Honor a veteran: Use restraint with fireworks

I dread New Year’s Eve. Why? Well, it’s because of a little curse I brought back from my stint in the Iraq war. Just a little thing. It doesn’t show up on metal detectors, nor is it visible to the public when I step out the door. It does, however, have a name — post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD as most people call it.

And I’m not the only one who has it.

A lot of my fellow veterans are afflicted and share my dread of fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Even though it is illegal to light them off here in Wasilla and neighboring Palmer, plus other towns in the Valley, people still do so anyway with little regard for the law or their neighbors who have this particular affliction. All people do not share this love of fireworks.

In my case, fireworks give me the shakes, make me want to take cover in my room, give me flashbacks to a time when the term “incoming!” meant something to fear. It meant the enemy had launched death toward us in the form of rockets, mortar rounds and other such missiles of death. The wail of the siren screaming out its warning as they impacted with a vicious crump or a loud violent explosion that is more felt that heard produced by close strikes that hurled pieces of dirt, sand, equipment and people into the air.

We huddled in our tiny bunkers, sometimes for hours, while round after round landed without warning, sometimes on a daily basis, mostly in the wee hours of the night. Having one explode close to you is not a good wake-up call. I would fly up out of my rack to land on the floor of my tent, or later in my trailer. Then I would race to put my body armor on, grab my weapon and make sure all my fellow soldiers did the same before rushing to the safety of the nearest bunker. A tiny, hollow concrete cube covered in layers of sandbags, open on both ends provided shelter for 10, or in reality up to 30 people would cram themselves in.

Such was life in LSA Anaconda in 2004 and 2005 during my time there. It was worse in Mosul where full-blown firefights erupted day and night. Welcome to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom 2, or as we called it OIF-2.

Every year’s end since returning from the war, I relive these battle scenes when people unwittingly light up the neighborhood with clusters of fireworks that boom like mortars, crack like rifle fire or shake my home like an impacting rocket round. Every year I ended up on the floor of my room, shaking like a stricken leaf, my heart pounding, threatening to burst from my chest. Sometimes I ended up screaming not knowing where or when I was.

This is a painful reality for veterans like myself, a sad price paid on a yearly basis. Some have it much worse than I. We all endure it in various ways. Some drown it in booze or drugs. Some can’t endure it at all and fall into mental darkness, even suicide. Nearly all of us dread New Year’s Eve.

So I humbly ask all out there to please use restraint. Go to a local fireworks display in your town or go to a place where it is legal to light off your fireworks. Please be aware the some humans and animals do not like fireworks and react badly to them when they are set off. Bring in the New Year with fun and joy, just be aware that people such as myself only want to bring it in without reliving the horrors of the wars we fought in. We want to bring it in the New Year in peace and relative sanity.

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.