Oral History Of Iraq & Afghanistan: First Sgt. Andrew Brown

As Told To Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008



First Sgt. Andrew Brown
36 Years Old
Army Reserve, 1990-present
Served in Falluja, Tajji, Baqubah

• Oral History Project

Andrew Brown joined the Army in July 1990. Six months later, he was in a tank battle against the Iraqi Army. His first flashbacks were triggered by TV coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Moving back and forth between reserve status and regular active duty, he deployed to Iraq in 2004 just in time to serve as an adviser to Iraqi troops in the battle for Falluja. On his return in 2005, his marriage broke up and he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Today, Brown, now 36, speaks about his experiences of war and PTSD as a local volunteer with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

[In 1991,] we were rolling over these wadis, over these hills, up and down, up and down. We got a report from the commander, "scouts reporting a contact within 10 kilometers," then "report of enemy contact within five kilometers," and the next thing we knew we were shooting, pretty up close and personal.

One of the tanks that we shot, we blew the turret off. The [Iraqi] T-72s and T-62s, they're cheaply manufactured. There was body parts, bodies were flung around. The ones that survived were surrendering in droves.

I'd really learned to suppress the memories that I had through just not talking about it, or through drinking, or a combination. [But when the US invaded Iraq in 2003,] I didn't sleep for three days, because I was watching what I experienced 15 years prior. It was somebody else's war, but they were driving the same desert, fighting the same fight. This was the era of 24 hour news networks. I couldn't escape it.

I couldn't sleep. I showed up at work the next day and I couldn't get the images out of my head. I came home, I was very short tempered. My wife, she tried to be comforting, but she really couldn't, she hadn't seen this side of me. I just wanted to detach, I wanted to disassociate from everyone and everything. After about a day and a half of trying, I realized I really couldn't and crawled back into the world.

In 2004, my contract was ready to expire. I thought, "Hey, I'm a drill sergeant, I'm not going anywhere. I got nothing to worry about." I signed the contract [to reenlist] and got a pretty healthy bonus. The next thing you know there's phone calls and e-mails, "We're going to go over to Iraq as advisers to the Iraqi army."

[He was assigned to an Iraqi Army battalion supporting the November 2004 attack on Falluja.] At that point, all of the Iraqi units, while there were Iraqi officers and noncommissioned officers technically in charge of them, they were being run by American officers, by the advisers.

We were in the city [of Falluja] for a total of 45 days. There were no IEDs while I was in Falluja; the city was pretty well locked down and vacated, but there was a lot of sniper fire, a lot of RPGs and mortars. When we would move out occasionally we'd have some knucklehead with a gun try to shoot at us.

We had to conduct presence patrols, we had to conduct searches, in the surrounding blocks. We were doing a lot of house-to-house searches. At first I had no confidence in their abilities whatsoever; I was very angry. They did things differently, but as I observed, [I realized] there was a lot of risk in how they were conducting house-to-house searches, but it worked.

The [Iraqi] soldiers I had there in Falluja were pretty competent. The soldiers I picked up after Falluja, they were pretty risky, they were more of a danger to themselves in some regards than they were to enemy forces. I'd like to say we trained them out of that.

We went from the very austere conditions of Falluja to the very pristine and plush conditions of Taji back to the very austere conditions of Baqubah. Baqubah was very much in the fight at this point, there was a lot of insurgent activity, drive-bys and IEDs.

There was one particular IED that took out of one of the Iraqi trucks: It killed the company commander and injured four or five other Iraqi commanders. It was five or six o'clock in the evening. We heard the boom -- it was that big of a blast, we heard a boom on the base. We heard some chatter on the American radio, then we heard a lot of chatter on the Iraqi radio. I knew enough Iraqi Arabic, I knew our soldiers had been hit.

We drove from where we were on this Iraqi base to this American base where they were triaging the soldiers. I walked past a couple of soldiers that were bandaged up.

I walked into the surgical area [and saw the dead Iraqi company commander as] they pulled a sheet across his body. I knew who he was right away. He went from being totally incompetent and just so frustrating -- I wanted to shoot him at a couple of points. Once he realized we were actually going to hold his feet to the fire, he started shining. He was vastly improved, and to then see him naked on a table, tubes sticking into him, American officers giving up on him -- when somebody actually dies it's kind of hard to watch. I recall distinctly saying to one of the other [advisers], "I hated that guy four weeks ago, and it really hurts to see him dead."

[Back at his own base], there was some e-mail from my wife about her driving the car into the garage and damaging the car. I wrote back saying, "I just watched one of my soldiers die. You need to handle this on your own."

They were also starting to brief our replacement team. [After] my year of being in the fight, working with Iraqis, my perspective had changed dramatically, I was perhaps a bit jaded. There was this element of separation between the new team and us; they were required to live on the American base.

[Living on the Iraqi base, he found a golf club, a five-iron.] I kept it right beside my bed, leaned up against the wall. I did keep a pistol, don't get me wrong, but I had this very complex reasoning that if I could subdue an enemy without actually shooting at them, that made me feel good -- having seen enough people shot, having seen enough death and destruction. Plus there's a safety element too: There was another [American] guy in my room. The last thing I wanted to do was shoot him, so I kind of conditioned myself to reach for the golf club. Worst case scenario, I'd give him a bad headache.

Periodically in the couple of years since I've been home, I'll have a nightmare and I'll reach for that golf club. I wind up hitting either the headboard or the wall because it's not there. But I'm still reaching for it.

[My wife] made a series of bad decisions while I was deployed including getting involved with another man. I knew something was wrong but I didn't know what. Eventually, she came clean. After 90 days, I moved out of the house and filed for divorce.

[As a Reservist, he returned to his civilian job]. The first day that I was back at the office, they had a little welcome back party for me, which kind of threw me off -- I guess I should've anticipated that. The second or third day I was back, outside of my cubicle there was this toaster, and this woman, completely innocuous, she burned her bagel. I smelled something burning. She kind of leaned around and said, "I burned this bagel. Doesn't that just ruin your day?" It was near the anniversary of one of my soldiers I had deployed with being killed. I said, "No. Watching someone die ruins your day." That kind of threw her. I had to get out of there and take a walk.

I do recall one morning, I was kind of just walking to work. I thought I was in a pretty good space mentally, watching the sun come up, smelling diesel fumes and there was just a bunch of little triggers that kept building and building and building. I found myself at a sprint, I was running through traffic, scanning rooftops, moving with a distinct aggressive pattern until I finally got into the building and got into the stairwell.

For me, the flashbacks, it's a cumulative thing. It can come on pretty quickly: a sight, sound, or smell would plant a seed, and the more I was thinking about that -- the next thing I'd know, Wow, I am no longer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I know I'm there, but my mind is 8,000 miles away. It just started increasing and it happened more and more frequently.

Ultimately I wound up getting help from the VA. There we entered into the debacle of VA mental health treatment. It was embarrassing: The first guy that I talked to, he wanted me to find my happy place and he wanted me to meditate. It was good in one way -- he explained what post-traumatic stress was -- but when we got into the meditation part, I'm not a big fan of Eastern mysticism, I was a bit offended.

The other doc [at the VA], he really pressured me, you ought to consider some medication. Eventually, he prescribed this drug Klonopin [generically known as Clonazepam], which is an anti-anxiety medication. At first I thought, "Anti-anxiety -- that seems like a good thing." But one of the listed side effects of this drug is depression. I'd already told this guy, "I already had depression, I've already had suicidal thoughts." Within five days, I had a pistol in my mouth again.

[But] he insisted I get back on that same drug. I got very frustrated: "You're not getting it. I'm not going to kill myself for your satisfaction." I kind of stopped seeing him.

What was working successfully for me, I renewed my relationship with the Lord. I started focusing on other people, I renewed my prayer life, and that has been more effective than anything the VA came up with.

At my lowest point, I was praying that the Lord Jesus Christ would be my salvation. One of the tenets of Christianity is to deny the self, to focus on other people; that provided me a refuge. The VA and a lot of mental health professionals will require you to focus on yourself; that really draws you into the self-seeking, self-absorbed, woe-is-me kind of mentality. The more I focused on other people, the more I focused on my relationship with God, the less I focused on myself, and I found that to be an incredible benefit.

I'm in fellowship with the local church. I participate actively in terms of the prayer meetings and the Bible studies and the worship service. It's very comforting and very edifying for me to have that connection with other believers. [My flashbacks,] they're almost nonexistent. The power of prayer, it's a pretty amazing thing. I've not had joy like this in my life.

There's certain people at church that I'll talk to. There are some things I'll them, there are other things I won't tell them. I'll share certain portions of my discomfort, of my frustration, of my anger or sadness.

If I don't feel fully satisfied with that, I'll call one of my teammates [from Iraq]. I don't need to say much at all for them to fully understand what I'm going through, because they're there. I'll get a phone call from one of them every now and then, and I can tell they're struggling.

[He also talks to local civilians and veterans about his experiences.] I found that to be a great benefit to me. A lot of Vietnam vets will say you've got to talk about it. Occasionally, when I do talk about it it brings me a down a bit; but I'd rather me be in a funk for somebody else's benefit -- that to me is far more effective and far more meaningful than just talking about it by myself.

This interview was conducted on Oct. 14, 2008.