Swords to Plowshares

In the spring of 2001, I read a book called Hagakure as an assignment in a Japanese History class I was taking in high school.  My teacher had also been my karate teacher since I was 10 years old, and his teacher was a man named Fusaki Hatori who lived in Tokyo.  Sensei Hatori would come to the United States once every summer to visit my teacher and to be a guest instructor at our karate lessons.  He and I became pen pals and he would send me post cards from Japan throughout the years.  He was born in the mid 1930’s so he was a young boy during World War II.  When he heard I was reading Hagakure he cautioned against it because he said Japan had used the book to indoctrinate a generation of soldiers during the war and through the teachings of Hagakure they were able to produce kamikaze pilots and some of the other policies and procedures that made Japan such a brutal nation at war.  As a headstrong 16-year-old kid in peace time America, I felt there was no need to worry about becoming an overzealous war fighter.

Hagakure is referred to as the “Book of the Samurai” and it teaches the philosophy of Bushido, or the way of the warrior.  It is a series of writings and poems that outlines the lifestyle and customs of Samurai culture in the late 1600’s.  One passage which stuck with me outlined my entire approach to warfighting during my first two deployments in 2003 and 2004-2005.  “The Way of the Samurai is found in death…If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way.  His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.”  I constructed my world view around this concept.  I convinced myself I would die in this conflict which freed me of anxiety and fear because I was no longer worried about self-preservation.  This was a constant process which I reenforced daily through a form of meditation.  Before every operation, I would get geared up early and then go spend about 10 minutes thinking about my life from the beginning to the present.  I would force myself to experience the “life flashing before my eyes” moment people claim to have before they die and then I would think about how grateful I was for my life.  I would convince myself that on this mission I would be killed, and I would find peace and gratitude for the life I had been given.  This was very effective in putting me at peace and allowing me to conduct myself without fear during operations outside the wire. 

In April of 2005, I was 20 years old and I had just returned from my second deployment to Iraq.  With nearly a year and a half left on my enlistment, I knew I was probably going to have to deploy again.  At that time, I was not yet disaffected by the endless wars like I am now, but I had become indifferent to the reasons why we were fighting them.  I wasted no time thinking about the purpose of the war and instead I focused on the short-term goals of being well trained as a squad leader, having a proficient squad and platoon, and winning the short-term battles and missions in which we would soon be engaged.  My mind set was summed up in a four word answer I gave my sister-in-law the first time we met.  She asked me directly, “Does America belong in Iraq?”  I responded with the only thing that made sense to me at the time which was, “I belong in Iraq.”  What I meant was, I was going to be sent there again along with all my closest friends and I had the training and experience to help them succeed.  I had no other skills or real-life experience and being a Marine was the only thing I was good at.  Big picture ideas and questions of right and wrong didn’t matter to a 20-year-old infantry corporal.  I thought in terms of IED detection and avoidance, cover and movement, over watch, and other small unit tactics.

I didn’t think, or care, about the fact deposing and executing Saddam led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destabilized the entire region.  I was told he had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was a sponsor of terrorism, therefore what happened on 9/11 was their fault.  In hindsight it is so stupid when I think about the illiterate dirt farmers in the rural Iraqi countryside who are just trying to grind out a living and keep their families from starving.  As if the people who get from their farm to the market in Babylon and back on a donkey cart had anything to do with a group of Saudis that crashed airplanes into buildings.  Why were we so stupid?  But I digress.  I was bought in to the concept of living as a dead man and so the idea of a future or old age was not something I really thought about.  To the degree that I had any plan outside the Marine Corps at all, I figured I could get one of those private security contractor jobs that were popular in the mid 2000’s.  We saw them everywhere in Iraq and from the limited contact we had with them we learned they made over $100,000 dollars a year, tax free, and only worked half the time.  I made less than $20,000 for a seven-month deployment so those guys were rich as far as I was concerned.  If for some reason I lived long enough, I could just go do the same job in the private sector where I would be well paid and better treated.  The concept of a normal life with a family and children didn’t even occur to me.

I got home from my second deployment in late March 2005 and a month later I met my wife.  Things didn’t change for me right away but when she introduced me to my stepdaughter my world view started to crack.  I fell in love with both of them immediately and every weekend I would make the drive from 29 Palms back to Bakersfield to spend every moment I could with them both.  About two months later we moved into an apartment together and I would spend my week training at the base and my weekend being a boyfriend and a mom’s boyfriend.  Now I was in a situation where I wanted to live and have a life with this new family.  I had never actively sought death, but I was not afraid of it because it was just part of the plan.  For the first time I started to be afraid for my own personal safety.  I was also worried that I would not be able to perform outside the wire if I didn’t have the Bushido mindset I had practiced in my first two deployments.  I deployed again for a third and final time in March of 2006 and since my EAS was in August 2006 I was sent home in July after only four months.  I considered extending my contract to finish my deployment with my unit.  They didn’t come back until September 2006 and I felt guilty leaving them there.  I had some close calls like when Aaron Simons was killed and a few other incidents, but my fear of losing the future that was waiting for me overpowered the shame I felt for cutting out early.  I also knew how bad my new family was struggling with me being gone and the fear that something might happen to me.  I’m glad I made that decision and chose my wife and daughter, but I still struggle with guilt for abandoning my squad in the middle of a deployment.

I made it back with all my physical parts still intact.  Like most of us, I was a little jumpy on the fourth of July, but I was very fortunate to make it out relatively unscathed.  The hardest part for me was the loss of purpose I felt going from a squad leader and platoon guide to an entry level construction worker.  Just a few months earlier I was running high-stakes operations in a war zone and now I was only running a wheelbarrow for $9 dollars an hour.  In hindsight, I’m glad to have received that blow to my ego because I probably needed to be taken down a peg, but I can see how that loss of purpose can be a slippery slope.  Fortunately for me I had my wife and daughter to worry about.  There was no time to feel sorry for myself or to be mad at the world for not recognizing how awesome and important I was.  I had to go to work to support them and it didn’t matter that I was only worth $9 bucks an hour.

I worked that job for about a year until I was able to get my current job and start the police academy.  The transition was easy for me after working a year of hard labor for bad pay.  It was a watered-down version of boot camp where I got to go home every day at 5 pm and it paid double what my construction job had paid.  The skills I learned in the Marine Corps transferred well to the academy.  I knew how to wear and maintain a uniform, how to keep cool under pressure, operate in a rigid command structure, work in a team environment, and I was very fit and able to outperform my classmates during most exercise sessions.  I also excelled at the shooting range and in defensive tactics.  The one area I was concerned about was academics.  Police academies are 60-70 percent classroom instruction and my last experience in a regular classroom was when I barely graduated from high school five years earlier.  To my surprise, I ended up being the top academic recruit and was awarded the top overall recruit of my academy.  Upon graduation, I started working as a patrol officer where I did well again and after two years I got into the gang unit.  By the three-and-a-half-year mark I was on the SWAT team and off and running with my career.

As time went on, I started to think about an Old Testament verse that had been stuck in my head for years.  Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”  Swords to plowshares.  What did that mean?  I started to think about the arc of my own life and how I had gone from a short-sighted war fighter to a husband and father whose primary focus was service to a family.  To take a sword and turn it into a plowshare means to take an instrument of killing, or war, and turn it into an instrument of farming and creation, or peace.  It means to take the skills of destruction and use them to create.  It means to integrate your shadow and use it in the service of the good. 

I thought about how specifically this happened to me and realized it was the relationship with my wife and first daughter that turned me towards peace.  This relationship reoriented my entire world view and how I fit into it.  My focus changed from small battlefield victories to leading a family, caring for a wife, and raising children to be good people.  All other goals and activities were subordinated to the new mission, and everything became about how to best accomplish my new job.  Of course, there have been plenty of mistakes along the way, but my experience in the Marine Corps set me up to handle most any task.  House is messy?  I’m really good at cleaning stuff.  Crying baby in the middle of the night? No factor.  I haven’t slept for the past 20 years.  At least now I have someone to hang out with.  Daughter needs to learn a sport I know nothing about?  Let’s go in the backyard and start training. 

When I think back on the two things I’m most grateful for, the second thing is the war.  Fighting a war makes everything thereafter seem simple and straight forward.  For me, it blew out my stress response and turned my hair grey at age 20.  I largely lost my ability to feel stress and anxiety I think because nothing is ever as serious or dangerous as it was back then.  The only thing that can stress me out now is when I make my wife angry.  This is a valuable trait when things get sketchy and sideways.

The number one thing I am grateful for is my family.  My wife and oldest daughter brought me back to civilization and saved my life.  I stopped living like a dead man and started living like someone who was responsible for the best interests of a family.  The two of them caused me to turn my swords into plowshares.  They saved my life and I am eternally grateful. 

For the veterans out there who are struggling with the transition to normal life, or anyone who is struggling to find meaning, my suggestion is to get up and adopt some responsibility.  Find something you can do in service to someone else and you will find purpose.  That purpose and the act of service will provide meaning to your life.  For the men out there, the best thing you can do is find a wife and be loyal to her, create a family, and focus all your effort to serve them.  Forgo your short term, hedonistic desires and provide a better life for your family.  Go to work to pay for their needs.  Get off the dating apps and porn sites and give that attention to your wife.  Put down the video game controller and go play dolls with your daughter or wrestle with your son.  What you will discover is that you are built for service.  When you are useful to others, especially to your family that you created, you will find meaning.