Until Tuesday by Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván Page B

easy target. That’s not normal, to worry about bombers in Colorado Springs. A lot of guys realized that, and they wanted me, as their superior officer, to help them. I never turned them down, no matter how late at night or how much I wanted to drink myself to sleep.
    I am an American soldier. I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills.
    I went to counseling, but I never mentioned the chronic pain, stress, or swirling anxiety that had settled over my life. Instead, I talked about my problems sleeping and my wife. I quit after two sessions, which was all the Army provided without authorization. I wasn’t cured. I hadn’t even figured out I was sick. But authorization for more sessions meant explaining myself to my troop commander, and back then that would have jeopardized my career.
    I am an American soldier. I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough.
    In late July, my physical problems started to outrun me. First, I pulled an abdominal muscle. A few weeks later, I pulled my hamstring. I had been unconsciously compensating for my cracked vertebrae for six months, and my body hit the wall. I stayed out of PT (physical training) with my platoon, rehabilitating myself in the swimming pool every morning, but my recovery was slow and my mind a jumble of contradictory thoughts. I was proud of my service. I had a bright future. I believed in Operation Iraqi Freedom and, especially, in the Iraqis themselves.
    I am an American soldier. I am an expert and I am a professional.
    But at the same time, I was coming unmoored, my mind dwelling on the hand-to-hand struggle for my life, the Syrian ambush, the sandstorms, the riots, and Ali, Emad, and Maher, the men left behind.
    I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
    The wife of one of my best men from Al-Waleed had become pregnant during his midtour leave. The fetus was fatally deformed, but Tricare, the Army’s health service, doesn’t provide abortions under any circumstances, and she had no choice but to carry the child to term . I will never accept defeat. Little Layla was born without a nose and several internal organs. Her parents had no financial resources on a soldier’s pay to provide her comfort. It was heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking, to hold baby Little Layla in my hands. I will never quit. Her life was pain, and it tore her parents apart. I will never quit. She lived eight weeks, and the difficulty of her life, and the inhumanity of forcing that existence not only on her but her parents too— I will never leave a fallen comrade —fueled my downward drive.
    I was angry with the Army. Not on the surface, but underneath, in the depth of my mind. Why did Layla and her parents have to endure that pain, especially after everything they had already endured? Why were they forcing our regiment back to Iraq just ten months after our return? Why weren’t they helping us cope with our pain? We were badly banged up. We were undermanned and underequipped. The Army didn’t care. They were churning us through. They cared more about getting us back to Iraq and making the numbers than they did about our health and survival.
    It was the summer of 2004. Victory was slipping away. Everyone could see that, but the media kept pounding the message: “The generals say there are enough men. The generals say there is enough equipment. The generals say everything is going well.” It was a lie. The soldiers on the line knew it because we were the ones suffering. We were the ones who endured days of enemy mortar fire when we arrived in Iraq without weapons or ammunition, as my element of eighty troopers had in Balad in 2003; we were the ones going back in 2005 without adequate recovery time or armor for our Humvees. And that is the ultimate betrayal: when the commanding officers care more about the media and the bosses than about their soldiers on the ground.
    In August, I informed my unit I was leaving the