I want to tell you a story. I’m a combat veteran with multiple deployments. Please bear with me. It’s been a decade and I still can’t speak of this without the pain clawing it’s way back to the surface from where I’ve buried it. This is my trauma.

It was June 2010. I’d just returned from working COIN in Jalalabad. Stepping off the plane, I could still taste the dust in my mouth. I still can to this day. At 30 I was already far older and more weary than my years would have you believe.

The trip home was long. After seven months in the villages of Nangarhar province, the return journey felt like seven years. As always I wondered what I’d find when I returned. When you’re gone that long and that often, home seems foreign after enough time has passed.

Finally, I returned home. My car, driven once a week by a kind neighbor, was waiting in its parking spot for me. Like I’d only been gone an hour. As I buckled my seatbelt I almost felt normal again. Relief washed over me. I was home. And after such a long trip, hungry.

There was a McDonald’s right up the street. I’d arrived around 1000 and I hadn’t eaten in almost a day. I was ready for a taste of home after serving our great country with honor and pride, dignity and compassion. I didn’t just need a sausage McGriddle. I’d earned it.

I pulled up to the drive thru and made my order: sausage McGriddle, hash brown, coffee. And of course I was careful to say “MA’AM”. Military bearing NEVER takes time off, especially for civilians who never served. They deserve my very best at all times.

After paying for my order, at the next window I was told to pull to the curb as my order wasn’t ready yet, aside from my coffee. I was utterly baffled. Didn’t they recognize a warrior who had just returned from battle? Could they not smell the valor I wore like a fine cologne?

I pulled to the curb. Seconds turned into more seconds. I was so hungry. Why was this happening? Why had my country turned its back on me? After all the pain, the lives lost, the battles fought and the blood of heroes running red across the ground?

A minute passed. To me it was like a year. I’d seen so much death over my career and learned to bury that pain deep down in the empty void where my innocence once dwelt. I hadn’t cried since my first contact front in 2004. But this......

Two minutes. Everyone betrayed me, and I was fed up with this world. I realized not ONE person had thanked me for my service since returning. NOT FUCKING ONE. Was there no appreciation left for our brave veterans? Because there was certainly no McGriddle waiting for us.

Three minutes. I wept and spit on an entire world that didn’t prepare me to be this disappointed and hurt. I screamed to any god that might be listening, only to be met with an indifferent universe. I tried calling my mom. My brother. A friend. Anyone. Someone, please.

It all came rushing back to me. A thankless nation refusing to even display a hint of gratitude while denying me the breakfast I’d earned after years of service. I laid down my head on my steering wheel and wept.

I wept. I wept for an innocence lost and a lifetime of service that meant nothing in the end. I wept. Not just for me, but for every veteran waiting in vain for a breakfast sandwich that never came. I wept for a country that had lost its soul.

At four minutes my sandwich finally arrived. I almost didn’t want it anymore. What was the point? It was just a symbol of the utter disrespect this country has for its cops and veterans. But I decided I was done letting McDonalds shit all over my sacrifices.

I took a bite.

Bacon. Not sausage. Bacon.

I was numb. The final twist of the dagger in my heart. I finished it, although the bacon tasted like ash in my mouth. I drove home in a daze. I left part of my soul behind.

That was ten years ago. That fragment of my soul still haunts that McDonalds Drive thru, but it is no longer just my pain. It is the pain of every single servant of this country who has had to wait for breakfast.

It’s the pain of my brothers and sisters who went without thanks for their service after waiting for breakfast.

We are still in the desert.

Wait til @MalcolmNance and @CombatCavScout see this