Page 391 - Total War on PTSD

chicken-leg thing, it stuck straight out and spasmed. There was all kinds of pain. Stabbing, burning and slicing...all at once. I don't think you can know pain like that unless you've been shot." I felt certain that Bales wouldn't make it, but they stabilized him, and an hour later he was on a helicopter. Bales eventually lost the use of the leg. I still take my friend out rafting and stand-up paddle boarding. "The balance is tricky," says Bales, "but the falls are safe!"
The major difference between the tour in Iraq and the tour in Afghanistan is that our units were spread so thin in Afghanistan. There were not enough boots on ground. A lot of things that would limit firefights to 10-15 minutes in Iraq weren't there in Afghanistan, so you were facing five or six hour firefights instead. Our enemy knew we didn't have back coming do they'd keep fighting. There were so many troops in Iraq that our that our responses were quick and we'd limit the damage by always having a backup reactionary force in the area. In Afghanistan that didn't exist. Afghanistan was far more chaotic than Iraq because of that. We were just constantly in contact with the enemy in firefights. I would say 50% of my unit had Purple Hearts by the end of our tour. We lost so many guys. The Taliban wasn't breaking contact because they knew we didn't have a division backing us up in the area. What we had was what we had. They had so many fighters available. We were fighting the Taliban, Pakistanis, Iranians and everything in between. I remember killing guys and realizing they weren't even Taliban. They were a part of some other fighting force just coming to kill Americans. They just crossed the border because they decided one day that they wanted to die some warrior's death.
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