Page 439 - Total War on PTSD

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.
We thought that was going to be the worst part of the night. But as darkness set in, we decided that we were going to continue the mission, that it would not be a good idea to stay in this area. That’s when all hell broke loose.
In the same area where we had just set up security, we swapped positions with my LT. A minute later, his vehicle was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire and was struck by a catastrophic IED. This was no ordinary IED. This was 500 pounds of explosive with 200 pounds of incendiary, which has the ability to melt metal and
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