{"id":89149,"date":"2026-04-29T11:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T11:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/89149\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T11:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T11:45:10","slug":"an-iraq-vet-weighs-the-personal-cost-of-combat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/89149\/","title":{"rendered":"An Iraq Vet Weighs the Personal Cost of Combat"},"content":{"rendered":"

A decade has passed since I last felt the thud of a mortar hitting the perimeter or the specific metallic scent of an IED-charred road, yet I\u2019m still waiting for the \u201chomecoming\u201d to actually begin.<\/p>\n

To the person standing behind me in the checkout line, I am just another civilian. Perhaps a bit too observant, a bit too stiff. They don\u2019t see the 400 combat patrols. They don\u2019t see the Sunni Triangle<\/a> in 2007, where the air was thick with the \u201cSurge<\/a>\u201d and the constant vibrating threat of violence. <\/p>\n

I am part of the 1%. Actually, even less. Less than 1% of Americans have looked through an optic and made the permanent, conscious decision to end another human life. We are the ones who stood in the gap, yet years later, I feel less like a \u201chero\u201d and more like an alien species observing a civilization I no longer understand.<\/p>\n

The Hero Myth<\/p>\n

The American public loves the word \u201chero.\u201d It\u2019s a clean word that fits on a bumper sticker or a greeting card. But the reality of an infantryman\u2019s service isn\u2019t clean. During my first tour, from October 2007 to December 2008, and my second year-long tour during the Baghdad withdrawal, \u201cheroism\u201d wasn\u2019t a choice, it was a survival reflex. <\/p>\n

\"\"Personal Security Detail of the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq in 2007. The author is in the front row, second from the left. (Photo courtesy of Jarrod Toothman)<\/p>\n

There is a profound, sickening duality in being thanked for your service by people who would be horrified if they actually saw what that service required. If the people applauding at the parade saw the kinetic actions, the cold calculation of the engagement, and the way your heart hardens when you\u2019ve taken a life, they wouldn\u2019t offer a handshake\u2014they would offer a wide berth. <\/p>\n

I carry the knowledge of what I am capable of, and that knowledge acts as a wall between me and every \u201cnormal\u201d person I meet.<\/p>\n

The 400-Patrol Chasm <\/p>\n

The civilian world worries about mundane emergencies: late emails, traffic jams, or a slow internet connection. To a man who spent 15-month stretches dodging IEDs<\/a> on treacherous roads and enduring unrelenting indirect fire from above, these struggles feel like an insult. <\/p>\n

This creates a pervasive sense of arrogance that I\u2019ve learned to hide but never lost. I look at my peers who spent those years in college or starting careers, and I feel a cold detachment. <\/p>\n

Even within the veteran community, there\u2019s a divide. I find it nearly impossible to relate to those who served in support roles\u2014the ones who saw a peaceful tour, unimpeded by the daily lottery of death that defines the infantry.<\/p>\n

\"\"The author at Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah in 2007, resting between missions. (Photo courtesy of Jarrod Toothman)<\/p>\n

I am jealous of their peace, yet I look down on it. It\u2019s a toxic, prideful loop: I wouldn\u2019t wish my memories on anyone, yet I can\u2019t respect anyone who doesn\u2019t have them.<\/p>\n

The Shame of the Living <\/p>\n

The most haunting part of being a survivor isn\u2019t the enemy, it\u2019s the silence. We survived the \u201cSurge,\u201d we survived the withdrawal, and came home to a world that moved on without us. We carry the guilt of every brother who didn\u2019t get to see a decade of \u201cnormalcy.\u201d <\/p>\n

We feel a sense of shame for being the one who gets to grow old, especially when we feel like the best version of ourselves died in the dust of Iraq anyway. <\/p>\n

We are told to readjust, as if we can simply flip a switch and forget how to scan a rooftop for snipers or how to ignore the adrenaline of a firefight. We are expected to brush aside the internal demons, the ones we don\u2019t discuss because they are too dark for polite company, while we shoulder the burdens of everyone else\u2019s trivial problems. <\/p>\n

This isolation isn\u2019t reserved for the strangers in the checkout lane; it leaches into the very foundation of my home, turning the dinner table into another kind of perimeter. I look at my friends and family, the people I should know best, and I see a different species.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jarrod Toothman with his children, Lilyana (left) and Elias (right) in 2022. (Photo courtesy of the author)<\/p>\n

They discuss neighborhood gossip or the stresses of a home renovation with a frantic intensity that I can\u2019t mirror. To them, these discussions are the pillars of a meaningful life; to me, they are soft, fragile distractions that exist only because men like me kept the darkness at bay.<\/p>\n

I envy the effortless way they inhabit their own skin, but that envy is spiked with a cold resentment. I want to care about the things they care about, but my mind is still calibrated for a world where the only metric of a good day was everyone making it back to the wire. <\/p>\n

A Stranger\u2019s Love <\/p>\n

Even in the quietest moments with those I love, I am performing a version of normal that feels like speaking a foreign language I haven\u2019t quite mastered. When my wife talks about the future or my kids play in the yard, I am scanning the tree line or calculating the nearest exit, unable to turn off the survival reflex that once kept me alive but now keeps me alone. <\/p>\n

They see a husband and a father who is a bit too stiff, but they don\u2019t see the Iraq patrols running on a loop behind my eyes. There is a profound, silent shame in realizing that the people I fought to protect are the ones I am most incapable of connecting with. My memories are a wall and every time I try to reach across it, I\u2019m reminded that you cannot bridge a gap created by the \u201cSurge\u201d with simple domesticity. <\/p>\n

The Price of Your Peace <\/p>\n

If this sounds bitter, it\u2019s because it is. If it sounds arrogant, it\u2019s because it has to be. That pride is the only thing that keeps the weight of the sacrifice from crushing me. The civilian world enjoys a peace they didn\u2019t pay for, protected by a tiny fraction of men they don\u2019t truly want to understand. <\/p>\n

I am a combat infantryman. I have seen the world at its most violent and raw, and because of that, I will never be normal. I will continue to walk through grocery stores and parks as a ghost\u2014a reminder of the cost that the 99% will never have to calculate. <\/p>\n

I am over a decade removed from the desert, but I am still on patrol. And I suspect I always will be. <\/p>\n

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mollie Turnbull. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A decade has passed since I last felt the thud of a mortar hitting the perimeter or the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1725,4141,94],"class_list":{"0":"post-89149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-army","9":"tag-combat","10":"tag-iraq"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116487829880022898","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}