NAVY SWO, PERSIAN GULF 2019 — Tanker war redux and how Sailors carry it

I was a Surface Warfare Officer on a destroyer in the Persian Gulf in June 2019 when the tanker attacks happened. We were on station for the response. Boarding teams. Air defense. The constant low noise of being in someone's crosshairs. No shots fired against my ship. No casualties. By Marine standards and by Iraq Army standards, this was not a deployment. By Sailor standards, this was eight months of being thirty seconds away from being a casualty and not knowing which thirty seconds. I came back to a shore tour in Norfolk and could not sleep. My chief, who had been on the USS Cole in 2000, told me very plainly: you don't get to compare your fear to anybody else's fear. Your body was on a war footing for eight months. Your body believes what it believes. I started seeing a clinician through Cohen Veterans Network. The intake question that mattered: 'Were you in a place where you could be killed?' Yes. 'Then we work on that.' Not 'were you engaged.' Not 'did you take fire.' Were you in a place. I was. That was enough to qualify for treatment, and that was the permission I had not given myself.