Today I walked another 16 miles east towards Brookfield, MO. Obviously I’m not going straight north, but we scheduled my route to go this direction because there is some promise that we may be able to meet with more youth groups this way. We have already met with a few youth groups since I started walking north of Kansas City, but we are hoping to meet with many more if we stay east of I-35.

I’ve had only a few physical issues to deal with since I started this journey. My feet hurt a bit after the first few hundred miles, but I don’t notice them at all anymore. Lately, my knees have been a bit of a bother. I don’t know what happened, but a few days ago I was walking along a back road, staring down some cows, when all of the sudden I felt a twinge on the inside of my right knee and it made it really hard to walk. I don’t know if I stepped funny or what, but I had to stop walking. I tried to massage my knee, but that seemed to do very little good. Being the guy that I am, I sometimes treat my body like an old car; when the massaging didn’t work, I proceeded to punch my knee in frustration. For one reason or another, that worked. My mechanical abilities carry over into physical therapy. J

I think people want to know why I am doing this march. Why did I leave my life and career in Florida to move up to Minnesota in a snowstorm to become the program manager of War Kids Relief? Why did I decide to walk 1000 miles across the country to raise awareness to the young people (as well as adults) about the troubles of children in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, there is more to it then I usually say to a group of kids or adults I’m meeting with.

I guess a lot has happened since I came home from Iraq in 2004. I finished my bachelor’s degree, started a personal training business, opened a nutrition store, went back to school for a bit, and eventually moved down to Florida to become a dolphin trainer (crazy huh?). I’ve been pretty successful readjusting to civilian life, but there has always been something looming in the back of my mind, something that I was searching for. Something that just wouldn’t let go.

The word “hero” is a complex term. In the Army, the word hero is actually a derogatory term, referring to someone who tries to do everything himself without thinking or working with his team. If you are called a “hero” in boot camp, you are more then likely being “smoked” by a drill-sergeant. (FYI: the term “smoked” means you are yelled at and forced to do meaningless and extremely strenuous physical activity until you throw up or can’t stand on your own anymore. Usually it also involves a wide variety of humiliation tactics.)

I have a different definition of the term “hero”. When I think of the word “hero”, I always think of my grandfather. He was a true hero in my eyes. It seemed to me growing up, that he helped everyone around him, was a gentleman, and was about as honest, loyal, and honorable as anyone I have ever met. All I have ever wanted was to be like him when I grew up…to be a hero like him.

Everyday I think about the kids I saw in Iraq, with their tattered clothes, sand and sun worn faces, hopeful eyes, outreached arms, and the smile our short interactions brought to them. I think back to a boy who sat with me in a Humvee for 2-3 hours teaching me Arabic and talking to me about his country in perfect English. I often wonder where that boy is now. Is he still alive? If he is alive, how many of his family and friends have become a casualty in the ongoing violence?

I also think back to another story…a story that I know still haunts one of my friends I served with. This story may sound insignificant in the grand scheme of things over in Iraq, but it was something personal that both I and another soldier shared that I know still haunts us.

We were on a convoy from Kuwait making our way up through Baghdad and beyond to Balad. As we so often did, we pulled our entire convoy over to take a rest from the long road, as well as talk and trade with local Iraqi kids who were lined up along the highway holding ice-blocks, pop, and souvenirs.

One boy came up to the driver’s side window to show the sergeant I was traveling with a few Iraqi war medals. The sergeant asked the boy to step up on the truck so he could show him the medals. The boy stepped up and offered a few of the medals through the window for us to look at. While we looked at medals and questioned the boy about them, the trucks in front of us started pulling forward. Before we knew it, the whole convoy was on the move and we hadn’t even started our truck yet! I told the sergeant to quickly hand the boy back the medal he was looking at and get a move on, but he dropped one of them on the floor of the cab. We searched for it with a sense of urgency, knowing the truck we were to be following was already a tenth of a mile ahead of us and moving fast.

We searched frantically, our heavy Kevlar helmets and ballistic vests restricting our flexibility to search the cab’s crevices. I told the sergeant we needed to move out right now to keep from being separated from the convoy, but the boy was still on the side of the truck, holding onto our door asking for his prized possessions. We started rolling, asking the kid to get off the truck, then demanding him to jump. After yelling for his stuff, pleading with us to stop and find his medals, he finally realized he was not going to get them back. I continued to search the cab frantically, but it was no use. I couldn’t find them. We were driving at almost 20 miles an hour when the boy finally stopped his pleading, and simply looked at us in total silence. It was a look of utter disappointment, hopelessness, sadness, and loss…as well as a look of acceptance, from a child who possibly has had such betrayals all his life.  It was the most painful look I have ever had to receive.

The boy then turned around, jumped off the truck, and rolled in the sand on the side of the road as we drove on. We looked in the side mirrors and saw him getting up and just staring at our truck as we drove away into the distance. Both the sergeant I was with and myself thought about that boy everyday we spent in Iraq. For a while, we couldn’t even look at each other in the eye, and when we did we knew exactly what each other were thinking; regardless of whether or not we meant to, we took the only thing that child had going for himself. I know we both feel the guilt just as heavily today as we did then. We never did find the fallen medal…and though I know it is the first thing we think of when we see each other, we have never mentioned it again. 

Only a few weeks later, we were getting reports that insurgent groups were using kids against troops in Iraq. They would use them for anything from suicide bombers to a distraction for US troops while insurgents hid in the background. Now, we didn’t know which kids we could trust, and which we couldn’t. We went from a time when we hung out with kids on all our convoy missions (heck it was the highlight of convoys), to a time when now, if a child comes within 15 meters of me, I have to yelled at him to keep away or point my gun at him if he doesn’t comply. Being 25 years old and pointing a gun at a 10 year old child has weighed on me ever since. I, as well as all of those I served with, did what we had to do and were ordered to do, but it doesn’t make the realities of war any easier to accept. As my battle buddy and I often said to each other in the worst of times to make light of an event or situation…“War’s hell.”

To help these kids, to get them out of the hands of insurgent groups, to give them a real chance at life, to let them see a new possibility for themselves…this is my life’s mission and it’s what I had been searching for since I came home in 2004. I don’t call myself any sort of “hero”, but I do hope that I am following my grandfather’s example of love, courage, honor, and the caring for others to the best of my ability.