Part 2 of the series,
A Warrior’s Journey Home
Do yourself a favor: sit somewhere quiet and listen to Warren Zevon play Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner. I’ll wait.
Now ask yourself, “What makes a man want to return to war again and again? What is it about this most human act, war, that pulls men back to it?”
I sit in a quiet booth by the bar at my favorite Mexican restaurant. The bartender doesn’t know me by name but he knows my order: Tacos Al Pastor, Rice and Beans, Modelo Negra in a glass. The entertaining and oddly comforting sounds of various corridos plays softly in the bar as I watch two Mexican soccer teams battle to an unimpressive draw. On another TV, the news streams a constant flow of footage from the front in Ukraine. “Will Kiev be taken and the Ukrainian Government collapse?” they ask each other. I can’t help but look. I know war much more intimately than the talking heads on CNN ever would. I scroll Twitter for a few moments and see a scene so sad it brings me to tears. A Russian Airborne unit in armored vehicles is ambushed by Ukrainian Special Forces. “Professionals” I think to myself. These men are pros. I’d have hit them the same way… pull them into an urban area, immobilize the first vehicle with an anti-armor rocket in the middle of the intersection, and stop the convoy’s progress. Isolate the remaining vehicles, obscure their vision of each other with smoke, have the boys spray everyone as they dismount. Young Russian men lay bloody and lifeless on the street. Others hang from their vehicles, their equipment caught on twisted smoldering metal. “Jesus, they never even made it out of their vehicles.” My god, what a waste of young life.
I’m still processing the massive shifts in my perspective and experience here on earth after my first psychedelic experience that took place in February of 2022. During my time in the infantry, the life of those Russian troops meant nothing to me, we trained to end their lives. We shoot targets nicknamed “Crazy Ivan” because while we might be fighting the Taliban and Al Qeada right now, don’t ever forget we’re actually here to kill Russians. General Patton would be proud. In this moment, I feel no animosity towards these young Russians. The truth we learn later is they didn’t even know they were invading Ukraine until people started shooting at them. I search for compassion in this image of young men cut down in the prime of their life for the aspirations of a dictator and the blind ambitions of NATO expansion. Ukraine’s President puts out a call for veterans and volunteers to come to Ukraine to fight for freedom for the Ukrainian people. For a moment, I entertain the ludicrous. I know how to lead men in combat, I spent my entire time in the Army in the infantry and in combat. I fought in urban areas and know the ins and outs of mortars just about as well as any human being on earth. I’d be a huge help over there to a unit of foreigner volunteers. I put my earbuds in and hit play on one of my favorite songs. The piano softly rings as Warren Zevon pulls us into another adventure. A slow bass drum beats and reminds me of my time in the army. It’s always the drums, the drums of war – they call to me.
Roland was a warrior from the Land of the Midnight Sun
With a Thompson gun for hire, fighting to be done
The deal was made in Denmark on a dark and stormy day
So he set out for Biafra to join the bloody fray
“Roland’s not so different than I am” I think to myself. Not so different than any warrior who has heard that call. It’s a strange thing to have been to war as an American these days. My grandfather’s generation was filled with men like himself. World War 2 and Korea Veterans, my father’s generation, sent millions to do battle with the Viet Cong and the NVA. As a child, I watched my nation demolish Saddam’s army over the course of 100 days. We watched grainy video of laser guided bombs slam into military facilities, communication towers, airfields, power plants, we saw tank divisions wiped off the map. The brutality of war sold to us in a video-game-like presentation as General Norman Schwarzkopf briefed the nation on the nightly news. The American public gets a glimpse into the reality of what just happened during the 100-hour ground war. The Highway of Death, retreating Iraqi Army divisions have their columns cut to ribbons by Marine A-6 Intruders, Air force A-10’s, Apaches, and every fighter and bomber in the coalition arsenal. It was a massacre. Journalists walking the battlefield in the hours and days after lose count of how many smoldering bodies they pass. They lose count of the number of destroyed vehicles and armor littering a 50 mile stretch of a lonesome desolate desert highway. This is the reality of war. It’s not grainy footage, it’s not laser guided, its human beings losing their future, children losing their fathers, men on both sides lose their humanity. All this to free a small, oil-rich nation most Americans couldn’t point out on a map 7 months earlier.
Through sixty-six and seven they fought the Congo war
With their fingers on their triggers, knee-deep in gore
For days and nights, they battled the Bantu to their knees
They killed to earn their living and to help out the Congolese
My own wars in Iraq and Afghanistan allowed me to see this is awful reality up close and very personally. It’s men making unthinkable decisions in fractions of a second which will haunt them for years. It’s the prayers a man sends up as mortars and rockets fall from the sky. It’s the moment of comfort you seek out from smoking a cheap Turkish cigarette in the shade on a 130-degree day after a rifle round, no larger than a bee, snaps past your face. You never saw it, you don’t know where it came from, but you know that was close and then the peculiarity of it hits you like a thousand pound hammer. Something so small, moving so fast could’ve ended my life, right there. Ended the enormity of my being, the love of my family, the effort and struggle my parents put into raising me – all made nil in a fraction of a second in a town no one knows about. And then you take a drink of water, put your helmet back on and get back to work. It’s the feeling of terror mixed with excitement on a raid as you prepare yourself to go first through a door, seconds later you’re fighting a man hand to hand in his bed for an AK in the inky darkness as your weapon light swings wildly and casts a strobe like effect through the darkness. I know why Roland keeps going back. It’s the feeling of being alive, fully alive, in a way only those who have confronted death will ever know.
Roland the Thompson gunner…
I heard someone once say about their time in the military: “I don’t miss the circus, but I do miss the clowns.” I laugh to myself when that comes to mind because as silly as it sounds, it’s true. I don’t miss the army and I don’t miss the bullshit. But I miss the clowns. I miss my boys. I miss the feeling of shared suffering with men you entrust your life to. I miss knowing there are men willing to die for me. And mostly, I miss having something so meaningful in my life that I am willing to die for it.
I think of watching my brothers Matt and Jon search for an IED in piles of trash with a shovel and a metal detector because as Jon so eloquently put it in his Mississippi drawl “I’m not gonna let you die alone brother; I’ll search with you.” In the hour just prior to this, I witnessed a beautiful scene. We met as a platoon to discuss the task. “Why the fuck are we going out there to find an IED by hand, isn’t that EOD’s job?” we all grumble. “EOD won’t go out to disarm it until we find it. It’s bullshit, I know, but that’s the job, men” our LT explains. In the minutes that follow, we make some quick decisions, some simple calculations, that only make sense in a place like this. We all understand this is a job for the single men in the platoon – no married men, no men with children are going out on this 50/50 suicide mission. A simple unspoken agreement: my life for your wife and children’s happiness. A sacrifice we are all willing to make for our brothers in arms. Sometimes in war, men die for glory, sometimes for honor, sometimes for their brothers, and sometimes because someone thought walking somewhere was a good idea. I miss the war. “In a heartbeat, in a heartbeat” I say to myself. “Would you go back?” I’ve been asked before “In a heartbeat, in a heartbeat to be with my brothers again,” I always reply.
His comrades fought beside him – Van Owen and the rest
But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best
So, the CIA decided they wanted Roland dead
That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen blew off Roland’s head
As Afghanistan collapsed, I discussed contingency plans with serious men. “If we put together a team to go over there, I’ll have a spot for you brother. I’d want you there,” I’m told. I’d need a few days on the range to polish off the rust. Some skills are perishable, some are burned into your being.
“A man fires a rifle for many years. And he goes to war. And afterward, he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he’s finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands– love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper– his hands remember the rifle.”
– Anthony Swofford, Jarhead.
Some things I’ll never forget. W654421 – the serial number of my rifle, how to use that rifle and move in a fireteam are some of them, and if you give me a mortar, I can sure do some damage. I dream of going back, of taking the fight to the enemy one more time… or ten more times. It makes no difference to me. These people need help. Their freedom and human liberty deserve my effort, a cause worth dying for. My thoughts slowly drift to my wife and the sorrow she would feel if I left her now to return to the war. She would be crushed, and I could explain it a thousand ways, but she could never understand it. The pull, it’s an addiction. It’s not rational once you’ve lived right on the edge of life and death – this existence feels so underwhelming so devoid of adrenaline. And this is a chance the universe is presenting me to go live again, live at the edge of life and death. Life and death, there’s an awful reality we all must confront. Those of us at war confront it far more often. Death, what if like Roland, I got my head blown off on some trail in some valley. My daughters’ beautiful eyes fill my mind and what her life would be like without me. I’d be a face in a picture. Never growing old, time standing still on the day I left. She’d wonder why her daddy doesn’t pick her up from preschool like the other kids. Would she sit in her Kindergarten graduation and look at her mother alone and think about where her Daddy was? Would she stop for a second on the soccer field and look up to the stands filled with cheering parents to see her mother sitting alone and ask why did daddy leave us? What was more important than being here to see me? Would she hate me through high school as she came to learn about the awful reality I threw myself back into? Would she sit in a college psychology class and learn about the trauma men at war experience and the urge they feel to return to the fight? Would she pity me for my wounds and wish she got a chance to talk to me about what she is doing now? On her wedding day, who would walk my baby girl down the aisle, would her tears of joy on her most special day be overwhelmed by tears of sorrow for her missing father? Would she tell tales to her children about the grandfather they don’t have and she never remembers meeting? Would she show them a picture of time standing still on the day I left? All of this becomes too much and tears flow down my face. “I’ll never leave you, little baby. I’ll never be a ghost in your life, my Stella, my star,” I say to her as I hold her in the dark of night, praying for a reprieve from this call to return to the drums of war.
I want so much more from my life. I want to be anything but a ghost in my daughters’ life. I want to smile, I want to live, I want to feel joy wash over me as I watch her dance and sing and play and laugh. I want more from my life than to try and right some wrong on the other side of the earth. I want more than to even up the score in a losing game I don’t want to play anymore. I want to be home. I want to be here with my wife Alex, my lighthouse, and Stella, my shining star. I just want to be home. But still I hear the drums, I hear the call.
Time, time, time
For another peaceful war
But time stands still for Roland
‘Til he evens up the score
Roland the headless Thompson gunner
Norway’s bravest son
They can still see his headless body stalking through the night
In the muzzle flash of Roland’s Thompson gun
I want more from this life than to pass through as a wraith, stalking the night with Roland, looking for the man who’d done me in. I want more than to dream of the war and regret those things done and undone. So why do I entertain this possibility? The ludicrous thought of going to fight in Ukraine for people I don’t know and for a cause I know too much about to buy the bullshit being pushed out on every news station. It’s because while I may be here, I’m not home. I’m still in the streets of Iraq and the valleys of Afghanistan. I don’t feel alive, not truly alive like I did before the war. What if I answer the call and return to the battlefield? I’d feel alive again for as long as I live over there or until I return home. And then what? More nightmares of the horrors I’d have seen, more years of counseling? A ruined marriage and weekend custody of my beautiful baby, if I’m lucky? I am lucky, but how long until that luck runs out over there and some Russkie’s round sends me to meet my maker? What if I choose to lean into the healing I’m feeling now in my life? What if I leaned into feeling alive in the here and now? What if I use these psychedelic healing sessions to move on with my life? What would a life not pulled toward war look like? Roland stalks the night headless, unable to speak, unable to tell those who walk in his footsteps about the peril they face. I can speak still, and I can use my voice and my words to help those warriors still walking in Roland’s footsteps, marching to the cadence of the war drums still beating in their minds.
I saw a different path in my first MDMA journey. I came to a fork on the warpath I had walked for a dozen years. I looked down the path – I saw veterans of the Great War and The Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and my own two wars. They were all dressed in their combat fatigues with their rifleman’s kits, playing war like children. I could see that they hadn’t moved on, they were stuck trying to recapture a piece of their youth lost to time. A youth they will never have back and that they waste their remaining years on earth chasing instead of living, instead of moving on, instead of accepting the love around them. I don’t want to be that old man, angry and stuck in the sands of time, lost and searching for something that can never be truly found again. I want more from this life. I want to give my daughter the life she deserves with the father I know is inside of my heart, yearning to be freed from the memory of the war.
Roland searched the continent for the man who’d done him in
He found him in Mombassa in a barroom drinking gin
Roland aimed his Thompson gun – he didn’t say a word
But he blew Van Owen’s body from there to Johannesburg
A soft-spoken waiter brings me my tacos and asks if I’d like another Modelo. I nod and flash him a smile. The scent of the Tacos Al Pastor savory pork, mixed with the sweetness of pineapple pulls me back to the here and now. I take a long sip of the remaining cerveza and thank God for the life I am living. What a beautiful thing to be able to sit here and eat tacos and drink cold Mexican beer. It sure beats an MRE. What a beautiful thing to have a warm bed to sleep in next to a beautiful woman. It sure beats a frozen foxhole in Helmand. What a beautiful thing to hear my daughter’s laughter. It sure beats sickening staccato of incoming machine gun rounds. What a beautiful life I am living now. This beauty juxtaposed and magnified by all of the struggle and hardship I experienced.
Roland the headless Thompson gunner…
“Why not leave the settling of scores to Roland?” I think to myself. Why not let the men who chose to walk in his footsteps settle their own scores, and mine if they’d like. I can chose to move on, to live again and be truly alive again in the here and now. That journey feels like a more worthy cause than settling scores. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and I’d rather see this beautiful earth in all its beauty. All its experience here for me to partake in. I’d like to help others see that beauty as well. We veterans can exist outside of our wars, we can quiet the demons that claw at our souls. But it takes work, hard work, and a decision to live again – to truly live and be alive in the here and now. We can spread this message of healing and of a different path. A close friend who helped open my eyes up to the benefits of psychedelics said to me once, “Just think, brother, if we could inoculate the world with this kind of healing medicine, how much good we could actually do?” How much good could we actually do? That’s the calling I want in my life. The calling to help heal my brothers who are still suffering and can’t bear the thought of walking Roland’s path any longer, can’t bear the weight of walking the warpath any longer. I want to open their eyes to a healing path where love and acceptance guide us to fully living again.
The eternal Thompson gunner
still wandering through the night
Now it’s ten years later but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland’s Thompson gun and bought it.
I struggled for a week or two thinking of how I’d end this piece of writing. I sit now at 38,000 feet, somewhere over Utah, looking out the airplane window at a beautiful mountain peak that is spreading the low laying clouds around it, leaving a valley of sunshine below it for miles. After participating in three MDMA ceremonies at the time of this writing, I am heading to an Ayahuasca Ceremony to embrace what it means to truly be alive again. I’m thinking of my beautiful wife Alex, my lighthouse, and my smiling, laughing, joy-filled daughter Stella, my star. Their love has provided me with a safe port from the storm and something to aim at when I feel lost. I’m thinking of a brother of mine who lost his battle with the demons and passed away a few weeks ago. I wish I could’ve shared with him the opportunity for healing available to us.
I think of all the brothers I’ve lost since we’ve returned home from the war – too many to count. We have to seek out healing, our wars are over, and we should be the first and the loudest to say “NO! Wake up, we are not doing this again!” to our politicians before they damn us to another war that they won’t fight, but will send us off to die in. If we don’t, we are damned to making the same mistakes to sending another generation of brave young men off to their deaths on foreign fields, or in their apartments alone when they return to a society that no longer understands them. I know why men and women follow in Roland’s footsteps. I know why Patty Hearst picked up a weapon. It’s because for the first time in their life, they felt truly alive and forever they’ll seek to recapture that feeling.
Maybe it is the staccato of Roland Thompson’s gun that starts the war drums in our minds and maybe the eternal Thompson Gunner still wanders through the night… but that doesn’t mean we need to give him anymore company. We can move on and live for today, live filled with joy and happiness and acceptance. And maybe one day, Roland will get to sit by a calm stream and take a rest and know that there are no more scores to settle and his time as a warrior is done. Until then, I’ll be walking my path as a warrior on a healing journey.