Interview with Travis Martin, June 3rd, 2011

SCOTT: Uh, we're here in Richmond, Kentucky with, uh, Travis Martin. He's twenty-six years old. Uh, a veteran of two tours, of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Uh, he was a member of the Army. Uh, he just finished his master's degree here at Eastern Kentucky University and plans to attend the University of Kentucky in the fall to, uh, begin work for his Ph.D. All right, Travis. Thanks for being here.

MARTIN: Thank you.

SCOTT: Uh, let's start with, uh, your early upbringing. Let's talk about where and, uh, and what you were like as a child.

MARTIN: I was raised in, uh, Somerset, Kentucky, mostly. I mean, we lived throughout the country in different places. Um, Hawaii, Tennessee for a little while, but mostly in Somerset. Uh, I grew up the son of a single mom, mostly. My father wasn't really in the picture, so, you know, I was, you know, kind of a troubled child. I got in a lot of trouble. No positive male father figure around to guide me and stuff.

SCOTT: What kind of trouble would you say that was?

MARTIN: Uh, let's see. It started in elementary school. We would, we would fight on the playground a lot. You 00:01:00know, nothing serious. And then, um, basically it was just, you know, talking back. You know, rebelling against authority. I never got into any real serious trouble with the law or anything like that. Just had an attitude problem.

SCOTT: All right. Was, uh, I mean, was it a, a hectic time for your mother as well, trying to--

MARTIN: --yeah--

SCOTT: --figure out how to, how to properly rear you without a, without a father figure?

MARTIN: Yeah. I was, I was the oldest of three kids. Um, it was my younger sister, who's two years younger than me, and about the time I was thirteen, I got, I got a little brother, a little half brother. And, you know, I was kind of his father figure for a while, so that kind of made me grow up fast in a lot of ways. But, it was about my junior year in high school that, you know, I kept getting in trouble in class and stuff, and so the counselor there said, "You need to talk to an Army recruiter or we're going to have you start talking to the police officer next time you get in trouble." And so I said, "Well, I'll talk to the Army recruiter, then." Because I really 00:02:00didn't want my mom to find out I had gotten in so much trouble. It was for writing stuff that I shouldn't have wrote. And I was basically trying to make a joke on an English assignment, and it turned out that the teacher didn't take it as funny. And so he, he sent me to the counselor's office. The counselor said, "Well, you can't write that kind of stuff. It's, um--puts up a red flag for the teachers." And I was like, "Well, I just meant it for a joke." He was like, "Well, you've obviously got a real problem with self-discipline, so I want you to talk to an Army recruiter and just see what he says." I'm like, pfft. Army. I'll never join the Army guys. Because I think in high school we called the JROTC guys "pickles." They had the green outfits and they were basically--we'd make fun of them when they walked by. So I was like, I'll never do that. I'll never be that straight-laced. So I talked to the Army recruiter, and he was a pretty cool guy. You know, he was down-to-earth. He was like, you know, "It's not going to be fun in basic training." Because that was the biggest fear, you know, is basic training. "But you'll get through it, and it's basically up to you after that." So I let it 00:03:00sit for about a year. Same stuff. You know, I just kept doing the usual high school stuff, running around with friends and working part-time jobs. Got out of high school. Went to college for maybe two weeks at Somerset Community College. And I just was a horrible student. I never took a book home in high school and somehow managed to pass. When I got to college, it was like, well, I'm failing my classes and, you know, I'm barely two weeks into it. And so I just quit going. And, I started thinking about it for a long time. You know, I read the Bible, prayed about it. Eventually, I was like, you know, I think I'm going to join the Army, thinking back to two years prior when I'd met that recruiter. And so my mom had gotten married to--about a couple months prior to that, and we moved in with my step-dad. I asked him to go with me, because, you know, he was, he was, you know, the first father figure I was ever starting to get. He came with me and we talked to the recruiter, and he asked me what I wanted to do and I said, you know, I'd had a friend who'd gotten assigned to 00:04:00Europe. And I was like, wow, I could go to Europe and get paid while I'm there. It would be like a free vacation. And so he said, "You'll be--you can be a truck driver and deliver mail all over Europe." And so I was like, that sounds like a really good deal. So I, I signed up, went to MEPS [editor's note: military entrance processing station], you know, did all the physical stuff.

SCOTT: What, what year? What age were you?

MARTIN: That was 2002 and I was eighteen.

SCOTT: Okay.

MARTIN: I was, I was eighteen years old when I went to MEPS. And, I didn't tell any of my friends that I was going in, but I was, I was under the late entry program for a couple months, and eventually they shipped me off to basic in, uh, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

SCOTT: What, uh, what was your mother's reaction when you told her?

MARTIN: She was, uh, you know, really sad at first, but at the same time, she kind of realized I was, I was headed downhill. Um, a lot of my friends--Somerset got really bad into drugs with you know, methamphetamines, people taking pills and stuff. I hadn't done any of that stuff, but a lot of my 00:05:00friends were starting to do it. And plus, you know, I had been drinking, you know, and partying and stuff, and she didn't like that. She's a teetotaler, and drinking's a big no-no in my family. So she was like, you know, "I'm scared for you, but at the same time, I think this might be good for you." That, that was her reaction.

SCOTT: Okay. So, I mean you knew that the nation was at war at that time. I mean, how did that, that weigh in your decision? But, whether or not it, uh, you know, pushed you towards, uh, being a truck driver or, um, you know, pushing you towards any other branch of the service besides the Army?

MARTIN: I, I really, honestly, didn't have a clue what I was doing. I went to the recruiter and told him I was flunking out of college, I was working a part-time job at a gas station, and really had no prospects for the future. He said, "Well, so the Army is really the bottom of the barrel for you." I was like, "Well, I guess you could take it like that, but I'll still want to join." And so I did. Um.

SCOTT: All right. Uh, let's talk about basic, then. What's, what's your, uh--walk us through your, your, your first experience with, 00:06:00uh, with the drill sergeant, with barracks life.

MARTIN: I had, I had a pretty good idea what I was walking into. Just, you know, you see a lot on movies. You hear a lot from your friends who've been. Um, I, I really didn't think basic was that bad. Uh, you just stay quiet, and I was pretty good at that. They said--one person when I first got there said, "You want to be what's called a ghost, you know. You don't want anyone to even know your name when you leave here. If you do that, then that means you've stayed out of trouble." And so that was my goal. I just stayed as quiet as I possibly could, back in the corner, you know. Stayed in the middle of the runs, not in the back or the front. And just basically stayed out of everybody's way.

SCOTT: Did you excel in any way in ba--in boot camp?

MARTIN: I wouldn't say so. I was a ghost, like I said. I didn't stand out one way or another. It was, uh, probably one of the easiest nine weeks of my life, honestly. I got in shape. You know, I got lots of good food. Um, learned lots of cool stuff. Got to go on little camping trips, play with weapons. It was fun.

SCOTT: Were those things you were interested in as a child? Play in the woods and hunting or anything like that.

MARTIN: Yeah, I played in the woods a lot as a kid. I, I grew up in a little place called White Lily, which is, um, near Lake Cumberland. And it's in kind of a little mountainous region. Um, I guess people who live in real mountains call them hills, but they were pretty big walking up and down them. Big creeks, and we'd walk up and down the creeks, you know, trying to catch fish and throwing rocks at snakes and, you know, chasing cows. I like the, I like the outdoors. It was, it was good stuff. So, I mean, it didn't really bother me much when we got to Missouri. I started doing a lot more.

SCOTT: All right. Uh, what's your most memorable moment from boot camp?

MARTIN: Boot camp.

SCOTT: Anything funny or amazing you want to share?

MARTIN: You know, probably the funniest thing--and this is real dark humor. And it, it--we had a 52 percent pass rate or something. It was, uh--a lot of people didn't make it. And, some of the, uh, the people that didn't want to be there, they would, they would, they would try to kill themselves by 00:08:00taking Motrin and aspirin and stuff. And it wouldn't work. They would just get sick, and they'd have to send them to the doctor and get their stomach pumped. And one of the drill sergeants said, "You know, if you really want to kill yourself, that's really what you want to do, tie that, uh, buffer right there around your neck and throw it out the third-story window. It'll do the trick. Because right now, you guys are just, uh, trying to get out of here. We know what you're trying to do." And, I don't know. I just thought that direct approach was hilarious, I mean.

SCOTT: So that was a real epidemic in your, in your platoon?

MARTIN: Yeah, it was, uh--

SCOTT: --or in your company, at least.

MARTIN: I, I didn't get it. I mean, like I said, I didn't think it was that bad, but some people, they just, um--they didn't respond well to the, uh, being told what to do, the authority. Um, a lot of people, I guess, were a lot worse off than I was when it came to being rebellious.

SCOTT: I've never heard of that. All right. Uh, you've already talked about what your occupation was going to be, uh, but you graduated boot camp. Uh, what's the next step from there?

MARTIN: That was, uh, AIT, advensed--Advanced Individual Training. I stayed 00:09:00in Fort Leonard Wood. We actually packed our bags and walked down the street, and we trained for about, I don't know, I want to say six to eight weeks, on how to drive trucks, different kinds of trucks. Uh, you had the, um, the 915, which is the, you know, kind of like the tractor trailer you see on the highway. You had the, um, the HETS, which is a heavy equipment transport, I believe. It's the biggest truck in the Army. We trained on that. And, the deuce and a halves--I know I'm using a lot of military-specific jargon now, but that's the, the old classic ideal Army truck. You know, four big wheels and cattle fenced-in place in the back.

SCOTT: Cattle wagon----------(??).

MARTIN: Cattle wagon. I guess that's what you call it. So we trained on all those. We trained on, you know, convoy procedures and all that stuff. Nothing really, um, combat-specific, though, which has kind of struck me in retrospect. We didn't really train for, you know, combat zone.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTINE: That was, uh, that training.

SCOTT: All right. Did, uh, did you make any, any long lasting friends while you were going through the training?

MARTIN: No, but I learned to speak Spanish, oddly enough. There was, um, a lot of, a lot of Hispanic people in my unit. And, they would speak Spanish in the barracks. I had taken Spanish in high school. And, I don't know. I, I went out of my way to speak it, so I thought it was kind of cool to learn a foreign language while you're in, you know, basic training. It was neat.

SCOTT: All right. So from there, you go to your first duty station?

MARTIN: Yep.

SCOTT: Let's talk about that.

MARTIN: I went to, um--my first duty station was in Mannheim, Germany. It was actually my only duty station. And, um, when I got there, my unit had been deployed to Iraq for I think a month or two--or the Kuwait border. Um, this was--would have been in March or April of 2003. The Iraq War had just started whenever I got there. And so--

SCOTT: --how did, uh--I mean, just to backtrack a little bit--did you hear--were you hearing about the buildup and then the initial invasion 00:11:00while you were going through training?

MARTIN: It was like my last week or so. Maybe second, second to last week in AIT that we saw the, uh, the thirty-day push into, uh, Baghdad. And so right after that, I got to my unit, who was actually in that push.

SCOTT: Uh, how did that, uh, you know, affect your decision?

MARTIN: I really didn't think about it, honestly. I mean, I figured I was in for four years and it really didn't matter to me one way or another if I went to combat or not. I was, you know--I owed Uncle Sam at that point. They told us over and over again in basic that, you know, you signed the dotted line; you belong to him now. So I was okay.

SCOTT: Okay. All right, sorry. Let's go forward back to where you were, in Germany.

MARTIN: All right, so I'm in Mannheim, Germany. We get to my unit. There's, uh, one of my friends that was in basic training with me. Um, I think his name was Glen Schletter (??). He, he had actually came to the same unit. And, we got there and it was all rear detachment people. And they basically told us that, you know, "Your unit 00:12:00is gone, but you're going to be joining them pretty soon." And so it was odd, because right after that, they stuck us in this German preparation course. And all the basic in-processing stuff that we needed to, you know, do well in U.S. Army Europe--

SCOTT: --um-hm--

MARTIN: --but we were supposed to be leaving any minute. So basically, for a month, we in-processed to Germany, and then we left to Iraq. That was, that was pretty much that. It was--I remember the first thing about Germany that struck me as odd was that, you know, I could, I could buy beer at eighteen. I was like, nobody told me about that. (Scott laughs) I mean, had they told me that, I probably would have, you know, been in JROTC in high school, like, getting As and ready to go to the Army first thing. But, I got there and it was, it was just this amazing place. I mean, the landscape looked a lot like Kentucky, so, I mean, that kind of reminded me of home some. People were pretty friendly. Most of them spoke English. And, that was amazing. And, you know, the people in my rear detachment were pretty friendly.

SCOTT: Did you feel like you got much of a chance to, to really experience Germany at all before you left?

MARTIN: Um, no, not really. I mean, we went downtown in Mannheim a couple of times, but most of it was in-processing every day. Um, and then we left. That's pretty much it. I think we went to the range once before we left, maybe. I can't remember.

SCOTT: All right, so you get a--the, the whirlwind tour of, uh, of where you're going to be stationed, and then--

MARTIN: --yeah, then we, um--about a week before we leave, the, uh, acting first sergeant, a Staff Sergeant Sanchez, takes myself, and there's a--like a group of new recruits that had joined the unit, I guess, to be replacements down range. And, he starts taking us into his office and preparing us for, uh, for combat. His way of preparing us for combat is basically just to take us in and smoke us, which is, you know, push-ups, sit-ups, and all these different exercises that are supposed to be corrective training. So 00:14:00he would take us into his first sergeant's office and basically make us do exercises all day, because that was supposed to prepare us for combat. And, um, it was pretty much like that, about five or six hours a day. He would just, like, try to catch us off guard, like not standing at parade rest when you talk to a noncommissioned officer, or not having your hat on in the proper place, or, you know, having a button undone. All these little, petty things that he could think of, you know.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTIN: It's supposed to, I guess, get our discipline ramped up and ready to go for the combat zone. Maybe it----------(??)--

SCOTT: --do you feel it helped any?

MARTIN: Maybe, I don't know. (Scott laughs) It made me pretty angry at the time. I kind of thought it was, uh--I kept on telling everyone, he's abusing his power. You know, he's a staff sergeant and he's, you know, he's just taking advantage of us young privates. But maybe, who knows. We listened to orders better when we got there because of it.

SCOTT: Do you feel like you, you got appropriate training before you deployed?

MARTIN: You know, in light I don't. I really don't. Like I said, we didn't do much combat training at all in Advanced Individual Training. It was pretty much just how to 00:15:00drive on civilian roads. Um, I took a German road test before I went to Iraq. That didn't help at all. I mean, when I got to my unit, we had PLSs, which were palletized loading systems. I don't think I'd ever seen one before. Um, as far as being qualified with my weapon, I mean, I did that in basic. That's, that's about it. I was qualified to shoot an M16, which they didn't even give us ammo for when we got on the plane--or got off the plane, into--(laughs)--Iraq, until we got to our unit. So that was kind of weird.

SCOTT: Okay. Let's, uh, let's talk about the, the move forward.

MARTIN: Yep. So we, we fly out of Mannheim, Germany to, um, Italy for a little stop, for like a couple hours. Then we get to Kuwait, and there's like a two or three-week--you know, we're trying to find our unit. Where's our unit at? You know, were six people, or seven people, lost in Kuwait, basically, going from tent to tent, little camp to little camp. 00:16:00Because it was very chaotic back then. There were little forward operating bases everywhere. People were moving, you know, every day. And, our unit was on the move. Eventually we found our unit. And, it was in, um, forward operating base, Dogwood, in Iraq. And, we got on a plane to Balad, and our unit met us there and took us back. And like I said, we didn't really know what to expect, so when I got off the plane, it was like, um, this hot oven. If you've ever opened an oven to look in to check on the contents, you can feel the heat, and that's exactly what it feels like when you step off the plane into Kuwait or Iraq. So I remember the heat really caught me off guard. Then I remember, um, you know, just--I was surprised because when we flew into Kuwait, I really didn't know a lot about, you know, Army layouts in the world and theaters of operation. Kuwait is just like this built-up place. You know, they've got fast food there. They've got, you know, gar--it's like garrison environment. And 00:17:00so we got there and everything was just, you know, very civilized. I was like, "This, this is a war zone?" They were like, "No, you'll be there in shortly. Just hold on." And, you know, like I said, we found our unit, but Staff Sergeant Sanchez didn't give us any ammo. Um, so we're, we're, we're--we get to Iraq and, you know, everybody's like, "You guys got these M16s." And these one couple guys had the squad automatic weapon, SAW. You know, "Where, where's you're ammo at?" It's like, "Well, they didn't give us any ammo." I guess Staff Sergeant Sanchez didn't trust us with it. But, when we met our unit, I remember I asked a guy for a magazine and he gave it to me, because he was like, "This is, this is crazy. You guys are--you know, we could be ambushed any minute." And, I guess then it kind of started to hit home that we had actually arrived in a war zone, and we were on the road from one base to another and they said, you know, "You should probably have bullets ready to go, because you never know what's going to happen." So we got to, um, got to forward operating base Duke--or not Duke, but Dogwood. I apologize.

SCOTT: Where, where in Iraq is this?

MARTIN: That is in--well, you start off in, um, Kuwait, which is south, below Iraq, and then you go north to a little place called Cedar, and then you go a little bit farther north. It's, like, uh, south central, I guess--

SCOTT: --okay--

MARTIN: --would be where Dogwood is. South central Iraq. And, uh, that's, that's going to be our home for the next couple of months. And, um, I remember when we, we got off the trucks that you step down and it wasn't sand like a beach, it was sand like dust. Like baby powder. Like a foot thick baby powder. Everywhere you walk, it kind of, like, sucks your shoes into the ground. And, um, everything is covered in it. People are covered in it. Food's covered in it. There's, um--the tents are covered and the beds are covered. Everything is covered in this moon dust, is what we kept calling it. We get there, and the first thing that I see in my unit is, you know, five or six big, green tents, and they're just sitting in the middle of the sun. And they say, "You guys are going to first platoon. 00:19:00You guys are going to second platoon. You guys are going to third platoon." That's where I went. Third platoon. We get to, we get to, uh, grab our bags, walk into our tent, and everyone's sitting around in a circle, talking. And, um, they're having what's called a census session, and this is my first impression of what will be my platoon for, you know, the next four years is that there's, um, been a complaint that racism is rampant in the platoon. One of the people feels that the, uh, higher NCOs, which are all black people, are making the white people work harder. So this is the first day. I'm like, oh, man. This is what I'm walking into. This is what it's going to be like my whole deployment. Race, race riots. You know and that was--I get out and set my stuff down and listen for a little bit. And, I'm like, "I'm really tired. I'd like to go to sleep, you know, catch, catch some Zs. We haven't slept the whole ride over here hardly." And so one of the guys tells me that, you know, "Ah, don't worry about this stuff. We've just got a couple of people that like to complain and stir up trouble." And that's, that's what it was. There, 00:20:00there really wasn't a lot of racial tension. But he tells me that there's no room in the tent, so you have to sleep out on the trucks. And so that kind of dampened my mood a little further. So I get out to the trucks and there's actually a lot of people sleeping on the trucks. That's where most of the people wanted to sleep, because I guess the tents were just so hot.

SCOTT: So it wasn't necessarily a hazing thing? They really--they really did have--

MARTIN: --no, people slept on the trucks. They slept--they had--the trucks were lined up, staged for a convoy. And that would mean that you'll have one truck lined up after another for, you know, as far as the trucks will go. And in between the trucks, they've got blankets, you know, strung up, they've got cots laid out, there are people playing cards. There's people, you know, rifling through the MRE boxes and stealing the Kool-Aid out. There's, um--you know, it's like a little, a little town almost, you know. You get out there and you're like, okay, you can sleep on this flat rack tonight, and the flat rack is what goes on the back of the PLS. It gets hooked to the little hook, and it pulls it up on the truck. And so I throw a cot up there, pull up my sleeping bag, and, you know, it's, it's about dusk at this time, and I'm 00:21:00out. Probably the best night's sleep I've ever had in my life. It--a sandstorm happens that night, it rains, but I'm--I just sleep right through it. I'm in my little sleeping bag. And, you know, it's--like I said, I don't know why I slept so good. You'd think I'd be choking from all the sand and cold from all the wet rain, but that was actually pretty amazing. I just felt so snug and secure inside that sleeping bag. And that, that was basically my introduction to Iraq. And, eventually they tell me, you know, we're going to be doing what's called the red ball mission. And the red ball mission is, um, a name they took from World War II, I believe. It's where you, you know, you deliver all the supplies to the frontlines. And, our job would be to go to Cedar, which is, um, the first base north of Kuwait, meet another unit 00:22:00that drives up from Kuwait, grab their supplies and deliver them to, um, Dogwood, where we were living, Baghdad International Airport, or BIAP, and Tikrit. It's like a little triangle. And we're going to go do this triangle over and over and over and over again until they tell us we can go home. That was basically what they told us we'd be doing. But they wouldn't let me drive a truck. They said you got to have, you know, at least--what was it? Five hundred miles of, you know, passenger time before you can actually drive one. Then when I got to drive one, finally, they told me I couldn't eat. Keep in mind we're driving for eight, ten, twelve hours at a time, you know. I want to eat because I'm hungry. They say, "Well, you can't eat until you've got 500 more miles." And eventually, I get my 500 miles. They tell me I can eat. Then the guy next to me takes off his Kevlar because he's hot. You know, and I'm like, I want to take off my Kevlar for a minute. You know, I'm hot. He's like, "500 more miles." Just kept going like that, over and over again. Every time I'd do something, he'd be like, "You got get--you got to pay your dues. You got to pay your dues." Over and over again. 00:23:00So we did that for a long time.

SCOTT: Oh, sorry, Kevlar. Explain that.

MARTIN: Kevlar is--(Scott coughs)--uh, the helmet we would wear.

SCOTT: Okay.

MARTIN: It's supposed to be protective against ballistics and bullets and all that good stuff. And we had to--you know, this is, um--about the equipment, I mean, lots of people have said the Iraq War, you know, the Afghanistan War, we weren't prepared for combat. Our equipment was, you know, sub-par. And you know, I think in 2004, people were actually refusing to do their missions because they didn't feel they were adequately supplied. Um, from what I remember, they kept telling us that our, our, uh, our flak vest, which was the, uh, bullet-proof vest we would wear, wouldn't stop anything over a nine-millimeter bullet. We didn't have SAPI plates, which were metal plates they use today. We didn't have armor on our trucks. We had, um--we eventually put sandbags on the floor. That would stop anything we ran over, hopefully. But, um, I just remember that it was, uh, extremely odd when we started taking the extra flak vests and draping them over the doors of the trucks 00:24:00to stop bullets and, you know, I--improvised explosive devices, IEDs. And, um, all these different little ways that we could think of to make ourselves safer that--what they have today, with, uh, two-inch thick armored vehicles and, you know, SAPI plates in their vest, and these helmets with night-vision goggles on it--we didn't have any of that stuff. And, um, it was just, uh, a little, little scary at times, knowing that your--the stuff you're wearing wouldn't stop anything more than a nine-millimeter bullet. Where was I at with that? I had a little sidetrack there, talking about the equipment--

SCOTT: --well, let's talk about, talk about your--just kind of your, your experience to you know, what you were thinking, what were you feeling when you, when you went outside the wire for the first time. Your first, first convoy mission.

MARTIN: I was thinking, man I hope I don't wreck this truck, because it's huge and these roads are really small, and I don't want to run over all these Iraqis that keep swarming the convoys, trying to get free food. My first convoy ever, we 00:25:00were, um--I was riding. You know, it was before I paid my dues. And we stopped the vehicle. When we stop the vehicle, we all get out to pull security. You know, each person on each side, you know, stands out with their gun and, you know, makes sure nobody runs up and tries to kill everyone. Well, anyway, there's these kids, you know, and they're like right, right down the street. And, um, he comes up to him and he's like, uh, "Mistah, mistah, can I, can I have some candy?" And I had some candy, you know. I had those little Charms that come in the, uh, MRE boxes. Little, little candies that come with it. So I just gave him--I gave him a whole MRE, you know. I was like, well, I just did a good thing today. You know, I'm feeding starving kids. The next thing I know, my lieutenant comes running up the side of the convoy, just screaming at me, cussing me out. He's like, "What are you doing?" You know. "Giving this kid MRE. You make me sick. I'm tired of all this crap. You guys have no discipline." And I was like, where is this coming from? I just got here and gave a kid an MRE. It seems like the right thing to do. You know, he's, he's, he's emaciated. He's starving to death. You know, I'm trying to help 00:26:00out. I didn't get it man. I was, I was mad at him forever. And, uh, it turns out that whenever they were doing the first push into Iraq, going to Baghdad, the people would throw out food and MREs to kids, and it got to the point where they would start running in front of vehicles to get food and stuff, and they were getting hit. And so when we started--when I gave an MRE, I was, you know, I wa--you know, perpetuating that. I was making it worse. And, it's another one of those things, you know, like with Staff Sergeant Sanchez. You know, it didn't make a lot of sense at the time, but I guess, you know, in retrospect, that, you know, there was a point behind it.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTIN: That was my first mission outside the wire. And for a wh--and the--on the way back, on that same mission, I was told that an IED went off in the background, under, like, the second to last vehicle. I didn't hear it, I didn't see it, don't know anything about it, but supposedly it went off, and it was right before we got in the gate. And that, you know, I didn't think twice about it. I was like--you know.

SCOTT: Had you heard about your unit getting hit any other time prior to you getting there?

MARTIN: No, not really. My unit had been extremely lucky, from what I'd heard. I heard stories about other units being, you know, ambushed and people being captured and all these horrible things, but I didn't see any of it for, like, you know, six or seven months, probably. Maybe not that long. Five or six months. And it became almost like I was living in a fantasy world for a while. We were just driving around the desert. No combat going on.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTIN: They would give us these intel briefs. You know, uh, keep aware there's still Iraqi soldiers roving around. You know, they don't know the war is over. Just never know what could happen. Or they'd tell us about, you know, people freezing the bombs inside of ice and then selling it to us, because we didn't have any ice. Everything was so hot. Like, we had Fanta that was, like, 120 degrees--(Scott laughs)--and we had to drink it. So people would want to buy ice, and I guess the bad guys figured out you could freeze bombs in there and when it unthaw it would blow up and kill people. They would tell us all these things, but I never saw it. So I'm just thinking, you know, this whole war thing must be a myth. I don't, I don't, I don't really believe 00:28:00it. I mean, this seems like it's pretty straightforward to me. We just go get the stuff and take it to the different three places and we're done. You know, I'll be all right. I'll be out of here in, I'll be out of here in a month. That's what they kept telling us, you know.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTIN: I got there. I was like, "Yeah, we're going home in a month." After a month, you know, "We'll be going home in two months, maybe." Eventually, it had been, like, nine or ten months for me, and the guys that got there before me in Kuwait had been there, like, twelve or thirteen months. And, every month, it was like, next month, next month, next month. We just kept staying. So anyway, you know, it was pretty mundane for a while. We just, you know, did the red ball mission. Go pick up the supply ammo, water, um, food, you name it. We'd go pick it up and we'd deliver it to those three little places. And, you know, I got to sightsee. You know, you'd drive by places, like little Towers of Babel, and you'd drive over the, uh, the, uh, Euphrates River or--just all these cool places like you hear about in the Bible or, you know, learn about in history class. We'd 00:29:00get to see that stuff. That was pretty cool. I saw camels for the first time. So we did that for, like, five or six months. And I, you know, never once saw combat, you know. And then eventually, you know, I'm on a mission to go north, and this is where I get my first combat experience at. Was in, um, I think it was November. When's Thanksgiving? Is that in November?

SCOTT: It's November. Yes. (Scott laughs)

MARTIN: Yeah so, it was the same month as Thanksgiving, whenever that is, and I guess November was, you know, a watershed month for me. But, it was like November 15th or 18th, something like that. I can't remember the exact date. But we're going, we're going north. It's a different mission. We're going somewhere different to deliver some supplies. And, one of our units runs over--or one of our trucks in our convoy runs over an IED. And, um, it was, um, the wrecker vehicle, so we couldn't, we couldn't hook it up. The wrecker was there to hook up to other trucks in case they broke down. And it hit that truck and the person inside was, um, he was 00:30:00slightly wounded in his arm. And, yeah, it was--I was like, well, it was bound to happen eventually, you know. It wasn't bad or anything. I didn't see it, again. You know, I could just keep on living in that little--

SCOTT: --did you hear it when it went off?

MARTIN: I heard it, and, you know, then I saw him on the side of the road getting treated, then, you know, I saw the truck was leaking a lot of fluids, and that was it. I mean, I, I, I, I guess the point I'm trying to make here is I kept trying to, um, you know, just kind of wish it away.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTIN: Like pretend it wasn't happening. Because I know--I said that, you know, our unit was pretty lucky, but prior to that mission, I had played Risk in the MWR tent with this guy all the time, you know. He was in another platoon. We never went on missions together or anything. Then one day he's not there, you know. He had gotten injured really bad, and his face, like, had been ripped apart with an IED, and they sent him home. And, you know, just one day he's there, one day he's not. And, you don't see it, you don't hear it, you know, and you don't really want to think about it, so you just kind of put it off. And 00:31:00then, you know, I'd get to this mission where I'm seeing a guy on the side of the road. It's getting a little bit more present to me, you know. First there was a guy I heard about, that I knew, who got injured. Now I'm looking at a guy who's slightly injured. But still, it doesn't seem very threatening. Well, anyway, he gets--we, we wait for our unit to send a, uh, another convoy to evacuate him and, uh, hook up our truck, and they also send a, um, a unit from, uh, an infantry unit to provide security for us, because we're going to be out there for a while. And instead of going to where we were supposed to go, we realized we didn't have time to get there before nightfall, which, back then, we only did missions during the day, instead of night like they do now. Um, they said, "We're going to, we're going to reroute you to a place called Al Taqaddum, Iraq," which was, uh, pretty--near Fallujah. And, you know a lot about Fallujah. In 2004, there was--you know, that's--the Battle of Fallujah was, like, one of the hotbeds for insurgent violence and whatnot. They said, "We're going to drive you right through there, and we're going to get to Al Taqaddum." You know, like I said, I didn't know anything about 00:32:00Fallujah. I said, "This sounds like a pretty good idea to me. It means we can get off early today." Everybody's all right. Trucks are all hooked up. We got, you know, combat arms guys providing security. We'll be good to go. We start driving through the city, and, you know, this is like the worst case scenario. They kept telling us, you know, "Whatever you do, don't stop," because we had buildings and high rises beside us. You know, we had crowds of people to the left and right. You know, it was just, you know, a perfect ambush situation. The next thing you know, the convoy comes to a dead halt. And, it does that. You know, you're just thinking, you know, something bad is going to happen, something bad is going to happen. But, you know, I'm distracted, because there's a little kid, you know, sitting next to the truck. He's trying to sell me some bananas. And, and I'm just thinking to myself, where does this little kid in the middle of Iraq get bananas at? Because those are really fresh-looking. I'd like to have those. Because we hadn't had anything to eat but, like, prepackaged food, for months. Fresh bananas are looking good. So, you know, I'm reaching for my wallet. You know, I'm like, I'm going to get some bananas off this kid even though I'm not supposed to. And, uh, next thing I know, 00:33:00this loud boom goes off. You know, it was just the loudest boom I've ever heard. And I look in my, um, my rearview mirror, which would be about right there to me. I see this dark black smoke, just billowing up about two to three trucks back. And the next thing I know, there's just all this, uh, machine gun fire going off, you know, everywhere, every direction. And I start hearing the, um, little pings of metal hitting my truck. I'm like, oh my god, I'm getting shot at. My truck's being shot right now, and it can't stop bullets, you know. This little inch-thick armor--not even an inch, but, like, eighth of an inch thick armor that's on the side of the truck is not going to stop these bullets. My first instinct is to duck down. So I duck down. I kind of peer over the side of the window, maybe hoping, you know, if the terrorist doesn't see me, he won't shoot me. So that's, like--seems like an eternity. I'm, like, fighting with myself. Get back up! Get back up! You know, you, you should be finding the enemy and shooting at him right now. Then I realize, you know, I hear this laughing sound, and it's, like, the guy next to me is just firing his, uh, his machine gun. It's crazy, you know. He's got to 00:34:00be melting the barrel or something. And, all those little pinging sounds I hear are the brass from his gun hitting the roof. So it's not my truck being shot. It's just him, you know, having a field day up there. Anyway, I realize that, and I get back up, you know, and I look out and I see all these people running. And, you know, the next, you know, couple of minutes is kind of hazy to me looking back. But I remember I tried to fire my weapon up at a, um, a rooftop because it was what we were supposed to do. Like fire--suppressive fire to, like, keep anybody's heads down that might be trying to kill us. The trucks are, the trucks are still all stopped. You know, I fire my weapon and it jams, you know. The first time I fire my weapon in combat, and it jams. I'm like, great. Good job, Travis. You just didn't clean your weapon. Horrible soldier. You know, you should be ashamed of yourself. I fire the weapon again. It jams again. It jams, like, three times, until eventually, you know, it starts doing what it's supposed to do. I'm looking, looking in front of me, and the guy on the fifty-caliber machine gun is just, you know, shooting all 00:35:00kinds of stuff. I don't see anything. I don't see a single bad guy. I don't see anybody dressed in black or wearing a cape or anything like that, you know. It's just people running from the truck, you know. That little boy just disappears into the crowd. I'm thinking, you know, I hope that little boy don't get shot. But everyone in the whole convoy is just laying waste to these buildings. And, you know, after that, it's kind of dazed out. Next thing I know, you know, I'm still looking for a target, and the guy that was shooting his machine gun up top says, "Go. Let's go. The truck--convoy is moving." And I see that the truck had started to move in front of me, and we just hit the gas and we floored out of there. And, um, after that, kind of like, um--if you ever hear about going to war and, you know, loss of innocence--I mean, not--nothing happened to me. I wasn't injured or anything, but, you know, I, I consider that my point where I realized, you know, the war was real.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTIN: I lost my innocence, and, you know, I realized that these people were probably--there were people out there trying to kill us at that point. When we got to Taqaddum, you know, I had realized that, you know, my hands had started to shake, you 00:36:00know, really bad. And, um, never had that problem before. Um, after that, my, my hands shook for probably, you know, a year and a half, two years, or something, until I started taking medication for it. But lots of us that were in our unit, we were real, you know, childlike. Eighteen-year-old, nineteen-year-old people and, some of the people had saw a lot worse than what I had saw in that instance. You know, I know I had friends that, you know, said they saw a guy with a grenade and they killed him, and that guy was just--the guy who, you know, killed the guy with the grenade was just super quiet after that. A real friendly guy before, always telling jokes. And then after that, he was like, super depressed. You know, just, always thinking about what he did, and always--you know. He knew he did the right thing, because it was, you know, it was a bad guy, but at the same time, he, um, he felt guilty for killing a guy. And, you know, who wouldn't. So I was, I was thankful I didn't, for that. And, uh, lots of people just were quiet. You know, there wasn't a lot of, like, bragging and, you know, banter and, Yeah, we made it. It was just--people were quiet. So it tells me 00:37:00right there that, you know, a lot of stuff that I can't remember that happened. I might of just--I don't really know what happened, so it's, it's kind of hard to really tell.

SCOTT: What did you find out later about that day, about that ambush?

MARTIN: Um, one bomb had went off, like I had saw, uh, next to, um, a truck three trucks, behind me. Another bomb had went off towards the back, where the cavalry scouts is. You know, my friend had actually killed the guy with the grenade. Um, the cavalry scouts that we were with basically just laid waste to a bunch of buildings. I mean, they had tore up some stuff, so. I know for a fact that, you know, some of the people in that crowd probably got shot by accident. And, that's something, you know, that kind of haunts me. The fact that, you know, we--people in, in my unit probably, you know, shot people that weren't supposed to be shot. And, you know, you want to say, you know, those people should be tried and hung, executed, and all these different things, but, you know, you put a bunch of people up there with loaded machine guns and you make bombs go off, and you got people running toward you, and you got all these different rules and procedures about 00:38:00what you're supposed to do, and bad things are going to happen. And so, you know, I really don't know what to say about that. I didn't take aim at any person that day and fire, so I can't really speak for what it's like for those people or what they went through.

SCOTT: Do you feel like they were properly trained for that kind of situation?

MARTIN: I don't think anyone can be properly trained for that kind of situation. It's just something that happens. And, you know. Basic training is supposed to mimic combat scenarios, and, you know, you've got lots of wedge formations and you've got lots of, uh, you know, marching movements. And, you know, you're trained to do all these different things, but you're not actually trained to do the thing that, that seems to happen. Training always falls short of doing what it's supposed to do.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTIN: I guess that's why people get traumatized by it. You know. It's all I've really got to say about that day.

SCOTT: All right. All right. So from there until, uh, it's time to redeploy, come home, how much, how much time 00:39:00passes?

MARTIN: Uh, I think we came home in the middle of January or so. You know, it was just so--it was a rough couple of months after that. Like, Thanksgiving, the same month, um, we were, you know, not supposed to go on mission because they said the terrorists are going to try to kill you on Thanksgiving because it's your favorite holiday or something, you know. So anyway, we're, we're stuck on this base, but Staff Sergeant Sanchez is in charge of the convoy that day. You know, and he's like, "Well, I want to be back on base so we can get the turkey dinner." So it's only like an hour away. And we get, we get in our trucks and we go, and it's raining. The guy on the truck was throwing up, he's sick. It's, it's just this horrible thing. I'm like, "Man, this is, this is just not right. We should just stay here tonight and we'll be okay." You know. "No, we got to get the trucks. We got to go on mission." So we're going down the road, about halfway back to our base, and, you know, a bomb goes off. The vehicle in front of me this time, you know. Before, it had been two vehicles behind me, and this time it was the vehicle in front of me. Last time, I had, you know, I had kind of blamed myself for not firing enough. My weapon 00:40:00wasn't clean, you know. I didn't find the enemy. This time, my weapon was immaculate and I was ready to go. I was locked and loaded. A bomb went off and I just started shooting all kinds of stuff, you know. Not people or anything. There wasn't anything around. We were in the middle of the desert, but I just, I fired, like, four magazines off into, like, the dirt. And I was like, this is what you're supposed to do when you're in combat, but it really didn't make any sense, because there wasn't anything there. But I remember the guy behind--(laughs)--the guy in the truck in front of me, when we got back--he was a friend of mine. His name was Paris. And, um, he's like, "Yeah, man, I saw the bomb go off. The next thing I know, you were just firing all kinds of stuff. (Scott laughs) What were you shooting at?" And I was like, you know, "You never know. (Scott laughs) Suppressive fire." He was like, "That's all I saw, was flashes from your muzzle going off. Nobody else was, like,--(Scott laughs)--really doing anything." I was like, "That's what they told us to do. And you know, fire suppressive fire." He's like, "Well, at least I know you've got my back, Martin. At least I know you've got my back." And, I guess. I felt better that day. I felt like, you know, I had regained some semblance of control over the situation. 00:41:00Because, you know, it just--it was, uh, weird the first time around. The paralyzing fear. And this time, you know, it was like I was ready to go. Weapon was clean and--you know. After that, you know, we started packing up our stuff. It got cold and muddy. All that moon dust and stuff. We were--we had moved camps to Balad, but there was still a lot of, like, moon dust, and the dirt was really, really soft. And it, it rained for, like, a month, it seemed like, and all that dust turned to mud. It was like a foot-deep mud. And everywhere you go, you have to walk in it. And it pulls your boots off. It sucks it down, you know. So we're just packing up and cleaning our stuff up. We were, we're like, we're going home pretty soon. And we're--at the same time, we're pulling missions. So people that aren't on mission are packing, and people that are packing, you know, are basically telling the people on mission to quit breaking stuff and quit losing stuff because we've got to get all accounted for. It's pretty hectic. Eventually, we, um, get our tents packed up and we go to our, our battalion joins us. You know, they hadn't deployed to the same place we had, and 00:42:00so for the first time, we're--our company is with our battalion, and we're all just--we're waiting to leave and they kind of got six more months or something. We get there and we wait. We pack up. And, um, like I said, mid-January, maybe early February, we leave Iraq for the first time. I didn't get any leave while I was there. Most people did. So it was great for me. I was ready to go.

SCOTT: What was it like coming home?

MARTIN: I didn't go home. I went to Germany. I went to, uh, you know--we went back to Mannheim. Um. There were protestors, honestly. It was kind of weird. Germans were protesting outside of our barracks when we got back. I guess Germany was pretty against the war. And, uh, so that was kind of odd. I know that the Vietnam generation had to experience a lot of that. I mean, nobody was spitting on us. Nobody was throwing Molotov cocktails or anything like that, but, you know, it was, it was kind of weird. You know, because I knew back--people back home were, like, getting really patriotic, hanging American flags out, and all this stuff, but we got to come home to protestors. And, after we got through the 00:43:00protestors, we came in the gate, you know, then all the married people had their families there. And, you know, us single soldiers, we just kind of went to the barracks, you know, we were waiting to drink. They told us we couldn't drink for twenty-four hours, but we wanted to go out and party so bad, we did anyway. So we had block leave after that. And, uh, I think I--yeah I went home on leave after about a week or so. I went home for three weeks, maybe, yeah. And I had lost a lot of weight. I was down to, like, 150 pounds or something. We, uh--because, you know, when we were there, the first, like, six months, it was like the MREs, you know, and those MREs would make you sick to your stomach. And eventually we started getting hot food three days a week. And it was T-Rats [editor's note: T-Rations], which I don't even know what that stands for--(Scott laughs)--but it was like, um, very terrible food with lots of preservatives in it that made you sick. Then eventually we started getting hot chicken, and then there was chicken every day for, like, six months until we started complaining. 00:44:00They said, "Well, what do you want, then?" We was like, "We want some hamburgers." Then it was hamburgers the last six months. Eventually it's so hot, and the food's so terrible, you just don't even bother going to eat. And, you know, you're working a lot too. So you--I lost a lot of weight. People were like--thought I was some kind of, like, starving child or something when I came back to Kentucky, and they just started feeding me. It was nice, though, coming back. Um, spent a lot of time with my family. Um, spent a lot of time with friends. I, I tried to spend, like, the first two weeks with my family, and then I spent the second two weeks with friends, because, you know--doing a lot of partying with the friends, basically, and I didn't want my family to know I was partying a lot.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTIN: That's what I was doing.

SCOTT: Did they--did anybody notice a change in you?

MARTIN: Yeah, my sister did. I mean, she woke me up one time and I just started freaking out. I think I was starting to have symptoms of, uh, post-traumatic stress disorder about this time. Uh, like I said, I had the shaking hands after that November incident. I guess, uh, whatever happened afterwards, you 00:45:00know, made me just, you know, on edge. I was starting to have panic attacks. I was nervous in crowds, I noticed. I didn't know what all this stuff was at first. I mean, it was just weird. And, um--yeah. She woke me up one time, and I just, I started screaming at her. I don't remember what happened really. And, uh, she told me later on. I was like, "Sorry. I, I figured--you know. I guess this is what happens now. I have to get used to it." And then, um, notice any differences--um--

SCOTT: --did you notice anything different about yourself?

MARTIN: Not really. I mean, it just--it all seemed normal. You know, like, this is what I should expect. You know, I--the screaming at my sister thing kind of caught me off guard, like when she woke me up. I guess because when they wake us up in Iraq, it would be like, you know, "There's, uh, mortars coming. We got to go get to the bunkers," you know, or something like that. So I guess when 00:46:00people wake you up, it's kind of a bad thing, and you get used to that. As far as me noticing things in myself, I noticed that, um, I, I really don't remember what I noticed about myself. (laughs)

SCOTT: That's fair enough.

MARTIN: That's so long ago.

SCOTT: You're too close to the situation at the time. It'd might be hard to know.

MARTIN: Yeah.

SCOTT: Uh, what was your attitude towards--towards Iraq when you came home?

MARTIN: Um, indifferent. Like, Good job, guys. Keep it going. Let's get it over with. That was about it. I really didn't think about it much. I was just--you know. I real--I really wanted to get back to Europe to do some stuff there. I was really looking forward to that. And, um, I figured I did my part, so. They told us we'd be going back within a year or so. It was like the first six months we got back was, you know, celebrating that we got back. The last six months, we were celebrating because we were leaving, so. After my leave, my 00:47:00family and stuff, I got back to my unit and we just started partying, like, nonstop. And, hey, it's, it's cool to celebrate things for a week, but whenever you're drinking in a group for, like, every day, five days a week, maybe, you know, for a year straight, it starts to take a toll on your body. And, you know, looking back now, I think that a lot of it had to do with anxiety. Because like, a lot of us were, you know, self-medicating.

SCOTT: Um-hm.

MARTIN: Because we would be--we--I spent my entire Iraq paycheck--you know, I saved, like, ten grand or something--I spent it all at bars in 2004. Every bit of it. We, we all did. Every one of us drank, except for my friend Rethford (??). And, he had managed to save all of his money, somehow, the whole year, and he drank with us every night, and so--this is a funny story. We found out that he still had all of his money and we'd spent all of our money at the bar, and he had been with us, so we started calling him Ten-G Rethford (??). And every time we'd go to the bar until we left, he would have to buy all of our drinks. And so every one of us went back the second time, broke. So that year was just, you know, constant drunken 00:48:00debauchery. We, um, we'd get in fights with people at the bars. And there, there was a lot of skinheads in Germany, believe it or not. You'd think after World War II, they would have learned their lesson about all that stuff and not done it, but lots of neo-Nazis. And every time we'd go to the bar, like, they'd have their little corner in there, and, like, we'd always end up getting in a fight with them. I guess, um, they don't like American soldiers, and American soldiers don't like Nazis. I know I don't care for Nazis. But, um, that would happen about once every couple of weeks. And then, you know, you had the Turkish people that would try to jump us in the streets. That was weird. You know, you come back from Iraq and, you know, you got--you're used to getting on, on edge about, you know, Iraqis, and then you got people from Turkey that look just like Iraqis, you know, that are against the war and against the American soldiers and all this stuff, because I know it's another Muslim country. And, you know, you're walking down the street and they would try to start fights with you. And next thing--it just puts you on edge. And, um, you know. I know it, it wasn't, it wasn't like a 00:49:00racial thing, though, with the Turkish people. I mean, we had, we had a good friend that was, uh, Turkish. He was, um--I don't remember his name, because we were drunk all the time, but he was, he was a good guy. He hung out with us, and, um, you know, we--he, he worked at the bar we went to. ----------(??) that's where we met him. Eventually we, um--before we left, we, uh, we would all get together. You know, we'd ride go-karts in Germany. I'm kind of digressing here. But we--(laughs)--they had this cool go-kart track in Mannheim, and the go-kart track was, you know, a lot like the go-kart tracks here that have restrictors on them. You can go full speed, and it's indoor. You know, it's got tires around the track. And they have a bar at the go-kart track. It's not a good idea. (Scott laughs) So you got, you know, this group of, you know, Americans, and you got our Turkish friends, a couple of--I think we had some German girls that would hang out with us, and then there was, you know, we got a German guy too. His name was Lars. He moved to Spokane, Washington. It doesn't make any sense why he would 00:50:00move there. But we all went to the go-kart track. We'd drink before we'd get on, and we'd just, like, run into each other. And, um, my roommate was this friend--my friend named Leon. I didn't like him at all. He was, like, the worst roommate you could ever have. Um, mainly because he would bring home a different girl, like, every night of the week, and you had to listen to him, like, put all these cheap moves on her across the blanket. And, so like, I was just so sick of him. You know, I remember going around a curve and, you know, I was looking straight at the side of his go-kart, and I just floored it and knocked him up on his side. And, um, we all laughed later on. And it kind of hit me there that, you know, we had all become pretty violent. You know, we were getting in fights every week, you know, and I'm putting my friend into a wall on his side in a go-kart, and we were drinking five or six days a week, you know. And, by the time our second deployment came around, I was ready to go. You know, I was getting kind of scared at that point. And, you know, I had masked a lot of the symptoms using the alcohol, 00:51:00but I started realizing that maybe something was wrong by then. Then, our second deployment came and they told us we were going to Fallujah. It was, uh, actually Taqaddum, where we'd went in that eighteen--November 18th thing where we got ambushed, and that was going to be where we went for our second deployment.

SCOTT: So how--how far out did, uh, they give you that warning order?

MARTIN: I don't remember. It was months. Maybe two months. And, uh, you know, the rallying cry for that was, "Fallujah, baby. We're going to Fallujah." And so Tuesday night, we had go to Fallu--we'd go to the bar and we'd drink, "Going to Fallujah." Wednesday night, you know--

SCOTT: --um-hm--

MARTIN: --same thing, every night until we left.

SCOTT: Now did you feel that the Army was providing the enough or any k--any kind of, uh, clinical counseling, or, or, you know, are they addressing the issue of, of, uh--you know, you're talking about these symptoms of masking your--

MARTIN: --absolutely not--

SCOTT: --you know, through the self-medicating. Were they doing--

MARTIN: --like I got absolutely--

SCOTT: --anything at that time?

MARTIN: No. We could, we could come to work drunk. 00:52:00Nobody even cared. You know, the senior NCOs were doing it too. Um, 2000, you know, 4, you know, this is like the second year of the war, I mean, I don't even think the Army knew what was going on. But, um, you know, I--there was no repercussions for, you know, coming to work drunk, getting in trouble. Like, before we left, uh, it was a Sunday night and we were out drinking, and, um, we stopped to get a, a doner, which is like a, uh, gyro, at this little stand, and this, uh, little, little Turkish guy comes up to us. He's about five foot tall. You know, and it's me and three of my friends, and two of my friends are, like, close to six-five. They're huge. And he says, "I'm Al-Qaeda," and he's like, "F you." And he's like--just swings at my friend and tries to attack him. And so I don't touch the guy. I step back, and my friend basically waylays him, but he keeps getting back up. He had to be on some kind of, like, drug or something, like PCP, because he just kept getting up and trying to attack us. And, um, I guess the, uh, owner of the, uh, gyro stand, the doner 00:53:00stand there, calls the Polizei. The Polizei come and we all run, like idiots. We should have stayed there and said we were defending ourselves, but I run, even, and we get arrested. And, the First Sergeant's only question was, like, "Why the hell were you out drinking on a Sunday night anyway when you got PT in three hours?" It was late in the day. It was like, you know, three in the morning, you know, when they got us. And, uh, it was--no excuse. And went on. That whole incident got swept under the rug, and we deployed like it never happened. That was, that was it, though. I mean, we'd be out three in the morning every night and wake up and do PT, and then around lunch we'd take a nap. Get up and do it again. I know at one point, I had--I was bleeding inside that we had drank so much. It was, it was bad. And when I left the second--when I--when we got to our second deployment in Kuwait, I had withdrawals from alcohol. I had the shakes, you know, fevers. It was, it was pretty bad.

SCOTT: All right. Well, let's take a quick break--

MARTIN: --okay--

SCOTT: --and then we'll, we'll go on your second deployment. and 00:54:00transition to school.

[Pause in recording.]

SCOTT: Okay. Um, so I think we left off with you guys were ramping up. You knew you were going to Fallujah, right?

MARTIN: Yep.

SCOTT: Um, let's, let's go ahead and jump into it, then.

MARTIN: All right. So well, they, they told us we had been--we would be going to Fallujah. And, uh, like I said, it was actually Al Taqaddum, which is down the road from Fallujah. So, you know, turns out that, you know, we're actually a little bit safer than we thought we were going to be, because when we were told that is when the battle for Fallujah was going on in '04. We're like, that's where we're going. You know, we saw all these devastation videos and stuff. So we got, we got to our base, and it was, you know, the same base we had been to in 2003, which was kind of, you know, ironic, I guess. We got there and, you know, our, our mission was changed. We weren't going to be delivering supplies anymore. We were going to be escorting Iraqi and Jordanian truck drivers as they delivered their supplies. We were, uh, put on a Marine base. It was, you know, the Anbar Province, Al Anbar Province, I believe. And, um, you know, basically our job would be to, you know, ride around in up-armored 00:55:00Humvees and, you know, make sure that things didn't go boom. And, you know, that was, that was kind of weird, because, you know, we weren't really trained for driving trucks in combat, let alone, you know, driving, you know, gun trucks and doing, you know, what we thought was some kind of a combat arms mission, so. They started asking for, you know, who wants to do what job, you know. Looking for gunners. And, I, I remember back to the, uh, first deployment, you know, just the, uh, you know, the thing in November where, you know, a lot of combat went down and people were shooting and there was a crowd. A lot of really hard decisions had to be made. And, I was like, you know, I would be a gunner, you know. I think I could make good decisions. You know, maybe keep some people alive if I had the chance. And so I volunteered to be a gunner. They asked me what gun I wanted to carry, and I was like--had the choice between the .50 caliber and the, uh, 240 Bravo. And I figured, you know, if I get the .50 cal, you know, yeah, it's big, it's nice, it's going to do a lot of damage, but , you know, I also have to carry that thing around everywhere I go. 00:56:00And so I chose the 240 Bravo. I figured, you know, we're not, we're not hunting elephants here. You know. A bullet's a bullet. I'll carry that around. So I became a 240 Bravo gunner, and, um, that would pretty much be my job the whole year of 2005. And our mission, you know, it changed a little bit. For the most part, we would, um, escort, you know, the truck drivers delivering fuel or, you know, whatever else they put on their trucks, to little bases like Iskandariyah, you know. We'd go back to Dogwood, where we were on our first deployment. We would go to other places, you know. And then, uh, for a long time, we did what was called, um, the, uh, IED alley, which was supposed to be the most dangerous place in Iraq in 2005. And, our job was to escort to the Jordanian border and back to, uh, Taqaddum or Al Asad. One of those two. Al Asad probably then Taqaddum. So we would--you know, it's like this grueling, twelve-hour, 00:57:00straight road. No turns, nothing. And you know. I guess the people there really were good at putting IEDs on the ground, because I guess they, they told us the unit we were replacing had gotten, like, twenty Purple Hearts and all these KIAs. And, it was pretty scary, you know. But again, as with the first deployment, we really didn't see a lot at first, and then it gradually got a little worse. Um, some things I remember about the second deployment that were a lot different was, you know, we no longer lived in tents. We had air conditioning connexes. Um, we had, you know, chow halls, where ridiculously nice food was made. We got lobster on Friday nights. And they had these four meals a day with handmade omelets for you in the morning. And, we had armor on our trucks. And, you know, we got SAPI plates for our vest. And, we had all this cool stuff. We had a tracking system in our Humvee that would show us a map of where every vehicle in the, every vehicle in the convoy was. We had a--this little weird device-- I don't even remember the name of it--that 00:58:00we weren't allowed to talk about to people back home that was supposed to stop IEDs from going off. I'm pretty sure that's not classified info.

SCOTT: That's, uh, yeah, the warlock or the duke.

MARTIN: Warlock, yeah. Well, anyway, we thought that was super cool. And, um, we got all this cool, high-tech gear. And, um, you know. We're not driving trucks anymore. We're pretty proud of ourselves. We're like, yeah, we're, we're real combat guys now. We're driving around with machine guns and we're keeping people safe. So I get to be the, um, the lead gunner. I'm, um--our LT had been promoted to captain, but decided to stay with the unit so he could deploy again. And, um, so he was a captain and he was a platoon leader. I was his gunner. We'd pretty much lead most of the convoys everywhere we'd go. And, uh, that's, uh, what we did. Uh, the Iraqis--we didn't really interact with them a lot this time around. Um, they weren't on the sides of the roads as much as they were before. Uh, we'd meet them 00:59:00on bases and stuff. From time to time, like when the trucks were staged or we had the guys, like, they were inside the wire that were cleared, we would, you know, sit around a little fire with them and they would tell us stories. And, you know, they'd share their food, which, you know, we really probably shouldn't have ate that food because it was--they were truck drivers and they kept the food in these little coolers for months at a time. One thing weird I noticed about the truck drivers is that when they got their, when they got their contract or whatever with the U.S. government, is that they were pretty much stuck with the U.S. government. They couldn't, they couldn't just quit or leave, you know. It was almost like a brand of slavery. One guy had said he had been on the road for, you know, like, three months straight and he wanted a break, and they would yell at him and say, "Get, get going! Get going!" They'd treat them like, you know, they were prisoners or something. And I thought that was bad. I didn't really like it, you know. It kind of made me feel bad being a part of that. But I, I don't know. I don't see the bigger picture. It was--it just struck me as like these guys, you know, are getting paid, but at the same 01:00:00time, they don't have a choice, you know. Once they sign up, they're stuck. But, you know, I was kind of in the same situation, so it kind of, you know--wouldn't worry about it as much as maybe some people would.

SCOTT: Was, uh--cultural training, was that embedded in your, uh, your buildup this time?

MARTIN: One or two weeks when we first got there, maybe. We would talk about stuff like that, like, you know, a couple of words, like qef, you know, to stop. That's really the only Iraqi word I know. I picked up a few in a little book I bought. Like, uh, I know how to say, like, "follow me" or "hurry up." You know. That was about it. So, I mean, really I didn't know a lot. I knew we weren't supposed to shoot at mosques. I knew we weren't supposed to go inside mosques. But, you know, when was that going to happen anyway, for us?

SCOTT: What would you say the morale was like in your unit the second time around?

MARTIN: You know, it--the second time around was pretty good. Our, our first deployment, you know, we were, we were kind of out in the middle of nowhere by ourselves, isolated. You know, living in a desert for a year with no hot--no cold water, 01:01:00no showers, nothing like that. Second time around, you know, we had a new platoon sergeant, who was, like, really gung-ho about being--you know, order, discipline, and squared away. That was, that was his, uh, that was his thing. So he kept us, he kept us working. When we weren't on mission, he would keep us, uh, training. And, you know, he really fostered, like, unit cohesion. And, you know, he'd put the squads together and he would get the squads to compete with each other. You know, we'd have, like, um, high miler competitions, like who did the most missions in a month, you know. I think I won that for the month of August. And, you know, it was just that it--the morale was a lot better going into it because, you know, we had a lot better living conditions. We had showers. Showers really improve morale, believe it or not. When you haven't had a shower in four months, I mean, you kind of feel bad about yourself. Just the way you smell, mainly. Um, what else? Any other questions?

SCOTT: Uh, I mean, did you notice anything different within yourself?

MARTIN: Like I said I--

SCOTT: --so you went through withdrawals and that kind of thing.

MARTIN: I went, I went through withdrawals for about two weeks going into Iraq. I also got really sick from the shots they gave me, like small pox and flu and all these different shots they gave me. I, I was put on quarters for, like, three days. Um, I was actually looking forward to the deployment, because, like I said, we--I pretty much became a full-blown alcoholic in 2004 after the first deployment. I, I didn't want to go back to that when I came. You know, I'm a religious guy. I believe in God. I'm Christian. And, I told him, you know, I was like, "Get me through this deployment and I'm going to be straight and narrow. Guarantee it. You know. I'm not going to go back to the boozing once I get back." And, um, and he got me through the deployment. And, you know, I didn't--I had a year off to stay away from the alcohol. You know, there was a time or two we'd sneak it. Like, you could get it in the mail. Like, people would hide it in Listerine bottles, or you'd buy it from the Jordanian truck drivers for some outrageous price, which it probably wasn't even alcohol anyway. It was probably just something like mouth wash or something, with some kind of flavoring. But other than that, you know, I didn't drink for 01:03:00the year. I mean, once or tw--I think it was on my birthday I drank once. That was it. I don't know. That was good. It was a good thing to be away from that. As far as the condition, I noticed that I was--I really, really wanted to be in that front truck all the time. You know, I wanted--I had--I was starting to develop control issues. Like, I wanted to be able to control what was going on. I figured, you know, if I'm the one stopping the vehicles and directing traffic and the first one in harm's way, you know, that's where I wanted to be. I don't know if that was, you know, me trying, you know, intentionally put myself out there to get harmed or what, but, you know, I'd get mad if they'd try to take me out of the front vehicle. You know, I took a real sense of pride in that.

SCOTT: All right. Um, any, any significant events on the second tour?

MARTIN: Yeah. I, um--you know, the first, first half was pretty, pretty good. Pretty easy going. And then, um, in April, first half--I'll say the first quarter--in April, I got a, um--we'd 01:04:00been out on mission. We had, you know, been clearing traffic and delivering the supplies where they needed to go. And, I got a, I got a Red Cross letter and found out that my step-brother had committed suicide. So I had to go home on, uh, emergency leave, and that was really rough. You know, it was like they pulled me out of a combat zone, where, you know, I'm about risking death every night, and they put me in a situation where, you know, I'm--I need to grieve. But I didn't grieve. I just shut it all down. And, you know, they basically, you know--my family asked me to help take care of, like, a lot of stuff my step-dad wasn't able to do, like going through his stuff. And, you know, it was just really, really hard for about two weeks. And, uh, I spent most of that time, you know, with my family, helping out. I missed the funeral. That was kind of bad. Then I, you know, I just kind of--I tucked it all away, didn't really face it, and, um, went back to Iraq and dealt with it. And then, um, you know, I got, I got 01:05:00really into the missions and stuff. You know, I was, I was a specialist. I decided I wanted to get promoted to sergeant. Um, so I started training for the board. And I, I did the board, and then they lost my paperwork and they said I had to do the board again. So I did the board again, and, um, eventually got promoted. I got promoted on November 1st. On October 31st, I was, you know--the first time I was going to be the truck commander of a Humvee. I was a specialist--still a specialist. They put me in charge, you know, of, you know, two, two of my friends, you know, a gunner and a driver. We were driving from, um, a forward operate--forward operating base Duke, where we were stationed that time. A little, bitty place. And I'll tell you about that place in a minute. But we were driving from there to Iskandariyah, around that area, and an IED hits our truck. And, um, it's completely like--blows three tires out, rips the antennas off. It, um, you know, sends shrapnel flying around inside the vehicle 01:06:00and everything. And um, the Humvee's limping. It's making it, but, you know. I'm trying to call on the radio, the SINCGARS radio. The big green radios like you see in the movies. Um, trying to call the rest of the convoy and tell them our truck's been hit and we're not going to make it much farther. And, um, nobody's answering, you know. I try to get on the little, um--the map thing, which has a text messaging feature the thing had. I try to tell them that way. Nothing works. And, um, you know, first thing, you know, is I--what happened is my gunner pats me on my shoulder. "Martin, Martin." I guess I had been knocked out. And, um, it was pretty brief, because I remember the dust was still in the air when I came to, and I, I--first thing I do is, like, you know, "We just hit an IED." You know, like, profound statement, you know. I just figured it out. So I ask the gunner if he's okay and I ask the driver if he's okay. I think, uh--everyone's okay. I mean, we all had a little--I had this little burning sensation in my shoulder, and I could see that, you know, Gilliani (??), my driver, had a burn mark on his eye, and that, you know, the gunner had something, like a cut on his nose, 01:07:00you know. Just minor scrapes and stuff. So, um, I'm trying to get a hold of the convoy. We're the last truck, you know. We're the last--we're doing rear security. I'm like, man, they're going to leave us. Our truck is going to break down. They're going to leave us because they can't hear us. I'm yelling on the radio. I'm like, why won't they answer the call? Because we're--it wasn't our unit. We were, we were being loaned out to someone, and, uh, these guys, you know, you don't--when you go to another unit, you really don't know how they, how they deal with combat, what their, uh, standard operating procedures are. And, you know, basically, if they're good at doing their job, you don't know. And so, you know, I figured these guys are just the worst in the world. What had happened is my, my antenna had been blown off my truck. And, um, eventually I--you know, my brain starts to kind of work again. You know, I'm kind of dazed when I'm going through this. I, I get mad and I throw the phone at, uh, the driver. I'm like, "You piece of shit don't work," you know. Sorry about the language, but--

SCOTT --that's okay--

MARTIN: --that's what I said. And--(laughs)--I said that, and then I started to hear chatter over the CB. We have a CB. It never dawned on me to use the CB because our s--our platoon sergeant said, "Don't ever talk about sensitive information over 01:08:00the CB," so I just, I just won't use it, then, because I don't want to give away anything and get in trouble. Eventually I hear it. I'm like, well, this is the only thing of communication I got, so I need to say--I try--I break up all the chatter and tell them, look, our truck's been hit, you know. Our vehicle is disabled, you know. We might have some wounds. I want to check my guys. Can we stop the vehicles? Can we stop the convoy once we get out of the kill zone? And, um, eventually they say, "What? Your, your truck's been hit?" I'm like, "Yeah. Yeah, the IED that went off, the one you're talking on the radio, hit my truck. We need to stop." And, um, they stopped the--they stop it, and, you know, and, uh, eventually, um, Staff Sergeant Brockman (??), a guy from our unit, and then some other guys, come back and they do a circle around us. Turns out we got three flat tires. We've got, you know, the trunk, which is like--it's two-inch thick metal, and I've got a piece of it at home. Like, it had been, like, mangled and ripped up. That's how strong the blast was, like turned into, like, a ball almost. And, like, it's just weird that you could take metal and just turn it into that. And, 01:09:00um, what else? You know. We had--I had--the burning in my shoulder was like I had a little piece of shrapnel that had went underneath my flak vest somehow, like melted into my skin, and like stuck to the flak vest so it just held in it's spot and just sit there and burned. You know, and the other guys got cuts, and he's got like a burn under his eye. But everybody's okay. We were--we get--we get tires and we fixed the truck to where it can run. And we, eventually, we, we drive back to the base, and, um, I remember coming back the next day. You know, my--I had this ringing in my ears. You know, I can't--I feel like I had Spiderman hearing. You know, I tried to tell my, uh, my roommate to turn the TV down because, like, it was just so loud to me. And, um, yeah. It was, um--the next day I got promoted sergeant. It was pretty cool. You know, I was--I felt like I had really paid my dues at that point. Like a good sergeant, I, I took my guys out and I, I made them go get records from the, uh, medical guys to say that they had been treated, because I wanted to put them in for Purple Hearts if I could. 01:10:00And, um, we all--because my unit was notoriously bad for not giving people awards. We didn't get any awards for, like, our first deployment. Like, not even Army Achievement Medal, which is, like, the basic thing they give. And, you know, I was an E1 private for, like, six months because they forgot to promote me. So I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to do this myself because you guys probably aren't going to do it. So I went ahead and told them to keep everything they had, gave it to the company commander, and he signed off on it, and it got lost, sure enough, so we didn't get the awards until later. Later, later, when we were all in different units. But, um, yeah, after that--actually, before that--I missed this part. This is the one time we, we lost a guy in our unit. It was Specialist Kevin Jones. He, uh--we were on a mission, the mission that actually moved us from Taqaddum to Duke, where I did the mission where I got injured slightly. Was, um--a couple platoons were packing all their stuff up and we were supposed to move it. Routine mission. His truck, which was one 01:11:00of the PLSs, ran over an IED that was planted there. And, um, you know, it was really up-armored, you know. They had the, they had the sandbags and jet armor underneath the sandbags. And, you know. He ran over the IED, and somehow a piece of metal went up behind his seat, into his back, and just tore his insides up into shreds, and, you know, I was in the way back, away from all this, but I know that a lot of my friends were up there doing the, uh, first aid. My platoon sergeant was, you know. One of my best friends, uh, Scott, was. You know, and they said he was talking, all this normal stuff. And, they, they put him in a helicopter and medevaced him out of there. We weren't even ten minutes from our base when this happened. And, um, when we got back to base, they were calling for, like, you know, blood. You know, they needed blood transfusions. They were trying to find the same types. And, you know, everybody was just really quiet. Nobody was talking about what was going on. We thought maybe an IED had went off like normal and everybody was okay. They didn't, they didn't even tell us in the back that, you know, someone had been really bad injured. They said that, you know, yeah, he had been evacuated, but that was pretty standard. We didn't know that he was pretty 01:12:00bad off. It turns out that, um, you know, Captain Sheets (??), who, you know, I had been the gunner for for so long, he was the acting commander, because our commander was on leave, and he, um, comes up and he tells us, you know, Kevin, he died. He died in the, uh, mission. I just remember feeling so sorry for Captain Sheets (??), because he had to, you know, be that strong person and, you know, lead the, uh--lead the company when it really, you know, wasn't his job, but, you know, he was stepping up and filling those shoes. And he, he did a really good job of, you know, being consolatory and just, um, you know. Tough situation. So anyway, Kev--Kevin died on September 22, 2005, and, um, you know. We eventually, the next day, went back on the same road and did a mission and finished it. I remember that struck me as odd. It was like, you know, this is the first time someone had died in two years in our deployments. The next day, we're doing a mission on the same road, you know. It's just--I 01:13:00know other units did that kind of thing all the time, but it was new for me. It was, it was hard. I was like--it's probably the first time I ever questioned orders. Not, you know, like, I'm not doing this, but, like, you know, really, is this a good idea? You know, I never even thought about doing that before. I was just like, I'll do whatever, it don't matter. Then after that, sure enough, is when my Humvee got blown up. So I've got--this whole year, you know, I come into it an alcoholic, you know. My brother--my step-brother back home commits suicide. That tears my family up, you know. And, um, I go back to Iraq and kind of ignore all that. Then, you know, Kevin gets killed, you know. We're in constant situations where I'm having to, like, avoid shooting people because I'm in the front truck. And there's something about, you know, being a lead gunner. It's a lot of responsibility. Because other units, they didn't--they, they would do things that I, I, I still have problems with today. They--you would go on missions, you know, and there was all these standard operating procedures. Like, you had a s--you had a spotlight, you had flares, you 01:14:00had glow sticks, you had warning shots. All these different steps to keep you from accidentally killing someone who's just an innocent. If someone's coming at you with an IED, they're not going to stop, right? They're just going to keep running and hit your truck. If it's an innocent person, they see a flare come at them, or a spotlight, and all this stuff, they're going to stop their truck, and everything's okay. You know, that's fine. That's how it works. But I remember we went on one mission--this is when we were in Duke--that a unit had just gotten there. You know, it was a reserve unit. And, I don't mean to talk bad about reserve units, but there's good ones and there's bad ones and, you know. I was active duty, so back then, yeah, we did talk bad about reserve units. But this was a bad one. And, they would, um, go on missions, and they didn't have a spotlight, they didn't have flares, they didn't have glow sticks. They didn't have the equipment they needed. And so to get vehicles to stop, they would just shoot them. You know. I remember we pulled out on the convoy and I was the lead truck, and we were--we'd left the gate right after them. And we start hearing all this gunfire in the distance, and they're doing the same job we're doing. 01:15:00They're just escorting trucks, right? But, you know, I had been doing this for, you know, six, eight months, and I've not shot a vehicle yet. I fired, you know, warning shots once or twice into the ground, but I hear metal hitting metal with the bullets. These guys are shooting stuff on every turn. And, um, you know, I don't know if they killed anyone, but I know that they weren't following the operating procedures. And I know that after that, shortly after, we got intel saying that insurgents, local insurgents, were planning an ambush on us because they think that innocent civilians are being attacked by the military. And yeah, that's what's happening exactly. So you really can't blame them for that. I'd be pissed off, too, you know, if, uh, my brother was going to work and some guy shoots him, you know. What do you do? I mean. So a lot of the insurgents, I think, are just, um, angry, you know. I, I, I wrote one time--for a story, I wrote that, you know, I would, I would throw rocks at trucks that wouldn't stop, you know. I said, you know, for every windshield I break, you know, that's one less terrorist, you know, because I didn't kill them. 01:16:00And he--if he's not a terrorist, you know, he doesn't get killed and his three kids don't become terrorists. It's like nine terrorists, you know, just by not killing an innocent person. And, those people that are out there doing that, they just--they don't really realize that, you know, you're going to cause an American to get killed because they're not following the rules and they're not really thinking about what they're doing. And these are the same people that will come back and they'll say that, you know, I engaged with the enemy all these different times, and I did all these different heroic things. And really, they, they were just like me, man, just a kid who really didn't know what was going on. A truck driver, probably, some kind of support unit, that should have been doing his job, and we're out there just trying to be all, you know, Rambo-like and shoot at things when really that wasn't what they were supposed to do. So kind of bitter about that when it came off there, but I think it's justified bitterness. Um, so I got my step-brother, Kevin--you know, I--they say whenever you're in, uh, an IED attack and you get knocked unconscious, it's 01:17:00pretty much said and done, you've got brain damage. Um, I got that going on. You know, and then it comes time to go home. You know, so I come back from my second deployment just, um, just weird, man. I decide--I get really religious really fast. And, you know, a lot of my friends don't like it. They want to go back to the bars. I'm just like, no. I'm not doing anything in the bar. I'm not drinking. I'm not leaving this room. I start watching all these, uh, Christian videos about God, and I watch them over and over and over again. And I start--I get this, uh, really obsessive compulsive, like, you know, I got to clean all the time. My room was spotless. I would crawl around on the floor at nights and just pick up lint off the carpet. It was just weird. Just real control problems. Um, so I didn't go to the bar--I know that something's wrong with me. I know that I haven't grieved about my brother. I know that, you know, I might have something wrong with me from that blast. You know, two years of combat was probably not good for anyone. So I decide to go to therapy. And so, like, the first or second week, 01:18:00I enroll myself in, like, a weekly social worker type deal. We just basically talk about the problems, and they tell me to, like, eat dark chocolate and listen to classical music and stuff. And, uh, it's nice. I mean, it's just nice to talk with someone sometimes. And, um, I realized I had gotten--when I'm talking to my therapist--that I've developed some real anger problems. Like, I, I get really upset with people really fast about little things because I think that, you know, they should just listen to me and it will be done better. I don't know. It all, it all boils down to control, and I've realized that since, you know, I've been back, like, four years now. So in 2006, I'm getting biweekly therapy. I got until November until I get out of the military altogether. I've saved up my leave, because they've got this rumor going around that they'll stop-loss you right before you get out and keep you in for another year and make you go to Iraq. So I've saved up my leave to avoid that, so I'll be getting out in, like, August or something. And I'll have two months of leave and they won't be able to catch me. That's my theory. And, um, 01:19:00yeah, I basically just do my--the job in Germany, which is, uh, to clean trucks and sweep up oil. And, we'd do some little missions here and there to deliver stuff.

SCOTT: What led your decision to get out?

MARTIN: Um, I had never intended to do more than four years. I, I, I got in because, like, when I sat down with that counselor in high school, he told me I needed discipline. And I didn't admit it at the time, but I did. I was a little smart-ass, and, you know, I didn't have any direction in life. I went to college and flunked out, and I was just disappointed in myself. I knew, I knew I had the ability. I just didn't have the drive or the, or the ambition or the, uh, structure I needed. But, I, I--I'm pretty sure I had that when I got out. That, and I met my, um--who would be my wife, too, later on--about a month into my, uh, deployment. After, after my deployment, I met who would later be my wife, Anna. Anna was, um, from East Germany. She's a German. She, uh, grew up in Ballenstedt (??) Germany. And, uh, she had moved over to, uh, Wurzburg, Germany and was engaged to a soldier there, 01:20:00but he had been killed in Afghanistan the year prior. And so she met me. She was, you know, still grieving a lot, but she was trying to get out. And when I met her, my therapist had actually told me to leave and go to the bar. Weirdest thing a therapist ever told someone who had a drinking problem was to go to the bar. Just do something. Just get out of your room, because you're going crazy. Um, so I went, you know. And, um, met her there, and she--I had a hat on my head. I wore fedoras at the time. I, I just thought they were the coolest thing in the world. And, uh, she took the hat off my head and said I had to give her a kiss on the cheek to get it back. And I did, and the next thing you know, we're getting engaged, and, um, I'm filling out all these immigration paperwork and stuff. You know, United States visas and green cards. And I bring her back here to Kentucky with me. And, I, I do my--I get out. I work at ----------(??). I stay in Germany during my terminal leave, which is the leave you get--if you've got it saved up. I stay in Germany. I work at ----------(??), at the, uh, PX, for a couple of months. And, you know, 01:21:00kind of just enjoy living downtown with her in a German city. So that was pretty cool. I got out as a sergeant, honorably. Um, you know. That's about it. Two tours of combat. And then, um, first thing I do, November, was, um, get an apartment, enroll in school, start Somerset Community College.

SCOTT: Was that your plan all along, was to go back to school?

MARTIN: That was my plan. I, I--

SCOTT: --what did you choose to study?

MARTIN: I st--I chose English, because I realized part of my problem before was I chose business, and I didn't really care about business at all. I was good at writing and I like to write things. I thought, you know, maybe I could write a war story and make a million dollars on it, since I had been to Iraq. It hasn't happened yet, but it might. And so I started at Somerset Community College. You know, I had the GI Bill. Montgomery GI Bill. And, um, that was kind of rough at first. I, I didn't drink. I told myself not a drop of alcohol for a year once I got out, and I did that. Um, I, I 01:22:00started getting more therapy at the VA. Filed my disability claims for, uh, compensation and pension and all that. Because I'd--I hadn't been diagnosed with PTSD. I had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. But, but there was a retiring lieutenant colonel in the hospital there who pulled me aside one day. He was about to leave in a week, he said. He was like--I was being prescribed Xanax for anxiety attacks and all this different stuff that was going on with me. And he said, "Look, the Army is not going to say that you have PTSD. But I'm telling you right now, you've got PTSD." This is what he had told me after meeting with me and prescribing me medication and all this stuff. Um, "Whenever you get out, you need to go to the VA and you need to file a claim for it, because you're going to be--they're going to give you your medication here and say you have an anxiety disorder, but it makes the Army look bad for all the soldiers to come back and have PTSD." I was like, wow. And, so, I took that, you know, with a grain of salt. I thought maybe he 01:23:00was just bitter or whatever, but sure enough, they didn't pre--they didn't diagnose me with PTSD, even though, you know, I was a combat veteran who had a pending Purple Heart and was, um--you know, did two tours. It seemed pretty clear to me that it wasn't just a generalized anxiety disorder. It was pretty specific. What caused it was probably in Iraq. But, um--(coughs)--yeah. I get back and I start--I have to drive all the way to Lexington from Somerset, which is about an hour drive every time I want to go to the doctor. It was about three or four times a week at first. I'm getting, uh, psychiatric treatment. I'm getting, um--they eventually hook me up at the outpatient clinic in Somerset with primary care, and they have a, uh, social worker there that I started seeing--I still see. Um, and that's, um--what, what got me into that--and this is a good story, too. When I got off the plane coming back from, um, Germany, coming home, I get off the plane. You know, I got--I think I have a military bag with me or something, something that makes me 01:24:00look like I'm in the military. I don't remember what it was. But there's the VFW and American Legion and all these, uh, older gentlemen from Korea and World War II and Vietnam veterans, just, uh, standing outside the airport with signs saying "Welcome back." And, uh, I guess a unit had come back or something. They saw me and was like, "Welcome back, son." I was like, "Thanks." He pulled me aside, and he's, he's giving out cigarettes. (laughs) It was pretty weird. He's not giving out, like, uh, cards, or he's not giving out, like, you know, candy or something, you know, that's, you know, healthy. He's giving out cigarettes. And, I took a cigarette and I smoked it. And he's like, "Look, son, the first thing you need to do is start filing your claims." I was like, "What claims?" "With the VA." And I didn't even know really what the VA was. I had heard of it. But it turns out there's this whole big medical system. You can get compensation for disabilities you get while you're in combat. I knew I could get my school paid for, but that's really all I knew. And, so he tells me about all this stuff. He's like, "Make sure you get started on that today, because it's going to take months." And he was right. So I got started on it almost immediately. And, um, yeah. And, 01:25:00luckily, I'd had--I'd had--I had had a physical in Germany that was already done, and so that sped things up. I get back in school and I realize that there's going to be some problems when I start school, because, first of all, I can't stand sitting in the front of a class. I have to sit in the back, with my back to the wall. I can't stand sitting next to a window. It doesn't even make any sense. I mean when did I ever be attacked by a sniper from a window in Iraq? So, I mean, I'm thinking, I was a truck driver. When, when--where does this come in as, like, a logical conclusion to draw from your experiences? But I guess there's no real logic to it. Any kind of, like, insecurity or threat or lack of control, which had been my case, was becoming a problem. So I, I, I did well though. I sat--I sat in the back of the class. You know, I'd stay after and I'd talk to my professors. I was a lot more mature than the other students, I noticed that a lot of them were just eighteen, nineteen. They'd be sending text messages. Then I realized I had anger problems. Like, they'd be sending a text message during class, and I just--it would just infuriate me. I was like, this is just so disrespectful. This teacher is up here trying her, her hardest to teach 01:26:00us right now, and she's probably distracted by that, so I'm not getting the education I'm paying for.

SCOTT: Did you ever act out on that?

MARTIN: Not another student. There was one incident where I acted out with the professor. And, um, it was about religion. I was in argumentative writing, and, um, I had come back and I had wroten a paper about, you know, freedom of religion in schools. And, I had taken, like, this creative stance. I was, like, you know--there was the creationist/evolutionist argument that was going on. I had taken the stance--I wasn't even--really pick a side. I just wanted to pick the side the--play devil's advocate. You know, this is the creationist that's being offended by school. And she got mad. And, she was like, um, "This is a straw man argument. It's pathetic." And she said some things that just kind of, like, made me angry. And, um, she had, you know, related throughout the semester that she was going through some problems at home. And, um, she had lost some family members recently and, um. And I told her, I was like, "Look"--she had started crying with me in her argument about the 01:27:00paper in class. Like, "If you're not fit to teach this class, you probably shouldn't be here anyway." So I was just thinking, you know, if I was in the military and I was in combat and someone's crying that's in a leadership position, you know, they would--they need to be taken out of command. But it wasn't combat. It was a, it was a classroom. And I felt bad, because, um, you know, she, she was a human being. She was suffering emotionally. But for me, I was just in so much, you know, pain and anger and anxiety all the time, I couldn't see that anyone else around me was actually, you know, suffering from conditions. When I told her that, you know, I just--I was like--I didn't feel bad at all. You know, it felt like I was doing the right thing, I was calling her out when she needed to be called out. So we argued about this stupid paper once, and um, the next day she brought me a book by Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That. World War I memoir. And, um, you know, she's like, "Someday we're going to look back and we're going to laugh on this." You know, because we'd got into it bad in front of her class. And it just--it made me feel really bad. Because I went home and I was angry, and I asked Anna and I asked my friend, like, "Read this paper. Do 01:28:00you think it's really that bad?" And, really didn't have anything to do with the paper, had anything to do with me. She was grieving. I was, you know, suffering from PTSD. You put those two things together and you're just going to click. You know, that's what happened. But sure enough, she was right. We're good friends today. We still keep in touch through email. We've, um--we help each other out professionally, since she's an English teacher and, you know, I'm getting ready to start working on a Ph.D. She wrote a letter to the VA for me to help me get my Ph.D. funded by voc rehab. Um, great lady. And that first instance when me and her got into it was just, you know, a wakeup call for me really. That, you know, I had anger problems and I really wasn't giving people the respect they needed. Because one of the things I would think when I got back was, you know, What are these people's problems? You know, What have, what have they done that they deserve to, you know, feel this much self-pity? They sit here every day. All they've got to do is wake up, go to work. You know, they don't have to worry about dying or friends dying, all this stuff. It didn't make any sense to me that anyone here, in the civilian world, would have a problem with, you know, anything. But it's unrealistic. 01:29:00It's egotistical and it's selfish, but you don't see it whenever you're suffering. So after, you know--I talked about that with my therapist for a while. Kept going to school. I got my associate's degree in a year. Um, transferred to EKU, Eastern Kentucky University. And, um, before, with the associate's degree, it was more you really didn't have a major. You just kind of did your gen eds. And I got here and I, I majored in English, and, um, one of my teachers at SCC had told me that I'd probably want to, um, major in literature. And so I did that. And, I really liked that. I like reading books and I like, um, and I like writing, so this was great. I got my bachelor's in, like, uh, um, a year later, maybe a year and a half later. I was just tracking. I take, like, eighteen-hour semesters every semester. Like, sixteen hours. I take fulltime in the summer. And I was just moving along. I, you know, started my master's work, but right before I started my master's work, I decide 01:30:00I wanted to start, like, you know, trying to come out of my shell some. So I started the, uh, student veteran organization here, the EKU Vets. And that started with me and, like, five other guys that I knew were veterans here, that I had met in classes and stuff. I was like, "Look, let's start a group, because I notice other schools are starting groups, and we should probably get behind the curve here, because we have no student veteran representation here whatsoever." I had done some work with non-traditional students, and they represented veterans, but I was like, veterans stick together. You know, we, we look out for each other.

SCOTT: What, what kind of issues were you facing that, that made you realize you needed some kind of cohesiveness like that?

MARTIN: Um, I noticed that, um, really the only, uh, office for veterans was one small place in the, uh, student services building. She--all she did was file claims. Um, I know that my plan initially was just--like, the veteran service officer like you get at the VFW or something, we would be that here on campus. You know, we would mentor other veterans. You know, lobby for improved services. You know, try to, um, get a lot 01:31:00of the stuff they got going on today. And so--I don't know. I thought working with people that have similar backgrounds and circumstances, you know, that I could relate to--you know, I was lonely, honestly.

SCOTT: Yeah. ----------(??) what I'm asking is was there something missing, you know, that--

MARTIN: --for me, yeah--

SCOTT: --the disconnect between you and the traditional student that--and, uh, you know, just that--

MARTIN: --there was--

SCOTT: --that thawing off from having that, that brotherhood, that bond--

MARTIN: --absolutely, um--

SCOTT: --that you were missing now?

MARTIN: You know, I made a few friends in classes, but nobody I would give a phone call to or go over to their house or anything like that. It was basically me and Anna for a long time. I didn't have any friends. Um, I'm a hard guy to get along with, uh, because of the anger issues and the anxiety, and I don't like leaving the house a lot of times, you know. It's--I have to take medication to, to leave. I mean, I'm on medication right now, just to be here and talk about stuff that, you know, I'm always thinking about. But back then, it was like, you know, I, I don't want to be just a mediocre student. I want to, you know, I want to do really well. And I want to make some changes. I want to, I want to show God. Because I told you I had gotten religious. 01:32:00And I, I believe that God had kept me alive in that IED blast. And I, I wanted to show him that, you know, it was a worthwhile investment. And, I said, you know, if I could start doing things that, you know, help people, then I could do that. And so as, you know, my senior year came along, I was like, I'm going to start this student veteran group, get it going. I'm not really leadership material, but I'm good at organizing things and getting stuff done fast, so what I'll do is I'll set everything up and then, you know, I'll let someone else take over. So it took me a couple of months and I started the group. And, um, about, you know, a month or two into it, I realized I was doing all of the work. And, um, I s--I sent out a really dirty email to all of the officers, and about all but two of them quit. And that was another instance where anger had gotten in the way. So, all of my officers but two of quit. We got a new guy coming in, Patrick, who's going to be the next president, you know. He's gung-ho. He's got ideas. He had been to UK and he saw what they had done. He's like, "Let's bring some of those ideas here. Let's get to talking to the Student Veterans of America group. And let's, let's get this thing bigger 01:33:00than what it is." So we had the group, we had the logo. You know, I'm going to graduate school at Eastern, so I'm going to stay around and help. I'm good at writing letters and getting things approved that way. And, um, he's good at, like, talking to people, so he had--me and him worked well together. He was the outgoing person and I was the introvert who could, you know, get stuff done fast and write. So we were just a really good team. And, we set some goals, like get a--get a resource center for veterans, get a veterans lounge, and, um, you know, lobby for, uh, improved services. Get veteran service officers in here. We set all these different goals. And, pretty much, today, all of them have been met. We've got a lot of good services here at EKU. It's, it's, it's been a--a lot of--the group's really done a lot to help get that here.

SCOTT: Have you noticed that your efforts pay off with other veterans coming in with similar issues that, that you faced?

MARTIN: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I--when I started working on my master's, you know, I was still suffering from PTSD pretty bad. You know, starting a veteran's group didn't magically make it go away. But, you know, it helped build my self-confidence to where, you know, I can be out and interact with other 01:34:00people, even if it's just veterans for now. So, you know, I started working on my master's. I was like, you know, there's something to the idea, you know, you can--you avoid symptoms of PTSD. Like, I stay locked in my house all the time. You know, I stay--when I first got back, I stayed watching those Christian videos and picking up lint off the ground. You know, I'm avoiding the symptoms, but I'm also avoiding my life. And I saw that that was a problem, and so I was like, I'm not going to avoid these memories, you know, of what I did in Iraq. So I--when I started working on my master's, I've got to really specify what I was going to research in literature. And so I said, I'm going to do war literature. You know, I'm going to read and write about war literature all the time, you know, until I can handle it. And I ended up writing my thesis about Iraq and Afghanistan war literature, and that has been a big help. Like, having all this firsthand experience, I can say, yeah, well, when the author says this, it might be a symptom of PTSD, and, you know, I've got the experience to back that up. I've, you know, read the literature, the research, about, you know, psychological impacts of combat and 01:35:00all this different stuff. So I was able to put, you know, a painful past to work for me in my schoolwork. You know, I knew a lot about PTSD. I knew a lot about TBI, because I, you know, I think I have a mild traumatic brain injury. And, um, I knew about medication. I know what happens in combat whenever you're scared, like I was in my first deployment. Whenever you're, you're getting bullets flying around and it's the first time it's ever happened, and you just daze out. And, you don't remember things. And, um, I knew about what that was, and I started reading more stories. And I was like, wow, these are really clear. These guys know exactly what happened to him. And so I started thinking, you know, they've had to fill in some gaps somewhere. You know, they, they've taken these stories of theirs and they've, they've filled in the gaps. Because there's no way you can remember every little thing that happens in these situations, because they went through things in these stories that are a lot worse than what I went through. And, you know, I, I've got problems remembering it. So that became, like, the cornerstone of my, my, my graduate work, was that. And then, you know, I s--I got a job, because, you know, Brett Morris, the associate director of veterans' affairs here, you know, saw the work I had done with veterans. And, and, 01:36:00the student veteran group had taken off on its own now. New leaders were doing good things. And he gave me a job, you know, as a GA. I had previously been the GA, graduate assistant, in the, uh, disabilities office. And I got to learn about, you know, students with disabilities. I had a disability. And that's another thing: work. When you're a veteran coming back with PTSD, is, you know, it's, it's pretty hard, you know. The first job I took--I really didn't need it because, you know, I got, I got a pretty good disability check. You know, I was getting good VA benefits for, um, the GI Bill, so I mean, I wasn't hurting for money or anything, living in a little one-bedroom apartment. But, um, I decided to get a job just so I could get out of the house, maybe do something physical. So I got a job stocking groceries. I worked at a grocery store for a while when I was, like, sixteen. I was like, I'll do that again, because it was fun. I enjoyed it. But I couldn't get along with the people I was working with. I, um, I'd--the, uh, people that were, um--you know, the co-stockers, they'd be slacking on the job or something, and then the boss would tell me to do something. One time, I remember, I pulled the boss aside and 01:37:00I gave him a speech about proper leadership etics--uh, etiquette, and how he's got to talk to his, his troops about commanding him or they won't respect him and they won't listen to him when it really counts. I got home that night and I was like, What the hell are you talking about, man? This guy's stocking groceries at Kroger and you're telling him about, you know, combat scenarios where--are you crazy? That's probably how people are taking you. And so the job didn't work out, man. I couldn't do it, because everything was just so serious. Everything had such dire consequences here that it really didn't and a lot of it just, you know, went back to control and not being able to control things in combat. And, so I, I quit that job after like, two months. And, um, you know, when I got here to EKU, I got s--I got enrolled in the disabilities office for, uh--so I wouldn't be penalized for missing my appointments and, you know, if I needed it, I could take extra time on tests. I never did, because I wanted to push myself, but I, I had the option. But I was enrolled there, and so I got to know the people, and eventually a graduate assistant job popped up. And I, I took it. And so I got to work with people with different disabilities, learn about those. They knew I had PTSD, and so they weren't as hard on me. 01:38:00Because I knew I--like when they would put me, like, in the filing room and I couldn't find a file, they'd come in, I'd be cussing. I'd be yelling at the files. I'd be like, "Who moved the file?" And, it was just totally out of place, because, you know, I'm not up here. You know, I'm down here and I've got bosses. And I should be listening and not yelling in the filing room at things that are inanimate objects. So they tell me to take a walk, because I had--you know, take a walk, cool off, you know, count to ten. They had all these different techniques, because they're used to working with people with disabilities. So that was a good first step into, like, working in the academic environment. And then, um, Brett gave me a job as a GA in the veteran's office, which was great because I'd be working with veterans. And, my, um--part of my job would be teaching a class. I'd be teaching the, uh, the GSO veteran's orientation course. And I, I taught that. And, um, they asked me basically what I thought they needed to learn, and I looked back at me when I first came back. I looked at statistics, and, you know, 01:39:00one in three, one in five, have PTSD. Uh, one in however many has got this, this, and this. And I'm like, I think these guys need to learn about disabilities and, you know, PTSD and stuff. Even if they don't have it, the odds are one of their buddies does. And so I taught, um, Anthony and Janet Seahorn's Tears of a Warrior book as part of the reading. Instead of the EKU Reads book, I took--they, they have a book they assign to all freshman students--I took that and replaced it with the Tears of a Warrior. So the veterans in class would read that. Then I teach them basic study skills, because, you know, I was, I was a good student. I worked, you know, nonstop. I had like a--graduated summa cum laude. I had a 4.0 in my graduate program. Um, I was, I was focused when it came to academic stuff. So I taught them all the stuff that, you know, that helped me, you know, really do well, and I taught them stuff about PTSD, too. I taught them about how--because writing and reading about war had helped me in my master's program a lot, probably more than any therapy I had. You know, just facing it. And so, I gave them options where they could, you know, write 01:40:00or read about, you know--write about their experiences they wanted, and I would publish them in a journal for them. We'd get grants from wherever and we'd put them in a book. We did that. We got, like, a book full of, like, twenty-nine stories or something. The Journal of Military Experience. And, um, that was good, you know. A lot of those guys, they, they told me afterward, you know, it did a lot for them. They really liked the chance to, uh, see their words in print. They think it means something now. It's, uh, solidified. Kind of like this project. You know, you get to see that your words are going to be carried on and that they mean something to someone. That's about where I'm at now. I'd--you know, I'm starting at UK in the fall. I've, uh, got a TA position there. I'll be teaching, uh, English and working here ----------(??). We're starting the veteran's study program, where I'll be teaching people about military culture and stuff that aren't veterans, and.

SCOTT: Long-term, what's your plan to do?

MARTIN: I'm probably going to teach English in college, somewhere.

SCOTT: All right, very good. Um, how do you feel 01:41:00about being a veteran? Are you proud of your service?

MARTIN: Yeah. I--it's done a lot for me. Like I said, I came from a smart-ass kid to someone who's got a master's degree in four years. I mean, yeah, I went through a lot. I, um, you know, I've seen some things I can't unsee, you know, I, you know, lost some things that, you know, I won't get back. But at the same time, I've gained, gained a lot, too.

SCOTT: All right. Anything else you want to say? Any, anything in regards to being a veteran or your past experience? Anything that you want--any, any closing remarks?

MARTIN: I, you know, I heard one old veteran say at, um, the veteran's service officer training one time--he said, um, "The best person to talk to if you ever have a problem is another veteran." And that, um, "If you don't feel like people understand you, find one and talk to them about what you went through."

SCOTT: Okay. Travis, thank you very much for sharing your experiences today.

MARTIN: All right, thank you.

SCOTT: All right.

[End of interview.]