To Hell And Back Again

Angie first came forward to tell her story in any interview for the documentary series 'In Their Boots.' The short film that resulted from that interview is called 'Angie's Story' and can be seen at www.intheirboots.org.

I was an 18-year old, fresh out of high school, with an M16 and camouflage paint smeared on my face, excited, a little naïve at just what I had gotten myself into.

No one told me that eleven years later, I'd be tired, very broken, isolated, and damaged goods. Yes, I was assaulted and harassed while serving my country. No one warned me that joining the Army made me twice as likely to be sexually assaulted than my civilian counterparts. That's not what I was signing up for.

I come from a family where military service makes you a man (or a woman, in my case). Both grandparents served in the Army Air Corps in World War II and my father dreamed of being in the Navy. Plans changed for him when I was born and he broke his leg in a motorcycle accident. I wanted to travel to crazy places few people have ever heard of or even knew existed. I wanted to meet those people I would see in National Geographic commercials or the World Almanac my grandfather would show me when I was little. Most of all, I wanted to get out of St. Louis and experience life on this irresistible planet.

I wanted to declare my independence to everyone I knew, so I shaved my head and signed the dotted line. A little rebellious I guess, but I liked the excitement of it all!

I had been a born leader, tough as a brick shithouse, and could knock boys over when I played soccer with them in the neighborhood. I played all the sports, ran faster than most guys and could outwit anyone with their intellectual theories. Especially the Catholic Republican in my Advanced English class senior year who would debate with me on issues such as abortion, the death penalty, and who would be President of the United States first, him or I.

In 1997, my senior year, GI Jane came out. I watched it the night before I left for the Army and dreamed of being just like Demi Moore, just as tough as the guys. I was ready, willing, and able to do anything a "man" could do.

Eleven years later, I wound up 2100 miles from home, staying in a homeless veterans shelter, attending a three month Renew Program for women veterans who have experienced Military Sexual Trauma with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. There were only five women in my group who were willing to face all the pain of their past to come out feeling better on the other side. Who says women aren't strong?

There, I met Amanda Spain, producer of "In Their Boots," an online documentary series
showing the struggles of Iraq and Afghanistan vets when we come home. They are apolitical, and funded by a grant from the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact fund (IADIF) and produced by Brave New Foundation under Robert Greenwald.

She asked me if I'd be willing to share my story with those that were willing to listen. Apprehensive, and shocked that someone finally cared enough to listen, I hesitatingly agreed.

It was the first time, ever, to share my story, from beginning to end.

One night in South Korea, I went out with some friends to the "Ville" which is all the little hole-in-the-wall bars and restaurants right outside the gates of Camp Carroll, Waegwan, South Korea. It was a dark, spring night and I had to work the next morning at 0730 hours to complete my yearly Common Tasks Training with the unit. I went out for an hour or so, only had one small drink, as being drunk was not my cup of tea at the time. I went to leave an hour later and someone had stolen my keys. Nervous, I walked through the gate with a male, non-commissioned officer I had seen around but didn't know very well. We are taught to respect and trust the NCO's and I had no reason not to. You are not allowed in South Korea to walk through the streets alone as it is with Armed Forces Policy in most places overseas. My roommate was not in our room so I decided to stay in the NCO's room down the hall to wait for her to come home. I checked several times throughout the night but no answer from my roommate.

The male asks me four times to have sex with him and I say no all four times. First, I tell him I don't know him, then I tell him I have a boyfriend in Germany, then I tell him again I don't know him. The final time, I tell him I am on my period and NO! Next thing I remember is my naked body being violently thrown all over the bed and I am unable to scream or stop it. I don't know, to this day, if I was drugged or hit over the head.

I remember hearing his roommate, just on the other side of the room and I am trying to scream, but nothing comes out. It is as if I am out of my body watching from across the room and can do absolutely nothing to get back in my body and fight him off.

I wake up the next morning twenty minutes late for my 0730 formation. Shaken, not quite sure what happened that night I am standing naked in the bathroom and cannot unwedge the tampon that is shoved all the way up.

My Platoon Leader asks me what's wrong and did I drink too much the night before, he smells my breath and concedes that that's not it, but what is it? I don't even know.

Three days later, I get flashes and cold chills as I am standing in the office and see him. My body knew what happened before I did. Somehow, I am told, the body remembers. My hands are shaking and sweaty and now it's all clear. It's too late for a rape kit, I had to tell someone.

I talk to my Platoon Sergeant, the man I respected the most. He told me that in the military when there is a rape trial they will blame it on me and make it look like I was asking for it. They would say I drank too much, I was a party girl. They would make up lies and I would be on trial, not the NCO. As I am a naïve 21-year old who trusts her leaders, I go along with his plan to just "live with it." My Platoon Sergeant told me the only thing that would happen to him would be that his rank would be knocked down one level, he would be transferred back to the States and I would have to live the rest of my life with it. So I stuff it way down inside and begin my new way of coping with it, binge drinking on the weekends.

Six months later, I reenlisted to stay in four more years and signed up for Europe. September 11th happens and I know Europe will be the first to deploy when war breaks out. We all knew it was coming. I will leave a part of myself in Korea.

A year and a half later, May 6, 2003, I am driving in a convoy from Kuwait to Baghdad. My family is watching it all back home on CNN and they have no idea.

I already had pain in me from the assault and now I am being exposed to the horrors of war. No front lines for women, my ass. Baghdad is the front line. No, I didn't have to kill anyone, but the fear of thinking today could be my last, either from running over an IED, small arms fire from a sniper, a grenade being thrown from the overpasses or the fact that my Tactical Signal Unit has no armored plates in our flak jackets like the contractors get.

I hear stories of soldiers killing themselves in port-a-potties, crazy Iraqis blowing themselves up and what happened the day before in the "Underpass of Death" outside a market we frequent on our way to the Green Zone for supply pickup three times a week.

I am having panic attacks daily, nightmares, flashbacks, all things I don't find out the names for until I get back to Germany. I kept a journal of me losing my mind. Fevers, diarrhea, vomiting, bloody noses, losing 48 pounds in two months.

Supply lines are not steady yet and we get 1 liter of water a day and the temperature is 130 degrees in the shade. I am falling apart.

My Command will not send me back to get medical treatment as I am "mission essential." Finally, I get orders to Fort Lewis, Washington as there is some loophole somewhere that says you can not be overseas more than 3 years straight. I get medevac'd two weeks early for medical treatment.

When I arrive back at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany, they run every test possible to see why I lost all that weight, as I am now a withering 103 pounds. No one asks me if it could be emotional or combat induced.

After seeing a fellow soldier from my unit, who now had staples from his chest to his genitals, I lose it and walk myself to psychiatry. I still tried to hold it all in, only telling the Major that every time I hear a door slam I think it is a gunshot. Be strong, I tell myself, I am tough I can handle this.

I get to Fort Lewis a month later to find out my new unit is being deployed in two months, I am going back to Baghdad.

Two weeks into redeployment, I get double ear infections, a fever, and chills. I am ordered by the Medical Staff to report to Mental Health section as when they see my pulse rate is 140 beats per minute and my blood pressure is through the roof, I am having a panic attack, and can't hide it anymore. Their stupid machines caught me covering it up.

I walk to Mental Health and explode. Holding nothing back the Triage Doctor tells me I am not allowed to be around weapons as I am now a danger to myself. I am non-deployable and will be medically boarded out of the Army.

I am angry, confused, the Army is my life. I am a Sergeant, my soldiers need me and I need them. I just wanted help, I didn't want to be discharged. I had served 7 years and wanted to retire from the Army.

The day I was medically retired, I laid on the couch all day knowing my life was over. I was 25 years old. I went from war hero to piece of shit in one day. I was depressed, couldn't sleep, and my husband, also an Iraq vet, didn't know how to help me or what was even wrong. Little did we know, we both had PTSD, for different reasons, but nonetheless, we waged our own war against each other in the same house.

The next two years are fogged from my use of prescription drugs to numb myself. I didn't want to feel anything. I wish I had died in Iraq. At least the deceased aren't suffering. I am trapped in my mind reliving over and over the rape and the war. I am not sure if I am even alive.

My husband finally gives up on me a year later and tells me to move back home, that I need my family to help me because he can't get through to me. I am addicted to numbing my pain with anything that will stop it, even for a minute a day.

The year of 2006, I attempt suicide more times than I can count. I argue with God to just take me. I trap myself in my house and push my family away. I am ready to die. After four months of feeling myself die on the inside, I finally check in for the fourth and final time to get clean and sober and tell them everything. If this doesn't work, I decide, I am jumping off the tallest building in St. Louis.

I have now been in recovery for drug addiction and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for two years. I have not attempted suicide once in that period of time. I am more proud of that than my military service. I have given up on organized religion to help me answer the questions my mind has posed, like, "Why me?" The pure part in the deepest part of my soul, which knows none of this was ever my fault, and didn't deserve any of it, has kept me alive. I can say that there must be a God that has saved me from a hell which I created in my own mind, and given me a second chance at living one day at a time. It has been a very slow crawl back, and I am just getting started. I still cannot trust, I still cannot sleep, I still have awful memories, nightmares and imaginings of things so horrible I cannot say them here.

But I do have hope and a dog that has helped me cope. I have courage that things will get a little easier every day and that someday, the wounds of rape and war will be healed inside me.

There are thousands just like me, women and men, veterans who signed up to serve their country and were raped, tortured, harassed, and raped again by their command.

When I enlisted in the Army I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. My oath did not end upon discharge. I want to help other men and women veterans get the support that they need and know there is hope that we can get better. We must not give up. We must band together and make sure this doesn't happen to our sons and daughters.

Comments

[Cactusman]

Dear Angela:

I think you are very brave and strong. I have read your story and watched the full film of you at intheirboots.org, and I am impressed with your healing process thus far. You have made it farther than perhaps you might feel at times. Please stay on your recovery path. You're doing well, beautiful sister!

I am so sorry for your pain and what the military-industrial-political complex did to you. For how it failed you. Know that there are millions of us who are working in our own unique ways to end it. Your story, and the stories of those like you (both male and female) are a critical part of the path towards progress and a more humane, just world. It's coming, and we are creating it together, you and me and millions like us.

Keep up with telling your experiences, because we do listen and hear you. It matters, and this horrible experience you went through is not for nothing in the end.

Peace and strength to you, dear beloved soul.

Cactusman

[ruralwannabe]

I just want to let you know I have read your story and am sorry for your pain and wish that everyone would do everything possible to not only prevent this from re-occuring to someone else, but to also heal our wounded heroines when they come HOME - heal them from all kinds of trauma, the least of which might be the missing years of their LIVES. ...

[MAWMAC]

Angie, I'm so proud of you for so many reasons. One is for the strength and courage you have displayed in the past and that you continue to display now by telling your story, a story that must be told, so that others may know the horrors that humans perpetrate upon other humans even while they profess to being on the same side during a war. I'm also proud of you for telling your story so that others may have hope. None of us really knows the answer to "Why me?" but rather than dwelling on that question as a victim might, you are taking a horrific negative and turning it into a positive...and giving hope to others as a survivor does! You go girl!!! You are a beautiful person with many gifts and I'm learning that writing is one of them! I could feel the honesty and depth of your pain as well as of your hope. I believe that the inner strength that sustained you through those years is the same inner strength that will help you beat this. Now, take your dog and go out for a walk together, breathe in that cold winter air and be grateful for everything because good can come from evil as your story shows. I love you lots and am lifting you in prayer, Aunt MA

[GTRZAN]

You are to be commended for your strength & courage.I have PSTD from several incidents in my life.Drugs & Alcohol are finally in my past.I am homeless but not lost.There is help out here for those who seek it.GOD BLESS YOU.--GTRZAN

[VETWOWDOTCOM]

Angela did a wonderful job of describing what she went through. Her writing is spot on, and it is easy for others to understand her fight as a result. Thank you Angela, for all you are doing!

Vetwow.com is a place for men and women who have experienced MST (military sexual trauma). We have been working since 1996 to provide answers to questions, help file claims with the VA, and get people "on track" to a more healthy life.

We understand that this takes a HUGE committment and a long, long time. We are self funded, peer to peer support, and help anyone who asks (barring anyone who is abusive or violent). We ask that they "Pay it Forward" to three other veterans.

Now that more veterans are returning, you will be seeing more people going through the hell that Angela has, only this time, they will not be able to describe it so well.

If you know of someone returning from war, man or woman (the numbers of men raped exceed the number of women) please tell them there are resources they can trust. Veterans helping veterans. www.vetwow.com.

Thanks,

Susan Avila-Smith
Director

[exwingnut]

Angela, thank you for sharing your story.
No doubt but that there are kids reading this post and thinking that PTSD is not going to happen to them.
Such notions are bovine scatology.
I can assure you of 2 things, one, that the human mind is remarkably adaptable, and two, that YES YOU WILL get through this.
How do I know this? because I have been through PTSD.
Hang in there, babe. It does get better.It may not seem that way now, but trust me, it does.

[blkcfy]

I have a sister named Angela. But your story makes me call you sister even more than the name. Your story has so many parallels to mine except mine occurred in the early 70's as 'Nam was winding up. I chalked up the indifference with which I was met with the times...the 70's. Your treatment, or lack thereof, was the same 30 years later. That angers and disturbs me. I have been through years of therapy in groups with any number of other women and one brave man trying to get out of the hell these experiences created for us. If the public knew how many of us there were, they'd be almost as traumatized as we were/are. What absolutely infuriates me is this is not news to either the DoD or VA. Both have overwhelming statistics on the countless number of women, and men, victimized with sexual violence. What damages us most, in my opinion, is the way we are treated by those who are supposed to serve and protect US. There is a very dangerous culture flourishing in our Armed Forces. And folks, if you really want to be outraged just look up PFC Lavena Johnson.

[Nina9a9er]

THANK YOU, Angela, for sharing your story. I wish it were not as common as it has become. You write beautifully. We all honor your service and grieve over its results. All of us, regardless of political persuasion, need to step up to the plate and help you and the other returning soldiers heal from your horrible experiences. THAT is what "Support Our Troops" should really mean. I will think about you every day and hope that you will find the peace and help you need and deserve and that you can then help others and pay it forward. "Yes We Can" is a good new beginning for our nation.

[kevin5]

Sorry to hear how things went for you. Your chain of command let you down. Incompetence comes in many forms and their example is the worst. I just hope whoever is giving you help can relate to you through a like experience. I talked to an Iraq vet, he has ptsd, is getting help but to no avail, no improvement. We talked for about an hour, he came back a couple hours later and thanked me, said my talk helped him more than the several different psychiatrists he had been talking to for (can't remeber how long he had been seeing them) a while. None of his counselors/psyche's had ever been shot at or seen anything- amazing. I really hope they start a 15-6 and get to the bottom of the jerks that let you down. You are not the only soldier "let down", I am positive there are many more. You will do well. If you were'nt any good, none of this would have bothered you-keep moving forward and keep up the fire.

[NicePerson1]

Angela, bless you. Post Traumatic Stress had a tight hold me for almost 4 years and my trauma was not a physical event such as yours. PTSD is a crippling disorder that no one outside the PTSD family can understand. You now belong to a unique family of people who now know and understand what you are dealing with and that there is no quick fix. I cannot begin to imagine your ordeal in dealing with the added trauma of such physical abuse. I am still recovering and wonder when I will return to normal and will I ever be able to manage full-time employment again. Take care of yourself, Angela, remember there are people rooting for you in your corner. I'd also like to thank you for serving our country.

[freedomis]

HuffPost's Pick

Will

Pain of the body saps the very strength out of the will and renders any form of relief the one to get a body back to where it can function as before.

T"is the same for a pain in the heart and or soul and how can it not be so? When it is all one, in this life, evermore.

See your life feel and know how the strength of your will has led to all that you hold close and would keep.

Are there cures that would rival or maybe even surpass all that pain is and torture a body even unto sleep?

It is so and it is here that the will is most vulnerable and the heart weakens and has let desire to rule.

Hold to your strength of will keep love close, of the Creator, of wife, family, friends and any and all who would see you well but know that strength of will is your primary tool.
You will beat this, Angela. Tony 11/23/08

[AngelaPeacock]

That was beautiful Tony, and thank you again to all who have commented.

[meshach]

I am so sorry for you and PRAY for you to heal. My 19 year old girl enlisted in the Army after high school. She had a reputation for being super rebellious and manipulative and in fact had been in educational programs to deal with this. I and her counselors thought the military was a better choice than the possibility of her going to jail -- that a stint would either make or break her. Naturally, she didn't take my advice to join the Army College Fund where there are more choices. Her brother had served under the Army College Fund during the first dessert storm and achieve a BA degree thereafter. I wonder if you are a small person though. My daughter is 5ft 10in and strong-willed. I understand smaller women are sexually abused and even murdered in the armed forces moreso than larger women. I also read a report where these sexual attacks were now being addressed in a very serious manner by commanding officers. Any male soldier who behaves in such an inappropriate and dangerous manner should indeed be court martialed, then sued for personal damages in a court of law.

[AngelaPeacock]

I am 5'6" weighed around 135 pounds the entire time I was in.

[squareL]

Have your doctor register your dog as "prescription dog" for you. That way, you will have a better chance of staying together with you fur friend under various circumstances.

I hope you continue to heal and that people continue to support you.


Desert Storm vet

[LightningJoe]

I've never been in the service, but I saw what it did to my dad; who, so far as I know, never had to personally kill anyone, either. He was an aircraft munitions crew chief, so "all" he did was load bombs, missiles, and napalm onto planes in Vietnam.

My dad got bleeding ulcers from it. He vomited blood. He was unable to operate as a husband and father, for the most part. That is just about the least fall-out one can expect, from being part of a death machine like the US Military. I'm not saying there is no legitimate use for the US Military. I'm saying is that there have been so few legitimate uses of it over the past half-century, that I've lost ALL confidence in the command structure (from NCO's to the CIC), that force is being used responsibly, or even (especially?) for proper ends.

The story above is typical. Violence ruins lives. Not just the lives of those shot or blown up in action, but the lives of those who do and support the killing. Hate to say it, but the rampant service rape problem is another symptom of the broad-based mandate that soldiers are given, to violate common sensibilities and moral tenets.

Take a late-adolescent, put a gun in his/her hands, and send them out into a real-life video game; and by the time it sinks in that this is no game, the damage is done.

[AngelaPeacock]

Thank you all so much for the wonderful support. I appreciate each and every one of your comments!! I accept all hugs and blessings and will continue healing!! My fight is not over yet!

Angela

[no one]

Your dog will provide more comfort than you can imagine. Get up every day, take a walk, and confide in this wonderful creature.
I a sorry for your pain.