ARMY 1-26 IN, IRAQ ANBAR 2008 — Convoy ambush, and the guilt of being the one in the second truck

Anbar, late summer 2008. I was a SAW gunner in second squad, second truck. Lead truck hit an EFP outside Tarmiyah on the route we'd been running for four months. Two KIA from first squad. The rest of us pulled security and brought the wounded out. The guilt I carried home wasn't that we lost guys. The guilt was that on a different day I would have been in the lead truck. The rotation had been switched the night before because our gunner had a fever. That's it. That's the whole reason I came home and Specialist Reyes did not. For seven years I did not talk about Reyes. I went to his funeral. I stayed in touch with his mom for a year. Then I stopped because I could not look at her face without seeing my truck instead of his. The Vet Center in my city has a group for guys like me — survivor guilt, specific to convoy ops in Iraq. Six of us. We don't fix it for each other. We just stop being the only one in the room who carries it. That has been more useful than anything else I've tried.