A Painful Story
This might be painful to read. Just a warning.
One of the things that tends to get glossed over in various discussions of the current war is the severe emotional toll that gets inflicted on our troops during a conflict. You occasionally hear something in the news, but for the most part people just don’t notice. And for many soldiers even admitting that these problems exits is taboo. Real soldiers don’t get worn down emotionally. Only weak soldiers do.
I have considered this carefully, and decided that I am going to share my experience on this subject. Long time readers may recall that I served in Bosnia and Kosovo. Bosnia wasn’t really all that bad. By the time I showed up the multi-national force had been in place for several years. I worked in an office, and for the most of the serious fighting had ended by the time I arrived.
But Kosovo was another matter.
Now before I go into this I want to stress a few things. I am not trying to claim that my experience in Kosovo was as bad as what soldiers in other conflicts had to deal with. This isn’t about being in some sort of pissing contest with other veterans. Soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq experienced far worse than me. I don’t even like imagining what soldiers in Viet Nam went through. And many soldiers got through those conflicts emotionally unscathed. This is actually what trips some people up. They compare themselves to other soldiers in other conflicts and go, “Well it wasn’t as bad as they had it. I don’t have the right to feel all messed up.” But it’s not about how bad other people had it. Its about what you went through, and how it made you feel.
In Kosovo I was in a non-combat, tactical unit. This meant we traveled around “outside the wire” all day, but we weren’t specifically tasked with patrolling or engaging hostile units. We got to speak to the locals, find out their needs, advise them on US Army activities, and try to help encourage a better relationship between them and US Forces. Oh, also we were supposed to undo roughly 300 years of ethnic strife.
I wasn’t involved with very much combat. There was some while I was there, but for the most part, I was pretty lucky and avoided the worst of it.
But the sheer amount of suffering that the locals had gone through started to grind on me after a while. That and the fact that even after all that suffering, nobody was willing to quit. It was like the entire country was one giant asylum filled with the violently insane. People treated grudges from four generation ago the way you or I would treat something that happened yesterday.
And when you’re in the Army, it’s not cool to talk about how stuff like that is starting to seriously bug you. And so I kept it to myself.
Eventually I shipped back to the states. And then I had trouble sleeping. And I started snapping at the people I worked around. Eventually I decided that I needed to take up some sort of hobby in an attempt to get back into a decent head space. Since I used to build models when I was in high school, I decided to give that a try. And as I have always been a huge history nerd, I got a scale model of a Mesopotamian step pyramid. Over the course of a week, I put that sucker together until after a particularly bad day, I took it out to the parking lot and set in on fire. One of my NCOs noticed me doing this and gave me a “Are you nuts?” look, but he left it alone. As written in the manual at http://howmed.net/viagra-sildenafil-canadian/, Viagra helps to treat erectile dysfunction or impotence.
Well I felt kind of stupid after that, so I bought another one, and tried to finish it again. I got closer to finishing it, but again, a bad day set me into a rage and I took it outside and put it to the torch.
The same NCO witnessed this act as well and he decided that something was wrong. And The next day I found myself ordered to go to the health clinic to see about getting some help.
And that’s when the doctor told me the news:
“Son, if you don’t stop smoking ziggurats it’s gonna kill you.”
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May 8th, 2008 at 6:19 am
You son of a bitch.
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Minty reply on May 8th, 2008 8:31 am:
Ditto. XD
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May 8th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Wait… What? did the doctor think you were doing that stuff because of smoking or did he just completely misunderstand the problem?
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realbadbaby reply on May 8th, 2008 8:23 am:
a ziggurat is a mesopotamian steppe pyramid… it is sort of a play on words
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Stickfodder reply on May 8th, 2008 10:31 am:
Ohhhhh I guess I didn’t read the last line carefully enough to realize it said ziggurat but then again even if I had I probably wouldn’t have realized what it was
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realbadbaby reply on May 8th, 2008 11:16 am:
don’t sweat it, the term is fairly obscure in western (american) vocabulary
May 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Wow, best lead up to a joke ever..
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May 8th, 2008 at 9:47 am
wow…. just….wow
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May 8th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Wow, man…here I was, naively expecting a heart-felt story about how you dealt with your sh*t with the help of those around you, a real “triumph over adversity” kind of thing…and you were just leading into a pun. I’d offer a salute, but I’ve never served and you aren’t any longer.
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May 8th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I have to admit, I have never once encountered another writer who was willing to go so very very far for one singular pun. lol
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May 8th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Wow. I was already to back you up since this is exactly what I’m going through too, and tell you about how my cousin’s all jacked up from Bosnia and Kosovo (permanent trenchfoot- ewwwww), and then I realized it.
You’re a heartless bastard. But you’re funny, so it’s okay. We don’t expect better. :)
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May 8th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
thats fucked up
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May 8th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Sorry. Tolkien had a longer lead-in to a bad pun.
Having commented on the pun, the points made earlier in the entry are entirely valid…
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Snyarhedir reply on February 10th, 2011 12:41 am:
Which pun is that?
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May 9th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Skippy, you are pun-god amongst pun-children. Bravo, sir. Just… bravo.
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May 9th, 2008 at 1:57 am
I bow to the inherent greatness of that set-up.
*bows*
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May 9th, 2008 at 2:07 am
We patrolled the Adriatic during that timeframe. I’ll admit I was looking for the “I needed help, and nobody would listen” story….
That said, AWESOME setup for the punchline!
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May 9th, 2008 at 2:10 am
Though I would love to lay claim to it, there’s a much longer, and equally as good a lead up at
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dftzkpqc_2gf38jj
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May 9th, 2008 at 3:07 am
I just about gave myself a concussion when I smacked my head into my desk reading that.
Masterful, just masterful.
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May 9th, 2008 at 4:28 am
gotta love military docs. and they wonder why with all the resources “readily available for the mental health of our troops” guys still come back messed up. we had a guy go section 8 and they just shipped him home and set him on a desk. no docs no conseling nothing.Thank you for sharing. i wish more guys would admit to being bothered by experiences. it’s important. not macho. everyone is effected differently by stress and more people need to see that truth.
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May 9th, 2008 at 6:38 am
Yes, that was quite painful to read.
You should be ashamed of yourself for that pun.
Do you know what happens to the person who commits the perfect pun? They’re beaten to death.
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May 9th, 2008 at 6:57 am
took me a few goes to get it… I’m blaming lack of sleep
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May 9th, 2008 at 8:18 am
You are a bad, bad person.
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May 9th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Oh my . . . that was . . . amazing.
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May 9th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
… bastard. XD
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May 9th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I’m supprised they didnt give you some motrin and tell you to come back in a few days.
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May 9th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Oh you son of a bitch! What’s worse, I linked in here and didn’t realise it was from YOU, O Listmeister, until I’d QWERTYd my forehead a few times having reached the end.
I shall now hold my nose and run screaming.
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May 10th, 2008 at 2:52 am
That has to be the most involved set up I have ever seen. Congratultions! I laughed so hard I had to check to see if I had pulled any stitches.
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May 10th, 2008 at 4:58 am
fantastic.
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May 10th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Absolutely glorious. I don’t remember that last time a joke winded me.
Nerdy-technical point: that’s actually a Shaggy Dog Story, so way more than just a pun.
T.
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May 11th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Well said Troop. Well done. I salute you.
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May 12th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I found your comments while reverse searching from hits to my site, VisionAndPsychosis.Net.
I wondered if you have any of the behaviors that would cause Subliminal Distraction exposure. The few things you mentioned suggest that this is the case.
If the first part of your post is not just a set up for the pun, Subliminal Distraction would cause just those problems. Trouble sleeping, unattributed fear, paranoia, panic attacks, depression and thoughts of suicide are symptoms of SD exposure.
You are apparently a dedicated word-smith.
If you need help surfing my site email me.
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May 16th, 2008 at 3:20 am
“If the first part of your post is not just a set up for the pun…”
You seem to be suffering from Post-Traumatic Inability To Get A Joke Disorder.
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May 16th, 2008 at 5:36 am
I smoked ziggaruts a bit as young man too…had to quit though cause it made my head feel puffy and all megalomanical and what not.
…and then there were the hangovers of Nimrodic proportion…
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July 22nd, 2008 at 3:09 am
I won’t lie- I looked up the definition of “ziggurat”.
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Snyarhedir reply on February 10th, 2011 6:55 pm:
I already knew the definition, because of certain books I had read.
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February 10th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Actually, as a lead-up to a pun, the story you mention (which I have just read) is far inferior to this one. For such a simple pun, it takes too long and goes into too much detail, but I understand that it is really a decent story with a twist of an ending just to prevent it from being all sad and mushy. As a lead-in to a pun, however, that story is the sort of thing that people refer to when they say, “Less is more.”
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Snyarhedir reply on February 10th, 2011 6:56 pm:
Fuck this server! That was supposed to be a reply to Gene’s comment, but ended up as a separate comment.
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July 19th, 2012 at 6:36 am
you should let Spider Robinson read this – it’s perfect for a Callahan’s pun :D
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