Iraq Military stories

zane T.

When ever my uncle walks into a room he says “Hey f*****s!”.  Since I can remember he's always been kinda like a kid. He mostly says this when he's talking to kids though.Just recently he told my little four four year old girl cousin to say penis wrinkle for example. My uncle goes to wyoming and buys us a bunch of fireworks on the fourth of july. I remember the cops coming once and we had to hide all the fireworks in the the house as fast as we could. We saw the cops lights ate the neighbors house. We had to hurry and hide all our fireworks in the cabinets of the garage and in the house. We were out all day and night in the front yard and in the garage. Were were setting of big fireworks off out in the neighborhood street. We had a little bit of a silent competition between the best fireworks with the neighbors a few houses down. The cop approached us after he was done with the neighbors in his car asking if we were all having a good night and being responsible along with other things and then leaving were we soon after continued.

Another time there was a construction zone with an incomplete road because of this there was lots of traffic. He decided to go off the road and onto the incomplete road and he sped past all the cars. This is the everyday rebellious things my uncle would do.

My uncle lost his arm and eye I never really noticed or knew he was in war. He went to join the army right before 911 happened. At the time he was in bootcamp.Before all of this my grandma described him as caring loving and joking. He ended up having to fight though as the gunner for a tank.The gunner who has his head and upper body sticking out the top of the tank the tank. He controls the gun on top of the tank. He was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. This took his arm and eye which sent him into a coma. He was depressed when he came out and was on lots of meds. The meds he was on had little balls in them. The pills were for depression and PTSD. He went to college still on the meds. He took a Biomedical class where he learned how awful the meds were for him. He tried to wean himself of the meds. He had to remove one tiny ball from thapules each time. It took six months to do this because he could feel it with just on ball in a capsule. Once he quit he was no longer depressed and angry all the time. Unfortunately he will suffer PTSD for the rest of his life.

I’m inspired by his resilience and standing strong in what we believes in. I remember conversation with my grandpa where he reminisced about when my uncle when he was still in a coma. I saw tears in my grandpa's eyes when he told me about how he talked to him in his coma. He would grab my uncle’s hand and tell him to squeeze if he could hear him: and he would squeeze as hard as he could.