– Combat Fatigue –
While
driving to the airport on Friday at 3.56 AM, I was praying, and in doing so always
using the Rosary. On that moment a thought of my mother came to me, a woman who
was a devoted of the Rosary and prayed it several times a day especially during
the long years of convalescence of multiple sclerosis. It gave me a feeling of guilt to know that
for a day, or several, I hadn't thought of her, and there I jumped to a
historic moment back in December 1990; where we were right in the process of
formulating the attack plans (the entry into Kuwait-Iraq in 1991) which should
have been "... The mother of battles..." Where Saddam Hussein predicted the deaths of
thousands of Americans and a large number of mothers mourning their children
over the bloodshed in that desert
Focusing on
the theme "Combat fatigue" I don't remember the day it was, but after
several planning sessions where the G2-G3 staff considered the kind of forces
to use, movement tables, what engineering equipment to be used at the breach; contingencies
whether we followed in the British or
Egyptians in the attack, depending on where it was most necessary to
"exploit a breakthrough" that
is using the most powerful tank division that would then take the advance and penetrate
with blunt force on the enemy. After
several days of 36-48 hours of continuous working; of planning without sleep,
the night and the day are confused, because in the command post you work with a
black out lights and only when you need to go out to eat and go to the
bathroom, until then you don’t get to find out if it is day or night, hot or cold
or if the is a moonlit night. At that time even the day of the week is
forgotten, every day is the same, contrary to the normal days were we worked
shifts of 12-13 hours since we arrived in Saudi Arabia. Given the need to
complete organizational charts, plans and movement tables, we only worked on
goals imposed for completion by hours or reviews before the next meeting that
took place every 12 hours (during shift
changes). The plans changed every time when another unit arrived, forced to
modify the plan, which put us in check for more than 32 days. And it wasn't
until we were told to stop, that we did and in one of those times that we were
given about 6 hours to sleep, I remember very well the incident that would
change my whole life. It was one of those days between long periods of work
that I woke up, and I was lost, I didn't even know who I was, I asked myself, then
I remember that I had a daughter, that I was married that I had lost a son a
couple of years ago and in the middle of that moment I cried ....without
consolation. It was there that I met (first
person- Myself) what combat fatigue is..... It is what it is to bring the body and
mind to the limit, to the point of total weariness, which lead to the breakdown
of a human being. This happened without firing a shot, long before going into
combat, but given the circumstances and its description it is the same
suffering that many soldiers who have not rested, after long hours and turns
them into non-combatants..... This is the result of a process where there is a
great level of intensity that only keeps one concentrated at that moment by an
event, whether fighting to live or surviving, where everything else takes a
background, and is at that moment by an event, whether fighting to live or
surviving, where everything else takes a background, and is at that moment rest
...that the two meet and you feel guilty.
Today you remember
it and a few tears comes to my eyes, at the time it was despairing and painful,
a feeling of emptiness and loneliness. You look around disoriented, oblivious
to your reality as a result of time and tiredness.
Sometimes I
am accused of being cold, of not feeling or reacting in a certain way. After
that event I am more aware of the stress of each day, of the work, of the
everyday Today is a long day that began at 3:30 AM and possibly will not end until
late tonight. I started driving about 40 miles to the Ft. Lauderdale airport,
flying about 364 miles, loading a truck full of furniture and other things,
I'll drive about 570 miles through four states I'll get to unload the trailer all
by midnight and tomorrow unload the truck and assemble my eldest daughter's
apartment but if I think of my mother, my grandmother, my wife at home, my
little daughter who is on vacation with her uncles, I will also recall that 20
years ago, I forgot who I was during a war and that long periods of work, stress, of the day does
not make me forget everyone whom I have left behind during this weekend so as
long as it lasts.
The Colonel
August 15, 2011 05:45 AM
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