In the weeks, months and years that followed my return from Iraq, I've had to tell my "story" countless times. Call it a condition of my staying on active duty, I had to talk whether I wanted to or not. The facts never changed, but how I expressed them did. If you're talking to military people, you can stick with the military vernacular. When you're talking to civilians, you have to adjust to their understanding.

In running these recollections through my head one day, the perfect analogy hit me. Schindler's List is one of my favorite movies. If it's been awhile for you, near the end of the movie Schindler is grief-stricken, insisting he could have done more, saved one more life, and ends with "I didn't do enough". That's survivors guilt in a nutshell, I've never seen anything that captures it so well.

So no matter how many times I shares my stories, or try to find the perfect words, or the best analogy, it comes down to how I feel inside. Words offered to me that are meant for comfort do little to change the dialog in my head, they're just words, and have done little to change how I feel. I certainly don't mean to put my experience on par with Oskar Schindler, only to relate that we find ourselves in different wars, and face our own battles, but as humans, what we feel can still be the same.

After I use the Schindler analogy, I think it's important to share a supporting anecdote. When the military sends you some place, especially a war zone, and when they say 365 days, as in my case, they mean 365 days. It practically takes an act of Congress to do otherwise. When it was my turn to leave Iraq, I didn't. I lied to my supervisors, to say that my flight was changed, that I got bumped on the Rotator schedule, etc. After three days, suspicions were mounting, so I couldn't work from my usual location. I took an "overnight" bag to an empty tent and slept there, so they couldn't find me while I was sleeping. I went to a building that was mostly vacated, and found an office where I could work from, only needed a PC terminal to log in and check on communications mission requests. Eventually, they tracked me down, but I ended up leaving Iraq 8 days late. I would have gladly stayed for as long as they would let me. It was as much that felt I didn't do enough, as that I could do more.

Christopher A. Valgardson