Notes From My Knapsack 1-27-08
Jeff Gill

When the War Strikes Close To Home

One day last year I came home, north a bit from Cherry Valley Road and Rt. 16, and from our driveway I could see a column of black smoke south of Rt. 16, as it turns out right along Cherry Valley Road.

It was a blow from the Iraq war striking within a mile of my house.

If you didn’t know the war had come to Licking County, let me explain, or at least explain my inference.

What had happened was a young man, new to driving a tanker truck, just back from surviving a tour driving such heavy vehicles around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, had rolled over the edge of the 175 year-plus Showman Bridge into Raccoon Creek.

He was not impaired, and the weather was fine, and in my opinion there is only one explanation for what killed him. When you don’t know which curve harbors snipers or which bridges hide bombs, and you deal with that uncertainty for a year, you don’t just shift back down to civilian pace overnight.

The young man who had proudly and honorably served his country by getting supplies and gear from point A to point B quickly and in one piece came home to support his new family in Ohio by doing much the same, but the tendency to punch the accelerator and go easy on the brake led to a load slosh that tipped him onto a railing, into a creekbed, and to his death a mile or so from my home.

Can you see why I think it’s fair to say he’s a casualty of the Iraq war? Sure, young drivers misjudge curves and turns all the time, and he might have lost his ticket if he had never been overseas. But I make that sweeping left turn from Reddington onto Cherry Valley over the old aqueduct all the time, and I keep thinking about how just a little too much “gung ho,” a bit too edgy a nerve ending about crossing where you can see the piers where they meet the water, and whoosh, bam, boom. You’re dead.

Of course if the military paid a full benefit for such a death after discharge and coming home, they would end up spending billions, right? Insert your favorite military spending joke here.

This won’t be a Purple Heart or a name for some future Iraq “Conflict” memorial, just an unlucky guy who died trying to make a living after surviving military service. Now, if he had some kind of brain injury, which the VA tells us is showing up for one in five returning vets, maybe he could have gotten a medical check that would have taken him out of the cab of that truck on that day.

Did he have some level of post traumatic stress, undiagnosed, that could have been treated to help him throttle back in life in general, and in heavy trucks specifically? They’re suggesting that half of returnees from both Iraq and Afghanistan should get assessment and treatment for PTSD, helping them ease back into the rhythms of hometown life.

With the primary debates and discussions, I heard an interesting quote out of South Carolina from a man who said he voted for John McCain. “I think he’ll get us out of Iraq fastest.”

That’s interesting, since many other candidates are working hard to say specifically that they’ll get the troops home fastest. McCain’s said quite a few things about Iraq, but getting the troops back home soon isn’t one of them.

But this fellow was a retired soldier himself, and what he seemed to be saying was that he knows how soldiers feel about war, and about being overseas, and he knew McCain had spent five and a half years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton wanting to get home.

What too many folks don’t seem to know is that soldiers and sailors and Marines and aviators all have three things in common if they’re career professional military. 1) They love training. 2) They are made somewhat uneasy by peace and quiet, ‘tis true. 3) They hate war.

Truly, the warrior class as a whole hates war. They like knowing that their training and preparation makes them ready for actions that most citizens are not capable of, and need someone to perform from time to time, such as flying helicopters out over the Gulf Coast and New Orleans to save 30,000 people from rooftops after Katrina. They like that knowledge, that capacity in themselves, a great deal.

They hate war, though. They know what it does to their friends and to the innocent and they know full well what it does to themselves. They love training all the more, so that sweat displaces blood.

Will McCain get our troops back to driving tanker trucks, slowly, down Cherry Valley Road? I don’t know about that, but I can see why someone would think he’d try, and try effectively.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your story of war and peace at knapsack77@gmail.com.