Iraqi people in order to be effective in counterinsurgency.
But here, amid the bucolic landscape of cornfields, tomato crops, and date palm groves, the Fort Stewart soldiers confronted a lethal and unseen enemy that didn’t play by the rules of engagement.
That July day, a bomb exploded in the building with everyone still inside.
Fig dodged debris crashing off the walls and ceiling. The billowing smoke filled his eyes and lungs. He couldn’t see anybody. He was yelling for help.
”Salazar! Salazar! Where are you at, man?”
When Fig got closer to where his friend had been standing, he saw pieces of flesh.
”We never found Salazar,” he would later say.
Fig had grown up in a rough neighborhood in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, where gunshots were as common as rice and red beans on the dinner table. But he had never envisioned violence on this scale.
Four days after the deaths of Salazar, the weapons expert, and his dog, Fig’s own vehicle rolled over a bomb. He felt as though someone was boxing him black and blue in the face. His brain swelled from a concussion and he lost short-term memory. He had suffered traumatic brain injury, a signature wound of the Iraq war.
He was flown to Ibn Sina, the Army’s busiest and grimmest combat hospital in the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area of central Baghdad that is the center of the city’s international presence.
When Fig’s memory returned two days later, he was sent back to Patrol Base Hawkes, where Bravo Company is stationed. He started having disturbing dreams and couldn’t sleep. He didn’t speak to anyone. He found comfort in food and put on pounds.
Hawkes is a rustic outpost where the soldiers sleep in metal shipping containers converted to look like dorm rooms with bunk beds. Last summer, there was no electricity, no air conditioning, no phones, no Internet.
No distractions.
A man can go crazy reliving his nightmares.
Fig’s squad leader, Sgt. Hitchcock, could see his soldier going down. He knew the trauma would render Fig useless as a warrior if he didn’t get help.
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