall. As he bounced off the wall, my father grabbed him by the neck and slammed him a second time yelling, “Where is my fucking wallet?” The wallet flew out of the nearby crowd and landed at my father’s feet.

I remember distinctly the look of fear in the “drunk’s” eyes. He was taller than my dad, but he wasn’t a warrior, and when he met the ferocity of one, fear penetrated his core. All night they had been pulling this scam, but only the warrior who is always thinking of potential threats identified it.

Realizing that you are a warrior is a paradigm shift. You will never look at the world the same way again, and the overwhelming majority of the population doesn’t understand or see what you see. Their prescription for your “problem” will always fail because they are trying to get you to see the world the way they do. You are not them, you are different, accept that.

This does not give you carte blanche to act out, It takes more power and courage to show restraint than it does to be violent. Do not ignore what you feel and see, take control over it. Don’t be too proud to seek help.

The only way to live in this world as a warrior is to be stronger than your urges, more powerful than your emotions, exert control over yourself, like a fucking warrior does. Any weak minded fool can be loud and angry.

Merry Christmas from the Taliban

Christmas Firefight…

Although I’ve told this story many times, there is an element of it that I’ve kept to myself because I didn’t think it was socially acceptable, but recently i’ve seen enough papers, articles, and posts to realize that I’m not the only one that has felt this, and so, for the first time the whole story:

December 2005 Afghanistan

Captain Teague, our company commander, had apprehensively gone on leave the two weeks prior, and like most of the men of Bravo company, he was eager to return to Afghanistan. We were getting into firefights on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, so leaving for three weeks or more meant that you were likely to miss one, and none of us wanted to miss one. Had we been given the option, i’m sure most of the Bravo men would have deferred on leave to be there with their brothers in combat. Teague got lucky and nothing happened in the three weeks during his absence, and I think it was the day he got back (or the next day) that we got into the largest firefight of the entire deployment.

Camp Tillman was a small base named after the Arizona Cardinals player killed in Afghanistan. It sat less than two kilometers from Pakistan right along a major supply route for enemy fighters. We slept in concrete buildings with one metal door, around 30 guys to a room. I slept right by the door to be easy to find and so I could get up quickly if need be. I was deep in REM sleep when the metal door violently swung open and SGT Harvey Lewis yelled, “The base is getting attacked!” as he shimmied past my cot towards his gear in the back of the room. I stood up and pushed the door open to see for myself. I remember thinking that I didn’t hear the familiar sounds of whooshing rockets or mortars, so his words didn’t make sense. When I pushed the door open I saw, through the bright moon-lit sky, hundreds of tracers and heard the sharp cracks of AK rounds pinging all around the base.

My heart leapt, and this is the part I’ve never told, I was excited for this fight. Enemy fighters within our lines, inside the base, this is the kind of shit they make movies out of! I slipped my feet into my boots, pulled the laces tight and tucked them into the sides. I threw my plate carrier over my head, grabbed my LCE and helmet, snapped my NODs into place and kicked the door open. I was the first one out of the hooch wearing only shorts and a brown t-shirt under my gear and I didn’t look back, I knew my guys were coming. I could hear the distinct sound of an AK firing and I was moving towards it quickly. Those fuckers had breached our wall and I was about to place some controlled pairs center mass to teach all of them a lesson.

My senses were extremely heightened. The cold night air filled my lungs, I could feel the snow crunching beneath my feet…movement on my periphery! I spotted something out of the corner of my right eye (I had a monocular night vision) and spun quickly. The PEQ-2 infared laser stopped right center mass on the target when I noticed it was a friendly and my thumb lightened pressure on the selector switch leaving the weapon on safe. I continued rapidly moving to the edge of the building towards the sound of the AK.

I reached the corner and could hear my soldiers pouring out of the door behind me and the AK firing on the other side of the wall. This was it, I was about to come face-to-face with the invading hoard, the adrenaline was coursing violently through my veins and I let out a sharp breath to steady myself as I spun out around the corner. My thumb pressed tightly against the selector switch and my trigger finger slipped onto the trigger. With my left hand I squeezed the pressure switch on my gangster grip turning the infrared laser onto the target, and that’s when I realized it wasn’t an invading hoard.

A single solitary Afghan soldier with his back against the HESCO wall had his eyes closed, his AK over his head, and was holding the trigger firing full auto into the darkness. That man had no idea how close to death he came at my hands. In a fraction of a second I recognized he wasn’t the enemy and released the pressure on the selector switch once again.

The enemy never did actually breach our perimeter, despite bringing over three hundred men to attack our small outpost of only 120 men. What they didn’t take into account is that Camp Tillman, although small in numbers, every one of us was either a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne or a Green Beret, basically some of the baddest motherfuckers on the planet. We fought them off for several hours, then bombed them with a predator (when it finally showed up), then chased them down and got into another firefight right on the border. The fight started the night of December 22nd and basically ended in the late afternoon of the 23rd. Not one US soldier was killed, and we covered the Afghan mountainside with the blood of our enemies.

I tell this story for two reasons, one, because I just celebrated the 10 year anniversary of that fight, and two, because I want my brothers to know that they are not sociopaths for loving what they did. There were two types of people on September 11th, there were those that were glad they weren’t on the planes, and those that wished they had been on the plane. The former don’t understand the latter, and on that cold December night in Afghanistan, I was surrounded by the latter.

Most of us in shorts and t-shirts laying in the snow, surging with adrenaline and excitement as we dealt a serious ass-whooping to the enemy. It may be difficult for civilians to understand, but I actually enjoyed the firefights. It was fun, it was a challenge, and ten years later, I remember that night and the fight the next day fondly, as do many of my brothers. That’s one of the reasons getting out was so difficult. I now understand why guys like Michael Jordan, or Peyton Manning, or Mike Tyson have such a hard time calling it quits, when you’re doing something you love, it’s hard to walk away.

Preventing Veteran Suicide

Suicide hotline: 1-800-273-8255

Every day a veteran somewhere takes his life. It’s one of the most tragic circumstances and often the deaths that hit us hardest when we get that phone call.

I’ve had four friends take their lives. They all bothered me, but one in particular keeps coming to mind because he reached out to me years before and I feel like I could have done more.

Rob Kislow was a young private in my platoon when we deployed to Afghanistan in 2005. I had only been the platoon leader for a matter of weeks before we deployed, and I had been in the Army for less than a year. About a month into our deployment, our platoon was sent to support a special forces team in a rural part of Afghanistan along the Pakistan border.

My platoon was going to be split up into two separate units to run missions in the area and I took the mission that I thought was going to be the more dangerous one; I didn’t want to miss out on the action. On June 10, 2005, soldiers from Bravo company 3^rd platoon got into one of the largest firefights of that entire deployment, and I was hours away on a separate mission…on foot.

When I think of the worst days in my military career, June 10^th is always near the top of the list. I sat by the radio for hours listening to my guys get shot up, completely unable to do ANYTHING to support them. I watched as helicopters flew over my position heading to the fight, trying to find a way to get there to no avail.

The fight went on for hours, and I could hear the 9-line MEDEVAC requests come in with explosions in the background. One killed, two evacuated, several others injured but ambulatory.

SFC Victor Cervantes, a Green Beret just days away from going home, was part of the ODA team that came to join the fight in progress; he was killed by the enemy while clearing a wadi.

Rob Kislow was shot three times, once in the ankle, once in the wrist, and the third bullet penetrated his helmet and came out the other side, scraping along the back of his head. Rob saw the guy that shot him, but because the Afghan soldiers didn’t wear a uniform, he hesitated before taking a shot to avoid friendly fire, and was blasted by a burst of 7.62 from the enemy’s AK. PFC Collazo saw this and took the enemy out, thinking Kislow had been killed when he saw the helmet fly into the air. Collazo began to administer first aid and Rob was evacuated, eventually making it to Walter Reed where they determined that his leg needed to be amputated.

When we returned from the deployment, the company commander, 1SG, myself, and my platoon sergeant went to visit Kislow at Walter Reed. As soon as we walked in, Rob looked at the PSG and said, “Fuck You Sergeant!” We all froze and the big vein in the center of my PSG’s head popped out immediately, Rob continued, “You can try to smoke me all you want! I can do flutter kicks all day!” He began doing flutter kicks in his bed, the nub where his leg would have been flew up and down. We all had a good laugh, some hugs, and sat and talked with him for some time.

I don’t remember much what we talked about that day, but I do remember him calling for the nurse. He said something about “phantom pain” and “this fucking button isn’t working” referencing his medication dispenser, then yelled, “it’s a fucking TEN ok!” He seemed to be in constant pain.

I didn’t know what to do or say. I was a 23 year old kid and I had no training on how to deal with this. What did he need to hear? What could I say to help? I didn’t know, so I sat there in silence, hoping that just being there was enough.

Months later I got a call from Rob late one night. I was sitting on my couch watching TV when my phone rang. I answered chipper, but Rob was in a bad place. We talked for about an hour, most of which was me listening to him cry, “my fucking leg is gone sir! It’s fucking gone. I failed you guys. I should have been there. I came home too soon.” He repeated that over and over, and again I didn’t know what to say. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember hanging up and sitting there on my couch in silence. The TV was still on, but muted, and I thought about my friend…but I didn’t do any more.

If I had known that was the last time that I would hear Rob’s voice, I might have gotten into my car and driven the four and a half hours to Walter Reed. I was a single guy, I didn’t have much else going on in my life, I could have done it.

Rob battled with PTSD for almost seven more years after that phone call, but he never once contacted me again beyond an accepted friend request on Facebook. Two years ago I was stunned to find out that he took his life and his fiancée’s mother’s life too. I thought he was ok, I had no idea.

I’m not sure that I could have changed anything if I had been more involved, but because I wasn’t, that thought remains in my mind. It’s the reason I’ve made an effort to get back in touch with my old buddies. It’s why I have asked you to do the same, and it’s why I started this endeavor.

All the time, money, and effort put into making CONUS Battle Drills happen will be worthwhile if we can keep even ONE guy from taking his life. If I can help a guy through the stressful transition time to start a career, bolster his relationship with his wife, and connect with his children, maybe I can show them there’s hope after all. Maybe I can make it easier to take the time to deal with the demons in his mind. If nothing else, maybe I can show him that he’s not alone, there are millions of us out there that will call him brother.

So if you are reading this, get in touch with someone and let them know you’re there. It will be good for both of you, and if you have had suicidal thoughts, please call the number below and get help. Life is worth it, it’s beautiful, and you shouldn’t miss out.

1-800-273-8255

-LJF

Surrender

What is Important to You?

Paying the Small Debts First

Conclusion

Getting out of the military is hard! Don’t make it harder on yourself by not being prepared! Buy CONUS Battle Drills: A Guide for Combat Veterans to Corporate Life, Parenthood, and Caging the Beast Inside!

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