“I was first on the scene. His arms, legs and face were missing. I could see his brain, but he was still alive. What was left of his arms, he was trying to push himself up and look at me, but he had no eyes…but he recognized my voice….”
Cap Stanley, retired Command Sgt. Major (CSM), retells one of his worst memories of his 31 years serving in the U.S. Army.
“It was one of the most horrible things in my life I’ve ever had to deal with,” he says.
CSM Stanley was on his third deployment to Iraq, and on this particular day, he and his soldiers were in charge of one of the check points in Baghdad. He had tried time and again to let his superiors know that these check points were faulty and put U.S. soldiers into added risk.
“You would have U.S. soldiers in front of a tank at the check point, so you couldn’t shoot the terrorist without killing a soldier,” says Stanley. “So, it might have been a controlled entrance point, but not a military defense.”
Stanley had also suggested that it should be the Iraqi soldiers that should be on the front lines of the check points, therefore, putting a barrier between any terrorists and U.S. soldiers; but again, his concerns were to no avail.
It was these kinds of decisions made by those not on the front lines, that caused CSM Stanley frustration, as well as many other soldiers. It is the frustration of trying to fulfill your duty to your country and yet grappling with the mixed emotions of feeling as if those in charge of your fate, see you as expendable.
And when those two strong emotions collide, it can have long-lasting emotional effects on soldiers, especially when you’re not only defending your own life, but you’re in charge of hundreds of other soldiers’ lives.
This is the position Stanley found himself in, on that October day in 2005, when he heard the explosion and turned to see one of his soldiers lying mangled on the ground.
Twenty-eight-year-old Sgt. Jerry Bonifacio was handing back the id card to the man in the car, when the unknown terrorist detonated his car bomb. By the time Stanley made his way over to where Bonifacio was lying, he was unrecognizable. “It’s one of my worst nightmares,” Stanley says.
“The whole time I was working on him I was praying he would die because there was no life left…”
Sergeant Jerry Bonifacio - Killed in action October 10, 2005
Those who’ve never experienced combat, can’t possibly comprehend what it feels like to see someone you know lying on the ground whose arms, legs and face have been ripped off by a bomb; whose brains are showing, and yet they are trying to reach for you for help. They will never know the helplessness of knowing there is nothing you can do to save them.
“I’ve had my hands inside human bodies trying to hold together body parts…the human blood…I can still smell that…some things you just can’t get rid of, even with therapy…” says Stanley. These are the life-changing moments that cause many soldiers to come back home with post-traumatic stress disorder.
And yet many, like Stanley, just keep plunging forward; burying their feelings, pushing through the stress of moving their family every couple years; struggling to keep their marriage together; shoving down prescriptions to curb anxiety and nightmares; all the while knowing in another couple years they may be back in combat.
“We have soldiers that have been on 12 deployments. That’s 12 years of combat!” Stanley exclaims. “Do you think these soldiers are all right?”
To put this in perspective, Stanley explains that in previous wars such as WWI, WWII and the Korean War, soldiers actual combat time was an average of five to seven months. Nowadays, soldiers are doing 12-month deployments with only 2 weeks home in that period.
“The person that comes back home is not the same person that left because of all you have seen” says Stanley.
Command Sgt. Major Stanley (far right) and his soldiers in Iraq.
He recalls more of these life-changing moments.
“We’d be out playing soccer with kids, and then the next day they would get blown up by the insurgents. One day a terrorist drove a car bomb into a market. There were 198 casualties. Our U.S. soldiers were all working on them. We had to deal with this all the time. Sometimes we would experience 10 car bombs a day….
…..I had a bus blow up next to me one day. A little girl looked me right in the eyes before she evaporated. I see her face every day….
…..Another time I remember sitting with this 4-year-old girl. She had down syndrome and she had been strapped with a bomb and was just walking around. I sat there with her playing horsey with her fingers on her belly, until they got the bomb off of her….”
These types of instances where children were weaponized weren’t uncommon. Stanley explains that there were two predominant factors fueling this.
First, they would get money from the insurgents to send their children out as martyrs. Then, they would get paid again by the U.S. government if one of their children or family members was killed by a U.S. soldier.
It didn’t matter that they were being used as a weapon to kill U.S. soldiers. They would simply claim they were caught in the cross fires and the U.S. government would pay them $1,400.
This may not seem like much, until you consider the average yearly salary of an Iraqi at this time was between $200 to $300 dollars.
So, as if it wasn’t bad enough, having to make the split decision to shoot and kill a child coming at you with a rifle or bomb, or risk the death of you and your fellow comrades; the soldiers had to deal with the fact that their own government was paying their enemy money after they had tried to kill them.
In addition, Stanley says the governmental bureaucrats started doing politically correct things trying to appease and win over the media and public’s attention, which in turn costs soldiers’ lives.
It might sound good in theory to those sitting in a comfy board room with a laptop, but for the soldiers who have to live under this type of politically correct scrutiny that ties their hands on the battlefield – it leaves soldiers coming home in body bags.
This is the kind of stuff that messes with a soldier's psyche.
Command Sgt. Major Stanley instructing one of his men.
And it also ends up destroying marriages, because the relationship can’t withstand the pressure building up in the mentally wounded and sometimes physically wounded soldier coming back home.
This is exactly where CSM Cap Stanley found himself after 31 years in the Army. As much as this strong, six-foot two soldier had tried to hold things together, his world was falling down around him.
The stress and strain of war, and years away from home, had not only taken its toll on him, but also on his family. Having moved 26 times, four of those times during his oldest son’s time in high school, certainly hadn’t helped with the stress.
And now he found himself after all these years of sacrifice - divorced, estranged from his two sons, battling extreme anxiety and PTSD; wondering was all the sacrifice worth it.
And the worst part was, he felt he had no one to talk to about his struggle. He felt they either wouldn’t understand, or he would be seen as weak – something a Command Sgt. Major who’s overseen over 10,000 soldiers, would never want to happen.
That’s when he decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. Everything he had lived for, sacrificed and fought for; it all seemed in vain. Where had it all gotten him?
He’d lost his wife. He’d lost his boys. Thirty-one years in the service watching friends die, only to have the media demonize their sacrifice and the government paying their enemies; it all seemed so wasted.
He grabbed his pistol and put the barrel in his mouth.
He was getting ready to pull the trigger and end it all, when suddenly his dog, Diesel, grabbed his hand between his teeth, pulled the gun out of his mouth and took off running. (He would find it several days later where he’d hid it in the chicken coop.)
Stanley sat at the table and cried. He knew he could no longer keep up this façade. He had to get help.
Several days later after being admitted into a facility, he was sitting across from another patient; a young African-American guy, who looked him in the eye and said, “You need to get you’re a** back in church.”
As Stanley sat there contemplating the wisdom of this 18-year-old guy, he realized he was right. He had allowed problems within the church to push him out of church and away from God. He also realized this was part of the problem in his marriage.
“We stopped talking and letting God be in our lives,” he says. “We each had our own thoughts in our head, and you can’t compete with what someone has in their head.”
And finally, he admitted that he needed help to deal with all the trauma he’d experienced during years of combat. “I allowed all the evil and horror I’d experienced to get to me.”
Four years later, Stanley hasn’t forgotten the memories that sometimes still haunt him, but the difference is, he now knows it doesn’t make him weak to admit he needs help sometimes in life.
“I thought I was strong enough to handle it on my own, but none of us are,” says Stanley.
“When you isolate yourself in this dark place you have no choice but to stay in the dark, and staying in that dark place is dangerous because we’re not meant to stay there,” he says. “I never thought I would get to that place to have a gun in my mouth.”
But he’s not alone. Twenty-two veterans a day commit suicide.
Some studies say if you factor in self harm and overdoses the numbers go as high as 44 a day. Our veterans are in crisis, and this is why today Stanley is doing everything he can to let other veterans know they have someone to talk to.
Everywhere he goes he leaves cards about suicide prevention for vets. On the back it has all of his contact information and his story. He even has a sign on the front windshield of his truck that says, "Talk to me about veteran suicide."
Stanley and his dog, Diesel, in front of his "Talk to me about Veteran Suicide" sign on his truck.
“I have about 30 veterans a month that call me. Some may call me two or three times a day,” says Stanley. “I try to save one starfish at a time.”
He feels it’s the least he could do, after being given a second chance at life. He knows it wasn’t a coincidence that Diesel, the Labrador he rescued from abuse several years earlier, grabbed the gun out of his hand that day.
And if you ever happen to meet Stanley and Diesel (cause he goes everywhere with him – of course), he’ll proudly show you the scars on his hand from Diesel’s teeth that day.
(Stanley and his beloved Diesel.)
The dog Stanley rescued ended up rescuing him; and he’ll forever be grateful to his dog, or as Stanley likes to say….dog is God spelled backwards.
If you are a veteran struggling with PTSD or suicide you can reach out to Command Sgt. Major Cap Stanley at (731) 307-7504 or Capstanley@gmail.com
You don’t have to do this alone. There is help.
- Written by Julie Nicole; Dayton, Ohio
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