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Hi Shelly
After reading the following article, I began thinking about something. I have been very adament about my viewpoints on the war in Iraq. I am totally against it and have been from the beginning but, I support our military men and women whole heartedly. I hope I never gave anyone the impression that I had had anything but the utmost respect them. Well, this story here tells of two buddies that went through school together and then into the army. After reading this I had an idea that I thought I would share with you. I am giong to write a letter to the reporter who wrote this article and ask her to forward it on to the two veterans she wrote about. I am going to thank them for what they have done. I will offer them my support and hopefully get some other people here at adland to do the same. What do you think about that Shelly?
Well, here is their story
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Publish Date: 11/7/2005
Derrick Duran, left, and Adam Seitz, who have been friends since junior high, are part of the wave of “new veterans” who served in Iraq. Times-Call/Kristin Goode
Junior high friends grapple with roles as new veterans
By Pam Mellskog
The Daily Times-Call
LONGMONT — Last spring, U.S. Army veteran Derrick Duran finally scribbled about a dozen taboo questions on the back of a brown grocery bag.
The list sits untouched in his glovebox. But he wishes he could flash it when people start asking about touchy subjects.
Since his April 2003 discharge, the former specialist in the 101st Airborne’s 2nd Battalion has fielded queries such as: Did you kill anyone in Iraq? and If yes, how many?
Answering honestly dredges up a past he and childhood buddy Adam Seitz, an Army specialist discharged in February from the 3rd Armored Cavalry, have not quite put to rest.
The Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed both men with disabling post-traumatic stress disorder. Symptoms include persistent frightening thoughts and memories of a traumatic ordeal that leads to insomnia, emotional numbness and jumpiness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Duran also suffered complete hearing loss in his right ear and has shrapnel permanently lodged in his right hand and arm after surviving an explosion near Mosul, Iraq.
The Army burned the uniform ruined by blood, he said. But no one can burn unwanted memories.
One night back home, as he tossed and turned with a war nightmare, his concerned girlfriend almost woke him.
“Don’t do that,” he told her later. “Your collarbone would have been broken.”
Realizing what could have happened shook Duran more than the nightmare itself, he said.
Near misses with suicide bombings made Seitz leery of crowds.
“You think about the things you were doing, that you were just (at the bomb site), and that you lucked out,” he said of driving Humvees through streets packed with Iraqis. “Now, I get really frustrated when people invade my bubble.”
He and Duran, both 23 and 2000 Skyline High School graduates, still feel too watchful to enjoy big party scenes.
But they initially buffered themselves from the troubling past with alcohol, in small groups or alone.
“For basically two months, Animal House was my lifestyle,” Duran said of his homecoming.
Getting an accurate diagnosis and competent counseling helped them cope in healthier ways. For one thing, they can better explain their disturbing experiences.
“First, you’re fighting (the Iraqis). And then it was, ‘Now, teach the kids how to play soccer.’ It was a big psychological switch,” Duran said.
And culture shock has given way to reflection.
“I never saw a woman ride in the front seat of a car there,” Seitz said.
At one checkpoint, Duran searched a small truck and saw three men sitting in the air-conditioned cab sipping cold sodas while the driver’s wife sat in the truck bed with four sheep.
They still marvel at the chauvinism, the poverty and the abuse they witnessed.
But they feel good about making some tangible improvements by building roads, schools and other infrastructure.
“It’s uplifting when they just want to touch you, and they’re trying to say ‘Thank you’ in English,” Duran said.
From civilian distance, they can also lighten up about sandstorms so strong that troops stopped, dropped and pulled ponchos over themselves like makeshift turtle shells.
“You look orange. You look like aliens. You wake up, and you look like you’re on Mars,” Seitz said of the sticky grit.
These days, Seitz studies international affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Duran works as a security guard — a job he hoped to swap for police duty had his hearing loss not disqualified him.
But memories and e-mail conversations with Army buddies still based in Iraq make the war a steady focal point.
“At school, people walk around with clipboards to send our troops home. They’re not helping things,” said Seitz, who totes a black backpack stitched with two patches from his uniform: the 3rd Armored Cavalry patch and an American flag.
“I’m proud. No matter what, I’m going to be proud,” he said. “And I get really frustrated with some of the things people say (about it) who have never left Colorado.”
A few peers, they said, have criticized them for going to school on the Army’s dime and cashing in with disability status.
“But I never refer to my disability as ‘free money’ because I pay for it every day,” Duran said.
He pulled his boot camp mug shot out out of his pocket.
“I’m not this guy any more,” he said.
He’s also not the guy who cheered with Seitz at Rockies games as a kid and sang with him in Skyline’s choir, he said.
That leaves both men with a question not jotted on Duran’s paper bag list, but ultimately the toughest one of all.
“We remember who we were before the war and who we were in combat. Now we’re left with the aftermath,” Duran said. “The question is, who will we be now?”
Pam Mellskog can be reached at 303-684-5224, or by e-mail at
pmellskog@times-call.com.
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