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From War To Home

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Images of Deployment

I have pictures of Afghanistan that people don't know about. People think it's a desert and a wasteland, and here I am in the mountains; clouds and a river going through, which looked like paradise almost. - Christopher W. Photo by Christopher W. We used to provide medical care for herds of civilians in the local populous; these people herded out in front of the gates and we let them in one by one. I like this picture because there is no life-threatening thing happening here, and there is no cool story about bullets, but this is a very real thing that happens on deployment. - Anonymous Because we call each brothers, we don’t call each other veterans. - Christopher W. Photo by Kenneth T. Photo by Raquel R. Those are the people that I laughed with, those are the people that I cried with, those are the people that I sang with. - Tiffany J. We did a lot of route clearance. - L.R.D. You’d grab a friend and take a big dozer and go out and hope you didn’t get smoked. - L.R.D. Insurgents could put an IED in that brush, but not after I burn it. - L.R.D. You roll over the dirt with a dozer and flatten it out, so if you come back later and see a mound of dirt you’d know... <br> - L.R.D. The boy, he watched us the whole day. - L.R.D. Photo by Christopher W. There were IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] everywhere. They have the big enough to take out a tank. I’ve seen soda cans that had IEDs in them. That’s not a big boom but it can do some damage. I’ve seen them put them in dogs, animals on the side of the road, tires, inside of the curb. They will rip the curb off, stick them in there, and then re-cement it. – Kenneth T. Probably the worst part of the job was vehicle recovery. We’d have to pick up these vehicles like Humvees that had been hit by IEDs and VBIEDS [Vehicle Borne IEDs] and put them on the back of the trucks. And most of time they’d be covered up already but on occasion they’d still be hot from the explosion, too hot to touch, and you can smell the burning flesh on the seats and everything. I can still smell it to this day, just talking about it. - Ray F. These are the Iraqi police, and me hanging out with them. I was sort of pen pals with one but he stopped writing me. He stopped writing me, so I don’t know what happened. I am kind of worried about him, because these are the guys who are constantly getting killed, hurt, and maimed. - Thomas C. When you’re inside of a Humvee, the idea that you can see an IED is bull. If you see it, you’re going to be dead. It’s too late. So largely what I would do is look for signs of life, look for kids. - L.R.D. I felt bad for a lot of [the kids]. They sleep on the floor, and I was afraid they didn’t have enough food. - Thomas C. We were very good friends, played football and basketball. He was killed in our second rotation. Not only was he a good friend of mine and he was killed, but I was supposed to be gunning the Bradley that he was gunning. And that eats me up a lot. - Kenneth T. This is for my friend Mark. I was with him when he got killed; he got shot right through the head. It bothered me quite a bit. He had a wife and three kids. I can’t stop feeling guilty about his death. If it had been me it would not have been such a big deal. - Thomas C. When we put that flag out there, it symbolized that we had taken control. That was our colors. We never went anywhere without that. That was letting them know that ‘hey, our unit was there, we're in control now, we're established, we own this city and we're always going to be on top.’ - Kenneth T. My best friend while I was there, she actually went and took a whole loaf of bread out of the chow hall. I mean how many people got to feed ducks in Iraq? - Drew B. We were always messing around to relieve the boredom. Put a bomb on a bike and this is all you have left of the bike. - Thomas C. On this one deployment, our base was just mortared constantly. This was one of the first mortar attacks. Somebody snapped a picture. And it was so surreal that I mean you can see the smile on my face. It was crazy…you’d go outside just to make sure that nobody got hit. And you’d be walking around and there’d be a mortar and it’s just like smoking a cigarette; just walking by like nothing’s happening at all. I look back on that like I was out of my mind. - Ray F. There we are cooking crab legs. They sent us these frozen crab leg boxes - they were like $150, but there we are dumping bottled water so we can cook them on this pallet. So we’re heating up really expensive crab legs. I don’t know, it was just silly. - Thomas C. Once the sand storms come everything would stick to you. You look like a snowman with sand. You’re constantly breathing in dust and dirt. They burn everything there…trash, feces, everything. I developed a nasty cough from it. You get used to it...You have more things to worry about than what you’re breathing in. - Drew B. We had an Air Force lieutenant almost got raped on the base. She had to fight for her life. My M16 was my best friend. We would go to the mess hall, the theater; we’d go to the gym, everywhere with the M16. I’d take it to the showers. - Raquel R. This is the menacing posture that I talked about; me trying to look hardcore. I am locked and loaded and I am not really so hardcore at all. I always had this mentality like, if it is me or you, I want to go home, but I never wanted to shoot anybody. - Chantelle B. The physical pounding is one thing. The rhythm of what makes you able to do that is perhaps the most dangerous part. In order to go work for a 25-hour shift, you don’t sit to eat. You just pound away at your body. – L.R.D. Photo by Christopher W.
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I have pictures of Afghanistan that people don't know about. People think it's a desert and a wasteland, and here I am in the mountains; clouds and a river going through, which looked like paradise almost. - Christopher W.
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Last updated: June 3, 2015