Dan Sheehan's Blog

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick note to explain how Kindle Vella works, and to announce that there are now eleven episodes of my new adventure/fantasy novel, The Judas Goat, available on the platform for your reading pleasure.

Here is the story description from Amazon:

“Dave Gillespie’s quest for redemption goes sideways when a box of hallucinogenic mushrooms sends him tripping into a deal with the devil. To win a second chance at life, Dave must prove that destiny is not all powerful by avoiding his predestined deaths in a series of future lives. An irreverent romp through the afterlife, the Golden Age of Piracy, World War II, and America’s war in Vietnam with adult themes, goat-bitten testicles, and other stuff not suitable for kids.”

I’m using Amazon’s new Kindle Vella platform to publish chapters of The Judas Goat as I complete them. Seeing how Kindle Vella is only about a month old, and Amazon hasn’t done a whole lot of marketing to promote the new platform, please allow me to do Mr. Bezos’s work for him.

Kindle Vella is a serialized novel platform. Despite having “Kindle” in the name, the platform has nothing to do with the Kindle e-reader. Instead, all the stories in the Kindle Vella Store are meant to be read on a smartphone, tablet, or computer. With this in mind, episode lengths are limited to between 600 and 5,000 words so that readers can enjoy a full episode during the random breaks in their daily routine.

The first three episodes of all stories are free. To continue reading beyond that point, readers purchase tokens (approx 1oo tokens for $1.00) from Amazon, and then use those tokens to unlock episodes at a rate of 1 token per 100 words. Authors earn 50% of the tokens spent to unlock their episodes.

For the time being, Amazon is giving new Kindle Vella users 200 free tokens to get them hooked, er, started on the platform.

With the help of my tweenage kids, I’ve broken down the math for how much it would cost you, right now, to read the first eleven episodes of The Judas Goat:

First three episodes: Free

Episodes 4 thru 11: 182 tokens

Yup. You can read three months of my work for free, and still have 18 tokens left over.

I’m publishing about one episode per week, and expect the full novel to be about 40 episodes total. So now is a great time to get started because you can do it for free and there are plenty more episodes to come.

Here’s the link: The Judas Goat 

Oh, and please post a short review if you enjoy the story.

Thanks,
Dan

The post Kindle Vella Primer, Plus Free Access to The Judas Goat appeared first on Dan Sheehan.

This is the last episode I can post in its entirety, but there are plenty more episodes available here: The Judas Goat on Amazon’s Kindle Vella

Episode 3: A Bag of Swollen Plums

The three friends dropped their charade the instant the Spanish ship’s gloomy interior hid them from Captain Wright’s view.

“Dibs on the flask,” Trevor called, shoving Dave and Noah aside so he could enter the crew quarters first.

Dave grunted as he hit the bulkhead. Trevor was built for blacksmithing, not narrow passageways, and had the temperament to boot. Every challenge he faced received the same application of brute force.

“Better share if you wanna see boobs, ya fuckin’ ox,” Noah grumped, rubbing his shoulder. After seven months of nothing but weak beer, it was the only threat that might prevent Trevor from downing the whole flask himself.

 Dave got to his feet as Noah clumped off in search of nudie pictures, loudly cursing each time he blundered into something in the darkness. Dave thought to warn him to let his eyes adjust first but didn’t waste his breath.

Leaning against the entrance to the galley, Dave closed his eyes and wondered how many eggs he could fit into his little pouch—six, maybe eight if he hunched over and faked a stomach ache as he hobbled past Captain Wright—and then shook his head.

Dad goes off, earns a fortune for Mom, and dies a hero beloved for saving his ship. Best I can hope for is swiping two extra eggs, he thought bitterly.

“Fucking hell. Dad must be cryin’ tears of pride,” Dave muttered.

Opening his eyes, Dave found them well adjusted enough to avoid banging his knee, which he could feel swelling quite clearly now, into anything and started limping toward the livestock pens.

As he reached the second storeroom, the sounds of rustling and the low murmur of a secretive voice came through the closed door.

Dave froze. His heart thudded against his ribs as the scene behind the door burst into his head. The rustling, and the speaker’s earnestly obvious attempts to avoid being overheard, could only mean one thing; two men were hiding something—and it sure as fuck wasn’t eggs.

Dave fought back a nervous cough as his mouth suddenly went dry. Ransacking empty berthing spaces was one thing. Fighting real live men was another, and whoever was behind this door was unlikely to just give up whatever they were hiding.

Maybe I should get Trevor and Noah, he thought, prudently easing away from the door to gather reinforcements until the voice of caution in his head got stuffed in a locker.

In its stead came the derisive, impetuous voice Dave had never been able to resist.

Did Dad wait? Did Dad get all whiny when his moment of destiny arrived? No! He grabbed his sword and lept into legend. Everything you’ve ever wanted is right behind that door—fame, fortune, the keys to Chastity’s heart. Now, sack up and take it! 

Make Dad proud, Dave thought, recalling the first mate’s words as he reached for the handle. 

He disengaged the latch carefully. When it didn’t creak, Dave took one last breath and burst into the storeroom as an ungodly shriek of pain erupted from inside.

“Aaarrrgggh! No teeth!!”

Dave looked toward the voice and squealed as the brilliant sunlight pouring through Gunner Short’s ragged hole scorched his eyes. Eyes scrunched shut, Dave jabbed blindly into the room and drew a sharp rebuke from the deep, and somehow goaty, voice.

“He-e-e-y! Watch it dickhead!” 

It didn’t sound very Spanish, so Dave stopped poking around and moved so he wasn’t staring right into the light. Then he opened his eyes—and dropped his sword to the deck with a dull thud.

“What the?” Dave started, staring at the creature huddling in the corner. From the waist up it looked like a regular, albeit hairy, man with curly horns. The waist down was all goat.

“Wouldn’t drop my sword if I were you. Dulcinea is in a bit of a mood,” Pan grunted, nodding toward a perturbed looking nanny goat eyeing them from her corner. 

When Dave didn’t respond, Pan straightened up gingerly.

“Ow ow ow,” Pan said,  grimacing as he pressed both hands into his crotch. After a moment, he got to the point where he could walk and clomped on cloven hooves toward Dave—who backed up until he could go no further. 

“I can’t look. You gotta do it,” he pleaded, turning his head away as he removed his hands.

NO! Don’t look! Dave thought, a split second too late.

There are some things that, once seen, can never be unseen, but a goat-bitten scrotum dangling like a bag of overripe plums pretty much takes the cake.

“What the hell!” Dave shouted, pressing himself away from the pulsing mess hard enough to make the solid timbers behind him creak.

“Just tell me its still there—no wait, don’t tell me. Just kill me if its not—no, wait, that won’t work. Gimme your sword. I’ll get it back myself,” Pan bleated, casting an angry glare at an unrepentant Dulcinea.

“It’s er-fine, I guess,” Dave said quickly. “It’s all purply and knobby and big and—just put it away, okay?”

Pan glanced down at himself.

“Oh, that’s all normal. Whew!” he sighed, wiping the narrow patch of brow between his twisting horns. Then he jumped back as he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

“Shit—you’re him. Damnit! Not supposed to see me—don’t tell anyone. We were just talking, you know? I was just, uh, pushing her away from that hole in the hull so she wouldn’t fall out, see? You didn’t hear that part about “Just the tip,” right? That was jokes, just jokes,” he bleated, a nervous little quiver in his voice.

But Dave was too flummoxed to notice.

“Whatwhohuh?” he stuttered as all the questions in his head tried to burst out at once.

Pan took that as a solemn promise to never tell another soul and breathed a sigh of relief. Eyeing Dave, he gave Dulcinea a wide berth as he clomped over to the hen coop.

“Spitting image of your father you are. Old Twelve-Pound Harry will be mighty happy to know you’ve grown up.”

Dave, his mind spinning dangerously out of control, lunged like a drowning man after a life ring for the one coherent thought in his head.

“…will be happy? Dad’s been dead near fifteen years?”

Pan waved the question away like a gnat. Instead of answering, he turned to retrieve a reddish box about the size of a bible from behind one of the hens.

“Not important. Now this—“ he handed the wooden box to Dave, “—this is important.”

Dave took the box like a man in a trance. This was some weird shit, and it was only getting weirder.

“What is it?” he asked, not certain he wanted to know the answer.

Pan gave him a smile.

“The gateway to what you seek,” he answered. 

Before Dave could press him further, heavy boots slammed into the deck above their heads.

“Alright men! Get the cargo transferred quickly. Oil and farm tools first, then get the fabrics and frilly stuff. Double demerits for anyone trying to help themselves to goodies,” Bosun Livingston boomed.

Apparently he’d recovered from his little bout of stomach issues with remarkable speed.

“Welp, time to go,” Pan said as the sounds of grumbling old sailors approached the storeroom.

“What am I seeking? Who are you? Where’s my Dad?” Dave blurted, finally finding his voice now that the strange episode was drawing to a close.

“Better tuck that away if you wanna find out,” Pan said, tapping the box in Dave’s hands. With a final wink for Dulcinea, he spun around and took a diving leap through Gunner Short’s hole out into the brilliant sunlight.  

“Wait!” Dave yelled, rushing forward fast enough that he should have seen the goaty hooves splash into the the ocean. When he looked down, though, all he saw was the unruffled surface of the gently rolling swells.

Blinking hard, Dave pulled back from the gaping hole just before Stubby and Bubby reached the storeroom. Remembering himself, he quickly slid the box into his smuggler’s belt and found it fit perfectly.  

Almost like someone had designed it that way.

“Come on, sonny,” Stubby called, poking his head into the storeroom and spotting Dave. “No time for barnyard follies, we’ve work to do.”

“What? No, it’s not like that—” Dave protested, but Bubby cut him off.

“Dirty business with goats. Now sheep, on the other hand. . .”

Dave, remembering Bubby had been a shepherd before an “incident” sent him running off to sea, couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

****To read the more of The Judas Goat, click this link: The Judas Goat on Amazon’s Kindle Vella

The first three episodes are free, and then Jeff Bezos gives you 200 free tokens to continue reading because he’s a nice guy. Oh, and if you enjoy the story, please “like” it a million times and consider writing a quick review to help other readers find it. Thanks!

The post The Judas Goat Episode 3: A Bag of Swollen Plums appeared first on Dan Sheehan.

Episode 2: Booze, Porn, and Eggs

First Mate Cole, standing beside Captain Wright on the quarterdeck, regained his composure quickly after storming into the gun deck. A spectacular negligent discarge hadn’t been part of his plan, but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Making certain the Captain was listening, he addressed the three-man boarding party as they came out on deck.

“Alright boys, Bosun’s boarding party is down hard—something in last night’s stew has them heaving over the fo’c’s’le—so this is your chance. Get under cover amidships and stand by for my orders. We’ll take her on the port side—and remember, no pilfering. Everything on that ship belongs to Valiant. Anyone caught thieving will answer to me,” Cole instructed, then gave a quick wink only Dave, Trevor, and Noah could see. 

The Captain’s “no pilfering” policy was indeed strict, but he didn’t inspect the boarding party coming back onboard. The First Mate did. 

Trevor and Noah shared a grin and stepped off. Dave turned to join them but the first mate motioned him to come closer. Leaning in, he reached out and clasped Dave’s shoulder with a weathered hand.

“Whatever happens, just imagine your old man is watching you,” he pointed toward the heavens. “Make him proud.”

The mention of his father sent a burst of adrenaline coursing through Dave. He gave a quick smile and raced to his position as the Captain congratulated his first mate.

“Top notch pep talk, Mr. Cole. A good captain always sends his men into harm’s way with smiles on their face and fire in their hearts.”

“I learned from the best, Captain,” the first mate responded, actually managing to sound sincere.

 Dave squeezed in between Trevor and Noah. Crushing his cutlass handle with excitement, he eyed their prey through a gap in the ship’s railing and waited for his chance to fix all his bad decisions in one fell swoop. 

Fame, fortune, forgiveness—it’s all inside that hull, Dave thought, grinning as he eyed the slowly rolling merchant ship. His pathway to fixing the past, as well as happily ever after, lay behind those wooden planks. All he had to do was follow his father’s audacious example and he had it made. Not for the first time, Dave thanked his lucky stars for First Mate Cole.

Tom Cole had sailed with Harry Gillespie, Dave’s late father, and vouched for Dave and his friends when they’d come begging to join Valiant’s crew. Spots on Captain Wright’s crew were hard to come by because, the contentious nature of privateering notwithstanding, the good captain considered violence bad for business and took pride in avoiding it. Sailors more interested in not getting blown to smithereens than in striking it rich, found their way to his crew and burrowed in like ticks until old age claimed them. But First Mate Cole convinced the Captain to hire a few lads as insurance in case Bosun Livingston, Ollie, and Sullie—themselves nearing forty but still relatively spry compared to the rest of the crew—needed some help, and Dave, Trevor, and Noah became Valiant’s youngest crewmen.

Please be carrying gold, Dave prayed, squeezing his sword’s rough handle hard enough to cut into his deck-monkey callouses. A handful of gold coins would go a long way toward winning Chastity’s forgiveness. 

Lots of gold, he corrected, remembering the look in her eyes when he’d answered her news that she was carrying his child by running off to sea.

“Careful,” Noah whispered beside him.

Dave glanced to his left, pleased that Noah seemed to be taking things seriously for once. Then his friend pointed at the straining muscles and tendons in Dave’s sword arm.

“You’ll ruin your love life.”

“Oooh, Chastity, just like that, ohh yeah, ohh yeah,” Trevor chimed in from Dave’s right.

Noah snorted.

“It was just a dream, I told you,” Dave protested.

They both rolled their eyes.

“Fuck you guys,” Dave grumped, resuming his scan of the Spaniard’s deck.

Behind him Stubby and Bubby, two doddering Valiant crewmen, argued over the best technique to spin their grappling hooks. Eventually, they settled on three full spins before release and the grappling hooks sailed across the gap to latch onto the Spaniard’s railing. As they hauled the ships together in the gentle swells, Dave counted twelve Spaniards on deck and smiled. A ship that size should have more.

I hope they’re below decks hiding valuables! Dave prayed, then couldn’t contain his excitement any longer.

“On me!” Dave called, and lept to the top of the railing with feline grace. 

“Aren’t we supposed to wait until—“ Noah started, but Dave didn’t hear him.

Make Dad proud.

“On me, boys!” Dave repeated, brandishing his cutlass heroically in a move he’d long practiced in private. 

Trevor and Noah rolled their eyes, sighed, and grabbed the rigging to hoist themselves up beside their fearless leader.

Dave, what little concerns he felt for his own life erased by the fear his appearance sparked in the eyes of the spanish crew, didn’t notice his compatriots’ lack of enthusiasm. 

That’s right! Twelve-pound Harry’s boy is coming for you! he thought, invoking his father’s nickname like a talisman. Nothing could hurt him behind the shield of his father’s memory.  

“For England!” Dave roared, repeating his dad’s heroic battle cry and leaping out into the empty space between the ships. 

Time seemed to stop as he left the railing. Dave’s regrets about the past, and concerns about the future, fell away as the imminent threat of death sharpened his vision and filled him with the intoxicatingly vibrant awareness of now. Whatever happened next, he was following Dad’s footsteps, and that fact alone would erase his shameful betrayal of his father’s memory so many years before.

But gravity doesn’t give a crap for theatrics or righting old wrongs, and Dave landed awkwardly atop a Spanish sailor’s back. Surprised shouts of “Calamtè!”,“Idiota!,”, and something that sounded a lot like “macaroni” but with the “i” in the wrong place, scorched Dave’s ears as he scrambled to disentangle himself from the groaning sailor. He made it to his feet just as Noah and Trevor landed more carefully behind him. 

Standing back to back in vague approximations of fighting stances, the three boarders brandished their swords outward toward the crew of the captured ship. 

Three against twelve, perfect! Dave thought with a grin, adrenaline keeping him from noticing his torqued knee.

For their part, the Spanish crewmen just made rude gestures and got back to work moving a gangway into position between the two ships. In a few moments, the walkway was firmly in place. 

Noah nudged Dave.

“Good job, dickhead,” Noah said under his breath.

Dave ignored him, focusing instead on a fancily dressed Spaniard who seemed to be watching the proceedings with some confusion. Even with his limited nautical experience, Dave knew those were sure signs of an officer. 

“Donde oro?” Dave barked, pointing his cutlass at the gentleman’s chest. 

The captain’s brow wrinkled as he tried to come up with an answer that wouldn’t be taken as an insult. Finally, he shrugged as if to say “ask a stupid question…” and pointed generally west. 

“Manila,” the captain answered in slightly accented English. “You know we just left Spain, right? The gold goes the other way.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Trevor muttered. 

Dave shushed him and turned quickly back to the captain.

“Come on—you got anything good onboard? Little stuff that’d fit in here?” Dave asked, lifting his shirt front to expose a smugglers pouch strapped around his waist. 

The captain shook his head.

“Barrels of olive oil, wine, some farming tools in the hold. You really should try and take ships going east, you know. We pretty much just carry boring stuff to the colonies heading west.”

“Tell me about it,” Dave quipped, his sword tip drooping in disappointment. 

Then Captain Wright’s voice came across from the Valiant.

“You there! What’s the Pope’s Dog saying?” 

Even the Spanish sailors who didn’t speak a lick of English cringed at the self-righteous tones of a devoutly religious man. Dave yanked his sword back up as if holding a dangerous attacker at bay. 

“He don’t speak nuttin’ but gibberish, Captain,” Dave yelled back. “I think some of his crew’s hiding below—best let us clean ‘em out before you come over.”

The Spanish captain raised an eyebrow, but Dave shook his head.

“Trust me,” Dave whispered. “If he knows you can understand he’ll lecture you on religion ‘till you run yourself through. Hates Catholics with a passion, that one.”

The captain paled at the thought and nodded his thanks. Then he spoke rapidly in Spanish to a sailor with a bulbous red nose. The man started to whine but a quick cuff to the back of the head changed his tune. Grudgingly, he gave his captain the right answer.

“Ortega has a flask of rum in the crew’s quarters, and Castillo drew some really good nudie pictures on some old sailcloth,” the captain said, inclining his head toward the forward hatch.

“He’s watching!” Dave hissed, narrowly preventing Noah and Trevor from tossing their swords aside in their rush to grab booze and porn.

“Right,” “Sorry Dave,” they chorused, bringing their sword tips up again to defend against imaginary threats. Resuming their positions behind Dave, the trio shuffled toward the hatch ready to do battle as Dave fought to contain his disappointment—the Spanish captain’s demeanor meant there would be no gold, silver, or jewels to fill his pouch. Passing the captain, Dave assumed a threatening scowl and made the best of it.

“Any fresh eggs?” Dave whispered. Might as well score a fresh omelet out of this fiasco.

“Livestock pens, second storeroom after the galley. Look out for Dulcinea, though. She bites,” the captain answered under his breath.

“Right, thanks. Oh, and sorry about the hole. Our gunner kind of fell asleep and shot you on accident,” Dave finished with a shrug.

Dave didn’t know what “Dios, sálvame de los tontos,” meant, but he got the gist.

****To read the more of The Judas Goat, click this link: The Judas Goat on Amazon’s Kindle Vella

The first three episodes are free, and then Jeff Bezos gives you 200 free tokens to continue reading because he’s a nice guy. Oh, and if you enjoy the story, please “like” it a million times and consider writing a quick review to help other readers find it. Thanks!

The post The Judas Goat Episode 2: Booze, Porn, and Eggs appeared first on Dan Sheehan.

This is the first episode of my new serialized novel about a seventeenth century privateer who’s quest for redemption takes a turn for the weird when a box of magic mushrooms sends him tripping into a wager with Hades. Enjoy!

Episode 1: Gunner Short Takes a Nap

Dave Gillespie welcomed the cannon’s cool barrel against his cheek as he estimated the range to the Spanish merchant ship through the gunport. 

“Wedge,” he said quietly.

He felt the cannon tilt as Trevor and Noah jammed a wedge beneath the breech, dropping the elevation of the barrel as they closed on the Spaniard.

Not that we’ll get a chance to use it, he griped.

As his first journey drew to a close, young Dave had discovered that the life of a privateer, supposedly full of riches, danger, adventure, and glory, was anything but—at least, that’s how it was aboard Valiant. 

Resigning himself to another boring day hauling cargo between ships, Dave started to pull back from the gunport when he heard the whoosh of air being blown through a narrow opening behind him. He froze. He’d made the mistake before of assuming that sound meant the gunner was readying the linstock—only to gag on a pungent fart. The stagnant air inside Valiant’s gun deck was bad enough, but when doubled up with one of the old fellow’s stink biscuits it grew truly foul. Pressing his face harder into the open gun port, he inhaled the clean air from outside and waited for Trevor and Noah’s reactions. If the gunner had crop-dusted them, Dave knew his mates would start retching soon enough.

Voices from the main deck drifted down into Dave’s ears. After seven months suffering their insults and torment, he instantly recognized them.

“But they’ll get all the good stuff!” Sullie whined.

“That’s the point, you idiot,” growled Bosun Livingston.

“An’ what are we supposed to do? Fall down?” Ollie added. 

“Don’t care what you do, just make it loud enough the first mate and Captain hear it from the quarterdeck. Do it right and we’re set. You two start, I’ll join in,” the bosun ordered, then stomped off.

Sullie and Ollie enjoyed the bosun’s protection and used it to browbeat the rest of the crew into doing most of their work. The only duties they actually pulled were boarding party duties, and the bosun took a healthy cut of the trinkets and treasures they pilfered from prizes as payment for letting them loaf the rest of the time. 

Dave wondered what they were up to. It almost sounded like they were plotting a mutiny but that didn’t make sense. They were in close with First Mate Cole, and it was common knowledge that old Captain Wright was retiring after this trip and was evaluating the first mate to replace him. No, the brutish trio had no reason to try and take the ship by force—it would be theirs legally just as soon as Valiant returned to England with her hold full of Spanish goods.

Which might be just as soon as we take this next prize, Dave thought, returning to scanning the Spanish merchant ship without much enthusiasm. 

The sixty-ton caravel represented what was likely to be his last chance to strike it rich on this voyage—if it carried anything valuable, and if by some miracle the primary boarding crew—Sullie, Ollie, and the bosun—needed backup. But Dave’s hopes had been dashed too many times over the last seven months to think this time would be any different. The scenario would play out like always: The Spanish captain would make a half-assed attempt to flee before giving up because it made no sense to risk damaging his ship to protect the low value goods in his hull. Then the Bosun, Sullie, and Ollie would go over to “secure” the prize, pilfer all the good stuff for themselves, and leave only scraps for the rest of the crew. 

Then Captain Wright would indulge in his favorite pastime—lecturing the captive Spanish crew on the evils of Catholicism—while the crew transferred the cargo into Valiant’s hold. When all was said and done, the two ships would sail off in different directions with the whole event more closely resembling a business deal rather than officially sanctioned robbery on the high seas.

Dave, Trevor, and Noah had started the voyage with high hopes. Word along the Plymouth waterfront was that Valiant was a good ship, a lucky ship, and the boys took that to mean a profitable ship. And she was, but only for her officers and owners. Captain Wright’s policy of avoiding treasure galleons and preying only on ships bound for the Spanish colonies brought in modest profits at low risk, and allowed him to do something few privateers ever grow old enough to contemplate; retire. 

But the rank and file crew only earned fractions of the ship’s overall take based on seniority, which meant that Dave, Trevor, and Noah, as the most junior members, would return home with just enough beer money to tide them over until Valiant set sail again. 

Dave couldn’t help feeling guilty. He’d convinced his two best friends to join him with promises of riches and adventure only to land them in nautical indentured servitude. They’d all burnt their bridges in anticipation of returning home independently wealthy; Trevor had run away from his blacksmithing apprenticeship and Noah’d abandoned his family farm just before harvest. And Dave didn’t even want to think about what he’d done to Chastity. 

No, unless they somehow got to ransack a prize before the bosun and his two thuggish lackeys, their futures held either poverty ashore or continued servitude at sea.

Seventy yards away, the Spaniard’s deck came alive with frantically moving crewmen and knocked Dave’s glum thoughts aside. They appeared to be readying the ship for action and the possibility of a real fight sent Dave’s hopes skyrocketing.

Nobody fights for olive oil—they must be carrying treasure! 

Too excited by the prospect of imminent action to worry about dangerous fumes, Dave pulled back from the open port to rub the sweat from his eyes. Blinking away the stinging salt, he quickly smooshed his face back into the narrow gap between Valiant’s oak hull and the cannon–and sighed with disappointment. Instead of opening her gunports and running out her cannons, the Spanish crew had struck her colors and was in the process of dropping her sails. 

Crap, Dave thought, slumping against the cannon in resignation.

I never should have left her, Dave thought, coming dangerously close to admitting that following his father’s footsteps had been a bad idea. From there, it would have been a short stretch to admitting he’d thoroughly screwed up by abandoning Chastity when she needed him most. Only the drive to live up to his father’s example made that decision palatable to him, and now it looked like he would never have the opportunity.

Then Gunner Short, having actually prepared the linstock quite well, took a little catnap. As he nodded off, the linstock in his hand dipped into breech and sent a double load of chain shot ripping through the Spaniard’s hull.

Dave’s world suddenly felt wrapped in cotton as the cannon went off inches from his head. Scrambling back from the hellish explosion, he found himself on his hands and knees but unable to see. Coughing and spitting on the deck inches from his face, he slowly became aware of a profound ringing and a single pinprick of light, like he was deep inside a tunnel looking at a distant entrance, that appeared before him. As the gray fuzz on the periphery of his vision receded, he sat up and saw Gunner Short staring at the smoldering linstock in his hand with the bemused look of a man who’d just woken up from a nap. 

An instant later, First Mate Cole appeared like a howling demon from hell. Shoving the old gunner aside, he grabbed Dave by the shoulders and shouted something that was lost beneath the ringing in his ears. When Dave didn’t answer, the first mate shook him like a rag doll and repeated his order with exaggerated slowness. 

“Ready—the—boarding—party!” 

 Dave’s confusion evaporated as the words he’d longed to hear registered in his concussed brain. Giving the first mate a quick nod, he turned to Trevor and Noah and found them still staring like stunned mullets at the gunner. Reaching across the hot barrel, he slapped his best friends’ sooty faces to get their attention, then shouted the good news. 

“Grab your pig-stickers and stuff—we’re going over!”

****To read the more of The Judas Goat, click this link: The Judas Goat on Amazon’s Kindle Vella

The first three episodes are free, and then Jeff Bezos gives you 200 free tokens to continue reading because he’s a nice guy. Oh, and if you enjoy the story, please “like” it a million times and consider writing a quick review to help other readers find it. Thanks!

The post The Judas Goat Episode 1: Gunner Short Takes a Nap appeared first on Dan Sheehan.

Who goes from writing non-fiction about PTSD and combat trauma to adventure fantasy fiction about mushroom trips and testicle-biting goats? You guessed it; this guy (With the hat, not the tongue; that’s Mike.)

I’ve just published the first five episodes of my new serialized novel, The Judas Goat, on Kindle Vella. The program went live this week on Amazon.com, and offers a new way to read original content on a smart phone.

The first three episodes are free. After that, readers use tokens purchased on Amazon to unlock and read follow on episodes. For those who spend tokens, Amazon allows them to assign one “Fave” rating to their favorite story per week. These “Fave” ratings determine whether Amazon puts the story on the digital equivalent of the front shelf, or stuffed behind last year’s ACT Prep books.

So, this post is going to be short and sweet. Please read The Judas Goat, label it your “Fave” as many times as humanly possible, and in return I promise to keep writing whatever irreverent stuff bubbles up from the depths of my dirty little mind.

Here’s the link: The Judas Goat

P.S. My daughter did the original art work for the cover. Please do not tell her that artists get paid in anything other than trips to the açaí bowl place. It would break her heart.

The post And Now For Something Completely Different… appeared first on Dan Sheehan.

EPILOGUE

THOSE WHO’VE FOUGHT in Iraq and Afghanistan have an historic opportunity to redefine the veteran’s experience for future generations of American warriors. How? By approaching the challenges of coming home as integral components of the warrior’s journey, not as aberrations that only affect the weak.

America’s relationship with her veterans has matured to a point where invisible wounds are socially understood to be unavoidable consequences of sending troops to war. It is time we, as veterans, do the same. The reality of combat has changed each and every one of us in fundamental ways. If we take the opportunity afforded us by the current political and social atmosphere to understand these changes, we stand to become better men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, friends, and citizens.

This opportunity did not happen overnight. It was created by the tireless efforts of generations of American veterans—past and present. The warriors who came before us labored long and hard to secure the social, political, and economic support we enjoy today. Lest we take this support for granted, we should remember that America has not always been so inclined to care for those who fight her wars. Consider these facts, catalogued in James Wright’s excellent work, Those Who Have Borne the Battle:

—1783: Congress refuses to fund pensions already promised to Continental Army officers for service during the Revolutionary War. A coup by Continental Army officers is narrowly avoided by George Washington’s personal intervention. (p.25)

— In reaction to petitions from individual veterans with claims of Revolutionary War related injuries, the Congressional Committee on Claims stated: “Congress cannot undertake the support of paupers merely because they may have been at some period of their lives engaged in the public service.” (p.67)

—“No uniform pension for all surviving members of the War of 1812 existed until 1871 . . .” (p.76)

—“Congress approved comprehensive pensions for all [1846] Mexican War veterans in 1887.” (p.77)

—In 1932 a group of some 20,000 veterans and their families assembled in Washington DC to peti- tion the government for early payment of a bonus promised to veterans of WWI. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur “. . . personally led mounted cavalry commanded by George Patton, tanks, and infantry with tear-gas canisters and bayonets to expel the veterans.” (p.93)

Take a look at how far we’ve come. In 1932, in the worst of the Depression, our own military, under orders from the President, attacked veterans with tanks, bayonets, and tear-gas because they were asking for early payment of an already agreed upon bonus. Contrast that with the fact that, in 2014, a scandal concerning wait times at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Medical Center ignited a public outcry that resulted in the resignation of VA Secretary Shinseki less than two months later. A month after that, President Obama signed a bill into law appropriating an additional $16 billion to overhaul the VA.

Bayonets and tanks on one hand, accountability and more money on the other. These two examples show the evolution of America’s relationship with her veterans and highlight the importance and primacy of veterans’ affairs in current political dialogues.

Far from having to scrabble for pensions and bonuses, today’s veterans have a wealth of opportunities waiting for them. Want to go to school? The Post 9-11 GI Bill is there to pay for it. How about starting your own business? The Small Business Administration has a whole department dedicated to helping veterans accomplish this. Need a house loan? Veterans are eligible for those as well. Medical care remains a challenge for veterans, but, given the disarray of our healthcare system as a whole, that problem is not limited to VA facilities.

Even though challenges remain, the benefits available to today’s veterans are wide-ranging and comprehensive. Perhaps even more importantly, they are provided ungrudgingly by the vast majority of society. These benefits are not considered as gifts to be doled out or withdrawn at will, but rather as a national obligation to those few Americans who choose to serve.

The organization directly responsible for fulfilling this national obligation is far from perfect. But as a governmental bureaucracy, the VA has demonstrated laudable willingness to address internal shortcomings and is making honest efforts to correct them—even if its feet must be held to the fire to do it. And with veteran service organizations and organized veterans’ groups wielding increasing political power, the problems at the VA are being corrected faster than ever before.

But improving veterans’ reintegration will take more than just fixing the VA. It will require changes in how we as a nation view the human costs of sending men and women to war. These adjustments have to occur on multiple levels: from the individual veteran’s understanding of how their experiences changed them, to the political wisdom to consider all the costs of conflict before engaging, to American society’s sharing of the burdens they’ve asked their military to assume in their name.

Most of those changes are beyond our ability to influence directly. Changing American society and injecting wisdom into political discourse are difficult, if not impossible, for most veterans to accomplish on their own. The improvements in those areas will take years of gradual adjustments if they happen at all.

But there is one area where each and every veteran can have a direct impact: the individual level. If we accept the concept that our duties as warriors do not end until we’ve met the challenges of coming home, then we stand to positively impact the reintegration of all veterans—now and in the future. Once we’ve done the hard work to process and learn from our own experiences, then we are in a position to apply our hard-earned wisdom to any number of political, social, and cultural problems. In this manner, the successful return of one veteran can be multiplied thousands of times as he or she shares their boon with their circle of influence, however large or small it may be.

This bottom-up approach has been overlooked in the current national dialogue about veterans. This is likely because few are willing to say that veterans have the ultimate responsibility to navigate the challenges of coming home. Others are willing to help, but each and every one of us has to be the driving force behind our own successful return. There is no other way.

This book draws heavily from my own experiences to illuminate a pathway through the challenges of coming home, but my path is not the only one that exists. You may find different tools to use and different routes to take and, indeed, I hope you do. If this book does no more than spark conversations between veterans who measure my efforts and find them ineffective against their own, then I will consider it an unqualified success. It would be the open sharing of what worked for them, and the fact that the conversation happened at all, that would signal progress for veterans as a whole.

Our service to the nation did not end when we took off our uniforms. By spreading out through society as healthy, well-adjusted veterans, we stand to influence not only our immediate family and friends with our wisdom and maturity, but also the fortunes of the nation as a whole. Crisis and conflict will always be part of our world, and future generations of American men and women—our children—will have to deal with them. Rest assured, they’ll shoulder the burdens of service and take the fight to our enemies, just like we did. Then they’ll come home and realize their challenges are not over, just like we did. The military will teach them what they need to know to fight and win. It will be up to us to teach them how to fully come home. The only way we can do that is if we’ve done it ourselves.

CONCLUSION

THE WARRIOR’S JOURNEY—the hero’s journey—is nothing more than a label placed on the particular branch of human consciousness that has carried strong men and women through life-changing experiences since the dawn of time. This book has tried to explain how this current influences your life and how you can better navigate its twists and turns by becoming an active participant instead of a passive observer.

What lies at the end of this journey? Well, death. That’s because the warrior’s journey continues for as long as you live. It’s a circle you’ll pass through many times in your life on slightly different trajectories. If you develop and maintain the self-awareness borne of honest introspection, the challenges of each revolution will teach you different valuable lessons, and you’ll continue to grow in maturity and wisdom. By refusing to stagnate, you stand to live a meaningful, fulfilled life surrounded by people who love and cherish you—faults and all.

It is my sincere hope that your life as a veteran is consciously guided by what you’ve learned from your experiences in uniform. Hard lessons about the value and fragility of life, often written in the blood of our heroes, should never be forgotten.

If nothing else matters to you, think about this. When you do die, when you finally link-up with your buddies who fell in battle, how do you want them to greet you? Will they shake their heads at how you pissed away the opportunities they were denied? Will they berate you for remaining mired in the past and ruining your chances for happiness?

Or will they greet you with a proud smile and a chest-crushing embrace? When the thudding, closed-fisted, back-pounding is done and the tears self-consciously wiped away, will they take a step back, hold you at arms length and say:

You did good, real good.

I don’t know. But that’s what I’m going for.

THE END

The post Continuing Actions Epilogue and Conclusion appeared first on Dan Sheehan.

AS UNSELFISH AS IT GETS

“Cover me, I’m fucked!” “Fuck you—I’m covered!” —Conversation between two grunts at Thermopylae, Fallujah, and every battle in-between

IT DOESN’T MATTER if you’re a grunt, an admin clerk, motor transport, or a high-speed, low-drag recon guy, there’s somebody in your unit who’s a selfish prick. This guy—or gal—always makes sure they’re taken care of first. Their pay is never screwed up, their vehicle always has the chow and water in it, their shelter is always the first one up and comfortable, and they never lift a finger to help anybody else.

Selfishness, as much as we act like it doesn’t occur in the military, is an unavoidable attribute of humans everywhere. At some point, the unselfish majority of service members realize they cannot change the selfish ones and quit trying. Instead, they double-down on their own selflessness in an attempt to make up for those who are only looking out for themselves. They become almost violently selfless—aggressively seeking any opportunity to put the needs of others first. To the veterans who fall into this category, and it is the majority of us, everything I’ve written thus far has likely sounded selfish.

As well it should. Because up to now the continuing actions described in this book have required veterans to go internal, to focus all their effort and energy on overcoming their own challenges. As I showed with examples from my own life, this requires taking time away from family, work, studies, and making money in order to get your own physical, mental, and spiritual house in order. This sounds like the very definition of selfish.

But it’s not.

IT’S NOT SELFISH BECAUSE OF WHAT COMES NEXT

Nobody gets a medal for completing their journey. There’s no secret handshake, no plaque to hang on the wall, and no elevated social status for achieving it. The last-place runner in a 5k gets more overt congratulations for their efforts than you will. But that’s never been the point of this journey. The warrior’s journey is one of discovery, not for our own gain, but so we can help others.

Just as helping a comrade in battle is part of our duty, so is helping a comrade at home. Executing this duty, however, is not as straightforward as just dragging them out of the line of fire. For the vast majority of us, the knowledge and skills required to assist others through the challenges of coming home are not innate. They must be learned.

Returning warriors must initially focus on their own challenges because that is the only way to attain the tools they’ll need to help others. You have to experience the confusion, loss of purpose and maybe your faith, and also the deep betrayal of having your emotions seemingly turn against you—and then learn to deal with these issues—before you can help somebody else do the same.

Overcoming the personal challenges of the first three phases of the warrior’s return—physical, emotional, and spiritual— were the prerequisites to reach this point. Your efforts up till now had to be directed inward. From this point on, however, they go outward. This is the final phase of the warrior’s return—the one where we share what we’ve learned to help others. To invest blood, sweat, and tears into extracting something valuable from your experiences, and then share it freely with those who need it the most, is the very opposite of selfish.

FINDING THE BOON

Love it or hate it, your time in the service has put you through experiences that have given you something, something valuable that is hard to put into words. Like the archetypal warriors in mythology, your journey has transformed you. You’ve learned things few others have, changed, and emerged from the crucible of service as a different person. It is in the essence of this personal transformation that we find what Campbell described as “the boon.”

The mythological warrior’s journey doesn’t end until he or she returns from the unknown bearing something of value. This “thing” is most often enhanced consciousness, a changed worldview, or something beneficial to the warrior’s community as a whole. Gaining this boon, and returning to share it with others, is the whole point of the warrior’s journey. It’s what elevates the journey beyond just a series of adventures.

The definition of what could be considered a boon has changed with time. Back when a warrior’s skill on the battlefield decided life or death for the entire community, the boon may have been victory itself. World Wars I and II may have had this aspect due to the immensity of the conflicts, but few other modern wars attain that level of existential threat. Negotiated settlements, political interests, and laws of armed conflict have removed total annihilation of the losing side as a true possibility in modern combat. More often than not, wars are now fought to achieve limited goals and objectives. Individual warrior’s efforts to secure victory achieve little notice in the community because the community as a whole has very little at stake.

So what boon can the modern warrior offer society? If fire has already been brought down from the gods, technology and science have proven what our world is and isn’t, and worldviews are formed by instant media access to the farthest reaches of the planet, then what of value is left for the warrior to bring back from the unknown?

Wisdom and insight.

The wisdom and insight gained by experience, by thoughtful consideration, and by becoming conscious of what is truly important in life. These are the modern warrior’s boon. The terrible trials and ordeals of combat, if survived, offer warriors unique opportunities to learn and grow. These opportunities are not for the faint of heart and, indeed, to experience them we must spend time at the fragile border between life and death. But the warrior who has seen, done, and survived the arena of combat has earned the opportunity to learn valuable lessons. The boon of wisdom is theirs for the taking.

To do this, though, to achieve the wisdom and maturity of experience that is the veteran’s boon to society, returning warriors must overcome the challenges of their return. The physical, emotional, and spiritual impacts of combat must be acknowledged, understood, and incorporated into our identity and awareness. Only by refusing to stagnate and choosing to complete our journey can we gain the wisdom of our experiences.

Then we can look for the opportunity to share it—and fulfill our duty to our comrades in the process.

THE COMMUNITY

To whom do we offer our hard-earned wisdom and maturity? As loudly as America’s love for her veterans is proclaimed in advertisements and media reports, the population as a whole is not waiting with baited breath for our wisdom to pour forth. Before that can happen we, veterans as a whole, must demonstrate the value of our wisdom. And for most veterans this will not occur at the national level. We may end up there, but first we must look closer to home to find the community most willing and able to benefit from the boon we’ve wrested from our adventures.

FAMILY

The people closest to us form the core of our community. Our family members, especially our kids, bear the brunt of our burdens if we stagnate. Physical isolation, emotional coldness, flashes of rage, and unpredictable responses are how we transfer our burdens on to them. But if we do the hard work required to push through the challenges of our return, they stand to benefit the most.

Buddha is credited with the insightful phrase, “Life is suffering.” Well, he had a point. Look around you. The reality is that everyone you know will die. The ability to ignore this fact is one of the first luxuries combat takes away from us. We’ve seen how fragile the human body is, how a huge personality bleeds into the dirt just the same as a meek one. Our relationship with death is one of equanimity and respect; we can respect its inevitability while refusing to make its job any easier.

Our family members are unlikely to have this same understanding. During times of family grief or tragedy, they will be confronted by the uncomfortable truths of life, often when they are least prepared to deal with them. During these times of crisis, the wisdom we’ve extracted from our experiences can be most valuable. We can be the pillar they lean on for support. A word, a touch, a look that lets them know we understand their pain, without them having to explain it, can make all the difference to someone imagining they are alone. It’s not that we can fix what has happened, but rather our ability to understand their pain that makes our support unique and effective.

And it’s not only in the arena of death and suffering where our wisdom has value. The ability to pass on life lessons, guide others through difficult transitions, and provide a solid foundation for our children to develop into responsible adults are also part of the returning warrior’s boon. Combat is a savage but effective teacher. The life lessons we learned under fire, the struggles of transitioning into, and out of, the military, and the awareness we gained by unpacking our reactions to combat have matured us beyond our years. The life wisdom born of this maturity is the boon that can provide calm and steady guidance through any challenges we, or our families, face in the future.

OTHER VETERANS

Regardless whether you are an orphan or are surrounded by multiple generations of your kin, another community exists that stands to benefit from the efforts you make to find your boon—veterans.

Every warrior will need to figure out their own way to transition home. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help each other do it. For every veteran who overcomes the challenges of coming home, there are many more who’ve stagnated. You know them. They are our brothers and sisters who can’t move on, who are mired in rage and hate. They are the ones who hide behind HESCO barriers filled with misconceptions and refuse to patrol. They are not living in the present, only dying in the past.

They cannot be goaded into leaving their imagined security. Encouraging them to honestly examine their emotions elicits angry responses and accusations of weakness. They regularly retreat behind social media avatars and spew hatred and rage online, portraying themselves as living reincarnations of the Spartan 300—stoic defenders of a population they denigrate for requiring protection while simultaneously longing to feel part of it. Far from the physical battlefields where they fought, these men and women maintain their combat mindset as if their life still depends on it. It is fear of the work required to heal their inner wounds and reestablish their concept of humanity that is keeping them from moving forward. In their never-ending battle, the threats they protect against are no longer external. They’re internal.

How can we, their brothers- and sisters-in-arms, help them recognize this? How can we overcome the anger and scorn they direct at us when we attempt to pull back the curtain on their suffering? There is a way we can do this that doesn’t involve confrontation. It requires leadership that encourages without ultimatums, that empowers rather than subordinates the follower, and that fosters initiative on all levels. It’s called “leadership by example” and it is the foundational ethos of any good leader.

Imagine a platoon in full MOPP gear, gas masks and all. Dead birds and dogs give evidence that it was not a drill, that deadly gas really was used. When the “All Clear” sounds, there is no mad rush to strip off the protective gear. Foul-smelling gas masks remain tight against their faces as they cast nervous glances at each other. But they can’t stay like that forever. The platoon has work to do, a mission to accomplish. They cannot stagnate in fear. Eventually someone takes the risk. He breaks the seal on his mask and the rest of the platoon watches closely.

First breath. Is he going to die?

No coughing, no tears. Maybe a fake grimace if he’s a joker, then a smile. Everybody strips off their masks and inhales deeply. When they exhale, their tension goes, too.

This is the situation our modern warrior’s journey leaves us in. We all return home wearing the gas mask of compartmentalization. Then we retreat into our holes, houses, and communities and struggle to breathe. The “All Clear” sounds a thousand times but cannot reach our ears. It’s not until we see someone else, someone like us, take their mask off—and live—that we grow strong enough to do it, too.

RETURNING TO A FULL, RICH LIFE

The compartmented life is a half-life, with emotions blunted and separated from conscious thoughts and actions. We want to be that perfect dad, mom, son, or daughter. We want our lovers to know us inside and out—our weaknesses as well as our strengths. We want to develop nurturing relationships with our children and for them to know we love them more than life itself. But we can’t live a life like that if we choose to keep our masks on.

We fool ourselves into believing our bullying and strict discipline are intended to make ourselves and our kids tougher, better equipped to handle life’s challenges. We may even see living an emotional half-life as some sick badge of honor and accept it as an unavoidable part of being a warrior. Much of our concept of strength revolves around the falsehood that, to be strong, you must control and suppress any emotional response not reeking of testosterone. As wrong as this sentiment is, it is an aspect of American culture that veterans may have to address before they can gain the courage to break the seal.

When General Patton got in trouble for slapping a shell- shocked soldier who was in a hospital in Italy, he explained that he was trying to motivate the young man to shake it off, to buck up. While a physical act like that is unthinkable today, there are still people in our society who believe veterans suffering PTSD and postservice adjustment issues are whiny babies who just need to “man up.”

This is the message of ignorance.

Whether ill-considered or criminally stupid, people who make statements that our veterans are somehow weak for experiencing normal human emotions are saying that our military consists of disposable heroes. They’re promoting the simple-minded concept that the only benefit a warrior has to society is on the battlefield, and usually by dying there. They don’t seem to realize that our nation stands to benefit tremendously from an influx of well-adjusted veterans empowered by the conscious wisdom of their experiences. The only way to gain that wisdom is to fully expose ourselves to the traumas of our past.

If these individuals are veterans, I recommend they take an honest look at themselves and consider how damaging their statements are to their brothers and sisters who have shown the courage to face their demons. Those who make these statements without having served should be ignored as fools. While we fought to protect their right of free speech, among other things, that doesn’t mean we have to listen to their message of ignorance that serves to enslave and marginalize us.

Veterans do not have to bury their emotions forever. We do not have to meekly accept that our service will always force us to react in ways we know to be hurtful to our, and our families’, happiness. We are warriors, not victims, and we have a choice to make: Stagnate in fear or advance to face our challenges head- on. Attacking and overcoming our obstacles is the only real option.

But somebody has to be first to go over the wall, somebody has to be first to take off their gas mask. Your buddies from combat are waiting for you to break the seal, to begin the process of de-compartmentalization. You can lead from the front and show, rather than tell, them how to move forward. And by taking the initiative to address your own challenges of coming home, you are leading by example for the entire veteran community, not just your close buddies.

OH, AND ANOTHER THING . . .

If the thought of investing serious time and energy in your own health and happiness still makes you feel selfish, here’s another consideration. The two primary beneficiaries of the wisdom you stand to gain if you do focus on yourself for a bit—your family and other veterans—may very well be one and the same.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, veterans are more likely than members of the general public to have family connections to the military. Seventy-nine percent of veterans surveyed had immediate family members who also served, as opposed to 61% of the general public. This gap grows larger among respondents under 40 years of age—60% of these veterans had an immediate family member who also served as opposed to 39% of the general public.

While interesting, the concentration of volunteers among families with a strong tradition of military service may not be enough to push a stubborn and proud veteran to face the challenges of coming home. They may imagine their grandfather never had any problems after WWII, so why should they have any after Iraq? Even if in their hearts they know this to be false, family myths and legends are difficult to overcome. This is why, in light of the following trend, it is more important than ever for today’s veterans to face the challenges of coming home openly, honestly, and without considering themselves selfish or weak for doing so:

“The biggest gap in terms of family connections is in the share [of the population] that has a child who has served in the military. Veterans are more than twice as likely as members of the general public to say they have a son or daughter who has served.” (The Military-Civilian Gap: Fewer Family Connections, 23 November 2011 by Kim Parker www.pewsocialtrends.org)

This report tells us there is more than double the chance that your kid(s)—if you have any—will choose to serve because you did. If this doesn’t reach in and grab hold of your parental responsibility bone, then nothing will. There may be nothing you can do to influence your child’s decision to serve—rail against the military and they may rebel against you, encourage it as their duty and they may rebel against you. Regardless of your opinions of military service, your children will know that you served and that your period of service had a profound impact on you. Their model of what it means to be a mature adult will include some aspect of military service in it. That’s just the way it works.

They may serve, they may not. But if they do, then they will likely face the same trials and challenges you faced. Indeed, that may be their primary motivation to serve—to prove that they can fight the same battles as you did. The military will prepare them very well to go into combat. But the leftover physical reactions, the chasm between their conscious and unconscious minds, and the shattered remains of their humanity are all going to follow them home from their battlefields, just like they did for us. It is unlikely that military culture will adapt quickly enough to address these issues in time to help our kids. But we can.

It is our responsibility to prepare our children for the challenges of coming home. Don’t have any? Nieces, nephews, and other young people in your community count as well. The challenges they will face, should they choose to serve, have not changed for thousands of years. They’ll face them because they want to test their mettle, and they’ll discover, just as we did, that the transformation they seek comes at a cost.

These young people will need role models, mentors, and heroes to show them how to handle that cost. What kind will you be? One who hides the truth and rearms the trap of stagnation? Or one with the strength to face, deal with, and share the full truth of what war does to human beings?

If you wish to feed the boon of your knowledge back into the loop, I encourage you to use this book as the starting point for the return phase of your own journey. Armed with the background information in the first part, and the specific examples of the second, you are ready to move forward against your own challenges.

The challenges are there. They’re real, they’re deadly, and they’ve always been borne by those who shoulder the warrior’s burdens. This book has brought you up to the Line of Departure but that’s as far as it can go. From here on out, it’s up to you.

So, muster your knowledge, decide upon your plan, and step out with confidence. The only way to fail is to quit trying.

The post Continuing Actions Chapter 11 appeared first on Dan Sheehan.

“DOC!”

BY THIS POINT IN MY JOURNEY, I figured I had it all under control. My self-aid consisted of spearfishing and free-diving to quiet the physical aftereffects of combat and writing to understand the emotional ones. I had developed my self-awareness to the point where I was able to understand the genesis of my emotions and reactions significantly better than before. I felt I had successfully moved past my combat experiences and had really, finally, come home.

But I hadn’t. Unresolved aspects of my combat experiences lingered deep beneath my well-adjusted exterior. I’d handled the physical and emotional issues pretty well. But now—ten years after coming home from Iraq—I finally realized I needed help with the spiritual ones.

It was a hard step because I took a lot of pride in the idea that I’d been able to handle everything myself. I’d spent three years processing, reconstructing, and recording my emotions and reactions to combat and was confident I’d figured them out. Hell, I’d written a book that other veterans said had helped them. I’d even provided buddy-aid for other veterans at Semper Fi Odyssey— and had been good at it! I took all that as evidence that I was golden, that I had healed myself and was moving forward on my own.

I was so certain that I’d taken care of all the aftereffects of combat that when I began to feel depressed I knew there had to be a different reason. At the time we were living in suburban northern Virginia and, while the area had a certain beauty, I’d never felt truly comfortable there. It was too manicured, too hemmed in by urban sprawl, and the lifestyle there just didn’t work for me. But I told myself it was temporary and that we’d move again soon. Only “soon” kept moving farther into the future. When a couple of years stretched into three, with no end in sight, I tried to stop thinking about moving on. Instead I focused all my attention on raising our two kids.

Raising our kids. That was a worthy place to sink my energy and effort. I learned a lot about parenting from my own parents. Their examples form the baseline for how I do, and do not, want to interact with my own children. As with many facets of my life, my father is my prime role model. He’s a great dad, but he wasn’t perfect. Growing up, Dad set rules that were to be followed to the letter. If they were broken, he could flash to white-hot anger in what seemed like a heartbeat. As a young boy this reaction scared and threatened me and, when my infant son came home from the hospital, I promised myself I wouldn’t act the same way. But I had inherited Dad’s temper, and the challenges of parenting seemed custom-made to test my restraint.

It was my failure to control this temper that brought unease and self-loathing back into my life. Amid the shade of oak trees and scent of jasmine in Virginia, the emotions I thought I had processed out of my system by writing After Action came back to haunt me. Only they seemed a little darker than before, like they could erase any happy thought and make my whole outlook on life change for the worse. I couldn’t put a finger on the exact cause—but there was a pattern to when this darkness hit me the hardest.

It always started with a blowup. The kids would catch me when I was tired, frustrated, or trying to get something accomplished. They’d whine, willfully cross any line I told them not to, and generally exert their two- and four-year-old senses of independence by obstructing every effort I made to complete the day’s tasks.

And then I’d lose my temper.

Red-faced and screaming, I would bowl them over with righteous daddy-anger. My voice would deepen in timber and gain the harshness of threatened violence. Even as I felt this dangerous anger rise, I could do nothing to stop it. When it erupted I could hear my father’s voice echoing in my head—and knew the impact it was having on the scared, immediately penitent, four-year-old boy in front of me. It was a sour victory, a bully’s victory. Worse, I’d failed in my primary goal of killing the anger. It remained as strong as ever.

In the aftermath of these blowups, I’d get depressed. The only solid goal I’d set for myself as a father and I had just failed at it. Again. Not only that, but the growing suspicion that writing After Action hadn’t been the final act in my return, that I hadn’t succeeded in moving on to “happily-ever-after” was making me feel like a charlatan, a faker. Even the book reviews and emails from other veterans thanking me for helping them made me feel like a failure. They were just being nice, I told myself. How could I have helped them when I hadn’t helped myself?

The periods of darkness lasted anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Sometimes they grouped together into longer stretches. It seemed that as soon as I came out of one slump, the kids would get my goat again—and down I’d go. I was stuck in this cycle and dimly aware of my own role in perpetuating it. But I didn’t know how to break it.

THE CONFRONTATION

I’ve always sucked at acting happy when I’m not. Lena, my wife, finally grew tired of my continued professions that everything was “fine” and confronted me one evening after dinner. We were walking through Reston Town Center, a group of high-rises, restaurants, and shops built to look like city blocks—manicured Disney World versions of city blocks—amid the suburban sprawl outside of Washington, DC. The cold December wind raced through the gaps in the buildings and straight through our thin jackets. Hands jammed in our pockets, we kept walking around the block, talking in the carefully considered words of a conversation where everything is on the table.

She knew I was unhappy, really unhappy, but I couldn’t tell her why. I felt silly admitting that my inability to control my anger was causing me such distress. I wanted a solution to the problem but didn’t know what it was. She offered up possibilities I was too chicken to voice.

“Is it me you’re unhappy with? Our marriage?”

“No.”

“Then what—watching the kids? Are you unhappy staying home?”

“No, it’s not that. All I know is that I can’t stay here—in this place. It’s not you, it’s not the kids; I just can’t stay here.” That was it—I grabbed onto that thought like a lifeline.

“I just hate this place.” There, I said it.

Whatever it was that was boiling up inside me had to be Virginia’s fault. If I could just get back to California, back to the escape offered by the Pacific Ocean, then everything would be all right. The cold waters near our house in San Diego had given me the means to quell the unease and irritability before. Maybe that was all I needed to control the anger once and for all. If we could just get back there, I’d beat it. That was it. I needed the ocean, the release it offered, to be happy. Anything less would just not work.

This was not news to Lena. We’d always talked about returning to San Diego someday. She just didn’t realize that my “someday” couldn’t wait until after retirement. She agreed that we should move back but with one caveat. If moving back to California didn’t take care of whatever was bothering me, then I needed to get professional help. I readily agreed. After all, I was sure a change of venue was all I needed. I’d be fine once I could dissipate the energy myself.

It took a little finagling, but six months after our shivering conversation, we moved back to California.

At first it seemed to do the trick. We moved back into our old house, hit our old haunts again, got the kids boogie boards and snorkel kits, and spent hours on the beach. San Diego was everything we remembered and more. It truly felt like we were home.

YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE

But after the dust settled from our move, the darkness came back. I didn’t even have to fully lose my temper with the kids to feel like I was losing my battle to be a good dad. Just feeling the anger rise in me was enough. Even with the outlets of surfing and diving, the tension didn’t go away. One day I found myself staring over the deep blue waters of the Pacific from a bluff, depressed, angry, and out of ideas. The car was loaded in the parking lot with a surfboard and all my spearfishing gear—but I was too distracted and depressed to feel like using them. I’d fired my last round and it hadn’t killed the beast. It was then, when I realized that even amongst the natural beauty I’d pined over for years I remained unhappy, that I knew I had to ask for help.

Right. Help. But where?

My perception of the Veterans Administration was not a good one. I’d only gone to one VA facility when I first left active duty and swore I’d never go back. The entire building reeked of stress and bureaucratic roadblocks. Every office had lines of greying veterans sitting outside it, waiting their turn to have their complaint heard. Just walking in the door made me feel uncomfortable, like I was going to catch something contagious. I’d dropped off my paperwork as quickly as possible and left, vowing never to return.

I really wasn’t interested in going to the VA. I feared that, if I did somehow get an appointment, they’d write me a prescription and send me on my way. Or that I’d spend three hours with some civilian counselor trying to explain what a “Marine” is. How was someone like that supposed to understand me enough to be able to help? And I sure as hell didn’t want to resort to using drugs. Realizing I needed help was one thing. But figuring out who to talk to was another. Then a friend recommended I look into the local Vet Center.

Tentatively, I called the number for the San Marcos Vet Center. On the second ring it was answered by a young voice, crisp and clear, as if answering the battalion duty phone. Within minutes I was speaking with a counselor. He gave me the rundown of what the Vet Center offered and asked if I wanted to come in immediately—or if I could wait until Thursday morning. He explained that was when they did routine orientation interviews for veterans new to the Center.

I went in the next Thursday—and all my fears proved to be groundless. It wasn’t in a huge building designed to house every possible function of the VA under one confusing roof. The Vet Center occupies a suite of offices in the San Marcos City Hall. Want to feel welcome and comfortable walking into a building? Then go to San Marcos City Hall. You walk on shaded paths past babbling fountains to get to the main entrance. Three-story glass windows fill the lobby with light and a smiling receptionist greets you as you come in. The cool air is quiet and calm and you wonder if caffeine is even allowed in the building—or just herbal tea. A display case features the huge painting of a bearded veteran leaning against the Vietnam Memorial Wall, as his fallen comrades press their hands against his from within. The door to the Vet Center is prominently marked and I actually felt proud that I belonged there. This is not a place where veterans slink in quietly. It is a place where pride of service is evident, and respect for our sacrifices is freely given.

Entering the suite you’re immediately greeted by the receptionist. A cheerful welcome, please sign in, and can I get you a cup of coffee? Where were the sullen gate guards I’d feared? Where were the piles of red tape I had to deal with? Shouldn’t I be overhearing someone complaining loudly about something by now? It was too efficient, too welcoming, and too comfortable to be true. There had to be a catch. Maybe I’d find it when—if—I finally got to see a counselor. Probably some psychologist who couldn’t get a job elsewhere, sucking on the government tit. Yup, I figured, that must be it—that’s where this Vet Center charade will fall apart.

The first counselor I spoke with had been a Marine amtrac driver. He’d spent two deployments in Iraq in an infantry role, and my fears of having to do hours of elementary explanations evaporated. After we shared basic histories, he explained what the Vet Center does, who can use its services, and what the normal flow of counseling looks like. The Vet Center program began in the 1970s and has grown to over 300 locations across the United States. Technically part of the Veterans Administration, Vet Centers are specially designed and staffed to focus on the needs of combat veterans, their families, and victims of military sexual trauma.

GOING IN

The next Thursday I met with the counselor assigned to me. Appropriately enough, he’d been a corpsman in his earlier career. A retired Senior Chief, Michael had spent most of his naval service on the “green side,” tending to wounded Marines. He is a soft-spoken bear of a man with a slight Jamaican accent, and he immediately made me feel at home. I saw him once a week for a month or so, then once a month after that. In a very short period of time, Michael was able to help me identify what was bothering me, figure out a way to mitigate it, and erase the depressive cycle that had followed me from Virginia to California.

Nothing magical took place in Michael’s office. He didn’t lift any curses from my soul or prescribe drugs that would rewire my brain. All he did was listen—and apply his clinical knowledge of combat trauma to the specifics of my experiences. I played a role in the positive outcome as well. The extensive program of self-aid I’d undertaken had set me up well for quick, effective counseling.

He didn’t have to sift through years of memories to get to the root cause of what was bothering me. Neither did I try and hide anything or stubbornly refuse to share difficult emotions or memories. I basically dumped the entirety of my experiences on his desk and said, “Here it is—help me figure it out.”

And he did.

GETTING TO THE ROOT

What was it that was bothering me? What was upsetting me so much that it could erase all the positive aspects of my life and leave me depressed and angry? It all boiled down to one thing— one simple statement that formed what I’d thought was a healthy perspective on my combat experiences. It was supposed to free me from the guilt I’d brought home from combat. Instead, it just gave the guilt a sheltered room in which to grow.

In the final stages of writing After Action, I’d uncovered the root cause of my unease. It had been the killing of other human beings that bothered me most about Iraq. The act of killing called into question my very self-identity as a good person and, as a result, made me question whether I was worthy of any- thing happy or good in life. Sure, they’d been enemy soldiers and I was just doing my job, but they’d still been people. What’s done is done, however, and I couldn’t bring them back to life. I decided that this was my burden to bear, the fact that I’d killed people, and I just had to figure out a way to move forward in life carrying it.

I did that by wrapping it all up in one succinct phrase—the phrase that was supposed to shrink my burden but ended up engorging it.

Good people don’t kill. I killed. What does that make me?

I meant it as a way to remind myself to always do good. But this phrase, and the burden it describes, became my “stuck point.” In PTSD, a stuck point is a place where rational thought breaks down. The mind ceases to process information or reach conclusions based on solid, rational thinking. Instead, it leaps ahead to a manufactured, foregone conclusion that is usually not supported by the facts. That’s what this phrase was doing to me. Let me explain.

By concretely separating what a “good” person does from what a “bad” person does, I’d created a division in my own spiritual landscape. I’d set up a big “compartment,” if you will, into which I sent all the memories and feelings about what I’d done that was “bad.” This had nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the morals and ethics I brought with me into the service. That they resonated perfectly with the core values espoused by the Marine Corps reinforced them to the point where they became nearly impenetrable.

And the problem with this “good/bad” spiritual landscape was that it left no room for phrases like “Good people don’t kill,” to be interpreted in any other way than simple black and white. It left no room for the gray areas that always, naturally arise in the theater of war.

As a result, there was no way to answer the hanging statement and question—I killed. What does that make me?—without self-identifying as a bad person. The guiding force in my life, therefore, became atoning for the fact that I had killed other human beings. But I felt like my balance sheet was so far in the negative that each small failure weighed much more than any good thing I could possibly do. My own self-image became that of a fundamentally bad person.

How does this factor into the depression that followed me from Virginia? The answer is, the same way the young sergeant’s guilt at deciding to kill the Iraqi boy poisoned his relationship with his own son.

Every time I failed to control my temper, my mind raced ahead to my stuck point. I didn’t allow reality with all its gray areas to factor in. It didn’t matter that sometimes kids need to see an angry response when they misbehave, or that getting mad is a normal human reaction that needs to be expressed. Instead, I took every loss of composure—even small ones that the kids didn’t even notice—as reinforcement of my self-image as a fundamentally bad person.

The logic loop went like this: I swore to not shout at my kids—I shouted at my kids—I killed people and I’m a bad person—I swore to not shout at my kids—I shouted at my kids—I killed people and I’m a bad . . . And it would continue, unbroken. It sounds silly now, but at the time that loop made me believe I deserved no happiness in my life, that because of my actions in combat, suffering was the only future I deserved. But I couldn’t see it myself. It wasn’t until Michael showed me the loop that I recognized its existence.

When I explained to Michael what bothered me most about Iraq, he immediately zeroed in on the phrase, “Good people don’t kill. I killed. What does that make me?” He explained what a stuck point is and asked me if I thought that phrase was mine. It obviously was, but he let me mull it over for a few minutes in silence.

That small application of good listening skills, coupled with his clinical knowledge, exposed the ultimate reason why I’d been feeling depressed. I consider myself a pretty self-aware individual, and I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating my experiences and reactions to them, but I still needed someone else to help me understand the spiritual impact of my experiences.

Michael didn’t stop there. Identifying the stuck point is one thing, but in order to remove its ability to shortcut rational thought it needed to be removed from the loop. Again, there were no magic words spoken, no incense or chanting filling the air. Sitting in his quiet office, Michael simply asked me if there was any other way to word that phrase—maybe a way that didn’t presuppose the answer.

I balked at the suggestion. Actually, when Michael opened his mouth to speak I immediately got angry. It welled up from somewhere deep inside and I just barely kept it hidden. The memory of the last time I had engaged in a conversation on this subject, in a chapel tent in the Kuwaiti desert, had popped unexpectedly into my head.

THE CHAPLAIN

It was about a week after the invasion of Iraq and I’d stopped into the chapel after my mission for that night had been cancelled. Something had been bothering me and I finally decided to ask the chaplain a question. I wanted to know how God felt about us killing other human beings. Truth be told, I just wanted the chaplain to magically make me feel better about whacking Iraqi soldiers with rockets and missiles.

He didn’t. Instead, the chaplain responded with a recital of how badly Saddam Hussein treated his own people, how he killed and imprisoned them indiscriminately, and how his actions made him an evil man. Guess he missed “how to avoid making bad comparisons” day in chaplain school. Then he asked if I thought we were doing the right thing by removing Saddam from power, as if I’d just been too simple-minded to see how two wrongs obviously make a right.

I left that tent angrier than I’d ever been in my life. That man, and probably my own naive expectations of what he could do, had made me feel stupid, ashamed, and weak—pretty much the trifecta of shitty feelings for any warrior. Stumbling into the blackness of the Kuwaiti night, I swore to bury those thoughts and questions deeply. They were never going to come out again; I’d see to that.

Yet there I was, sitting in Michael’s quiet office, asking essentially the same question ten years later, “Am I a bad person?” When I realized the parallels between my failed attempt to get spiritual guidance from the chaplain and my current attempt to get secular spiritual help from my counselor, I braced myself for another disappointment.

I didn’t think something so simple as muttering a few words would make any difference. I didn’t know what would erase my stuck point, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be quick or easy. This thing was so deeply entrenched it was messing with the core of my being. I knew I would have to work hard and long to dig it out.

I was wrong.

In his quiet Jamaican accent, Michael simply asked, “When do good people kill?”

His words shot straight into my soul. Because of the years of self-assessment and dedicated attempts to truly understand the impact of my experiences, I could see the value of those words as soon as he spoke them. They replaced the shaming, damning, self-hating phrase that had derailed my healing process. They correctly described my situation by allowing that sometimes good people must do bad things. No longer was I to be forever reminded that I was a bad person because I killed. Those words did not erase the fact that I’d killed—nothing could do that— but they gave me a healthy way to look at myself in light of my actions in combat.

The phrase is still the burden I bear—it remains my personal burden of peace—and I want to remember it. It is the essence of my warrior experience and will forever remind me of the sacri- fices I, and millions of others, made in service of our country. But the burden is now a productive thing, a reminder to do good whenever possible without automatic condemnation for the actions of my past.

MORE GOOD TO COME

I’ve figured out a lot about my reactions to combat on my own. But it took a calm, quiet professional to help me defuse the spiritual reactions that threatened to roll back all my advances. I was unable to apply self- and buddy-aid to the spiritual aftereffects of combat because I didn’t understand that they existed. Luckily, I found a corpsman at the right time and place.

It took moving to California and an ultimatum from my wife for me to finally seek, and accept, professional help. In other words, it took a lot. Unfortunately, many veterans wait until something catastrophic happens before talking to someone. We recoil from anything remotely selfish and, to a warrior’s way of thinking, devoting time to one’s personal issues at the perceived expense of others is a selfish act.

But as you’ll see in the next section, facing these internal challenges is about as unselfish as you can get.

The post Continuing Actions Chapter 10 appeared first on Dan Sheehan.

LOOK AT IT

“By itself, reconstructing the trauma does not address the social or relational dimension of the traumatic experience. It is a necessary part of the recovery process, but it is not sufficient.” —Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p.183

I HAD A GOOD FRIEND in college who loved to get hammered and expose himself in public. More than once I lost track of him while stumbling home from the bars only to find him standing proudly in the middle of the street, pants around his ankles, shouting “LOOOOOK AT IT!” to anyone within earshot. This is only tangentially connected to the focus of this chapter, and I may be rightly accused of using it as a cheap attention getter, but oh well. It’s relevant because we’re getting to the point in our journey where we need to share the intimate and sometimes painful information we discovered during the process of creating our own true narratives. But this doesn’t mean we should hang out our junk for just anyone to see.

This chapter will explain the benefits of communicating your experiences through whatever medium works for you. I accomplished this through writing, and later, through public speaking, but those are not the only ways to do it. Want to paint yourself green and do interpretive dance in a Speedo®? Go ahead. But chances are you’ll find more low-key ways to express yourself such as painting, photography, music, or drawing. Because the field of art therapy is spread across so many modes of expression, I will not attempt to introduce a comprehensive list of the different types of art here. Instead, I’ll use my own experience with writing to identify the positive impact of sharing difficult information, as well as to introduce considerations for whom to share it with. What type of art should you choose? That’s totally up to you. All your art needs to do is give you a way to express yourself.

But don’t drop trou and “express” yourself with just anybody, not right off the bat, anyway. Your initial rounds of sharing are a continuation of the self-aid plan that started when you began recording your narrative. The information you’ve learned thus far in that process is intimate and deeply personal, but you probably haven’t figured everything out yet. The act of sharing it with the right person will help you access the emotions and reactions that remained hidden during the creation of your narrative. But to share it without regard for the listener’s capacity and willingness to understand risks diluting your focus at a critical point. This loss of focus will increase the odds of stagnation, of failure.

Who makes up this “trustworthy community” capable of receiving your message? They may be people close to you such as family members, good friends, or buddies you served with. Or they may be new friends you’ve met while engaging in healthy self-aid activities. Regardless of how long you’ve known them, the right person to share your narrative with is someone who can listen without judgement and is capable of sharing in your emotions. In many instances, they must be willing to go to hell with you.

The whole point of communicating the difficult emotions you uncovered in your narrative to a person you have a relationship with is that you’re no longer keeping them to yourself. You’re getting them outside of your head and, once released, they cannot be bottled back up. They become a known and accepted component of the relationship between you and the listener.

Drunken exposures to strangers can be denied in the light of day. Because of this escape clause, they lack the therapeutic effects of meaningful, honest sharing. But when you take the risk to truly open up to someone, neither you nor they can make it disappear again. The people you share with will know something real about you, and your relationship with them will deepen as a result. If you spend your life hiding behind a mask of strength, Hollywood heroism, or some shallow concept of warrior-hood, then nobody will ever truly know you. They’ll only know the mask and your relationship with them will remain shallow and distant.

We, as veterans and warriors, have no further use for those masks. They are for the unproven.

SHARING: INITIALLY, IT’S ALL ABOUT SELF-AID

I’d been working on After Action for over a year and a half before I really understood the benefits of sharing my experiences. I’d already recorded the facts of my deployments and overlaid my emotional reactions on them through writing, but some critical connections remained missing. I found myself experiencing intense emotions but unable to tie them to specific events. This gap in my understanding was preventing me from uncovering some crucial information I knew existed but couldn’t put my finger on. And it was really pissing me off.

I went internal and mulled the problem over and over in my head. For the first week or so, my wife gave me space to work it out. But eventually my distracted and distant demeanor prompted her to ask what was going on.

We sat in the quiet living room of the old farmhouse we were renting in Great Falls, Virginia. The kids were asleep upstairs, and the only noises were the wind and the dog snoring by the fireplace. Safe on the couch, I walked my wife through a battle that had occurred on the outskirts of An Numinayah during the 2003 invasion. I didn’t know what I was trying to tell her, or what I was trying to figure out. I only knew that something was there and that it was bothering me. In as much detail as I could remember, I explained where we were, who was in what aircraft—she knew all my squadron mates—and each action I’d taken during the fight. Somehow, while explaining why I chose to fire and how many people I killed with each missile, I got there. I stumbled upon a hidden mental room that contained all the emotions and reactions I’d compartmentalized during the battle.

That particular battle had taken place over seven years before, but the emotions in that room hadn’t aged a day. The reactions that escaped finally brought into focus what had been bothering me for all those years. They provided the connection between the person I knew I’d been before and who I was now.

For some reason, that mental room remained invisible throughout my writing process. But when I started talking through the events of that day, it became clear. I rambled on for a while, running down escaping emotions and examining them without cohesion or concern while my wife sat staring into the fire. These were the little bastards that had been thorns in my side for so long. Now that they were out in the open, there was no way I was going to let them hide again.

When it was over I sat back on the couch, drained. But contented. For the first time in years, I knew why I was upset. I knew what was making me uncomfortable. I kind of looked around the room in amazement for a moment, then looked to my wife for comment. She’d sat, unmoving and silent, for almost an hour while I talked.

Finally she spoke, “That was really hard to hear.”

That wasn’t the response I was expecting.

“Hard? Hard how?” I asked.

“I mean, I really had to focus on what you were saying to keep my mind from wandering.”

This floored me. Inside I was saying, “I’m pouring my fucking heart out and you’re thinking about what? Work? A goddamn grocery list? What could have been more important?”

Luckily, I kept my mouth shut. She continued, “It was hard to listen to because I didn’t want to think about you that way— scared, angry, and hurting. I didn’t want to hear that you’ve felt that way for years and I never knew it. I just didn’t want to imagine you that way.”

As hard as it was for her to hear, it did me a world of good to get it off my chest. And her reaction taught me that whomever I share with will have their own feelings and reactions to what I tell them—and they may not react the way I want, or expect. From that conversation I finally understood what had been bothering me most from my combat tours. Of equal importance was the realization that she, and the rest of my family, were not standing on the sideline. My struggles were as much theirs as mine because they were being affected by me just as I was being affected by my past. On that day I understood that I had never been alone in struggling to carry the burdens of my service.

This understanding went both ways. Now that I’d fully opened up to her, my wife understood that my random bouts of moodiness, angry flashes, and periods of withdrawal were not in response to her, the kids, or anybody else. Now that she knew they were internal fluctuations in my mood and not something that could be “fixed” by anything she could control, she was better able to help me deal with them. That one conversation gave us perspective on my experiences, strengthened our relationship, and allowed me to move forward—and she’d barely said a word. She made no attempt to explain away my emotions or try to minimize them to spare herself from sharing my pain. She just listened, regardless of how much it hurt her to do so.

Who’s your “go-to” person going to be? Think about it carefully.

The person you choose to share with will play an integral role in your ability to fully understand your experiences. This person needs to understand the process you are going through and what they can do to help. One way to do this is to explain it to them. But an easier, and more thorough, approach would be to have them read this book—or at least this chapter. If you both understand the overall concept of your journey, then the chances of success are that much higher. You’ll avoid recreating the wheel and the entire process can move ahead smoothly.

A NOTE TO “LISTENERS”

Asking a person to listen to the full impact of our experiences— not just the vignettes we tell at the bar—is one of the greatest honors we, as veterans, can bestow on someone. If a veteran has expressed interest in sharing with you, then take heart—you are an important person in their life. They see something that makes them believe you can understand what they’ve been through and that you’re important enough for them to give it a shot. They are offering you a means to understand them as they are now—a critical bit of information if your relationship with them is to grow and progress into the future.

One of the primary things the listener needs to do is listen. While this may sound obvious, many of us have real difficulty listening to what someone actually says. Our mind wanders, we project our own emotions and thoughts into what’s being said, and we jump ahead of the speaker by forming our own conclusions. Active listening is difficult. It takes a lot of concentration, and no small amount of self-discipline, to truly hear what someone is saying. This is especially true when the subject matter is deeply emotional—to both the speaker and the listener. It wasn’t the words I said that made it hard for my wife to concentrate on our conversation. It was the pain I was revealing that made her want to seek mental shelter to protect herself.

Listeners will have to steel themselves for the uncomfortable nature of what’s to come. They will also have to fight back the common tendency of trying to “fix” the problem.

Let me be perfectly clear: There is no fix to the pain caused by experiences in our past. Dead friends never come back to life. The families of those we killed will always miss them. Kids will grow up without fathers and mothers, parents will know the pain of outliving their children, and spouses will face the future without their partner and friend. Innocence lost can never be regained, and the very concept of humanity must be reevaluated after seeing what humans can do to each other. The emotions we suffer after the reality of combat are appropriate and healthy. They do not need to be “fixed.” But they do need to be understood.

So, if you are the listener, don’t try to fix anything—just listen. The emotions will probably come out slowly at first, but pretty soon they’ll stream out under pressure. You may need to prompt and prod a little to get it going, but once the speaker accesses trapped information and begins to share it, let him or her go.

You’ll know when the speaker hits this point—their knees may bounce, their eyes will become slightly unfocused in the distance or on the floor, and words will come out in compressed bursts. Raw emotions undiluted by time will pour out, very likely along with tears that may go unnoticed by the speaker. These emotions were white hot when they were compartmentalized years ago. They’ll be white hot the first time they come out, too.

Silence will follow these bursts—but don’t interrupt. Pauses in a normal conversation allow the other party to interject and participate. But this is not a normal conversation. These pauses are not an invitation for you to fill the silence. They are opportunities for the speaker to find the right words to describe something he or she has never said before—or maybe didn’t even realize could be said. This is about them, not you, and they must remain firmly focused on the particulars of their experiences, not anyone else’s. There will be time to share your insights later but for right now, just listen. The accumulated pus of trapped emotions must be allowed to spew out unhindered.

BUDDY AID: THE BUILT-IN COMMUNITY

“What a returning soldier needs most when leaving war is not a mental health professional but a living community to whom his experience matters. There is usually such a community close at hand: his or her surviving comrades.” —Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, p.198

The listener who provides your buddy-aid doesn’t have to be a family member. Nor do you have to rely on only one person. At various times throughout my journey, I have relied on my brother, sister, father, and mother to help me understand things I was having trouble with. I’ve also used long runs with a close combat buddy to chew on reactions that I was having a hard time processing. And of course, my wife—a veteran herself—helps immensely as well. My relationships with each of these people are different and so is the support I gain from sharing with them.

But what if your relationships with friends and family don’t support this kind of sharing? Then it’s time to call in some buddy-aid.

Remember the young Marine who almost killed the boy while on patrol in Ramadi? He’s a prime example of someone who didn’t feel comfortable sharing with friends and family—or even his VA counselor. Even though he’d asked for corpsman-aid, it just didn’t work for him. He just couldn’t open up and tell anyone about the boy he’d almost killed. Luckily, buddy-aid was available.

For him, buddy-aid came in the form of Semper Fi Odyssey, a week-long retreat designed to assist wounded veterans transition out of the service. Created and run by retired Major General T.S. Jones, Semper Fi Odyssey helps wounded veterans develop realistic plans for their future after they leave the service. The nonreligious, week-long program of instruction focuses on defining and understanding the four fundamental components of a whole, healthy person: Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual.

General Jones brings team leaders—most of whom are combat veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan, or Vietnam—and wounded veterans to a secluded camp in the hills of central Pennsylvania. Internet and cell coverage are spotty at best, and the isolation of the camp creates the opportunity for introspective thought and honest self-evaluation. The atmosphere of the camp—unconditional positive regard and a sense of shared profound experiences—is almost as crucial to the participants’ success as the actual instruction.

It was at this camp that the young sergeant finally shared what had been bothering him. I happened to be the one he shared with, but it could have been any of us. It wasn’t the friends he’d buried, nor the Iraqis he’d killed that were haunting him. It was the decision he’d made while staring at the boy with the rifle. His conscious decision to kill the boy was in direct conflict with his self-image as a good, caring person. The fact that the boy lived didn’t matter in the least. He’d made the decision to kill him— and now he knew what he was capable of.

His immediate, violent reaction to his son jumping on his back put him right back behind the .50cal. The years between the events evaporated in a heartbeat, and he saw himself clearly capable of hurting a child—this time his own. The belief that he posed a very real, lethal threat to his own family reinforced his willingness to do anything possible to keep them safe. Including removing himself from their lives. He’d contemplated doing it permanently—the guns were all in his room in the house—but hadn’t. Not yet.

He told me all this through a series of explosive bursts of conversation. I sat quietly during the interludes as his tears dropped unnoticed on the head of his therapy dog. When I sensed he needed a break, or a chance to regroup, I shared some of my experiences. I never offered platitudes or promised that he’d be okay. I didn’t need to. The effect of just telling another person these deeply painful emotions seemed to lift a weight from his chest. The words he spoke carried poisons from deep within and, as they poured out, his personality emerged from hiding. Over the course of the next hour, small inflections of voice, self-deprecating jokes, and how he wiped tears off on his shoulder with a look that said, “well shit, this sucks,” all told me that the real man inside—not the tortured, self-hating soul—was coming back.

He knew that he had a long way to go still. He knew that counseling offered the best chance for him to fully heal and, now that he knew he was neither alone nor weak, he was willing to give the VA another chance—this time without withholding critical information from his counselor.

He was, and is, a proud man to whom the very idea of admitting pain goes against his concept of strength. But his concept of strength matured when he realized his family needed him in their lives. They stood to lose a father and husband if he didn’t step up and face his demons. Barricading himself in the back bedroom suddenly felt like cowardice—and he was no coward.

We don’t keep in touch anymore, although I’d love to hear from him again. Our conversation, sitting on a rock wall at a camp in central Pennsylvania, served its purpose. The atmosphere created by General Jones set the stage for this Marine to achieve in a single, transformative conversation what had taken me several years of writing to do for myself. He realized why he was upset, knew he was not alone, and knew he was not a monster. More importantly, he knew if he dedicated himself to healing, then he had a bright future with the family he loves—not isolated and forever quarantined for their protection.

This is buddy-aid at its finest. If you don’t know where else to start—or find yourself slipping back into stagnation—contact Semper Fi Odyssey. Or any other, similar nonprofit for that matter. They exist because caring, compassionate people, many of whom are veterans themselves, have figured out their own paths home and want to share what they’ve learned along the way.

None of us faced the challenges of combat alone. There’s no reason to face the challenges of coming home alone, either.

The post Continuing Actions Chapter 9 appeared first on Dan Sheehan.

KUM BAY YAH, ANYONE?

“In the second stage of recovery, the survivor tells the story of the trauma. She tells it completely, in depth and in detail. This work of reconstruction actually transforms the traumatic memory, so that it can be integrated into the survivor’s life story.” —Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p.175

TO UNDERSTAND THE EMOTIONAL effects of your experiences, you must tell your own true narrative. Don’t get freaked out—this isn’t some New-Age, self-help catch phrase, and it isn’t going to require joining a drum circle.

Your own true narrative is simply your story—what you saw, did, didn’t do, heard, smelled, tasted—and how it made you feel. That’s it. How does this help you to move forward on your journey? By bringing the events, actions, emotions, and reactions of combat into the light. Only after these insurgent forces have been brought out of the darkness can they be consciously assimilated into your life.

There doesn’t have to be a moral to this narrative or some underlying theme that ties it all together. You may find that, you may not. There is only one thing this narrative must contain and that’s the truth. This is not the time to consider what you think people want to hear or how you want them to see you. Incorporating those external considerations will reduce what could be a crucial step forward in your journey to just a throw- away story—something to tell a stranger at a bar. A story like that hinders progress and encourages stagnation, the exact opposite of what your own true narrative will do for you.

It is important to remember the goal of this first step. You are not writing a book or a journal for other people to read. This is just for you. You may choose to share it later, but this first round of excavation is meant to simply pull all the emotions and reactions out of the darkness to give you a chance to make sense of them yourself. Once you’ve accomplished that, you can decide whether or not to share what you discovered and the means through which to share it.

The value in telling your own true narrative is in the journey it takes to learn it. That’s what we’re going to talk about here.

GATHERING THE INTEL

I have a hard enough time remembering what I did last week, let alone years ago. Our memories fade over time, and often our combat experiences seem to morph together into one long period. Memories that, at the time, felt scorched into our souls somehow become hard to recollect. Details slip away and events become jumbled up together like so many writhing snakes, seemingly impossible to separate. As a result, we usually associate our combat experiences with broad-brush emotions that are incapable of carrying the nuances we’d actually felt.

Combat isn’t a uniform experience. There are good times, shitty times, and times that fall somewhere in-between. If we are to understand how various events impacted us, we have to make them—and our reactions to them—stand alone from all the rest. We need to tie our reactions to specific events as opposed to the entirety of a deployment or career. But because of the way our minds work, extracting the details of past events, especially traumatic ones, can be very difficult.

“Traumatic memory is not narrative. Rather, it is experience that reoccurs, either as full sensory replay of traumatic events in dreams or flashbacks, with all things seen, heard, smelled, and felt intact, or as disconnected fragments. . . . In other instances, knowledge of the facts may be separately preserved without any emotion, meaning, or sensory content.” (Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, p.172)

Even locating the memories and emotions of our experiences in combat can be a challenge. But, we can circumvent our mind’s attempts to keep us from accessing that information if we develop, and stick to, a plan.

SELF-AID: DE-COMPARTMENTALIZATION11:

STEP ONE

The first step in the process of constructing your narrative is to create a list of events that occurred during your deployment(s). These will likely be the “big” ones—the date you arrived in country, your R&R, major operations, noteworthy firefights, holidays, the day a buddy was killed—and will form the framework of your deployment(s) so you can begin filling in the gaps. Get a calendar, or make one, and put any remembered occurrences on their actual dates.

A whole lot of stuff happened between those dates though. Now you have to figure out what those more minor events were. Use the “big” events as a trail of breadcrumbs to follow backward into your memories. Jot down smaller events in relation to the bigger ones—before or after—and don’t necessarily worry about the actual dates.

Of course, if you kept a diary, then use it. If you kept mission notes or a debrief logbook to record information for intelligence reports, then use them. Anything that you wrote during that time frame is valuable here. I used my own journal, my kneeboard cards from actual missions, my flight-hour logbook, and hours of gun-camera footage from my helicopter to rebuild my experiences while writing After Action. I plotted grid coordinates of various incidents and engagements on GoogleEarth and recreated as much of the aerial control point system as I could. You’re trying to reconstruct something that happened years ago, and each bit of information is a puzzle piece. Pulling together as many puzzle pieces as possible gives you the best chance of actually creating a cohesive picture.

This is an opportunity to call in a little buddy-aid as well. Reach out to former comrades and use them to help rebuild your memories. Maybe they remember things you don’t, or maybe they kept a journal and will share it with you. I was able to borrow my co-pilot’s journal and found that he had recorded things I’d missed. Even more important than just gathering information, though, were the conversations it started. I couldn’t just ask, “Hey dude—could I borrow your journal from Iraq?” I had to explain what I was doing, why I was doing it, and what I hoped to get from accessing his memories. This request for support broke an unspoken agreement to never admit any confusion or difficulty over what we had done. It was as if we believed our emotions could be ignored out of existence by not mentioning them. But asking to borrow his journal finally broke that foolishly naive pact. We’d fought in multiple engagements together, buried good friends, and have been best friends for years. But I had to take the first step and admit that something was bothering me before we began to have honest conversations about how those experiences actually impacted us.

DE-COMPARTMENTALIZATION:

STEP TWO

Once your personal deployment calendar contains some solid information, it is time to move to the next step. Get a 3-ring binder with loose-leaf paper in it. Dedicate a sheet of paper to every date you’ve marked on your calendar and write what happened on that date. Begin with the bare facts—the who, what, when, where, and why of the event—just like you’re going to turn it in for an after-action report. If anything else comes to mind then record that as well. Don’t force it though; move on to the next significant event on a different sheet of paper if you get stuck.

This first recording of events will likely jog your memory. Each event initially exists in isolation in your mind, but the effort of recording the details forces you to examine that event closely. In doing so, other events linked to these primary ones may pop up in your memory. Capture them and write their details on their own sheet of paper. The goal here is to impose a basic level of organization on the memories jumbled by compartmentalization so that you have a thorough, tangible record of your experiences in combat.

Now it’s time to go back through that binder and add another layer of information. This is the tough part—remembering and recording emotions created by those events. But don’t worry; nobody ever needs to see what you write here. This notebook is simply your tool to use, your place to dump the memories and emotions extricated from the compartments in your mind.

Go back through your binder a few times with an eye toward what these events made you feel. Underneath the bare facts of each event, write the reactions that come to mind. They can be from the day itself, or how you are feeling right then and there as you think about it. Either way, you are accessing the compartmentalized reactions created by the event and jotting them down on paper—they can’t be stuffed away again. That’s not to say that you’ll experience everything again in a rush. The walls of compartmentalization are solidly built and will not allow much to escape. But each little bit that does get out is a step in the right direction.

Flashes of compartmentalized emotions that do escape, if not recorded, usually get recaptured and stuffed away again by our conscious mind, thus ensuring they will escape again in the future. But writing them down circumvents this re-compartmentalization reaction and gives the emotions a place to live outside your head.

You may have to go through this process multiple times. If you can’t remember how you felt at a certain event, try to remember what your body felt like. Did your teeth hurt from gritting them for so long, or your hands ache from crushing your weapon? Was your heart racing even though you weren’t doing anything physical? Our bodies react to emotions even when we successfully compartmentalize them. Recalling those physical sensations can provide important clues to remembering the emotions that caused them.

It is quite possible that, during the process of remembering and recording the events and emotions of the past, you’ll find yourself experiencing those emotions in “real time” again. Be aware that this can happen and prepare for those emotions to interrupt and intrude in your daily interactions. Ramp up your self-aid activities, use buddy-aid by letting friends and family know what you’re doing so they can help, and always keep the door open to seeking corpsman-aid. Uncovering a memory that requires immediate corpsman-aid is not a bad thing. Quite the opposite. It means that you can go to your first meeting with your counselor with a concrete starting point. This can literally save you hours of sifting through memories and events to uncover the root cause of your unease.

Back to the second step of de-compartmentalization.

Another good tool to use in this stage is the correspondence with friends and family—more buddy-aid. Letters and emails we sent back from the war zone often contain hints of our emotional state at that time. But we may not have written our true emotions down—we usually wrote what we wanted them to be, not what they were. I remember sending my then-girlfriend, now wife, a letter after one mission on the ground in Baghdad. The breaching charge we placed on the front door of the target house blew just as a woman inside was reaching for the handle. She took the brunt of the blast, and the door broke her nose when it flew off its hinges.

After we’d secured the house and captured our target, she refused to allow our corpsman to give her medical assistance. Our “Terp,” an Iraqi American from Detroit, dismissed her with a casual wave when she launched into an angry tirade from behind a mask of streaming blood. In the letter to my girlfriend, I angrily berated this woman for being such an idiot. We didn’t want to hurt her; she should have kicked her dickhead husband to the curb for planting IEDs and then we wouldn’t have had to blow her door in and wreck her house. It was her own damn fault, I wrote. Truth was, I felt like shit that this woman had been hurt by our actions—even more so because I did nothing to help. I just focused on my job and got to the roof where I could control the aircraft protecting our small force. Reading the misplaced anger and total confidence in my perceptions of right and wrong in that letter now makes me cringe.

The emotions we wrote in those letters will often ring hollow if they’re not really what we’d been feeling. This hollowness is apparent only to us because our unconscious mind shouts “Bullshit!” when we read our words from years ago. This is a clue telling us that we should pay attention. This hollowness is our unconscious telling us we’re on the right track, that we need to dig deeper here to uncover buried emotions. These are the ones leeching poisons into our emotional groundwater. They’re what we’re looking for.

We might write about feeling angry at the Iraqis for using kids as shields or bombers, but what we’re really angry about is the fact that they put us in a position where we had to kill kids— or even contemplate it. Aggressive professions of our inherent “goodness” are often used to cover up the painful realization that we are neither as good nor as altruistic as we claim to be. This is especially true when we can look back and see how much pain we caused while simultaneously knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that we’d done the right thing at the time.

The truth is, few people are more likely to experience the full disillusionment of smashed ideals than a warrior in combat. Ideals created and nurtured in peacetime rarely survive the ugliness of human combat. And as these ideals often define what’s right and wrong, when they are crushed by the harsh realities of war, the warrior’s concepts of right and wrong get crushed as well.

There’s no time limit for gathering this information. It will take as long as it needs to take. But over time, your binder will contain the facts about your experiences and the general emotions they created. By giving them a place to live outside your head, you’ll defuse their incessant escape attempts—the emotions will calm down and you’ll be ready to move to the next step. You’re closing the chasm by this point, but you’re not done yet. You still have to gain perspective on the entirety of your experiences—not just individual events. To do that will require, you guessed it, more writing.

DE-COMPARTMENTALIZATION: STEP THREE

“The recitation of facts without the accompanying emotions is a sterile exercise, without therapeutic effect. As Breuer and Freud noted a century ago, “recollection without affect almost invariably pro- duces no result.” —Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p.177

Get something fresh to write on. Could be a journal, a notebook, or a computer—whatever you’re most comfortable with. This is the stage where you are going to put all your previous work together and connect the emotions and events into a single narrative or story. Start at the beginning event, the first page in your 3-ring binder, and write out what you did, where you did it, who you did it with, what it felt like, and how you feel about it now. Include all the emotions you can remember, and spend time on the details. It can literally take days to uncover the emotions and reactions generated by a single event. Go from significant event to significant event, filling in the gaps with any additional information that comes to mind. It may read like an overly personal after-action report, it may read like stream of consciousness, or it may read like a novel. It doesn’t matter what it reads like. All that matters is that you spend the time and energy required to get it right.

If writing is not something that comes easily to you, don’t worry—buddy-aid is available for this, too. You’ve done the hard work to collect all your raw material; now you just need some help organizing it.

At this point in my own journey, I had the good luck to stumble upon David Hazard, founder and director of Ascent, an international coaching program for authors, and the man who would become my writing coach. I’d already written the first draft of After Action—over 420 pages of who-what-when-where details—when we started working together. While it was essential for me to write that first draft, it was nothing anybody else would ever want to read. It was just for me, an opportunity to put my experiences on paper and organize them outside my head. Actually, the writing was crap, devoid of emotions and personality. I would have to delve much deeper into how my experiences had affected me if it was to have any hope of becoming a book, even though at that time, I wasn’t certain I wanted it to.

I was not an easy client for David. I was so wary about admitting I even had emotions that any attempt by him to get me to describe how something had made me feel made me clam up. I could tell him that I drove a missile into a truck and watched bodies fly, but when he asked what I was really thinking during that experience or how it made me feel . . . my mind went blank. I was nervous that if I shared the smallest emotional response, I’d immediately end up banging a drum around a fire singing “Kum-Bay-Yah” with a bunch of teary-eyed dudes greased up with baby-oil. That just wasn’t going to happen.

Because I knew I had to dig deeper, though, I kept going. Over time I developed trust in David—I knew I could share painful and confusing emotions with him and he’d listen without judgement. More than that, I knew he wouldn’t laugh or think less of me because I admitted being human. Eventually, David’s questions helped me pull information out of hidden compartments I didn’t know existed. He became my sounding board and was often the first person to hear how my experiences had made me feel. He helped me to sort through what I wanted to open up about and what should remain private, kept just between me and my very closest loved ones and confidantes. In other words, I remained in control and could still set my own limits on what I shared and what I didn’t. Just because I became aware of something didn’t mean I had to share it. This opening up and sorting as we went was a crucial “first step” in communicating my experiences. It gave me the confidence to share with family, friends, and, eventually, anybody who picks up the book. I couldn’t have defined it at the time, but David’s help with my writing was invaluable buddy-aid support for my own self-aid plan.

There aren’t enough “David Hazards” to go around, though. This is where veterans’ writing groups come into play. You can contact colleges, community centers, or Veterans Administration facilities and ask if they know of any veterans’ writing workshops or seminars near you. Or take a look online—a quick Google search will provide links to Veterans Writing Project, Veterans Writing Group, and veterans’ writing workshops all around the country. Find one that is close to you and make the effort to get involved. Go to a meeting and find out if they’re a good fit for you. Share with them as little or as much as you want, but, as is true with anything else, remember this:

The more you invest of yourself, the more you’ll get out of it.

Mentoring, support, and a shared desire to use writing as a tool for personal growth and healing are hallmarks of these groups. If the thought of sitting behind your computer or notebook by yourself is terrifying—or mind numbingly boring— you’re not alone. But don’t let that derail your self-aid plan. Chances are good that the veterans in the writing group have traveled the same road you’re on and they can help. More than that, they want to help. That’s likely why they’re there.

Whether you write in solitude or with guidance from a confidant, you are the only person who will know if you “got it right.” If what you wrote accurately reflects what you felt—and feel—about that particular event, then you’ve done it right. A good way to test this is to let your narrative sit unread for several days or even a few weeks. Then reread it with fresh eyes. If what you’ve written doesn’t trigger any “bullshit” flags, then you’ve succeeded. You’ve uncovered your compartmentalized reactions and have begun to process them.

A final step remains though—one that will carry you many steps down the road to fully returning from war.

You have to communicate your experiences to another person.

The post Continuing Actions Chapter 8 appeared first on Dan Sheehan.