When you lose enough friends every day feels like #MemorialDay. https://twitter.com/dyllyp/status/1132294299947655169

Kevin Cueto played football with my little brother. Jonam Russell was a drinking buddy in college. Both KIA.

Losh’s wife just sent me a photo she found on one of his cameras that’d I’d never seen before. I guess he snapped a pic of me as we were boarding our first hop on the way to Iraq. Had my Cinnabon and a neck pillow so you know I was ready.

I remember being so excited to go to war. After months and months and months of training you get tired of the drills and just wanna do what you’ve been training to do—to go hurt people. Then you get there and you’re surrounded by death and destruction and shit isn’t so exciting.

And I remember the exact moment I knew without a doubt that I didn’t want to participate anymore. On a patrol I found two children—maybe 4 and 7 yrs old—stuck in a razor wire fence. The boy had a broken leg. The girl was laying in a puddle of blood. Both too dehydrated to cry.

I scooped em up and patched em up the best I could—my CO yelled at me for rendering first aid without gloves on—and took em back to the FOB for medical treatment. Don’t know what happened to em. Don’t even know if they’re still alive. But I think them a lot.