Extraordinary article on Alejandro Villanueva, an extraordinary man. Definitely not your standard sports page reading. Link and excerpts below
Alejandro Villanueva reflects on the dangers of football and combat
“The first time I did a mission, I was really scared. I mean I was terrified because you realize how things can happen and how things happen. The first time you see somebody die in front of you, you’re like ‘Holy smokes, this is real.’ You thought maybe the fighting would happen and you envision it and everybody’s alive and then you start seeing that people die, people get hurt. You see limbs.
“One of the first missions I did was to actually carry the limbs and the body parts of a soldier from another company. We were bringing them water because they ran out of water. I was doing a really cool mission, and I had to go bring them water and as we were linking up he blew up, lost both of his legs. They took him in the medevac and forgot his legs, forgot his body armor, so I had to bring all that stuff back.
“Crazy, crazy stuff. So I think you become at peace with it and say ‘You know what, if I wake up tomorrow and I get shot, I get shot. I’m doing this because this is exactly where I want to be, with my soldiers and doing something I consider honorable. I’m going to be surrounded by my soldiers who are going to fight with their lives to save me. I would give my life for them, they would give their lives for me.’ So you come at peace with it. If I step on a bomb — hopefully it’s not terrible, if it is terrible hopefully it’s a quick death. You really come to terms with death.”...
The issue is when you come back to the United States. You’re no longer deploying, but you have the mentality, the cancer-terminal-patient sort of mentality that you are just good with anything that happens. Because you can’t have a fear going into missions, so you lose all that fear going into missions. You don’t care if something happens. And all of a sudden you stop, you’re out of the military and into civilian life.
“Now I started developing a fear of flying. I started developing even a fear of bacon because it can give you cancer.
“So you start developing all these things because you’re like ‘Holy smokes, I’m a healthy 20-year-old now back in normal society, I have a life expectancy. I don’t have to die tomorrow.’
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/s...s/201712070145
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