42 | McConnell

We often think of endurance in terms of the physical, how much we can do before we’re out of our depth, but things like psychological and emotional endurance contribute so much to our experiences. David McConnell’s 20-year military career was a test of his physical endurance, but it wasn’t until he retired that he learned about the other kinds.

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
I think that's where everything just reallystarted getting messed u because we had made
a promise that when we left wewere coming back with everybody, and we
didn't. And I can remember justbeing pissed off because it's like, how
dare we promise something that we can'tkeep. We often think of endurance in
terms of the physical how much canwe endure before we're out of our depth,
But things like psychological and emotional endurancecontribute so much to our experiences.

(00:30):
David McConnell's twenty year military career wasa test of his physical endurance, but
it wasn't until he retired that helearned about the other kinds. What is
true bravery? What makes a heroa hero? Tested by the worries of

(00:55):
what's happening at home thousands of milesaway and the reality of what your feet
seeing here and now, when yourlife is in danger every second and it's
either kill or be killed. Anoriginal podcast from Incongruity Media. This is
Anthony Rouzzo and This is War.David McConnell enlisted in the military because he

(01:36):
wanted to be a cop in thecivilian world. Any new prior service would
give him a leg up He chosethe Air Force simply because it was the
first branch that promised to make himan MP, and he served for a
few years Stateside before being deployed tothe Philippines. Political violence intention had been
heating up on the island nation,and when he arrived in the early nineteen
nineties, McConnell got his first tasteof what it was like to be part

(01:57):
of an increasingly unpossed popular US presence. While I was up in South Dakota,
we had four people assassinated over atClark Air Base, so the Air
Force geared things up to start sendingmore security police over there to beef things
up, and got over there andit was it was surreal and the fact
that we were in peace time butwe were drawing imminent fire. Pay is

(02:22):
what they called it. The paywas you're going to get shot pay is
how we took it and got overthere, and there were some more assassinations
that occurred, but every once ina while, the New People's Army would
decide they were going to test usout, so they'd do stuff along the
perimeter and then they would ambush.Their method was ambush killing. They got

(02:42):
some gis one night outside some bars. When that one happened, I was
getting ready go down to Subic Bay. My dad called me up and he
goes, what the hell's going onover there? And I say, what
the hell you're talking about? There'snothing going on over here, like I
would know. You know, I'ma cop. I'm in the middle of
it. He goes, you justhad three people assassin needed. So I
was like, let me talk toyou later. So I started making some
phone calls, and sure enough thebase was shut down and they had snuck

(03:06):
up and pistols of the back people'sheads while they weren't looking. So started
getting a lot of experience with theasymmetrical warfare type thing, the ambush style.
You know, we don't have frontlines, we don't know who the
enemy is type thing. Our doctrinewas definitely not set up for that at
the time. It was all ColdWar era stuff. So we started gearing
up for fighting the insurgency type ofthing. That thankfully ended up helping a

(03:30):
little bit when it come time forIraq. The trouble in the Philippines was
related in part to negotiations about whetherthe US would keep its military bases open
and under what conditions. There alreadywas a significant amount of tension in the
government given the continued incursions by theNew People's Party. This terrorist group was

(03:50):
working to oust the US and totopple Philippine President Korazon Aquino at the same
time. But in August of nineteenninety one, Mother Nature contributed her two
cents to the convert station. Westarted getting rumblings of Mount Pinatubo becoming active
again. Was a six hundred yearold dormant volcano about six or seven miles
away from the base, and itstarted sending out steam and smoke. So

(04:15):
they decided that something was going tohappen. You're not going to desert storm,
and sure enough, it wasn't muchlonger than the volcano went up and
basically destroyed Clark Air Base in SubicNaval Station. We were told it was
ten times bigger than Mount Saint Helen'sand they expected that if it did go
up that we were all going toend up dying because it was going to

(04:36):
come rushing at us at something likesix one hundred miles an hour. I
went to go check the gas stationto make sure that it was still locked.
For some reason. They that wasa priority, and I heard my
partner just all I heard was inoh shit, and I couldn't figure out
what was going on. I steppedback, and to this day, I
don't remember ever hearing a noise,but when I looked up, it was

(05:00):
as far as as I could look, and from as far left of right
as I could see, was awall of ash heading our way, and
it was like, I think weneed to leave. So we ran around
and gathered up everybody we could andgot lined up to evacuate the place.
And by the time we got towhere we were going, we had a
completely abandoned Clark Air Base and itwas two o'clock in the afternoon. It

(05:24):
was pitch black, and we hadbeen hit by a typhoon at the same
time, so it was raining mud. It was a little bit of an
unreal experience. It was like MotherNature did not want us around. And
we spent about seven days out atan agricultural college trying to regroup, and
went back to Clark and it justit looked like a moonscape. Literally everything

(05:44):
was gray. It seemed like thesky was just always full of ash and
everything like that. But spent aboutthree weeks playing in that and finally got
to come back to the States.With Operation Desert Storm already in the rearview
mirror, McConnell didn't have a lotof incentive for remaining in the military.
He missed his chance for combat,and not long after he arrived back in
the States, his second son wasborn. Dealing with domestic complaints on and

(06:05):
off the base and rousting the occasionaldrunken airman gave him the sense of transitioning
from MP to town cop would justbe more of the same. With my
dad being in the Navy, Ikind of missed out on a few years
of being around my grandparents, soI want to get my boys at opportunity.
I showed up back home in McCook, Nebraska, and it wasn't long

(06:27):
afterwards army recruiter approached me asked meto join the reserve unit there. I
told him I'll join your reserve unitif you promised to give me my rank
back and no basic training, whichI figured was impossible. And the next
day he showed up on my doorstepwith a contract that stated exactly that.
March ninety nine is when I actuallygot into active duty Army. I was
in the reserves starting in March ofninety seven. I beliezed when I signed

(06:51):
up. Originally they told me Iwas going into renovation, and I thought,
this is great because I'm going tolearn a skill, you know,
re modeling, construction type thing.Walked into the unit and they showed me
where the renovation office was and Iwalked back there and there was row upon
row of nineteen forty nineteen fifty erassinger sewing machines. And I was like,

(07:13):
what is this and he said,well, this is a renovation You
sew patches and repair uniforms and repairtents and things like that. Our building
had no television, no radio,anything like that. In fact, we
didn't even have windows. Nine toeleven, I was sitting at the reserve
center there in McCook and I gota phone call from the company trainer and
she told me she was have youseen what's going on in the news?

(07:36):
I said no, and I startedtrying to dial in the radio, and
I had heard about the first planefinally, and then my father showed up
at the door with a portable TVand he said, you've got to see
this. So we plugged it inand we're able to pick up some stuff
on the aerials, and then Isat there and watched it go down,
and we locked the building up.The one thing that kind of surprised me

(07:58):
was I got ahold of a allonsand are we supposed to arm up or
anything like this? And they saidno. And then I got a report
from the police department that an individualof Arabic descent had been asking questions about
the reserve center and the airport whichwe were right next to. Reported that
and nobody seemed concerned. Nothing ever, did happen of it. But I

(08:18):
got my father to bring up oneof his service revolvers, and I had
that tucked away a cobhold my desk, just in case something would happen.
Although he'd joined the Air Force andthen the Army more as a career opportunity
than because he had hoped to fightafter nine to eleven, McConnell had a
very different attitude as the country headedtoward war. He anticipated that he would

(08:39):
be asked to do his part,and he looked forward to it. He
thought he would get his chance inFebruary two thousand and four, when he
was spun up with the Quartermaster Corps, but his deployment to Kuwait, in
a place called Truckville, was morethan just uneventful. It was a little
disheartening. Somehow we ended up therein February a two thousand four war.

(09:00):
In November of two thousand and fourwe departed. I don't I don't know
how that happened. I think it'sa flat come out too, that they
did not really have a mission forthe battalion, because when we got there,
we were supposed to originally go tokrit I don't know how that got
changed, but we ended up downin Eric John and they were just looking
for work for us, and Ithink somebody finally realized there's there's nothing here

(09:20):
for him, so they sent usback a little bit early. I think
the big thing that stood out inthe deployment for me was here we are
in Kuwait, were considered to bein a war zone. We're receiving all
the benefits of being in a warzone. And I'm sitting at a mayor's
cell watching our fuel trucks come backfrom runs in Iraq, and our supply

(09:41):
trucks and they're they're shot up,and I'm sitting here running a giant military
hotel basically and it just it wasa sense of I'm not doing my job
like I'm supposed to be doing.I'm supposed to be up there with these
guys running in and out of Iraqinstead of seeing them come back from the
hell they were going through. Andthen just I can remember one of the
fuel trucks coming in and big piecesof metal missing off of it, and

(10:03):
you could see scorch marks, andyou could see a couple of holes here
and there, and the drivers thatsunk in look in their eyes and blackness.
It's just the exhaustions they were goingthrough. I felt like I had
deployed in for nothing, you know, an I don't recall anything special about
it. It was just nothing toit. Got the unit back out of

(10:26):
there and hit it home. Idid have a lot of people, you
know, thanking me for my serviceand asking me what it was like to
be in war, and you know, like, I can't really tell you
what it's like to be in war. I'm near it, but I'm not
in it. McConnell carried back withhim a self imposed guilt. He didn't
shirk his responsibilities, but he hadwished he had had the opportunity to do

(10:48):
something essential or at least helpful inthe war effort. He was coming up
on twenty years in the military withan eye on calling it a career,
and McConnell wanted just one more chanceto see some action. Eventually, he
traded out his next assignment, whichincluded a move to Pennsylvania, so he
could take that opportunity. I hadjust gotten back from Kuwait. My sons

(11:09):
had been basically they had been raisedin McCook. So I got ahold of
some people and asked him. Isaid, what happens if I get orders
to Iraq in the middle of allthis? And they said, what cancels
your orders? And said we'll signme up. I got back home two
thousand and four, and July twothousand and five I was on my way
back and we actually went to Iraqthis time, jumped on the bird flew

(11:30):
into Lsa Anacond in the middle ofthe night, which was completely disorienting.
Again. When we woke up inthe morning, they had we were staying
in some hooches. Our first introductionwhen the sun come up was to the
mortar sirens going off and all ofour guys were hitting the ground. And
then we noticed everybody else around us. It was just standing around looking at
us like we were idiots, going, yeah, you guys are obviously new.

(11:52):
It's like there's one siren for theentire base, and it was like
a thirty five mile perimeter, sothis mortar be landing anywhere, and people
just didn't give a shit anymore.It got tired of heading for bunkers when
nothing was coming in even close totheir area. We started getting things arranged
and once again they said, well, you're shower, laundry and clothing repair,

(12:13):
and we don't have that job here. So what we want you to
do is sit in the command postfrom fourteen hundred twenty two hundred each night
and if this phone rings, answerit, it's like, you gotta be
shitting me. McConnell lobbied hard forother duties. He wasn't an adrenaline junkie,
but he knew he couldn't bear anothercompletely saved combat tour. He jockeyed

(12:35):
for a different assignment, anything toget out beyond the wire. Eventually he
struck kind of a compromise. McConnellwould head up a construction crew, supervising
local nationals and third country nationals.It wasn't particularly dangerous work, but it
did give him a genuinely useful jobshoring up the base against mortar and v
bit attacks. We'd go in themorning and there'd be a list of basic

(13:00):
It was areas that the army identifiedas this needs to be secured, or
it was units calling up saying weneed some better barriers because we're having this
problem here, and they're like,you know, a few sniper rounds were
getting by, or the barriers weren'tprotecting from the mortars well enough. So
we go out and we started offwith I believe it was three KBR drivers

(13:24):
and then the rest was my Iraqicrews and my six cranes. They all
operated the cranes. Eventually, themilitary decided that KBR drivers were too expensive,
so they started hiring. The termwas third country national, so I
had I ended up with a Filipinotruck driver and two Indian truck drivers.
So that meant that the truck driverpay went from something like seven thousand dollars

(13:46):
a month down to a thousand.We got called up to the I believe
it was the North Entry Control Point. We had a new unit come in
and they wanted their twelve foot barriersreplaced with fifteen footers, and I was
standing out there talking to their firstsergeant, and you could hear the rounds
going overhead, and it didn't Itdidn't concern me because I knew the angle.

(14:09):
Even they couldn't even get enough ofangle to shoot into ricochet off of
anything, and you were just goingover our heads. Every once in a
while, we'd hear the gunshot whenwe were on the perimeter, and you
might see a puff of dirt somewhere, but by the time you reacted,
it was too late. And usuallywe'd be out Every once in a while
when the mortars would start dropping,we had a couple of them drop in,

(14:30):
and they were always in threes,so the first one would hit and
you'd kind of take cover paws andsee what was happening, and the second
one would hit, and you getan idea of where the third one was
going to hit, because they alwayswent in a line. He's out there
standing on some barriers one day andmortars start dropping in about seventy five meters
out from us and the cruise,and everybody just hits the dirt, and
he stands there and watches them andgoes, get your asses up. They

(14:52):
didn't kill us some time to goback to work. That's just that's just
the way it was. While therewas some danger in the assignment, the
real draw was that it was auseful, practical part of the war effort.
McConnell was doing his part to protectmilitary lives and to make things safer
generally for everyone involved, at leasthe thought. The difficulty in working with

(15:13):
local nationals, though, was thatamong the insurgency Iraqis were seen as traitors
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McConnell settled into his construction work,he was able to connect with his workers
the way you connect with anyone youwork long, hard hours with. You
get a sense of their family lifeand in this case, some of their
culture, and you can develop acloseness with these one time strangers that undermines
any preconceptions you may have had.We'd get sniped occasionally, but they really

(18:00):
couldn't hit us because we were behindbarriers to begin with us. We're setting
these things up. We'd get mortaredevery so often. It was one of
those things where I wasn't sure ifthey were just that bad, and we
happened to be in the area fortheir aiming. We'd be in the middle
of nowhere and all of a sudden, mortars would start dropping, and I
was like, well, maybe theyare actually targeting us. They'd never come
too close, but my concern wasmy crew. My crews would leave the

(18:23):
post and every day and they wouldhave to drive about it forty five minute
drive to where they lived, andsure enough, I went to go leave
the mayor cell one afternoon in thephone rang and I just went ahead and
answered it, and it was theentry control point telling me that my crew
had been shot up. So Irushed over to the hospital there on anaconda,

(18:44):
and they were wheeling them in asI rolled up, and one had
been shot in the back, onehad been shot through the jaw and it
had exited out the opposite side bythe top of his ear, and another
one had been shot through the forearmand it had exit and then entered his
bicept because he was holding onto thewhat I call the o shit handle on
the side of the vehicle. Andthey were pretty tore up, and I

(19:07):
was very thankful because the doctors andnurses and medics there at the hospital took
really good care of these guys.It ended up that one of them never
returned after that because he just he'dhad enough, because they were purposely targeted,
of course for working with working withAmericans. The other two came back.
The one that had been shot throughthe jaw, he had lost hearing

(19:27):
in both ears, and I thinkhe had lost a little sight, but
he was a damned determined that hewas going to come back and earn a
paycheck, and that he did.After the attack, there was something of
a culture change. The workers wereinvited to stay on base for the duration
of the project as a way oftrying to keep them safe, and the
guys who stayed did so partly becauseof that. But violence continued to surround

(19:49):
the operations at Camp Anaconda, emphasizingthat massive base or not, nobody was
safe in Iraq. Major Anderson hadbeen sent to Alisad for some reason.
He needed to come back to Anaconda, so he jumped on one of the
helicopters and it was a sandstorm thateverybody says they should never have taken off.

(20:10):
Well, in the middle of asandstorm they went down and I think
there was eleven people totally killed.We didn't know anything about it at first.
Of course, all of a sudden, it was like a media blackout.
We weren't allowed to make phone callshome, we weren't allowed to email,
no access to the internet. Andthat's when somebody made us, you
know, said hey, look,this is what happens when you lose a
soldier. One of your guys isgone, and we're talking about this jolly

(20:33):
old guy. Major Anderson was justit'd have been an awesome grandfather. He
really would have. Unfortunately he nevergot that. But it really hit home,
and I can remember just being pissedoff because it's like, how dare
we promised something that we can't keep. You know, here's a guy that
he has two daughters and a wifethat will never see him again, and
we didn't fulfill our part. Iwasn't mad at anybody in particular, but

(20:57):
I was just mad at everything becausethat wasn't supposed to happen. It was
the first soldier I would consider thatI lost in my career, and it
just we we regrouped from that.We had a one of the barriers that
we were setting out units like topaint the barriers, you know, put

(21:18):
Union symbols up and stuff like that, and we were able to do a
memorial barrier to him. Had oneof my military escorts was a good artist,
and he painted an American flag anda silhouette of a soldier and we
put the information up on, youknow, as a memorial. I found
out later that when we returned Anacondaover to Iraqi control that some of the

(21:42):
barriers were being defaced, and itjust so happened that Major Anderson's, one
of his best friends, happened tobe at Anaconda. Well, this changeover
was happening, So he went overand spray painted the entire barrier blacks and
nobody could deface it. And that'swhere everything just early started getting mess up,
because we had made a promise thatwhen we left, we were coming

(22:02):
back with everybody, and we didn't. And I can remember just being pissed
off because it's like, how darewe promised something that we can't keep.
As he prepared to head home forhis mid tour leave, McConnell was struck
not only by the loss of Andersonand the other soldiers, but by what
was beginning to feel like a kindof pointlessness surrounding his stint in Iraq.
He was there because he wanted tobe, and he had good reasons for

(22:26):
it. Coming at the end ofa long career, he felt as if
missing out on the war would somehowreflect poorly on the rest of his service,
although he was clear that that wasonly in his head. Still,
he began to see some of thedeeper difficulties and implications of his service.
My first indication that something was somethingwas up, and something was different.

(22:47):
Was when I got to Denver.The Army was I mean, seriously,
they were gracious enough that they paidfor my flight from there to little town,
you know, McCook, Nebraska,instead of me having to drive four
hours. It was now our flight. But while I was waiting for that
little puddle jumper, I was downin a gateway and all the seats were

(23:07):
filled up along the walls. Peoplewere just sitting there and I was It
didn't bother me because I was like, I'm tired and I just want to
lay down. Of course, Ihad to be in uniform, and it
was obvious from you know, thefade and everything else that where I was
coming from. And I lay downon the floor there and put my ruck
underneath my head and went to sleep. A little bit later, I woke
up and everybody was staring at me, and I thought, what the hell

(23:30):
is going on? And some ladythat was near me was nice enough,
she goes, you fell asleep andyou've been twitching and jerking like crazy.
And only thing I could think was, oh, dear God, these people
must think I'm psychotic. Then whenI got home, for a while,
I was I just I just didn'twant to go back. It was like,
no, there's no reason for meto go back. Somebody else can

(23:52):
take over the cruise. But thenyou know, it all pops up that
no, you got a mission yougotta do. You gotta go back and
get this taking care of because Idon't want to leave my boys. You
know, I felt like I hadput them through hell and back for me
wanting to get out of the AirForce to raise my sons around their extended
family, and then I turned aroundand abandoned them to go off to war.

(24:14):
You know that just I felt likesuch a hypocrite. You know,
you know you're torn between doing yourduty and taking care of your boys.
It's like, here, I amtelling my boys that going to war is
more important to my personal sense ofhonor, is more important to me than
sticking around to raise you. It'snot how I felt, but that's how
I thought. God as how they'regoing to feel. When he returned from

(24:36):
leave, it was if a switchhad been thrown, and whatever accidental protection
they had enjoyed, dissipated soldiers increasinglywere injured by minds and by mortars.
Attacks nearer the base than before,began to have some success. After twenty
years in the military, McConnell startedgetting disillusioned. Before it was in Iraq.
He had seen violence in Mayhem,both at home and broad from domestic

(25:00):
dispute and taxes to the escalation ofviolence against Americans in the Philippines to helping
civilians in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitchin El Salvador. More than ever before,
he was unsure about what his servicemeant. It was little things that
happened that you start realizing that youknow, something's either wrong with the situation

(25:21):
you're in or it's you. AndI was out doing sergeant of the Guard
one evening and I checked on acouple of soldiers up in a tower.
And while we're up there, abouta thousand yards away, a fuel truck
went up. It hit an iedcoming into the base, and this immense
fireball went up. And my firstthought was, Oh, I hope it
wasn't a GI I hope it wasthe Third Country national driving it. And

(25:44):
I thought, God, that isjust the most screwed up shit you've ever
thought. Man, it's a humanbeing in that truck, and you just
you don't give a shit because youjust hope it's not a gi Like,
what the hell is wrong with you? Man? Don't do that shit.
You start realizing that you're your thinking'smessed up. Going to the intra control
points, everyone's and while you'd runinto the group of people coming in from
medical treatment and just seeing all thesecivilians. I can remember this guy's leg

(26:07):
was pinned together with metal rods andyou could see the muscles in his calf,
you could see the leg bone andall these screws going into it,
and there was no bandages on it. And he was standing there in line
waiting to come in to see ifhe'd get treated. And you're just sitting
there going, this is what kindof is screwed up shit? Am I
inn? You know that's just it'sunreal picture somebody in America standing in eight

(26:30):
nine in line waiting to have theirleg looked at this goal exposed flesh.
You know, it just doesn't happenhere, but over there it was common
in practice. As he prepared toclose out both his career and his combat
deployment, McConnell worried about the guyshe'd be leaving behind, particularly the members
of his work crew. What limitedthat ambivalence was knowing he had contributed what

(26:52):
he was able and had done hispart both for the Iraqi people he had
come to understand and respect, andthe legacy he hoped that's the time that
the war would establish. The lastday in Iraq, it was definitely a
bitter sweet one because where we wereat where they had put us up,
We're getting ready to grab our bagsto head out towards the runaway and hare

(27:14):
comes my crew on the cranes headingout to set barriers somewhere, and I'd
already told them goodbye, which washard as hell, and then here they
come rolling up and they see mewith my ruck on my back and my
bags in my hand, and theyknow this is it. This is the
last time they're gonna see me.So that was that was a little rough,
watching my crew go buy and they'rewaving at me and I'm waving at

(27:37):
them, you know. But thenthere was the excitement that you know,
we're gonna go home, and youstart to question a little bit about exactly
why are we over there because everybody, you know, we always had that
thing about we're going over there foroil. You know, we're over there
to stop the terrorists, you know, from coming here. Well, I
got over there and it was like, you know what, none of that
matters. What matters is I'm hereto help the Iraqi people as much as

(27:57):
I can. Because we made apromise too that if we come in here
and tear the shit out of yourcountry, that we're going to fix it,
you know. And my thing was, we can't break that promise,
and in my opinion, we did. McConnell knew he was ready to retire,
and he wasn't too afraid of whatthe future would hold. After all,
he was a twenty year veteran withpolice, logistical and managerial experience.

(28:19):
On paper, that should have beenenough to make it smooth sailing once he
was out of the army, backhome and safe, as it would turn
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(28:51):
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That's Norton dot com slash war fortwenty five percent off. Arriving home after
a combat deployment left plenty of timefrom acconnell to burn before having to return

(30:17):
to duty. When he did,it was in the kind of lame duck
capacity you might expect. Mostly itwas just a waiting game, but as
he increasingly was exposed to the civilianworld. He found it a little alien
worse. They started losing soldiers athome, which was baffling and demoralizing all
at once. I got back andstarted getting closer to retirement, and then

(30:41):
after retirements win, everything just wentto shit. Ay, I mean it
went to ship fast. We gotback September six. I returned to duty
sometime in November of six, startfeeling a little disconnected, but not nothing
too major. And then I gota call one morning that three soldiers had

(31:06):
been killed in a traffic accident abouttwenty five miles away, and two of
them were from our unit. Theywere driving late at night, got tired,
fell asleep at the wheel, rolledthe vehicle. Three of them were
killed, one of them survived.They didn't have seatbelts on. From my
understanding, no alcohol, no drugsinvolved, anything like that. Now,
just a winding road, dark night, tired. And that's when things really

(31:30):
started going downhill for me. Andat the same time, we lost two
more soldiers traffic accidents from our unit. One was alcohol related, burieder's car
into a telephone pole. The otherone rolled it. And it was just
all all these soldiers were dying intraffic accidents. It was so unbelievable.

(31:51):
And that's when I really started feelingdisconnected and started, i'd say, he
started enjoying my bourbon and stout alittle bit too much. Reintegrating was a
lot more difficult than McConnell had supposedit would be. The years of service
had worn as much on his psycheas on his body. He took advantage
of a retraining program offered through theVA, but in his early forties and

(32:14):
after more than a decade in thearmy, his people skills didn't really translate
to the new service economy. Thenit was the realization that people saying I
support the troops really rang hollow,because once I got out of that uniform.
Upon retiring, you know, Igot to find another job. I
took the first thing that came availableended up being a work on radio sales,

(32:37):
and I am not a salesman atall. And the same people that
were like, thank you for yourservice, and oh got it's great to
have you back, I'd walk intotheir shops and they'd be like, get
the hell out of here, andI'm like, I'm trying to make my
own way in life, and youknow, yesterday you were patting me on
the back and now you're telling meto get the hell away from you.
I'm not looking for praise. I'mnot looking for gratitude. You know.

(32:57):
I did the job that I volunteeredto do and was paid to do,
but don't treat me like a pariah. And it just felt like everywhere I
went I was either the crazy combatveteran or they didn't have time to listen
to my shit. I think whatever. So you start to become really bitter,
really fast, and the upper managementdidn't care. They didn't give a

(33:21):
shit. They just wanted to getthe job done and the money made.
After I got divorced, I movedup to Grand Island, took a job
as the warehouse supervisor up there,and it didn't work out because people can
show up late to work and theycan basically do whatever they want to and
upper management just didn't care. Youknow. They put me in between a
rock and a hard place, andI said this, the civilian world shit

(33:42):
is not for me. So Iwent back to I got ahold of the
VA and they said, well,you qualify for the GI. Bill McConnell's
marriage was in a way one ofthe other casualties of the war. Even
once he got helped from the VA, McConnell's symptoms of depression and anger cast
a paul over the future his wifewas unwilling to accept. Still, the

(34:02):
ability to return to school was something. Eventually, McConnell realized that his best
way out was helping focus on theguys whose problems were still getting to them
as well. It's a little surrealat first because you know people and here's
a guy that you're best friends witheven though you haven't seen each other for

(34:28):
pushing thirty years, and they're talkingabout ending it, and you're like,
how can it be so bad?Then you realize, well, you were
the idiot that was out on yourmotorcycle one hundred miles an hour with a
six pack in your system, tryingto see if you could wreck. Because
suicide hasn't covered in life insurance policies, but accidents are. So your family

(34:49):
is going to be taken care ofonce they get rid of this pain in
the ass that you are. Andthen to hear that coming from somebody else
that you care about, it's agut punch and you're like, don't you
dare to take your own life.You've got to convince somebody there that dark
place is going to end soon,you know, when it's not going to
end with you ending your life,because that's not going to solve shit.
And it really doesn't top my head. I can probably I think I got

(35:13):
name six suicides that happened in mymilitary career, and it devastated everybody,
you know, when people didn't seeit coming and when it came up was
too late. So I ended upgetting my degree in social work. I
decided that I'm going to live offmy pension and consider that my paycheck from
the government to get this nonprofit upand running. And that's that's what I

(35:34):
do in my life now, isI'm going to be the civilian first sergeant
for my guys and gals. McConnellfounded Listening Post Air as a kind of
retreat for combat veterans having trouble findingtheir own way. It's part of how
McConnell can find his own way.Whether a person serves twenty years or just
four, the key to military serviceoften comes down to tests of endurance,

(35:58):
learning to incorporate new worldviews without losingtouch of the old ones. After all,
just because a person no longer isin the military doesn't mean they have
license to quit next time. OnThis is War, I was kind of
pulled around and pull of security,make sure that no one is coming up

(36:19):
behind us. And every suddenly likeit just opens up, like the is
like the sky just starts ripping open. There's just all this enemy fire and
it was just raining down right ontop of us. Are you a combat
veteran or do you know one witha story to tell? Reach out to

(36:44):
us at stories at this iswar dotcom with your dates and branch of service,
and a brief description of the experiencethat you'd like to share. This
is War was written by me AnthonyRusso and produced by Incongruity Media. If
you like the show, you canhelp support us by visiting our answers or
by leaving a five star review whereveryou're listening right now. You can also

(37:04):
follow us on social media at thisis War. You also can find show
notes, photos, and more backgroundon each episode at this iswar dot com.