Countdown to Being Prince Charming commences.

You’re no Prince Charming.

 

Gunny has given up everything, including the Marine Corps, for a second chance with the woman he loves. Madam Eve has given him one night to prove to his ex-wife Lissa he’s all she ever wanted. Fail, and she’ll marry another man in the morning.

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Front Toward Heroes

“When you say something, make sure you have said it.” E.B. White

A quote almost every author has seen. To me, that means every word you write has to have meaning, or it’s wasted.  Wasting words is wasting a chance to make an impact. Why write if you can’t make some kind of an impact?

I want to talk about my novel, Finding Mercy today, about the brutal and graphic scenes that have received both criticism and praise.

Why did I write them?

Good question.

How many of you have a family member who has been in combat? Everyone has heard someone mention that father, grandfather, sister, brother, someone who doesn’t talk about what happened while they were in battle.

PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We all know what it is, but we might not understand exactly how it affects someone and why. Often those who suffer from this condition can’t talk about it. I have seen this in members of my family, my grandfather, my son. I have seen my son climb off a bus after months of heavy combat, go straight to a grocery store and buy several baskets of food. I have seen him up, night after night, cooking more food than any of us physically could eat, desperately grasping for anything to take his mind off what happened “over there.” I have seen the “thousand yard stare”, where you know they are somewhere else, trapped in a living nightmare.

I have talked to a service member who served in EOD, disarming ordnance, who kept a diary. They would hand that notebook over to be read when anyone asked what was going on in their head. They did this because they couldn’t talk about what they saw. They didn’t want to try to recall the events. When they woke up in a sweat, screaming, they’d grab the notebook and write it down, force it to the page and in a way, from their mind. Through that notebook, I discovered that they not only disarmed bombs, they investigated after one went off, after lives were taken in a most gruesome manner, and they were often the first on the scene to witness the carnage, seeing things no person would ever want to. Or could ever forget.

I have heard week after week, of the suicides of young service members unable to come to terms with what they saw and did. So when I wrote about a hero suffering from PTSD, I wanted to try to bring out a fraction of what caused his pain, and in doing so, bring awareness to readers of a growing epidemic in our service men and women. It is not a condition just defined by four letters, it is one of the worst wounds a service member can suffer and many need help they are not getting. This happens because they either don’t know how to seek someone out that can help them, or because they can’t. It’s important we recognize the signs and symptoms, so we can do what they can’t do themselves.
Help them.

In Finding Mercy, the scene where Sgt. Justin Redway calls for an airstrike on his unit, is purely a work of fiction. The act of valor however, is not. During my time in the service, I met a man who was thrust into this situation, who had to make a split second decision between life and death—expecting that he would not survive, but did. To read about some of these remarkable “real life heroes” please visit this link. Home of the Heroes. You can read each of their stories, from why it was harder to wear the medal than earn it, or why one hero stuffed his in an old shoebox. You can even read stories of true valor about what you do when you run out of bullets and have to defend your ground at all costs.

So why the scene? Why the graphic, heart-wrenching view of a combat medic who makes a split-second decision, believing he will die, only to survive and be forced to live with what he did?

Because I needed my readers to understand what was going on in Justin’s head. Why he ran halfway across the country to hide in the middle of nowhere. Why, when he clawed his way out of the darkness, he reacted to someone prying into his past the way he did. I wanted a story of courage and human grit. I wanted a story that showed not all wounds that need to heal, are visible, but you can learn to live with them. All is not lost. There is hope.

I wanted to tell the story of the silent heroes.

Excerpt from Finding Mercy:

  

          He’d stumbled around until he’d found the radio operator. The kid was dead. He looked over to see a captain, most likely the commander for the Ranger detachment, his leg gone, lying on his belly ten feet from the radio, struggling to breathe. The smear of blood across the dusty ground showed he’d crawled at least twenty feet on his belly, trying to reach the radio. Justin’s gaze followed the trail. The captain’s leg lay under an overturned vehicle, beside a bloody Ka-Bar. Like a coyote caught in a trap, he’d used the teeth of that ugly combat knife and sawed off his leg to get free. It had to have taken him most of the night to finish his surgery.

          Justin rushed to the injured officer’s side. He hooked him under the arms and propped him against a tire. He scanned the man’s body, noticing a belt above the hemorrhaging stump, where the man had tried to make a tourniquet. Justin untied the strip of fabric holding it, and twisted the bar under the woven band, tightening it, before he tied the strip back in place. Once satisfied the bleeding had stopped, he went to work on the man’s chest wound. A deflated lung, but if they could load him on a chopper soon, he’d stand a chance.

          “You’re going to be okay, sir,” Justin said, not entirely convinced he would be. It was a wonder he was even alive. How he’d even survived the pain of what he’d done was amazing. His pulse was weak and he’d lost a lot of blood, but he’d seen men recover from worse, and he’d be the last one to steal this man’s hope.

The officer shook his head and tried to say something, only managing to cough.

          “Don’t try to talk.”

          “Do it,” he said in a gravelly voice, more a death rattle than clear words. Until he’d spoken, Justin hadn’t realized he could. A good sign. He still had fight in him.

          “Easy, sir. Going to get you all patched up as good as new.” Justin pressed the plastic package that had held the dressing against the hole in an attempt to seal it.

          “Call for an airstrike.” The captain wore the thousand-yard stare of a man with one foot in heaven and one on earth. Justin had seen it over and over since the attack, but it was what he saw in his eyes that chilled him far more than anything else he’d witnessed on the battlefield.

          Justin studied the man, assessing for any sign of shock, any reason to believe he didn’t have a clue as to what he’d asked. There were few times a serviceman could disobey an order, one being that the officer wasn’t in his right mind.

          The silver-haired officer waited, his mouth set in a grim line, his face white, eyes clear, and the blank stare gone. All his focus now was directed at Justin. “You heard me, Sergeant. Pick up that radio and do as ordered.”

Justin blinked. God help them all. He hadn’t imagined it. “If I take the pressure off this wound, you’ll die, sir.”

          “Call in the goddamned airstrike. I want that five-ton a smoking hole in the ground. Yesterday.” He tossed a sticky GPS next to him, one Justin hadn’t realized he’d had clutched in his fist. The wounded officer turned toward where the cargo sat, guarded like Fort Knox, coughed, and lifted his chin. “When that sun comes up, we’re done.”

          Was this a situation that called for suicide? Apparently the Ranger thought so.

          “They can’t get reinforcements into the valley. You got to do it.”

          They were all collateral damage, expendable. Whatever was in that convoy, the captain didn’t want the enemy to have it. It had more importance than he’d surmised earlier. A Ranger escort, a company of elite infantry sent in to extract, and more Taliban than Justin had ever seen in one place. Important enough that the Ranger commander had ordered his own death, and the deaths of everyone in the area, to ensure it was destroyed. No man would saw his own leg off and crawl twenty feet if he thought there was another way.

          A sinking feeling of doom settled over Justin. No, there’d be no reinforcements. No way could they get here before the fighting started again. It was oh-four-forty, twenty minutes until sunrise, barely enough time for air support to arrive, let alone prepare for the next assault.

          The captain pulled his sidearm. He pointed it at Justin’s head and stared. No, he hadn’t been able to reach the radio with his injury, but that didn’t mean he intended to stop trying. He’d found his means to an end and knew it.

          “I gave you an order—did you understand it?” The weapon slipped from his grip and hit the ground. He didn’t try to reach it again, but just held Justin’s gaze waiting for him to make a choice.

          Justin let go of the dressing, picked up the blood-covered GPS, and crawled over to the radio, staying low to avoid enemy fire. He gave the commander one last look and called in the coordinates. “This is Sergeant Redway with the Two-Fourteen, Bravo Company….” The rest went by as a blur. As soon as he heard “roger,” Justin released the radio. From that point forward, everything seemed hazy. He rolled to sit beside the dead radio operator, leaned against the roof of a M-ATV tactical vehicle, and swallowed hard.

He kicked the GPS away and turned toward the officer, who sucked in a wheezy breath.           “You’re a hero, son. You know it had to be done.”

          Yeah, it did. Justin’s guts knotted. It had been the right thing to do, but it didn’t make killing himself or his friends any easier. They couldn’t go anywhere, only sit here and wait for it to happen. The others—they didn’t even know what was coming.

He clamped his teeth together, doing his best not to call him something that could get him shot. Not that it mattered. They’d all be dead soon enough. They really didn’t have a choice. The cargo must not fall into enemy hands, but did the commander really think he wanted a medal for what he’d done? Posthumously?

          “It would be real bad for everyone if they captured what’s in that truck.”

          “Just what is in that truck?” The cargo again. Everything pointed back to the cargo. What was so fucking important it outweighed the preservation of human life?

          The captain shook his head. “This is a small sacrifice, and I’d willingly pay it ten times over. You would too—if you….” He closed his eyes and his chest stopped moving.

           

Spy Rings, Ghost Armies and Military Intelligence.

Gah! I think if I hear this one more time, when someone asks me what I did in the Army, I’m going to scream. “Military Intelligence is a contradiction of terms.” Yeah, the famous *MASH* line that anyone who served in Military Intelligence has heard one time or another.  If you’re MI, or former MI, you know what I’m talking about. Stop for a moment, and listen to one of the brilliant reasons this isn’t true.

As we approach Memorial Day weekend and we think about the heroes of the past who have fought and died for our country, there are many you may not know about, many who fought as ghosts.

Now we all know about the CIA’s memorial that has 103 stars for fallen agents, omitting names, and bears the inscription, “IN HONOR OF THOSE MEMBERS OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR COUNTRY”, but what of the 1100 men who pulled off one of the greatest deceptions in history? There are many heroes you don’t hear about until their missions have become declassified, as is the case with the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, aka, The Ghost Army.

When I say Military Intelligence, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Cloak and dagger? Gathering intelligence with drones or spy planes? How about spies behind enemy lines?

How about ghost armies? No, and I'm not talking about the Army of dead from Lord of the Rings. I'm talking about a true, blue ghost army.

I bet you didn’t think of them, but they are part of the cloak and dagger operations of our military in WWII, and a lot of what they did, saved thousands of lives and turned the war in the United States favor.

Military Intelligence has a deep rooted history, going back as far as the Revolutionary War in America, and Washington’s Culper Spy Ring. Washington understood two very important things about spying. One, that it was about gathering intelligence on enemy movements and processes, and two, it was about deception. By planting false information, Washington manipulated the enemy into doing things they might otherwise not do. From those roots, military intelligence has grown. But nothing demonstrates deceptive tactics better than the once top secret mission of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops.

Inflatable tanks, artillery and convoys were planted, camouflaged with nets and moved around battlefields to give the appearance of larger forces in the area. Much thought was put into how much and what could be seen from above by enemy planes, as well as spotters and spies on the ground. Tank tracks created with bulldozers, a slip of net, exposing the corner of a tank. Unit patches painted or sewn onto uniforms, unit designations painted on military vehicles, and men driving said vehicles up and down the roads to give the appearance of a certain division occupying an area. They changed their patches like we change our undies.

 A perfect example of this “seen from above deception” is a munitions factory in Baltimore that appeared from above as farm fields, painted by members of the ghost army to hide its true nature, and protect it from potential bombings.

But where did the Army find men with such creative minds? They recruited them from art schools throughout the United States, and these artists brought the art of war to a completely new level.

The second part of the Ghost Army consisted of speakers on mobile vehicles, with recordings of troop movements, tanks and convoys, even engineers setting up a bridge to cross the Rhine. These recordings gave authenticity to an otherwise silent inflatable army. They called it sonic warfare.

The third part of the Ghost Army was the radio operators, whose chatter, mimicked the movements of the inflatable divisions. So good at the deception, they fooled German radio operators that had never been tricked before, resulting in the drawing live fire, and repositioning of German forces.

What’s amazing is that fifty-mile gaps in the front line were filled with armies that didn’t exist, keeping the Germans from flanking US troops by going through the holes. That the trickery manipulated the Germans into moving away from where we didn’t want them and to where we did. This ghost army also drew the fire away from real divisions, as in the case of the crossing of the Rhine. So certain we were building a bridge to cross the river, the ghost army diverted the attention of German forces away from where our troops were really crossing.

So, I hope you’ve developed a new appreciation for Military Intelligence and the art of gathering and planting information, as well as the previously unknown heroes who pulled off one of the greatest deceptions of all time.

Hmm, I'm thinking a little modern-day ghost army story just might be in my future.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend.

 

D. L. Jackson

With it or on it.

Okay, so here I am two days from my blog post and for once in my life I don’t know what to say, so I’m just going to speak from the heart and see where it takes me. (By the way, after I wrote this, I had to amend, because of a big surprise I received.)

I’ve just spent the last two weeks seeing my boys off to deployment. My youngest is a combat medic in the Army. He flew out to South Korea two weeks ago. The other is a Marine, who has returned to Afghanistan for his second deployment. Both of their wives are pregnant. My youngest son’s wife is due any day with his first child.

There are few times in my life I have seen my son tear up. This is one of them. His duty assignment to Korea has become a “deployment”, which means it's unlikely he will be home for his daughter’s birth. In fact, they told him he may not see her for her first year, maybe even longer. This is one of the challenges our soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen face daily, the separation from those they love.

Please let me share this picture of my daughter-in-law when the bus carrying my son pulled up in front of us after months of deployment in Afghanistan. She hates it. I love it. It tells a story of love. It says more than I ever could about how you feel when your hero returns. Sometimes the picture speaks for you, and I think I will let it.

 

When our young men and women serve in the military, they don’t just risk life and limb, they give up precious time that they can’t get back. My oldest son was here for his first daughter’s birth, but he missed the first time she rolled over, her first steps and first words. Now, he faces the same situation as my youngest. His wife is also pregnant, with her second child. He too will miss the birth of this child.

I understand what they are going through  all too well, know what it is to be that soldier and know what it is to be the family member left behind while their warrior goes off to war. Yes, I was once that soldier, and I was also the pregnant wife, waiting for my hero to set foot on US soil again.

For those that have been there, you will understand when I say this. While your loved one is deployed, especially if it is into a hot situation, where there is combat daily, it’s almost as though you forget how to breathe. You hold your breath. When you receive word their plane has touched down in the United States, for the first time since they left—you exhale.

So, last night I went out to dinner with my husband and daughter-in-law. I'm sitting there, looking over the menu when someone comes up behind me in my seat and hugs me. I turn to look, and my youngest son is standing there in an Army tee-shirt and his shorts. I was speechless. My husband was talking with my daughter-in-law's father and wasn't aware he was standing there, until I elbowed him. This was an amazing moment, and I can't say how happy I am that he can be home for her birth. I imagine my face looked very much like Cate's does above. There are tears in my eyes as I write this. Yes, his duty will eventually call him back to Korea, but for now, he is here and I can not thank those who made it possible, enough. They are heroes too, and perhaps it's because they've been there too.

“With it or on it.” This phrase is attributed to Spartan mothers when they presented their sons a shield the first time they went off to battle. It is a phrase of great courage, not only for the one receiving the shield, but the one who presents it. It says we know this fight is worth the sacrifice. It says come home, but not as a coward, serve honorably. Come home the sons we raised you to be. Men of honor. Men with a deep sense of sacrifice. Men who are willing will give all to make this country safe for their families, friends and posterity. Come home heroes—on your shield or with it.
And so to my sons I say.

“With it or on it.”

God bless. We’ll be right here when you get back, but while you're here, we'll embrace you with all we have.

Mom, and US Army Veteran.

www.authordljackson.com