Oral History Of Iraq & Afghanistan: Sgt. Robert Bartlett

As Told To Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008



Sgt. Robert Bartlett
35 Years Old
Army, 2003-present
Served in Baghdad area
Audio Slideshow: His Story
• Oral History Project

On May 3, 2005, a roadside bomb struck Robert Bartlett's Humvee. The shrapnel tore off the left side of his face, injured the vehicle's gunner, killed the commander, and blew the fourth passenger clear out of the vehicle. Bartlett has been through numerous surgeries since, at least twice ceasing to breathe and being revived by Army doctors.

My family's been fighting since Valley Forge with Washington. War of 1812, Mexican War, you name it. My own family was split with the Civil War.

Even when I was younger, I've always said I would join in time of war. '91 I was in high school. Somalia went too quick. A lot of those were overnight wars. I saw myself becoming a number, [and] I didn't want to make that sacrifice unless it was going to be a substantial war; unless they needed me, basically.

When you go to basic training, you all start out on an equal playing field; you're all basically a turd and they're going to scrub you clean and get you straight. It doesn't matter -- race, color, origin -- we had Polish guys, Irish guys. It didn't matter, you were all at the same starting level. I see the military as the leading example of bringing the nation together.

I didn't want it to be any lighter than my father and grandfather went through. I wanted them to be just as tough on me as they were on them, because those things really instill survivability. In combat you're put to the ultimate test, mentally and physically. Those same lessons helped keep me alive.

[His first duty assignment was at Fort Stewart, Georgia.] We went to NTC, the National Training Center at Fort Irwin [California], the next month. I got back from that, I did a cavalry "Saber Challenge"; I got third place there. I got "hero of the battle" at NTC and then I got third place in the cavalry challenge -- I'm not happy about that.

I went to sniper school. I was up for top gun, I didn't get it. [The other guy,] he just shot better than me.

[Later,] I had a funeral detail. We're scouts in an armor platoon so we're held to a pretty high standard, we've got to be early everywhere we go, and they tasked us out to do a lot of things like carrying the casket, displaying the colors. It was a young kid, he just had an aneurysm and died in his sleep.

That was my first experience in talking with my chaplain. I talked to him about the feeling that I was going to die at the age of 32 -- and I've had that feeling for about seven years. The same chaplain, he was there when I died in Iraq, holding my hand, 22 days short of my 32nd birthday.

They train you so much that you're actually overprepared. You see the movies and the media, and they don't show the boring parts, they don't show the humanitarian parts, and that's 90 percent of your day, is boredom and humanitarian aid.

To be honest with you, it's not anything that the media portrayed, where all you see is bombs going off. It's not like that for every mission. So we'd probably make contact once a week. Our battalion lost the most during our deployment, and we had the most contact, from what I understand: once, twice a week at the most. Sometimes there's a week or two in there where things are really quiet. [It was] mostly IEDs, snipers and IEDs. You hear shots going off at night or you hear machine guns going off around you.

[His unit covered an area of Baghdad] from the airport to Sadr City and Salman Pak. I averaged three to four missions a day. Usually a morning mission was a combat mission -- clearing roads, [going on] patrols, [manning] security checkpoints, mixing with the people, taking our interpreters along, find out if they're having problems with insurgents. You drive to a location, and then you get out with the people and talk about what's going on: insurgents in the area, schools, any kids missing.

We had a lot of insurgents that would kidnap kids and take them to a village and kill them to instill fear so they could operate in the village. [In] Salman Pak, these guys kidnapped seven kids and put guns to their head and assassinated them in front of the village and said "Your kids are going to be like this [if you don't cooperate with us]."

Afternoon, it would usually be humanitarian aid or escorting a general around from camp to camp.

Then I'd do night missions. I'd do sniper missions and go hunt Chechnyans, Iranians, Syrians, Palestinians. They were all from different countries. For the Chechnyans, they have their own interpreters that can go with them on mission because they don't obviously speak Arabic.

We worked joint operations with the Iraqi army and the Iraqi SF [security forces] troops on those missions. We always took the Iraqi military with us. [They were] awesome.

Even the civilians were really glad we were there. They didn't want us to leave. Especially the Iraqi military, they knew if we left, they knew they really didn't have a fighting chance. They had military training themselves. So they understand what's at stake and what's really going on.

The first time we got hit by an IED, I remember, your time stops, and sound stops, and it goes into like a slow-motion effect. Flash by flash. I remember the rocks slowly going across the hood of the vehicle, and the smoke, and the smell, and the guy screaming, "Go! Go! Go! Go!" Just things like that.

[That IED attack,] it just flattened some tires. It actually hit more civilians, peppered more civilians than anything else; we had to treat them. [There were two major attacks that killed Iraqi civilians,] one in a marketplace. The one that was in the marketplace was daisy-chained with a lot [of explosive] because they don't care.

When a bomb's going off right next to you, there isn't anybody that can just stand there and take that. It's very scary.

I didn't [suffer from combat stress in-theater]. You get a guy here and there who did, and they were getting the help they needed. We had a guy, after we got hit, he just didn't want to go back to theater -- he was on leave. He talked with the chaplain and the counselor and got a lot of things off his chest and returned to duty a week later. Sometimes you just need to take a break. Otherwise it controls you, and that means the bad guy wins.

It's not that it happened to everybody; you feel bad for them and you hope they get back to it. You hope that they get back on top of it. We were shorthanded; they were needed.

Command, they don't want somebody that's not going to be able to react and save lives. They want that person to be combat effective. They can't help anybody if they get into a fix [psychologically]. It's good for everybody. You want the guy who's sitting to the right and the left of you to be able to fight.

The one question kids ask me at high schools, they want to know what it feels like to kill somebody. There's a reason the Ten Commandments are there, but war is one of those necessary things. It's not anything that guys like to talk about. I would suggest not to ask anybody.

Do I have any regrets? No. In fact, I wish I could do one more sniper mission in Afghanistan or Iraq right now before I got out of the military. [It's] your ability to know that you're making a difference, that you're saving lives in the long run, that you're taking out people who could kill a lot of people in the long run.

The hardest thing I've had to deal with -- being in a hospital, my guys were there, I couldn't be there with them. I've had a ton of surgeries, I've died a few times, and I can tell you the hardest thing I had to deal with was not being with my guys. I missed this last deployment when they came back this summer. I lost a buddy over there. I wonder if I could have made a difference -- if I could've sniped a few guys, maybe that wouldn't have happened.

The Battle of Gettysburg was three days; 53,000 were killed. Now, because of our combat effectiveness, because of our training, because of the improvements in technology, people are surviving. I wouldn't have survived in the past.

[The day I got hit,] I remember everything since the bomb went off. I have trouble with some of the stuff before that -- the mission that day, what we did before we got hit. Some of it's come back, some of it's still missing.

What I remember is wailing in pain, not being able to hear anything but ringing in my ear. I can remember the rocks and the shrapnel coming through the vehicle. I remember the smell of burning flesh. I remember looking over at my truck commander and seeing he was killed instantly. I remember thinking it was my time. [My gunner and I,] we just kind of embraced each other. We thought we were going to die right there with Sergeant Brooks. [Staff Sergeant William Jerome Brooks, killed May 3, 2005, at age 30.]

[The fourth soldier who had been in the Humvee, Staff] Sergeant [Edwin] Greer woke up in the street. He told me in the hospital here that he woke up to Sergeant Brooks' spirit telling him to move, to drive out of the kill zone.

I remember all of it, every little detail. I remember getting out of the truck and trying not to let my guys know how bad I was, trying to walk into the hospital. I remember them throwing me onto the stretcher.

I went into respiratory arrest immediately. I don't remember much after the hospital, that's when I started dying. A chaplain -- the same one -- was there holding my hands.

[After each surgery,] you start working out again. Finally, after you've recovered for a month, and you start getting your strength back, and you're building yourself back up, and then you get knocked down again, and you've got to start over again. Has it made me stronger? Yeah, absolutely. The military training has definitely helped me.

I did group therapy with some soldiers, and we just talked about what we went through and told our story. A lot of us discussed the survivor's guilt we go through: "What if I did this...." You come to the realization that it is what is, and you can't change it, and you couldn't change it back then. You talk about it, you've got to get it off your chest, it's as simple as that.

[I've had] nightmares, anger issues, just about everything that everybody else deals with. Sleep issues, memory problems, you name it. How I got through it was just doing the group therapy and talking about it. I wasn't going to let the guy who blew me up win.

The therapists were there at the group. They just tried to keep the focus of the group rolling in the right direction of people getting things off their chests. They just keep it in a format that's very easy to talk about. You have lunch and you just sit there and talk about it, and you realize that other guys are going through the same thing, that you're not alone, that it's not strange, that you're not crazy, that it's going to get better. Guys are at different stages.

I don't like taking meds. I tried Zoloft. Meds are OK, but if you're just medicating and not dealing with the issue, [that's bad]. As for psychologists, yeah, I saw [them] a handful of times, maybe five times, not very much, just to talk about issues I was dealing with. Just trying to figure out what might work best for me. That's when they prescribed Zoloft and tried that.

I just found out that doing group and getting it off my chest was the best therapy, just talking about it. Going to church, having faith and talking with God, my own personal faith. My chaplain is one of my best friends, [the one] who was there when I passed away.

Before I'd got hit, I'd go to church here and there -- not very often. Did I pray a lot? Yeah, but I never read the Bible much or anything like that. I needed to strengthen my faith and my knowledge. My father was Mormon and my mother was Catholic. So I was baptized Catholic, but I did search other religions -- Mormon, non-denominational Protestant. I just felt at home as a Catholic.

I don't think I'm going back to active duty. I'm looking into some companies that have a military-hire program and who are involved in the active military and in the veterans' side of it. I've been working with both sides since I've gotten hit. I always want to Continue Mission, taking care of the guys and the girls coming from [the war zone]. I can't be fighting a war anymore, but I can fight for them here. My focal point now is just helping others get through what I've been through.

It still affects me. I know it does [affect] my sleep here and there; but it's gotten so much better. I'm at the point where I don't need any therapy.

Do I still need to engage and talk to my wife about things? Absolutely. She needs to be able to understand that. When we get out of the military, there's a family [counseling] session so she can understand some issues and some things we can look for. We're a team. We're going to do this together. We started dating after my injury. We met through a friend, and she just grabbed on and wouldn't let go. Yeah, I'm very lucky, I thank my lucky stars.

There's a stigma out there. These young guys think if they go to a psych or a group, they might be labeled crazy, and they're not. Firefighters and policemen go through what we do, things that you just don't see in the ordinary, everyday life. We just need to get that stigma out of there and let people heal.

This interview was conducted on Oct. 16, 2008.