Page 503 - Total War on PTSD Final

become. In fact, one of my proudest moments was when I was given a coin from COL Steele for my first kill. I would go on to eliminate numerous Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents, including three high value targets. I spent a lot of my time in Iraq in an area known as the “Triangle of Death.”
But during my deployment, I experienced one of the hardest moments of my life. I’d gone through having friends wounded and even killed in other companies, but nothing came close to what I would experience on this day.
On November 1, 2007, my commanding officer, Lieutenant Tracy Alger was killed in combat.
Our group of men was on a three day mission to push an insurgent stronghold out of our area of operation. We’d already not been able to cover the ground that we had expected to cover due to numerous IED attacks and sporadic arms fire, however, we had finally gotten to a place where we could set up a 360 degree perimeter and hunker down for the night. But that’s when the first IED struck my vehicle and the vehicle behind me. The enemy was prepared for us, and we were ambushed.
The first thing I saw as I stood back up in my turret was my friend Lucia slumped over in his vehicle. I immediately told my driver to back up all the way to his vehicle. At that point, with no regard to my life, I hopped out of my gunner turret and began to bang on his windshield. After he finally came to his senses from being knocked out, we took incoming fire. I dove back into my turret and returned fire. As we pushed the enemy away from us, we were able to take Lucia and another friend, Bowden, out of their vehicle and move them to ours.
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