Part 4 of the series,
A Warrior’s Journey Home
“I witnessed Americans dying, even though I don’t know their language I saw them crying and holding each other. When one was killed the others stuck together they carried away the body and they wept. I witnessed such scenes and thought Americans, like us Vietnamese, also have a profound sense of humanity. They cared about each other. It made me think a lot.”
Le Cong Huan
Viet Cong Guerrilla
“Ohh, your eyes have changed,” she said as she hugged me and held my face. In that moment, those words broke my heart, because I knew it was true. A mother knows her child’s eyes like the back of her hand and my mother could already see her little boy was gone. I was cold and hardened by the few months at war and was now staring into my mother’s eyes as a warrior. Not fully man, not fully human, a significant part savage and violent now.
Do you remember the last moment you felt like a child? I do. It was January 9th, 2010. You see, we’re all born into this world as innocent children and we learn and grow and then one day, that little child is gone. Those innocent eyes lost, I’ve been trying to show my mother her little boys’ eyes filled with innocence and joy again, ever since that moment.
Memory is a fascinating thing. This day swirls in my mind like something out of the beginning scenes of the “Wizard of Oz.” Only I’m Dorothy and I’m carrying a rifle, wearing body armor, and full of nervous anxiety. We walk towards the Hawija Girls School across a small dirt lot. The wind swirls a collection of trash, some heavier items bounce off the concrete curbs, some begin to carry themselves aloft from this battle-marked neighborhood. My eyes follow a chip bag into the morning sky and onto the clouds staring down at this moment. The principal meets us at the main gates, along with a few local elders invested in a different, educated future for their daughters.
A girl’s school is not a particularly popular idea with the local insurgent group Jaysh Rijal aṭ-Ṭariqa an-Naqshabandiya, Army of the Men of the Naqshabandi Order in English, JRTN for short. They are a collection of Baathists, Saddam Fedayeen Guerrilla’s, Republican Guard and Sunni Sufi militants who didn’t think Al-Qeada was extreme enough and later decided to ally with ISIS.
I stood on the upper floor of the U-shaped Girls School in Hawija Iraq, staring into a classroom of elementary-age girls all dressed in proper school uniforms, or as proper as their families could afford. I flash them a smile and a wink. They giggle and shyly wave to me. I catch the side-eye the teacher is sending my way. I don’t speak his language, but I remember the same look from my high school teachers, and I get what he’s saying. “Hey asshole, I’m trying to teach here, go interrupt someone else’s class.”
My Lieutenant is getting a tour of the place and the principal is showing him around. Sgt. Robb keeps near but not near enough to draw a rise from the LT. Everybody has a job to do here, and Robb’s is to die for the LT in true bodyguard fashion if needed. This is a bad part of town, and we’re not about to get our LT waxed the first month into the deployment. The 70+ pounds of armor, ammunition, grenades, batteries, water, and the heavy green brick-looking ASIP radio in my backpack give me a physics lesson in the effects of gravity with every step. Mike is standing at the edge of the building, looking down on the street. “The streets are clearing, bro,” he says to me. The radio hand mic clipped into my helmet crackles to life. “Steel 1 Romeo, Steel 4, let LT know the streets are clearing out down here prepare for contact.” I respond, “Roger that. Steel 4, prepare for contact.” I look across the school at the LT and Robb and yell to them, “Hey Sgt. Robb, Steel 4 says the streets are clearing, prepare for contact.” Sgt Robb nods and moves closer to the LT. They both start moving toward the stairs. The blast is shocking and immediately causes a deep startle response as my shoulders damn near touch my ears. The half-second following is punctuated by the sharp rapid fire. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack of an M4 carbine in response. In a second, I’m sprinting to Mike. I reach him, look over the chest-high wall and see a sickening black cloud over one of our trucks. We both turn and in unison scream “CONTACT!”
The next few seconds of my life are absolutely seared into my memory. There are times when I’m not at my best and my daughter starts screaming and for a fleeting second, I’m transported through time and I’m back in that moment at the Girls School. I guess that’s what they call a PTSD Trigger. I run toward the stairs, passing classroom after classroom of screaming, terrified little girls who moments ago where giggling and laughing. A couple hundred screaming, crying, terrified little girls. That sound seeks me out and finds me in my nightmares; I don’t know if it will ever leave my mind. As I run, I can hear the steady mechanical chunk, chunk, chunk of a Russian machine gun in the distance. The rounds slap with a thud into the surrounding buildings, a few ping violently off of our rear truck’s chicken plate, narrowly missing the gunner trying to see where this fire is coming from. We sprint down the stairs and out towards our trucks, taking a knee in the street behind our truck. I instinctively hand my LT the radio mic so he can coordinate the ensuing fight.
Our medic Andres sprints by me up the street. My eyes follow him, and I see my roommate, my best friend Clark laid out on the street. He’s not moving and in that moment, I’m fucking terrified. “Please God, don’t let Clark die. Please let him be ok.” LT snaps me back to the here and now. “Brown jacket, black pants is the description from Steel 2.” I nod and look over to Robb, I’ve never been in anything like this, and I am as scared as I’ve ever been in my life. “So, this is combat, this is what you wanted right?” I think to myself. I’m scared, I’m confused. My adrenaline is spiked. I feel like a child looking to their older brother for reassurance. Robb’s a good person to look to moments like this. He spent 15 months in the Hell of Sadr City, Baghdad’s Shi’ite slum. He’s got a stern look on his face, not worried, not scared. Solid, aware, calculating. He’s seen this tactic before and like the fictional Sgt. Elias in Oliver Stone’s masterpiece “Platoon,” he can feel the flank attack coming. “LT, they’re going to hit us on the flank, let me take a team and push into the neighborhoods?” He responds, “Go, Zaffuto. Leave your radio bag,” our LT replies.
I slip the backpack off my shoulders and follow Robb and Mike into the neighborhoods on our eastern flank. We’re followed by our interpreter Calvin and a few Iraqi police officers. The Iraqi police officers decide to abandon us a block down the street, and we never see them again. As we move quickly, Robb yells “Take a building!” I move quickly to the front door of a building. Eighteen months of training have prepared me for this moment. Over and over and over we rehearsed close-quarters battle drills. For months, we trained day after day, hour after hour on taking down buildings and clearing rooms until the motions become second nature. To this day, I can explain the ins and outs of room-clearing… the steps you take, how you position your body, where your rifle points at each exact moment… all of this trained to a razors edge in preparation for this one moment. Iraqi doors in this part of town are generally sheet metal and the locks not very resilient. I’m unaware of this and put my boot to this door like it’s made of concrete and oak. It flies off the hinges and into the room when I hit it. My eyes have adjusted to the mid-morning Iraqi sun and all I see before me is a pitch-black doorway — a “Fatal Funnel” as it’s known in CQB training. One of my best friends from basic training was killed less than a year before this in a similar scenario. I don’t let the fear cause hesitation, I punch right through the threshold of the doorway, expecting to trade lead and blood with anyone inside. I’m shocked by the scene inside. An elderly Iraqi woman dressed in black, stands there unveiled, a small faded crescent tattoo hangs just below her right eye, four small children huddle in the corner. As they see me, they all begin to scream. I had been expecting the enemy. The reality was much worse. A grandmother trying desperately to defend her babies from the war outside her door. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I say. My inner child can feel how wrong this all is. I back out of the door and turn to Robb. “Not that one.” He’s a combat leader and trusts his men. He doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t argue and tell me to do my fucking job. He nods and we continue east.
We reach a T-intersection. The nondescript tan 2 and 3 story buildings feel as if they’re towering over us, surrounding us like a giant merciless anaconda. Robb covers the southern corner as Mike and I push around the corner and turn north. We turn the corner as a shooting pair and are 10 yards from 2 men, one short, wearing black pants. One tall, wearing a brown jacket. Their eyes are the size of dinner plates. Shock is the only emotion on their face. They freeze in place, clearly overcome by the shock of seeing a pair of Americans with guns charging at them.
“GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND!” we scream. They hesitate and we close in on them like a pair of lions. I kick the short one harder than I had just hit that door and he folds. I bury my knee into his solar plexus. The tall one is a few feet in front of me. He hits the pavement, not interested in being on the receiving end of any of this. I struggle to control the now fighting man below me. I smash the muzzle of my rifle into his face, his throat, his chest. I grab his shirt with my left hand and pin him to the pavement. In between strikes, I scream and point my rifle with one hand at his partner, who is now getting the courage to do something. He’s reaching into his jacket. Each time I look down to hit his buddy. My left hand finds this man’s throat and with all the grip force I can muster, I squeeze and try to crush his trachea. Sickening gurgling sounds come out. His partner is reaching deeper trying to get to something. “Mike, help me!” I scream. A terrified child, choking a terrified man. Mike’s boot smashes into the tall ones’ face and he stops trying to get whatever was in that jacket. Mike puts the muzzle of his rifle into this now bleeding man’s mouth, his teeth chatter on the steel barrel and he begins to dry heave. “Calvin, you tell this mother fucker if he moves again, I’m going to paint this wall with his fucking brains.” Our interpreter Calvin mutters something in Arabic and the man clearly gets the message. The brutality of war up close and personal. And I’m taking full part in it.
The innocent child inside of me dies right there in the middle of that street. All that’s left is a Warrior. A savage. I no longer see these men as human, they’re the enemy, Hajji. With the dehumanization of the enemy complete, the dehumanization of the self begins.
We run these men back to our platoon. I search them and pull a grenade meant for me out of the tall one’s jacket and a video camera containing video of previous attacks from the short one’s pants pocket. We turn these men over to the Iraqi police. Hours later, we return to the Iraqi police station with an American interrogator in tow. I walk in to to see the men we captured bloody and beaten, their hands zip cuffed, their heads covered with sandbags. They pant, filled with fear. Each man now in place of a foot has a mangled mess of pulp and bone. The rumor mill tells us they smashed one foot on each with a hammer so they couldn’t escape, then whipped them with cables. Brutality is common practice in a place like this.
Days later, standing outside that Iraqi police station, I ask a pair of police officers, “What happened to those dudes?” One takes a long drag of a cigarette, the other pulls his pistol and points it as if aiming at the back of a kneeling man’s head. “Pop pop, ali baba, bye bye.” Someone behind me remarks, “Problem solved, problem staying solved.” And I feel nothing. No anger, no shame, no outrage over this miscarriage of justice. No pain over the loss of two young lives. Nothing. They tried to kill my buddies. It’s just war.
You can do anything to someone you don’t see as human. You can torture, you can kill, you can maim, you can burn their village, destroy their crops. That is why since the being of recorded history we’ve made the enemy “those people, that tribe, the fellas on the other side of the ridge.” We make them “the other.” We call them “Redcoats, Rebels, Injuns, Huns, Japs, Jerry, Zips, or Hajji.” We consciously decide to not acknowledge their humanity, to not acknowledge the inherent value of their lives. In doing so, we unconsciously devalue our own lives. And it’s why we wonder if we are actually the monsters now? What would my wife think of me if she knew these truths about me? We lie to ourselves over and over, telling the innocent child inside, “They aren’t like us. They’re animals, they’d do it to me and worse given the chance.” And maybe that’s true. Then again, maybe it’s not?
The deep, introspective work of my psychedelic journeys has shown me a powerful truth. You are just me, living a different life. Both of us are simply God, the Universe, Collective Consciousness, whatever you chose to call it, experiencing itself. In dehumanizing the enemy, I dehumanized myself. I made my life, my inherent value, worthless in my own mind. That is the most painful and yet beautiful realization of them all. What I do to them, I do to myself. How I treat those faces across from me in the world is a reflection of how I treat myself.
When you begin to see yourself in every human being, you find compassion arises far more quickly than judgement. You see your judgement as a mirror reflecting back something about yourself you don’t like. Kindness shines through where anger, derision, or hate previously made beautiful days a cloudy mess. Love and acceptance wash over you as you feel the beautiful oneness of us all.
After a recent ceremony utilizing San Pedro Cactus, often called “the Grandfather medicine” for the loving, gentle awareness it brings to those who choose to journey with it… a friend and mentor said to me “Your eyes look so childlike and innocent.” I laughed and felt the warmth of the love surrounding me. I had spent the day walking barefoot on the edges of the Mendocino National Forest, feeling deeply connected to mother nature. The psychedelic molecule in San Pedro, mescaline, imbuing every step, every flower, every encounter with the beasts of the wood with magic. I’m filled with the wonder of a child seeing this beautiful earth with aware-opened eyes for the first time. I was astonished by the beauty of the flowers— purples, blues, yellows, greens, reds— all shining marvelously for our enjoyment. God’s gift of joy to us, reminding us of the beauty of creation, the enchantment of this astounding planet.
I sat in front of a mountain pond, reflecting back to me the perfect blue sky, and listened to the birds as they sang. My mind quiet and serene… at peace, at peace. Something many of my brothers are still seeking and yet can’t seem to find. The rattling of the guns, the shaking of a terror-filled heart always intruding upon our wanting of a quiet peace. A few years ago, I don’t know if I’d believe you if you told me there could be peace after the war. “The wounds are too deep,” I’d explain. “The scars are marked on our souls like a photo negative of those moments of terror, a Hiroshima shadow of the horrors we’ve seen.”
But here today, I find myself at peace, in a crowded bar surrounded by people, writing to you about what it’s like to feel the wounds of war scared on the soul and healed through medicines our government bans. I won’t tell you I’m always at peace. There are times when the war creeps back into my life. And when it does, it doesn’t take me over. I don’t lash out with anger, I don’t need a bottle of whiskey and weeks of sadness. And I no longer hide it from my wife. She gets to see all of me now. I just need to take a deep breath, to write, to remember the beauty of this experience, and the wonder I find in this life. I can look out at this world with those childlike, innocent eyes and show my mother her little boy’s not dead. He was just hiding behind a stoic mask to face the terror he had seen and taken part in.
I’ve got plenty of lessons left to learn. The one I find the hardest is the one I’m drawn towards the most. Perhaps I’ll spend the rest of my life seeking to fully embody it, but I’d like to see my enemy through the same eyes with which Le Cong Huan saw my brothers that day as they mourned our dead. Compassionate eyes that acknowledge the humanity in my enemy and know that those men on that day were just me, living a different life, in a different place.
To learn more about Adam’s journey and the power of psychedelic healing, check out this podcast interview by Adam Bird with The Decision Hour: Psychedelic Healing.