Family Ties and Iraq

"In Iraq, I knew where I was, I knew what I was doing. In Afghanistan, I knew where I was, I knew what I was doing."

By Richard Denny

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Youth Radio has been gathering the voices of troops returning home from Iraq since the beginning of the war. Specialist Richard Denny is originally from Knoxville, Tennessee. He is stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq for 12 months, returning to the states in November 2004. He’s from a family of military men. Both his father and his brother have done tours of duty in Iraq. But Richard explains that since he returned to his base North Carolina, he’s realized his war experiences are hard to share, even when he’s with his family in Tennessee.

I know when I go back home on leave and I’m with people that I knew before, who don’t really know me now, I tell them a story that’s amusing because it’s not that they don’t want to know the rest of it. They care. It’s just that I don’t know how to tell them.

I had such a tight family unit back home that really wanted to be supportive of me and I’m really just wanting to be left alone about it. Because there’s a huge portion of your life that they’ll never understand.

My brother for instance is in the Air force and he’s done two deployments to Iraq and I can’t even really trade stories with him because our experiences were so different over there. And even now, the only person I can really talk to about it is my father who is a Naval reservist and he’s been deployed to Iraq. But I saw a little bit worse of Iraq.

You know, if you’d give me the choice, I would rather be deployed than not be deployed. In Iraq, I knew where I was, I knew what I was doing. In Afghanistan, I knew where I was, I knew what I was doing.

I remember the day I got back from both of them, I went and got a hotel room away from everybody, just by myself and I spent an hour making fists with my toes in the carpet. And my cousin, like a brother to me, took me to a club and then the lights went down and I was okay, and the smoke machine goes off and I was okay, and then the strobe light comes on and I just about decked the blonde next to me.

And at that point, I was like, “Okay. I need to step back. I need to reevaluate this. This music sucks anyway. I’m leaving.” It’s hard – there’s a huge portion of your life that no one’s ever going to get.