{"id":4471,"date":"2023-02-14T14:01:04","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T18:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/?p=4471"},"modified":"2025-02-11T22:00:21","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T02:00:21","slug":"what-just-happened-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/02\/14\/what-just-happened-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What Just Happened!?! Becoming Consistent Life Despite Myself, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thad<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

by Thad Crouch<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is the second part; the first part is:<\/em><\/p>\n

What Just Happened!?!\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Becoming Consistent Life Despite Myself. Part 1<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Early May, 1988. Interstate 65, Alabama<\/h3>\n

A Greyhound bus passenger asked about my \u201cAirborne Infantry HOOAH!\u201d t-shirt.
\nI proudly inform him, \u201cI\u2019m an army infantryman and just graduated airborne school.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s an Infantry?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cInfantry are combat soldiers. We kill personnel and destroy equipment.\u201d I said with all the false pride and folly of teen who had never been in combat and was convinced that war was awesome like in 80\u2019s combat action movies.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo!\u201d he interjects incredulously. \u201cWhat\u2019s your job<\/em> description?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes!\u201d I proclaim defiantly, \u201c\u2018Kill personnel and destroy equipment.\u2019 That is <\/em>my job description!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCould you shoot someone?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShoot someone? Yeah. Booooring!<\/em>\u00a0 I\u2019d rather look \u2018em in the eye and stab them to death!\u201d\u00a0 I actually said that loudly, with intensely aggressive piercing eyes, like a psychopath. In the days before cell phones, half the bus was listening.<\/p>\n

As a teen, I studied and taught Filipino knife fighting. I idolized characters portrayed by Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone. Even at seventeen, I somehow knew money, a mansion, sports cars, and sex couldn\u2019t fulfill me. Life seemed pointless until I decided great purposes are fulfilling. I chose protecting American lives, freedom, democracy, and human rights around the world. After all, that\u2019s the purpose of the U.S. military, right?<\/p>\n

I took a rare two-year enlistment opportunity. In those two years I got my airborne wings, my Expert Infantryman Badge, and proudly assisted the Army\u2019s School of the Americas (SOA) counter-insurgency training of Latin American soldiers to fight communists and protect freedom, democracy, rule of law, and human rights in Central and South America. I used my MCI long- distance card to call my mother on a payphone to tell her I was training Latino troops who are actually fighting communists. She was tearfully proud.<\/p>\n

\"Thad<\/a>

Thad’s father pins on Airborne wings<\/p><\/div>\n

I crossed many milestones between infantry soldier and war tax resister. The most shocking milestone came within two years after my life-altering prayer experience described in \u201cWhat Just Happened!?! Becoming Consistent Life Despite Myself. Part 1<\/a>,\u201d which resulted in hours of daily contemplative prayer, getting a spiritual director, and becoming more active in the Church. This time it was a vision rather than a Voice. I saw myself as a soldier escorting civilian refugees on a dirt road in a war zone. I don\u2019t recall seeing what lay ahead of us. There were fields on our right, a forest on the left, and a smoldering city in a desert behind us.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, an enemy armored personnel carrier (APC) attacked from the tree line on our left flank. This anachronistic APC had horizontal slits in the sides like an old-timey armored wagon.\u00a0 Enemy troops could safely fire at us through the slits and we had a Chuck-Norris-Oscar-performance-as-a-war-tax-resister\u2019s-chance of placing a shot through those slits and hitting those @h0L&$^s. \u2014well, from a distance, anyway. I ordered the refugees to get in a ditch, ran toward the tree line, and I hid behind a tree \u2014without being seen.<\/p>\n

When the APC passed by, I put my M-16 on full auto, lept like a panther, grabbed the armored personnel carrier roof with one hand, and stuck the rifle barrel into that slit. I put my finger on the trigger.<\/p>\n

At this point it seems like a dream. I\u2019m fulfilling my purpose and former job description. I am totally<\/em> a like Chuck Norris character in that moment.<\/p>\n

At point blank range on full auto with a 30-round clip, it was unnecessarily gratuitous to peer through that slit. I wanted to look \u2018em in the eye when I killed them. Just. To. Watch .Them. Die.<\/p>\n

When I looked into the eyes of my enemies I saw<\/em> them. I saw them<\/em>. I suddenly knew<\/em> that they were my brothers and I could not kill them. I let go of the vehicle, fell into darkness still clinging to my weapon, and abruptly startled myself awake \u2014or back to normal consciousness.<\/p>\n

What Just Happened!?!<\/h3>\n

This experience didn\u2019t quickly or easily integrate into my life like my previous realization about the death penalty. My moral identity \u2014my very sense of self \u2014 was indescribably shattered!!!\u00a0 <\/em>It seemed like the whole world fell out from under me. I desperately clung to pieces of my identity while feeling an intense mix of cognitive dissonance, fear, confusion, and shock. Writing this, decades later, I started shaking and crying remembering how it felt. I was so discombobulated that I\u2019ve never been able to remember where I was when it happened, or if it was a vision in a prayerful trance or a dream after falling asleep in prayer.<\/p>\n

I had been one of 32 men in my regiment \u2014 out of the 404 who attempted \u2014 to earn that Expert Infantryman\u2019s Badge that year. When the colonel read the award certificate he said, \u201cMay they change to combat badges before long.\u201d With no prompting, we all yelled, HOOAH!\u201d \u00a0For several years, it was my prize possession. My sense of pride, goodness, and accomplishment was largely rooted in being soldier willing to risk his life for a noble purpose. That pride was crumbling and contrasting with my recently deepened identity as a Christian who highly valued human life.<\/p>\n

I had so many questions for my spiritual director, Sr. Camille Martinez. She pointed me to ancient and modern nonviolent Catholics. She gave some Pax Christi literature. I transferred to Loyola University New Orleans and chose a Religious Studies major.<\/p>\n

I took a class on social & political inequality and learned that U.S. troops often carried out policies for economic and geopolitical gain to the detriment of freedom, democracy, and human rights. I did not<\/em> want that to be true, so I kept researching while forming moral questions. If <\/em>this is<\/em> true that our nation that does such evil things and I value Christ\u2019s teachings, human life, human rights, freedom, democracy, am I culpable as a citizen?\u00a0 As someone with freedom of speech and a right to redress grievances, should I be doing something about this?<\/p>\n

My professor offered us extra credit to attend a Pax Christi event with a Haitian asking us to petition Congress and President Bill Clinton to oust the military dictator and restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected president, back into Haiti. He also asked us to close the School of the Americas. Had I not been studying the use of our military, I would have screamed my defense of the SOA to the crowd, but I was learning to listen. When he told us that SOA graduates were kidnapping, torturing, killing, and disappearing their own citizens \u2014 the \u201cinsurgents\u201d whom they countered, who struggled for democracy and rights \u2013 I began slipping out of my chair. I had only begun questioning my responsibility as a citizen, and now I was suddenly confronted with my culpability for training terrorists. My heart wanted to vomit!<\/p>\n

Transformation isn\u2019t always so dramatic. Mine continued slowly as Loyola, Pax Christi, and the poor of New Orleans educated my heart, though it did once again feel like vomiting when confronted with having been blind and done nothing to counter dehumanizing racism so embedded in U.S. society, and to some extent, myself.<\/p>\n

\"School<\/a>

Fort Benning protest; Thad on left.<\/p><\/div>\n

I went on a two-week Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation to Haiti, then under U.N. occupation, at the encouragement of a Pax Christi friend. I shook hands with President Aristide in the Haitian National Palace and met people who were imprisoned and lost loved ones in the coup years. I went to Nicaragua with a Maryknoll campus minister and lived a month with Sandinista peasants who had been my \u201cenemies\u201d in the \u201980s. I saw the Haitians, the Sandinistas, the New Orleans African Americans, the homeless men, and the people of Central and South America as my sisters and brothers. The attacks on their lives and dignity by systemic racism, greed, and militarism were as moving to me as the first time I, around the age of twelve, had heard about abortion on TV news and asked my mother what it was. I was eleven when my baby brother was born. I had felt him kick in my mother\u2019s womb. I was horrified that anyone would kill their child, because I didn\u2019t need to do research or have a poignant spiritual experience to know that biological brothers were my brothers.<\/p>\n

As I write, I\u2019m newly struck that brothers and sisters we see as enemy soldiers probably see their military purpose as being just as noble as I once saw mine. Perhaps the best thing we can do to promote the Consistent Life Ethic is to peer within, look into each other\u2019s eyes, and help each other see clearly who we are \u2014 who we all<\/em> are.<\/p>\n

==================================<\/p>\n

For more of our posts from Thad Crouch, see:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

What Just Happened!?! Becoming Consistent Life Despite Myself. Part 1<\/a><\/p>\n

Culture of Conscience:<\/a>\u00a0Would You Pay Taxes that Fund Abortions if Hyde and Helms were Repealed?<\/p>\n

Mourning After & Hoping for the Future,\u00a0We Call for a Consistent Life Texas<\/a>!<\/p>\n

For more of our posts from people’s personal journeys with the military, see:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Coming to Peace and Living a Consistent Life After Military Service<\/a>\u00a0\/ Eve Dawn Kuha<\/p>\n

Becoming a Catholic Conscientious Objector<\/a>\u00a0\/ Tony Magliano<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Get our SHORT Biweekly e-Newsletter<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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by Thad Crouch   This is the second part; the first part is: What Just Happened!?!\u00a0 Becoming Consistent Life Despite Myself. Part 1       Early May, 1988. Interstate 65, Alabama A Greyhound bus passenger asked about my \u201cAirborne Infantry HOOAH!\u201d t-shirt. I proudly inform him, \u201cI\u2019m an army infantryman and just graduated airborne… <\/p>\n