Discussion: Traumatic Reactions-6411-wk3

The Effects of War and Combat – Part 2

The Effects of War and Combat – Part 2 Program Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

STEVEN MATOS: I was part of the initial push into Baghdad. I don't think anybody's really ready for that. It takes that first gun shot to go by your feet for you to realize, holy smokes, I'm really getting shot at. And of course, I'm giving you the edited version. A lot of people say before they go, I'm ready to do this, do that. And when that first shot goes over your head or hits in front of your feet and stuff hits the fan, that, OK, I have to get ahead, remember my training, and do what I was trained to do.

I got wounded the first day of war. March 21, 2003, we got caught in a mine field. It was a Iraqi gun position. We went into the position. We took over the guns. They were still hot. Realized there was a bunch of holes in the ground-- looked like rat holes. Sand rat holes. Realized that something wasn't right. Within about two hours of us being there, the first one went off. It injured a chaplain's driver.

During that time, I ran down the field and told everybody to get back into their vehicles. And about five feet from my truck one of the staff sergeants pulling out a gurney out of an ambulance to set up a triage for the ones that just got injured, and he took two steps back and set one off. And it took his right leg from the knee down.

And it also hurt seven others at the same time-- myself. My injuries were treated on the spot. I was walking around with a limp for a couple days. And started smoking, heavily. I wouldn't get out of the vehicle without checking the ground. I was just a little nervous on stepping on something myself. You've got a better perspective on what's going on around you, because you're always looking around. And you're always trying to make sure that everything is OK.

RICHARD MALMSTROM: The mobile assault platoon, as they call it, they dropped me off down in heat. And they took off to go take care of some other missions. And I was getting myself settled in. Getting ready to do some services, and I felt the blast. My door actually popped opened. I could feel the impact from a blast. And I thought something just hit right outside my door. So I grabbed all my gear and went outside. I didn't see anything immediately, so I went to the battalion aid station. And I could see the plume of smoke from the other side of the Euphrates River. So it was quite a ways away.

And again, had to sit and wait for the injured and the KIA to come in. One of my close friends was medevaced out, and waited for weeks to hear of what happened to him. And in the meantime, they brought back one of the KIA. From the torso down he was gone. He was hit by a suicide vehicle borne IED. And it

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The Effects of War and Combat – Part 2

took him-- from the waist down there was nothing left. And they brought him in. We had him in the body bag. I said my blessing.

And what they call the combat operational center called up, and said, do we have all the pieces and parts? Or do we need to go looking for everything else? So we open it back up and started looking through. And we found four-- or two left feet and two right feet. We found the feet of the bomber along with the feet of the Marine who was there.

And we started to have this conversation. Well, what do we do with the feet of the bomber. And the gut reaction of a lot of the people there was to throw them out in the dumpster. Throw them out with the garbage, and let the dogs take care of these feet.

And as chaplain, part of my job of being command advisor, it was my task to stand up at that point and say no, you can't do that. We have to treat them with respect and dignity. We have to put them in a bag. We have to send it off to Al Assad. And we need to return it to the family if we can. We need to do whatever we can for his grieving mother-- to return these body parts so they have something. And that was a pretty difficult spot to be in. To have to argue on behalf of the man who just blew up a Marine who is laying right there. That was a difficult one.

The most notable, aside from that, was just a sheer volume that we had. I was very close to our snipers. They're hooch, as we called it, the place where they lived was just right down the hallway for me at Haditha. And so we got together all the time. I was very close with one of the corpsmen who was attached to them.

And one day, they called me up and they said, well, we just lost two of our sniper teams. So seven of these snipers were--- their position was compromised, and they were killed. Excuse me. So they asked me to go in and tell the other snipers what had happened

And to make matters worse, one of the younger brothers of the sniper he was so, so impressed with his brother . So enamored by his brother that he decided to join the Marines as well. So he was in our battalion, also. The insurgents had taken his body, and we couldn't find it. And they were doing things to his body.

So I had to sit with this young Marine while we waited for his brother to be found. And I had to sit and counsel with him. Get him calmed down. And try to refocus him on what was now his new task while they were waiting to find his brother.

And then immediately following that, we sent out some quick reaction forces to try to find the men who had done this. And we lost 14 men in what's called an AAV-- an Amphibious Assault Vehicle. So we lost 21 guys in three days. It was

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The Effects of War and Combat – Part 2

overwhelming. You can't even imagine what that's like to lose so many people in such a short amount of time. And you kind of go through a funk for a while afterwards. For several years afterwards. It takes a while to get past something like that.

There are times, too, where I would see the aftermath of an event and take care of those Marines as they came in. And then as my corpsmen would come in, and they would describe to me all the things that they'd done to try to keep these Marines alive. And they would describe in detail everything. The way the scene looked. How the bodies were positioned. The extent that they went through to try to keep these men alive.

I mean, one of them, he was trying to give mouth to mouth resuscitation to one of these Marines, and there were so much internal bleeding that this Marine had vomited blood back up into his mouth as he was trying to resuscitate him. And so he had the smell of blood on his breath. And I could smell that. And having them describe everything that happened, along with seeing the aftermath, it's another one of those images that gets imprinted on your brain. That you can't escape from.

The Effects of War and Combat – Part 2 Additional Content Attribution

IMAGES: Images provided by http://www.istockphoto.com/

MUSIC: Creative Support Services Los Angeles, CA

Dimension Sound Effects Library Newnan, GA

Narrator Tracks Music Library Stevens Point, WI

Signature Music, Inc Chesterton, IN

Studio Cutz Music Library Carrollton, TX

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