Why leaving the Army was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make and how mental illness played the deciding factor

Why I chose not to re-enlist. A surprisingly difficult decision.


There is no way to tell this story without wading into political waters and discussing my views on what campaigners call “Hot Button Issues”. So I want to be very clear that the opinions expressed in this article or any other article listed on my blog are strictly mine and mine alone. I do NOT speak on behalf of my employer or any organization listed on my page or any other organization which I am involved with past, present or future. Nor should they ever be interpreted as such. I speak for Mike A, private citizen ONLY. Also note in this article, all names have been changed as I didn’t have the ability to reach these people to ask their permission to mention them.

Also while I’ll try to avoid long winded rambling, periodically I will have stop to explain why I’m saying what I’m saying. When I do so, I’ll set these sections apart from the rest so you can backtrack to my original train of thought more easily. Now lets begin.

Being ADD, I sort of fit into the Army like a round peg in a square hole. It gets the job done but isn’t the prettiest thing in you’ve ever seen. The Army gives you thousands of dollars worth of gear and expects you to keep it clean, neat, and organized. They demand attention right down to the most minuet detail. That was tough on me. I’m not a spit-shine parade-ground soldier and had little patience or use for white glove inspections. In the six years I was in the military, I wore my dress uniform only twice and went to extremes to avoid putting it on, even volunteering for KP and 10 mile marches. I was forever loosing gear and that cost me quite a bit of money forking over hard earned cash replacement costs. “Hurry-up and wait” often drove me to tears of boredom. The Army grudgingly tolerated this from me because my rifle and field gear were always clean and ready, and I always shined when it came to important tasks pertaining to warfare preparation. Much to the annoyance of every NCO I ever served under, I very much took to extremes The Murphy’s law of combat that stated, “No combat-ready unit ever passed inspection, but no inspection-ready unit ever passed combat”. No soldier I ever served with would ever question that I was combat ready, nor would they question my ability to fail a white glove inspection with flying colors !!! By the time my enlistment was up, the ways of the Green Mother, were wearing on me. It was obvious to everyone, which is why many of the soldiers I served with will likely be surprised at to learn that the decision to not re-up was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make and that I’ve only quit second guessing it recently.

But lets be clear on this. Like a lot of veterans, I often think back to those days and reminisce about the friends I made, experiences I had, feel a pull of obligation to my fellow veterans in uniform and consider joining up again. For me, this is almost every time I read the news. In many ways though is like a boxer or football player whose past his prime, but has a hard time admitting the game has past him by. While he knows it, its extremely hard for him to give-in and accept that its over. Sure from a physical standpoint I’m still healthy enough and young enough to endure the rigors of the Infantry, but due to my medical condition pertaining to mental illness, I know I would be unable to handle the stress and pressures of military life. Yet, it is a hard, bitter pill for me to swallow and admit to. Its only as I learn and understand more about my condition that I’m able to stop feeling ashamed of this fact.

By the time Sept 17, 2003 rolled around I had reluctantly made the decision to not re-up and after a final formation at the unit’s annual picnic, I saluted the CO, was handed my honorable discharge papers, and left the military for good. It was the end of a six year journey that had given me the opportunity to make some of the closest friends I’d ever have, meet some of the most interesting people I have ever met, see parts of the country and have experiences I would not have gotten to have otherwise. As much as anything, I knew then what I’d miss most: working as part of a team of people I could trust with my life, who were so in sync with each other that we could tell by the tone in one another’s voice or walk what was on the other’s mind. I doubt I ever get to experience anything like that on that kind of level again. And a lot went into the decision to walk away from it.

One of the things foremost on my mind was the ongoing combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite George Bush’s declaration of the “Cessation of Hostilities” in Iraq, things were white hot there and Afghanistan was flaring up again too. My unit in fact was in the middle of preparations for a “volunteer” deployment to Kosovo to free-up active duty units to deploy there. How that “volunteer” deployment was being managed by our leadership turned out to be final straw for me but more on that latter.

Digression for explanation on how I felt politically. To this day I have very conflicted feelings about the Iraqi conflict and it was far worse back in 03. I an neither a pacifist or a war-hawk. If anything I am pro-soldier. I dearly want peace so that our young men and women can come home to stay, but I can’t decide the manner in which we should withdrawal. Listening to veterans who have been to both conflicts you hear strong yet intelligent, reasonable opinions for both cutting our looses and getting out as well as staying for the duration and seeing the thing through to the end. Some would say it’s a “black hole with no end in sight so stop this thing and get out and end this needless bloodshed or we’ve served our purpose time to go home”, others say “If we pull out without reaching the our goals, then our dead and wounded soldiers have sacrificed in vain”.

Personally I feel very conflicted about the war. But George W. Bush and some of the war-hawks that supported his administration pissed me off something awful and it all started with his reelection efforts. By 2003 they were already tooling up for the campaign and the theme seemed to be “Reelect me because of 9-11” and through out the campaign W shamelessly carried on in this manner. As far as I was concerned he was holding a political rally at Arlington National Cemetery using the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for a podium while vendors sold t-shirts from booths set-up over grave sites. This would bother me so much that the following summer I would leave my job, as a political staffer who specialized in campaign work, to peruse college full time and reevaluate my chosen career field. At the time I was pretty outspoken about how I felt and this did not go over very well with my fellow political co-workers. I was called a traitor to the Republican Party, my patriotism questioned more than a few times and some who had never worn the uniform flat-out called me a “sunshine patriot” who was too scared to answer another call to duty. Words cannot describe how angry this made me.

Be assured just as I am now, I was then, no less willing to answer the call should my country ever need me. I may not volunteer or be overly eager, but if the need should ever arise I will put down my plow and pick-up my rifle again. By the fall 2003, I was already so sick of these war-hawks who have never worn the uniform, never had a son or daughter serve in the military or possibly at risk of being drafted, going around saying "America needs to turn half of the Middle East and South Asia into a giant parking lot". It is very easy to say we should be out there gunning-down everything in sight if you aren‘t going venturing into the line of fire and pulling the trigger. War-hawks fail to understand another of Murphy’s laws of combat, “If the enemy is within your shooting range, you are within the enemy’s shooting range” and “Incoming fire always has the right of way”. If you know you are at no risk of going into combat and neither is anyone you love and care about at risk of going into combat, you can be phony brave like that. Those of us who have, while more than willing to do so, aren’t quite so trigger happy. The night I got the call to active duty I was proud and frankly scared shitless. Honestly, I would never want to go into combat with anyone who isn't scared. It means you have a health respect for incoming fire. See Murphy's laws of combat, "Never forget your weapon was made by the lowest bidder " and "NEVER share a foxhole with someone crazier than you !!". Only a week before at a Buckeye Football Game my father, also a veteran, had it out with someone who was spouting such “Kill‘em all and let God sort them out nonsense“.

The decision to go to war should not be taken so lightly and should never be driven by mindless rage. It’s a decision to be made knowing full well that people will die and feeling fully convicted that in spite of this, it is necessary. The people coming back in those flag draped coffins were and are real people to me. People I had broken bread with only a short time ago. For George W to shamelessly campaign by saying you should reelect me because of 9-11 was beyond despicable to me and I’ve yet to forgive him for it. Furthermore after having it out with one of these war-hawks I came to the opinion that if America truly wants these wars, why is the Army barely able to make a mere 75% for its recruitment goals, why aren’t military in processing centers overwhelmed with patriots wanting to do their part ? Why are these knuckle heads running around the US shooting their mouths off and beating the war drum instead of shooting rifles and beating down Iraqi “freedom fighters” ? In the interest of non-biased journalism, Kerry wasn't any better either. I was equally disgusted with both of them. But I felt betrayed by "W" given that I had worked on his initial election campaign.

For the above reasons, I felt that until some of those people took a turn on the frontline, I’d fulfilled my turn on the defense line for America, and wasn’t getting back in line for another rotation till some more people had done so, until some of these war-hawks had put their money and their ass where their mouth was.

The second reason I left had to do with my distrust of the senior leadership of my Army unit. Over the course of my active duty deployment as well as a briefing and training maneuvers two months prior, it had become apparent that the leadership above company level was horribly inept and quite frankly corrupt. Only three months prior my old team leader had chose to return to civilian life solely because of this and it heavily effected my decision. For the sake of protecting him, I’ll just call him Phil. Phil had served four years with the 101st Airborne Air Assault Division and proved to be one of the best soldiers I ever worked with and one of my closest friends. He had protected me from making bad mistakes several times and I am in his debt. Phil flat out said on several occasions “Sooner or later this chain of command is going to get us all killed, either get out or transfer asap”. He was one of the few people who knew how much I was struggling with the decision to stay or go and made clear that I should get out. He even drove down from Cleveland to Bowling Green the night before my final drill to party with me and make sure I didn’t re-sign, so strongly was his feelings. Only two days before in a phone conversation, he had said “Dude stop with that Band of Brothers drama. You stay with this unit and you will face certain death, if and when it goes into combat. The guys left in our team need to transfer to a better unit NOW if they are serious about making it”. I agreed with him and I wish I could say this feeling was unfounded paranoia, but it is based on several facts. I will now break off into a another paragraph and switch to italics to qualify this thought.

Digression for explanation: I actually saw a ton of actions taken by the senior leadership of my Army unit that I found appalling, unethical, and so irresponsible that it nearly cost the lives of soldiers (during peace time operations) on at least three different occasions. However in the name of brevity the situations I witnessed which left the most profound impression on me, while not life threatening, did result in undue personal and finical hardship for many soldiers. When my battalion was called to active duty we were so called under Federal Orders from the President of the United States. This qualified us for protections under the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act of 1940. The list is long but the chief protections are that any civil court actions must be delayed until you return i.e.: law suits, foreclosures, .., also since in most cases you are taking a pay cut when you leave civilian life, you and your family are protected against evictions and the bank must reduce the interest collected on any loans to 6%. It is important to understand this law only applies to military personal on active duty per orders of the Federal Government and you are not afforded such protections if you are on orders by the state government of say the State of Ohio. Our orders called for four companies to be sent, our battalion sent five. How did they do this ? Well they sent the fifth company with us under state orders. The unfortunate soldiers caught in that faced a great deal of finical hardship for lack of those legal protections and eventually this resulted in an investigation by US Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (CID). One of the things that came out of that investigation was that some soldiers had essentially been coerced into extending their enlistments. You see many Guardsmen work in civilian law enforcement or have ambitions of doing so. When we were mobilized many soldiers had less than one year left on their enlistments. These soldiers were told if they did not reenlist, while they would receive an honorable discharge, they would also get hit with a bar to reenlist. This is a disciplinary action that can end the career of a highway patrolman or someone with ambitions on becoming an FBI or CIA agent. So they re-upped. CID came along eight months later and said this was wrong and illegal, and per orders of the Federal and State governments declared their enlistment papers null and void. The soldiers were then given the option to re-enlist or go home. Half stayed, half went home. I can’t blame either half for the decision they made. I’d have had to think long and hard had I been given the choice to go home.

Sort of in that same vein, three months prior to getting out, we had been called into a briefing about possible upcoming deployments. Leadership wanted to poll us on the question, “Which would you prefer ? Another stateside deployment or an overseas deployment” and we were asked to write our preference down on a signed piece of paper with our signature. Well, I felt that if I was going to be deployed I may as well get the chance to use this TOW anti tank weapons system that I’d spent the better part of six years preparing to use; instead of playing security guard at another ammo depot . So I put down that I preferred an overseas deployment and forgot all about it. Two weeks prior to my last drill weekend, I got a call from the unit’s readiness NCO stating that since I had volunteered for a Kosovo mission, they would require me extend for a year and a half. This surprised me, since I had not knowingly put my name in for any such thing. Apparently that “poll” I had taken was a certain NCO’s trick to get enough volunteers to justify the Army taking him along. It took four days, countless phone calls, and eventually I had to threaten to take the issue up with my congressmen and the Commanding General of the Ohio Army National Guard, before my name was taken off the roster. To say this upset me was an understatement, I was so angry I almost had a stroke !!

Yet it was that very deployment that had me feeling so conflicted. By 03 I was an acting team leader, charged with the training and welfare or four junior soldiers. I did not take that responsibility lightly and I had been worried. I fretted that if I did not go with them to Kosovo, a lesser soldier would take my place and get them hurt. However, two weeks prior to that call from the readiness nco, our company commander had made a wise decision and promoted my long time friend Todd. Todd was an excellent soldier and had much better leadership skills than me, so I knew my guys were going to be in good hands.

Also long that same vein of thought, these were my friends. For six years we had worked with each other through the bonding experiences of long marches, rain soaked field problems, for a year on active duty we had spent nearly every waking moment together. That year I had jokingly told my roommate’s wife that I had spent more time with Tim than she had. Even as I write this I get choked-up. It is hard to walk away from those friendships. Its been six years and I still miss those guys very much. We shared a common experience that only we can understand or relate to.

But in the end, I had to make a decision based on what was best for Mike. And I knew then that I needed treatment for mental illness and it just wasn’t going to happen if I stayed. Twice in our year long deployment I had suffered mental break downs. Those incidents by themselves weren’t what I found concerning, this happened to several of my close friends of the time and two of them are still in the Army. But after the second one, I wasn’t the same person and it had bothered my roommate enough to go behind my back and ask our CO to order me to get some help. In fact he and I both sought treatment and were shocked at how little the Army had available. That’s a whole story of its own that I’ll save for another day. Staying on topic, in 2003, I was getting treatment by a civilian doctor and knew that the medication I was on (Celexia) and the diagnosis he had given me (Generalized Anxiety and Major Depression) would automatically disqualify me from being considered fit for duty by the Army. So when our unit’s number was called for another deployment I’d have to either hide the condition and risk another relapse or suffer the embarrassment of a medical disqualification and not be able to go anyhow. Clearly it was time to get out. For that reason alone, it was the decision that was best for Mike. But it sure wasn’t easy.