My Story (of Sorts)

My Story (of Sorts)

Part 2

Adulthood

By Terrance Ó Domhnaill

 As I mentioned in part 1, I went on my first overseas deployment in the fall of 1974 after basic training and a technical school that I didn’t do well enough in so they kicked me out.

I blame my recruiter for setting me up in this school to fail. He should have known better based on my high school transcripts (I had barely passed basic algebra). Given that he couldn’t spell my sur name right, this didn’t surprise me but getting chewed out and sent to a duty station with no training didn’t bode a good start to my new life.

The school was in San Diego so, naturally, I was sent out to a unit that was homeported there. Although, they were currently in the far east at the time I received my orders to report. Off I went, home again to wait for a telegram telling me where to report for a plane ride to the other side of the world. Within a couple of weeks, it arrived. I was to fly across the country to San Francisco to catch a plane at the MAC terminal at Travis Air Force Base to fly to the Philippines.

My first time in the Philippines was an eye opener. They were under martial law with a midnight curfew back then and we had strict rules detailing when and where we could go off base. Needless to say, Americans being stupid, a sailor was shot and killed by the local police for violating the curfew while I was there waiting for my boat to arrive and pick me up. We never learn as I have a lot of stories of American service people doing stupid stuff in foreign countries through the years because they think they’re immune to local law.

Once I reported aboard, I was told, as a know nothing fresh recruit, to report to a crusty Gunners Mate for special training and my other job specific training would commence later. So, I went to ‘special weapons training’ with three other newbies.

Our training consisted of determining who was the best marksman with a M-14 rifle and model 1911 Colt pistol and learning how to take good care of said weapons. The training was a bit brutal but effective. I learned to hone the shooting skills I had learned as a kid hunting food in the backwoods of northern Maine.

After leaving Subic Bay Naval base in the Philippines, we set off for Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. During the trip, I started to learn my new trade as a Marine Diesel Mechanic and my side job as an external security patrol member. All of which consisted of me dealing with sea sickness (puking a lot until my body learned how to adapt to a rolling boat), and marksmanship training when I wasn’t standing watches in the forward propulsion engine room.

One we arrived at this huge seaport, the captain and executive officer left us at the pier and I learned how these veterans partied, which was to party hard at any opportunity. In this case, it was with a barrel full of ice and beer commandeered from the Army at the PX on the end of the pier.

I had not experienced this phenomenon before. My father, being an alcoholic, had deterred me from being like that until I arrived out here. Like most people, I wanted to be one of the guys. I had already taken up smoking cigarettes in basic training for the same reason.

In this particular instance, I only drank a couple of cans and watched the antics of my peers and NCO’s. After the officers returned from their briefing ashore, we left Cam Ranh Bay and commenced our next mission.

My new job, the one that I had been in training for over the last couple of weeks, commenced with twelve-hour watches. I was to walk around the main deck of our little boat with an M-14, guarding against possible swimmers who might want to do us harm and any Vietnamese shore batteries that we spotted. My boat had a shallow bottom, was 60 ft. long and 21 ft. at the beam. We were a search and rescue boat and our new mission was to remain on standby in case any of the river boats got into trouble and needed a tow back to port for rehabilitation.

That meant we traveled up and down the South Vietnamese coast line and waited for a call for help, if needed. Meanwhile, keeping an eye out for any North Vietnamese boats trying to get past the U.S. ships and deliver arms and supplies to their troops in the south.

In the short time we were there, we came upon some boats and disposed of some of them with the 3-inch cannon on the front gun deck, small arms and 50 cal. MG’s, as part of the two watch groups, one of which I was assigned to. My weapon was an M-14 with a scope that I used to neutralize enemy combatants as directed. I was quite proficient at my job for an eighteen-year-old farm boy from New Sweden, Maine.

We had an incident one night that nearly got me and my spotter killed, and afterwards, required some patchwork on the top deck area to deal with a bunch of bullet holes. They pulled us off that mission and sent us out for some R&R to Hong Kong. From there, we went to Yokosuka, Japan to the U.S. Navy repair facility to get patched up and refitted. The rest of the deployment was spent working during the day, going out and seeing Japan for the first time and a making a small trip to Busan, South Korea for a couple of days, before returning home to San Diego, CA.

The trip home was very slow as this boat was not very fast. Twenty knots on its best days. Mostly a lot slower. We dodged a couple of typhoons in the south Pacific and stopped in Guam, then Hawaii (for customs inspections) on the way home. During the trip, I started my mandatory three-month kitchen help job (mess cook) and spent a bunch of mornings cleaning the sleeping area of my crew mates. That and learning more about my new job as a marine diesel mechanic, which I grew to hate.

We arrived in San Diego, CA in March of 1975. I quickly learned that a nineteen-year-old sailor wasn’t very welcome there, along with Marines and any other service members who may have been passing through. There were signs in store windows reading, “Military not Welcome”. Signs saying “Sailors and Marines Keep Off the Grass” in affluent residential neighborhoods. We learned to only go where we were welcome, like the USO and partake in all of the other nefarious activities that young men get into at that age. Since the drinking age off base was twenty-one, I couldn’t hit the bars but I could drink weak beer at the enlisted club on base.

In January, 1976, we left for my second Western Pacific Deployment. Another six months in the far east and south Pacific. This time, we were tasked with humanitarian aid trips throughout the Marshall Islands to see if any of the locals on these islands needed any medical or other humanitarian aid. We also brought a small detachment of EOD guys who were along to blow up any leftover WWII munitions on some of the islands.

It was on one of these islands that myself and three of my friends were nearly taken out by a large amount of shrapnel from one of these, so called, controlled explosions. We were told what time the explosives were to be detonated and were given some time beforehand to explore the island a little. These islands were right full of old WWII relics. Destroyed Japanese planes, bomb craters, brass shell casings by the bucket full and so on. We were having a field day exploring and didn’t quite make it back to the safe zone on the beach when the explosives were set off. Maybe my watch was a little off or they were a couple minutes early, who knows. All I remember was a huge detonation nearby and shrapnel fragments raining down on us through the trees. We ducked for cover as best as we could and waited until it stopped raining metal fragments.

After it was all over, we collected ourselves, checked to make sure no one was hurt and made our way back to the beach, which so happened to be about fifty yards away. Of course, we got an ass chewing for not being at the beach on time.

The rest of the deployment was much like the last one. Same old ports of call, same routine every day. I did manage to find a girlfriend while we were in Subic Bay, Philippines on this trip. That lasted the month we were there. The night of the big typhoon, we had a recall to get back to the boat and I ended up in waist deep water in the main street of the town trying to get back. That was a fun night.

Traversing across the Pacific quite a bit, we dodged or were deep in several typhoons while on these deployments. They were scarier than getting shot at by the NVA. At least with the NVA or Vietcong, I could shoot back. In a Typhoon, all you can do is hang on and pray that you don’t go down. With only a sixty-man crew in a small boat built in 1945, we wouldn’t have stood a chance if we had to abandon ship in such seas.

Upon our return stateside, I made one last trip home which I regretted due to the constant fighting with my Da, so it ended up being my last one for the next six years. Back in San Diego, I picked up my life and continued the party. We figured out that if a bunch of us got together and rented apartments, we could party all we wanted without being harassed by the cops for underage drinking (I was only 20). Marijuana was a big thing then, so we would have keggers and smoke some Mexican weed when we were in port and allowed to have liberty.

Towards the end of 1976, a young girl returned to San Diego and made a splash at the local USO. I had met her briefly back in 1975 while trying to get a date with her friend but I had no interest in her due to her personality. One night, my best friend was doing his gig at the USO as a volunteer DJ and I showed up later to bring him home after he was finished. As we were leaving to go home that night, we exited out of the back door to the parking lot where the car was, and a girl jumped out of the dark, kissed me, then ran off. As it was dark, I didn’t get a good look at who it was.

She turned out to be this girl I didn’t like back in 1975. Long story short, I ended up going out with her later on, wherein she seduced me while I was drunk and high one night. I never intended on this relationship to be more than us having fun together as I was way too young to be serious about anyone when I was only twenty and twenty-one years old.

Then she lied to me about being possibly pregnant and I caved because I was still just an ignorant farm boy. She pushed me into marrying her so we were married in April of 1977. Then three weeks later, she admitted that to me that it was all a scam to get her out of going to Navy basic training in Orlando, FL in June of that year. She was never pregnant and I wasn’t versed enough in things like that to think about getting an annulment or even seek advice from anyone experienced with these things. I most assuredly wasn’t going to call home and talk to my parents.

Then I went on my third and last six-month Pacific deployment in September of 1977, which lasted until March of 1978. I was still newly married and not sure about things at home. This deployment was a repeat of the last one, humanitarian trips through Micronesia in the south Pacific and the usual refits in the Philippines and Yokosuka, Japan. Of course, there was another trip to Hong Kong and Busan, South Korea, typhoons and the other usual stuff.

Being young, dumb and stupid, I stayed with my young wife until she left me in 1990 for another man. During those years, we had three children and fought like cats and dogs the whole time we were together.

In June 1978, I decided to give civilian life a try. I hated my job in the Navy and I needed a change. I got out at the end of my contract and found some work. After a couple of bad starts, I landed a good job with a San Diego Caterpillar dealership as an apprentice marine engine mechanic. We also expanded our family. My first son was born in April, 1979.

During the disastrous economic slowdown in late 1979-1980, I took some bad advice from my wife about refusing to work the night shift for a while, I lost my job and scrambled desperately to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. I lived on a couple hours of sleep a day due to a crying one-year-old baby and me only able to find work doing graveyards at a 7-11. After four months of this, I got desperate and reenlisted in the Navy.

That was the start of my new military career of sorts. Multiple duty stations, none of them good and, in 1982, a visit with my parents after six years, to introduce my wife and children. My mother was happy to finally see me after so long, plus meeting her daughter in-law and grandkids for the first time. Needless to say, even after the long absence, dear ‘ole Da managed to ruin it with all of his drinking and ugly comments about my family. He told me in one of his drunken talks when we were outside one day, that he didn’t like my wife and I was weak for not disciplining my boys more.

I had to leave my family there for a couple of weeks until I could secure some housing on post at Fort Monmouth, NJ. This is where my new duty assignment was to start. On a somewhat classified supply ship at an even more secret navy base near this little Army base. That was when I found out that my younger brother supposedly attempted to seduce my wife (according to her) and my father was ranting about the two little boys not behaving as he thought they should in ‘his house’.

My new duty station was extremely stressful and with a wife at home whom I didn’t get along with very well, life became pretty bad. I was gone a lot, including two six-month deployments during those four years and missed a lot of time with my children.

My fourth overseas deployment was to support the NATO forces in Beirut, Lebanon in the fall of 1983. This was also when the U.S. raided Grenada. Other than watching a battleship pound Syria, and a month away from the front lines spent in Athens, Greece, there isn’t much to talk about. The daily routine at sea was pretty boring, except when we were actively engaged in moving supplies ashore for the troops, or dodging occasional suicide boats full of explosives.

One of the biggest stressors at home for my wife was my second son. His mother didn’t want him when he was born in August, 1981 because she wanted a girl and swore that he was going to be her girl. She tried to tell the doctor to take him away during the birth (I was there) and she rejected him when we brought him home. She did nurse him and give him the minimal care needed as she wasn’t necessarily a bad mother but she just didn’t like him. This caused him to start having behavioral problems at an early age.

With that going on at home and me being constantly gone, my life was becoming a mess. We measured my home time after this posting and we estimated I had only spent a total of ten months at home with my family out of a total of forty-eight months at this duty station.

My fifth overseas deployment in the early spring of 1985 was to southern Europe, the near east (Turkey and Israel), and Morocco, in which we spent a lot of time making repairs to the ship in southern France and chasing communist terrorists around the region. We actually found some in Greece, not that we did anything more than report them.

 In May of 1985, my daughter was born. I was on deployment again and I didn’t get to see her until she was already four months old. With her now being the favored child, my second son became even more rejected by his mother. My oldest son was favored more as he was her first, and now mommy dearest had her long-awaited daughter.

My life spiraled out of control between extreme work stress and all of the screaming and yelling at home. In 1986, I was told that I needed to make a choice. If I wanted to continue in the navy, I had to either go to a recruiting post or a teaching post at RTC/NTC Great Lakes, IL. I took the latter.

With three little kids to take care of and an ever-demanding wife, I needed to stay employed no matter what, so off we went to Illinois. We went on an epic cross-country vacation where I dropped off the family in Spring Valley, CA, where my wife was from originally, and I returned to Great lakes, IL to start my new job.

When housing became available, I sent for them and we set up housekeeping. I actually had a job where I was home nearly every night for a change. But that just opened up another big can of worms. We quickly found out that as much as we fought when I was gone a lot, we fought even more when I was home a lot.

She wanted a real house for a change. As we couldn’t afford to buy one and I would be transferring again (so I thought) in three years, she opted for better furniture. I agreed that we needed some but I wanted to pay cash. She wanted to use credit cards. Hence the fighting. I finally gave in and we went into debt. With neither one of us experienced yet in the world of banks and credit cards, things didn’t go well.

I allowed her to have whatever dining and living room furniture she wanted and whipped out the new credit cards. That was fine until all of the bills started rolling in and we suddenly found ourselves unable to meet our debt obligations anymore. But that didn’t stop her.

She kept trying to spend money we didn’t have and things got only worse. Our relationship deteriorated beyond repair and the kids were caught in the middle. In February, 1990, I received a phone call in the evening at home that changed my whole world.

My father had passed away suddenly while laying on their couch in the family room. I was needed home immediately. Getting emergency leave was the easy part. Dealing with my wife, not so much. She was working by this time (another story) and she would have been hard pressed to get the time off, and take the kids out of school for at least a week.

She was all for going but I was pressed for time and it was the dead of winter in Canada and Northern Maine. That and we didn’t have enough money to get everyone there and back without borrowing more money. I made a command decision to go alone. Which in hindsight, was a bad idea. I flew home for two weeks and after dealing with the chaos of the VA and my father’s funeral, then his burial at the state VA cemetery, I returned to Illinois only to be handed divorce papers on the ride home from the airport.

The divorce and the aftermath were ugly. She had been in contact with a divorce lawyer in secret several months before my father died seeking a no-fault divorce. She was citing I had caused her a lot of mental anguish. Little did they know about her and I was in no mental condition to fight any of this. I think she planned it that way. When my father passed away suddenly, she saw the opportunity and took it. She took everything from me except my government issued property and a handful of personal items I still had left from before we were married.

Then I found out the real cost. Because I was so focused on taking care of the kids (something she wasn’t doing much of anymore) I wasn’t watching her or the family finances. After she left me, it turned out that she had been skimming the money set aside for paying our credit card bills. She would write the checks, then cash them at check cashing places instead of sending the checks to the creditors. Then use the cash to party with her girlfriend (her fellow con artist) and a boyfriend I didn’t know about.

I only found out the month after she left, as the bills started coming in as unpaid. I was frantic by this point. I borrowed a little money from my mother to pay off the more urgent ones to bring them current and then I got a notice about an overdrawn checking account in her name I didn’t know anything about. Which I also had to take care of. Then the last straw.

I received a bill for a credit card that had been maxed out that I didn’t know was missing. In the divorce, I got stuck with all of the bills, and a huge child support payment on my meager salary. She got custody of the kids and all of the material assets because I was subject to deployment, the judge ruled. When she left me, she stole one of the zero balance credit cards in direct violation of the divorce agreement ( she was supposed to give me all of the credit cards during the divorce) and used it to fund her trip from Illinois to southern California (to stay with her parents, whom she also conned out of a lot of money) and then to Houston, Texas to move in with her boyfriend.

Of course, I immediately shut the card off and paid the bill. Boy, didn’t that raise some hell from her. Soon after all of this, I became eligible for orders again. Since I had been extended involuntarily for an extra year at this post, I was given pretty much carte blanche to go anywhere in the world there was an opening for me.

Then I made another stupid mistake out of emotional conflict. I picked an isolated place half way around the world to get as far away from this witch as I possibly could. B.I.O.T. Diego Garcia. A one-year tour. My head was so bent out of shape at this point; all I wanted to do was run away from the United States as far as I could for a while. I should have requested a ship out of Japan in hindsight.

While waiting for my transfer date to arrive, I dallied with a couple of women, one which I never should have but that is another story for another time. Meanwhile, I still had the ex-wife constantly berating me for not giving her enough money to survive on, over and above the already excessive child support. She didn’t care that I was broke from trying to pay off all of those credit cards, she needed money to keep within the standard of living she thought she should have down in Texas. The last straw was the night she yelled at me on the phone to go AWOL and come to Texas to help her take care of the kids.

When I finally transferred, I flew down to Texas to spend a couple of days with the kids. I stayed in a hotel room while we visited together, then it was back to pack up and head for Maine for a little vacation before flying overseas out of the MAC terminal in Philadelphia. PA. I tried to enjoy myself a little bit in Maine but it was hard knowing I wasn’t going to see my kids for a long time. Sort of like preparing for a prison sentence.

My sixth overseas deployment in January 1991 was interesting. At first, I was sent TDY to Bahrain for a couple of months in support of Desert Storm. When I finally arrived in Diego Garcia, my life became pretty humdrum. Then I met someone there towards the latter part of my tour that I should never have gotten involved with. She was another mentally deranged woman, a drunk and pretty loose. It all started when she got drunk at the NCO club (apparently a normal thing for her) and my friend asked me to help her get home to her barracks room. Things went downhill from there.

The relationship ended, (so I thought) when she transferred to Hawaii. After she got there, she would call me late at night (time zone differences) on our military land line which was supposed to be only for official use only. I asked her to leave me alone but she persisted. She even sent me a loaf of homemade bread once that I asked another friend, (who was military police) to use his working dog to check it for drugs.

Then she called to tell me that she had miscarried and that we should remain together. I didn’t see how that would work out as I already had orders to another remote unit up in the Persian Gulf for the following year (still Desert Storm and my seventh overseas deployment). Because I wasn’t thinking straight at the time, I relented and helped her get a plane ticket to northern Maine where I was going to be on leave before reporting to my next duty assignment. She thought it would be a great idea for us to get married before I shipped. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have listened to the voice in my head and other people.

She got very drunk at my brother’s house and embarrassed herself the night before the wedding. Then we had a little ceremony with a local Justice of the Peace my brother knew and we honeymooned in the dead of winter in New Brunswick, Canada. After she sobered up, she quickly figured out that we were not a match made in heaven. She got mad and went back to Hawaii. I shipped out to the Persian Gulf by way of Louisiana.

A few months later, I received divorce papers in the infrequent mail I received at my new posting in the Persian Gulf. By this time, I was sort of dating someone I had met in Louisiana during training. Out in the Persian Gulf, neither of us had much time to spend with one another so we went out when were in port, which was once a month and only for five days at a time. We would spend a little after hours’ time on the ship but the minutes were few and far between.

When the tour was over and we were getting ready to call for new orders, I was told that I had escaped the long arm of the detailers in Washington D.C. long enough. I was going to an amphibious ship in San Diego, CA or Norfolk, VA, whether I liked it or not. I didn’t want to go as I always hated big ships. I was given a choice to either get stationed on an amphib in the same geography as my new girlfriend or we would be separated for a very long time, likely forever. I say this as long distance relationships rarely work out. Especially with me. In hindsight once again, I should have opted to go our separate ways but I was lonely and she needed someone to take care of her.

I opted for togetherness and I ended up on a U.S. Navy LPD in San Diego, CA while my girlfriend got orders to the communications station there. We moved into an apartment together but we didn’t see each other much as our schedules rarely matched.

My enlistment contract was coming up for renewal in August, 1993. While waiting for that magical date, a lot of my fellow sailors were getting riffed as this was right after Desert Storm. The whole middle management of my repair shop was on the chopping block. Two of my junior NCO’s and myself, with my contract coming up. I saw the handwriting on the wall. Even though I was exempt from the early out programs being offered so far, I could still be hit for an early retirement cut later on after I hit the eighteen-year mark, which I was just a few months shy of.

I decided not to reenlist and boy, did that set a lot of people off. Once I made the decision, I didn’t look back, no matter the consequences. As I was trying to decide, I asked my girlfriend what her future plans were. She wanted to reenlist and I could come along as her dependent, if I wanted. I thought that was an excellent idea so we decided to get married to seal the deal. We were married in our apartment by a Justice of the Peace and went on a honeymoon to a resort at Big Bear Lake, CA in 1993.

Things didn’t go as planned. A couple of months after we were married, she learned that she wouldn’t be able to reenlist in the job she had been doing in communications and she would have to go to a new school before we could transfer to a new duty station. She froze at the news and decided not to reenlist. Of course, this was a couple months shy of her reenlistment date so I was in shock about what we were going to do next. I had found a job in the civilian sector that was okay but not something I wanted to do long term.

Then she dropped another bombshell. She wanted to move back to east Tennessee where she was from and where her family and friends were. Then she failed to sign up for the free household goods move the government gave her so we ended up paying for the move out of pocket. I was now starting to think there was something wrong with her.

We moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee in March of 1994 and shortly thereafter, Clinton, Tennessee, which was a little farther north. I had trouble finding decent work when we arrived and so did, she at first. After some struggles, she landed a receptionist job at a local printing company. I borrowed some money on a credit card and put myself through truck driving school to get my class-A CDL. I didn’t see any other job options that promised to pay me what I needed. I was still paying off the massive debts and child support from my first marriage. So off I went driving commercial trucks around the U.S. for a weeks at a time.

For the next four years, I worked for a few companies driving long haul across north America and also a year and half stint for a local electrical repair company in Knoxville, TN, all the while doing my best to schedule my home time for my other side job, the Tennessee Army National Guard with the 278^th Armored Cavalry Regiment.

After a time, I helped her buy a little house for ourselves and we managed to survive. Wages were small and our budget was pretty tight. In 1998, she decided she wanted a baby. I was in my late thirties by then, and she was in her early thirties. I had repeatedly told her since we started up together, that I didn’t want any more children. Then one night, she caught me half asleep and with no birth control, she got pregnant.

I had stopped driving big trucks by then and we were living on a shoe string budget. In 1998, I was in vocational school using what was left of my G.I. Bill plus working at a part time evening job. She was still working at the print shop and not making much money, barely above minimum wage as a receptionist. It was very bad timing but we made it work.

My youngest son was born on the last day of July, 1999. I had graduated from HVAC trade school by then and I was working as a restaurant repair technician so we had some health insurance, thank the gods. Then on September 11. 2001, my world changed again.

In the beginning of September, 2001, I had switched from the Army National Guard over to the Federal Army Reserve component, and I had been assigned to the 489^th Civil Affairs Battalion in Knoxville, TN. Three months later, I was on my way to Afghanistan for a year. My eighth and last overseas deployment.

In early 2001, we thought about selling our little house as it needed lots of work still and I wanted her to have something better and larger for our new additional family member. She fought me on it and we had it listed forever. Just when we were getting ready to take it off the market due to lack of interest, and we found out I was going overseas, we got an offer a month before I was due to deploy. Chaos ensued. I had to scramble to get ready for my deployment and get her a Power of Attorney so she could sign any papers regarding the sale of the house without me. She was the technical owner but we were both on the title deed.

During all of this chaos, I left for Fort Bragg, NC, and then Konduz, Afghanistan. I helped her as best as I could from Fort Bragg but this was before everyone had cell phones so I was managing this by pay phone on post and the occasional email, when I could get access to a computer. We had emails, sort of and very infrequent. Once we arrived in Afghanistan, it was snail mail maybe once a month, occasional emails and a 10-minute satellite phone call once a month.

When I returned home at the end of 2002, I returned to a mess. My youngest son had been two and a half when I left and he was now three and a half when I returned. She had not been able to take care of him very well while I was gone. The apartment was a train wreck, with old dried food all over the small kitchen, and piles of stuff everywhere. My son had puked up milk in the car seat and back of the car which she never cleaned up very well. The car smelled so bad, even I gagged when I got it in it for the first time. I immediately sent it off to be cleaned. She claimed she had lost her sense of smell and didn’t notice it.

I helped her clean the apartment and stow away some of the stuff on the floors so we could walk around and I tried to figure out what to do next. I had signed up to stay in the Army to complete my twenty years active duty and I was waiting to hear from Washington. D.C. The reason I did this was for financial security. That and I found out that my old civilian job had been cut out so I would have been laid off as soon as I asked for it back, which the company had to let me return to by law.

The fighting started in as she wanted to go with me, wherever I ended up. I wasn’t sure how that would work out with the Army and I told her to wait until I knew more. She wanted me to spend more time with them and I agreed but I couldn’t make that promise yet.

Meanwhile, I tried to get to know my son again and deal with some of the issues I brought back with me from my deployment. Namely medical issues. Small things at first that got worse later on.

I finally received my orders and I was to report to an office building in Alexandria, VA for duty. I wondered what I was going to do there? I had to go alone at first until I could secure housing somehow. That didn’t go over well with her and I really couldn’t blame her after me being gone for a year.

After I arrived for duty, I quickly found out that I didn’t have a job as my new boss didn’t have much of a plan for those of us returning and entering the Title 10 Sanctuary program. I sat around, made my doctor appointments over at Ft. Belvoir Army hospital and exercised every day. My immediate boss didn’t know what to do with me as I had no skills behind a desk or with a computer system like he was using. I was a mechanical engineer, not a personnel specialist.

There was another staff sergeant with me, an Army reserve photographer, who also didn’t have a job so we both sat there and twiddled our thumbs most of every day. After a couple of months, I secured a very expensive apartment (by my standards) that was subsidized by the government and I moved my wife and son up from Tennessee. She left her job and we tried to mend our marriage as best as we could. I was also starting to notice some anger management issues with myself back then but I would just head for the gym to work out my anxieties.

After a few months, the sergeant major was starting to get some flack from a more senior sergeant major upstairs about me. Mostly about what was a Civil Affairs Specialist was doing there? I didn’t have any secondary MOS in any clerical work so why was I there and not with other soldiers in my job specialty somewhere where I would be more useful?

As it turned out, my sergeant major and his warrant officer boss had been hiding the Title 10 soldiers from everyone to be used as he saw fit. Instead of assigning them near their reserve units in their home states, he was using transfer funds to bring them to D.C. to work at graveyard affairs (notifying next of kin) and work at Walter Reed Hospital helping patients get to their appointments and such. I had escaped that so far but I was in the slot to go work at Walter Reed. Which meant I would have to take a commuter train from Alexandria, VA to Walter Reed every day and that terrified me being locked up in a train full of strange people.

I started to advocate for myself. I gained a sit down with the sergeant major upstairs and they allowed me to attend a leadership school at Fort Jackson, SC and the second phase at Fort Bragg, NC. At Ft. Bragg, I gained an interview with the USACAPOC Command Sergeant Major, who managed to get me reassigned to HHQ company USACAPOC at Ft. Bragg in the fall of 2003.

I thought I had trouble enough at PERSCOM. I was assigned to another desk job that I knew nothing about and was told to self-train. I received a little help from the sergeant I was relieving but it was of little value. My miseries were just beginning.

I spent the next several months navigating through the politics of office life and a new company first sergeant who was a martinet from Ft. Benning, GA. Someone who had never deployed anywhere in his career and thought he was a god. I was way behind the curve at navigating through all of this and I ended up on the wrong side of things before it was all over in the summer of 2004. This was when I entered the pipeline for retirement and I was taken largely out of the loop at the office. Thank the gods. Between the time I arrived and the time I finally retired and got the hell out of dodge, I was mentally a near total wreck.

My stress levels were off the charts from work and at home, things got continually worse. I started really exhibiting PTSD symptoms and I didn’t know it. I was out of control a good part of the time as my wife and I started trying to figure out what to do after I finished with the Army.

She wanted to go back home to Oak Ridge, TN but, as we found out after making a couple of trips over there, there were no jobs to be had. The unemployment rate was through the roof, empty abandoned houses were everywhere and her brother in-law told us not to come back. Go anywhere but there for a while until the economy got better.

My wife didn’t want to hear that. She was adamant that she could only live there and I told her that my meager pension wouldn’t support us without jobs. She had been offered her old job back but I knew it wouldn’t be enough to live on if I couldn’t find a job. I started to look elsewhere and she fumed. Finally, I reached out to my mother in Caribou, Maine.

She started looking around but there never had been any jobs up there and it was no different then, than it had ever been. As she tried to help, I asked my wife if she would like to take a break from everything and go up there to spend some time relaxing and looking around? She agreed and off we went to northern Maine the summer of 2004.

While we were up there, I found out how easy it would be for me to set up my own business because there was a need for my refrigeration mechanic skills. We also took a look at the schools and my wife liked them, so she said at the time. Then we talked to a retired real estate broker, who was a friend of my mothers. 

This friend said he would start looking for me as a favor to my mother (and the commission). Nearly everything he showed me was within my meager price range so I started making plans. That was when our marriage became a screaming match.

After we returned from Maine, my wife did an about face and said no to Maine. It was Tennessee or nothing. After lots of shouting trying to explain to her that there were no jobs there for me and her not caring, I gave up.

I told her that I would take her and my son to Tennessee and stick around long enough to make sure she was settled, then I was going up to Maine to start my business without them. She realized I was serious and relented but I knew this wasn’t settled by any means. I just didn’t know by how much yet.

In December of 2004, we moved to Aroostook County, Maine and we found a ramshackle apartment to live in until I could find a job, any job, so we could buy a house. I went to work as a local fuel oil truck driver and after a couple of months, we qualified to buy a small house. Which was a good thing as I was laid off not long after that.

In May of 2005, we finally found something that suited our needs. There wasn’t too much work required to move in (a little painting) and it had a large detached garage that I could turn into a nice repair shop. It was outside the city limits so I could safely open my home-based business without violating any city ordinances.

After we moved in, we discovered other major repairs I needed to attend to after our first winter. Finding the money was the problem. Like any small business, it takes a bit to start making a profit and I was no exception. So, in the second year of business, with not enough cash to spend for needed external house repairs, we borrowed a little to put much needed siding on the house, a new roof and some front foundation repairs to the sill where an old deck had caused the outer board to rot with the snow melt.

The other elephant in the room started in the winter of 2006-2007. In 2005, after we had settled into the new house, my wife had found a job with a local hospital as a records administrator and my son started school. Then I started having serious PTSD symptoms. Major OCD, severe anger management, as in loud shouting from me over the slightest things and middle of the night nightmares that would wake me up in a cold sweat screaming bloody murder.

I denied having problems and drove on with my life. I would flinch badly and duck at the slightest odd noise or loud bangs. If someone dropped something that made a loud noise behind me, I would duck and become enraged. If someone in public tried to get aggressive with me, I would take them down instantly, not a word, just put them down on the ground.

I had problems with road rage and once put a man in the ditch for following too close. As I said, by late 2006, I was out of control and problems started arising in my son’s school during his second grade because of this. When social services got involved, my wife freaked out and I became enraged at them. We went to see a counselor, who said they were seriously thinking of removing our son from us because of me and all that I was doing at home. I sat there with a sullen look on my face, which I’m sure didn’t go over well but she didn’t say anything about that.

They sent someone out to inspect my house and us and it just so happened I was home for lunch the day she arrived. I refused to let her in and she threatened to call the police. After she entered through the kitchen door, she told me that I needed to get some help from the VA or they would come take my son from us. That was when I threatened her and anyone else with serious violence if they dared to try and take my son. She left in a huff and I sat down thinking about what she said. I decided to drive over to the local Veterans Counseling Center on the other side of town to get some information.

It was while I was perusing the handouts, that a counselor came out and asked to interview me. It turned out that I had nearly every PTSD symptom in his book he showed me and told me that I needed therapy starting right away before I lost my family and everything else.

In the spring of 2007, I started mandatory PTSD therapy with a counselor that has never stopped. I have gone from weekly visits in an office down to a monthly check-in phone call now. In 2010, I was advised to put in for VA disability for my symptoms and they gave me a fifty percent disability rating as my symptoms have never completely gone away.

After my diagnosis in 2007, I was asked to bring home some literature to share with my family, which I did. We sat down at the kitchen table one night after dinner and I showed them the booklets and pamphlets to explain why I had been behaving so badly those last few years since I had returned from Afghanistan.

Once the cat was out of the bag, my wife freaked out even more. Now I was a dangerous ex-special operations soldier like those she had read about back in 2003. Those that had returned to Fort Bragg from Afghanistan and killed or severely wounded the women they were with at the time. She was afraid that I was going to be one of them and hurt her and our son.

Before I was diagnosed, she knew I had anger problems and she figured I would come to my senses eventually. Now that I had a ‘label’, I was suddenly dangerous. We danced around that issue until the spring of 2009 when she asked to go down to Tennessee to visit family and friends. As we were barely talking by then, I thought it would be a good idea.

The other thing about her is that she is one of those evangelical Christians and always will be. It was one of our biggest riffs as I could never embrace that. I tried Catholicism until they lied to me. I tried a handful of protestant churches that she attended in North Carolina and Caribou but I couldn’t handle them. I eventually settled on a Universalist Unitarian church my mother attended and that seemed okay for a while but I was restless and looking for something else besides this one God religion. That was when I ran afoul of the unitarian universalist minister.

After a conversation in private that went sideways, I lost interest in the church until he allowed Wiccans to attend from the next town over. That was when I sat up and took notice. I wasn’t that interested in Wicca but I soon found my calling. Druidism. I embraced that wholeheartedly and I still practice it to a degree today. It was easier for me to immerse myself wholeheartedly when I lived near the woods outside of town in Caribou, Maine, as it was less conspicuous to people driving by my house. Nowadays, I’m more circumspect and private about celebrating my religious holidays.

When I confessed my newfound spiritual path to my wife in the spring of 2009, she lost it. All of it was too much for her. In June, while she was in Tennessee visiting her family and friends, her best friend from childhood convinced her to leave me and return to Tennessee. So, she called from Tennessee and said she was only returning to Maine long enough to file the divorce papers and collect her things.

What a shock. We had been married for sixteen years by then. I truly thought she would stand by me as I went through all of my issues and, hopefully, came out the other side a better person. We filed a no-fault divorce through a friend’s sister, who happened to be a practicing family law attorney. We split everything down the middle. I got keep the house and she left for Tennessee before the ink was dry on the paperwork. That was when I lost my son. He was ten when she left and it took fifteen years to reconcile with him.

After she was gone, I tried to pick up the pieces of my life once again. Living alone in that house became a burden at times. At other times, I enjoyed the solitude. I tried dating but couldn’t find anyone worth having a long-term relationship with until I met my current wife in 2013. We had a long-distance relationship for nearly two years before making things more permanent.

I ran my successful small repair business until I started having right knee problems. A VA orthopedist in 2013 told me my right knee was shot and I needed a knee replacement. And to find another line of work. I contemplated retiring, sort of, until my mother, whom I was caring for, suddenly became unable to care for herself anymore in 2014 and my brother and I had to put her in a memory care ward in a senior’s home down where he lives, where she finally passed away in November of 2021.

After she was moved to the home, and we had taken care of her house and personal items that she would no longer need, I decided to leave northern, Maine. I had had enough heartache and there were now, too many bad memories for me to manage without driving me mad living alone in my little house.

Between late 2009 and 2013, I had tried dating local women and others from dating apps that all went badly in one way or another. I decided by the end of 2012, that I had had enough of American women trying to take advantage of me because of my retired pension and stable health insurance from the government. That and I always kept in shape for a mid-50’s single man, which apparently made me a little more attractive than most other men my age.

I dated a few who were either drunks, on the run from something, bad hygiene or simply grifters. I finally met a Chinese woman in January of 2013 who had recently immigrated to the United States with her daughter, and they were living in Flushing, NY, a Burrough next to Queens. We got married in January 2015 and are still very happy together.

In April 2015, we moved to Texas at the behest of my two oldest sons who were living down there and we ended up in a small town a few miles north east of Austin, TX. In the five years we were there, I had a couple of jobs there that went south due to their financial issues, one of them was the infamous Sears and Roebuck Corporation. We likely all remember what happened to them. The other two companies I worked for suffered similar fates, although not as catastrophic as Sears.

In December of 2019, I was offered a chance to go back to school again at 64 years old, courtesy of the Veterans Administration through the VR&E program. I chose a vocational IT school in Austin, TX and I attended, mostly remote, all through 2020, despite Covid. I graduated at the top of the class at the end of October, 2020. We immediately sold the house and moved to a suburb of Richmond, VA, where I have been living since.

I worked in IT for a couple of years after arriving and then retired from full time work once I became old enough to start collecting my full social security pension. I still picked up a little part time IT work now and then, until I reached my 70^th birthday, and now, I spend most of my days writing and puttering around.

My health is declining rapidly due to severe osteoarthritis, stemming from my adventurous younger days, that is incurable and it’s only going to get worse as I get older. That and a few other toxic exposures issues that are incurable that plague me at night. I plan to write, whether anyone reads my pieces or not, until I physically can’t anymore as it’s good mental therapy for me. But I do hope some people will read all of this as a good story to tell over a fire place or under an oak tree someday.

Thank you for reading this if you made it this far. Sláinte

All events written here in part 1 and 2 are true to the best of my memory and may not be reproduced without the express permission of the author.