About
A little bit more about my background: I was a lazy and unmotivated high school student, and got horrible grades in almost every class. Most of my classmates had plans to attend prestigious universities and go on to high-paying careers; many of them did just that. My aspirations were to get out of high school and never go to another school again, join the Marines and spend the rest of my life in combat or training for it. I didn’t concern myself with minor details of life, like how to make enough money to support a family. All I wanted was to someday be with a Marine infantry platoon, laying in the mud behind a machine gun, waiting for the enemy to attack. If the Marines around me trusted that I would do my job, and if I held my ground under fire, then as far as I was concerned my life was a success. Even if I died behind that machine gun.
Three weeks after high school I was in Marine boot camp. On my 18th birthday I was too busy throwing hand grenades to celebrate. When I graduated basic, I could almost see that muddy machine gun position out there somewhere, just waiting for me to lovingly wrap my fingers around the pistol grip and pull the stock into my shoulder. My Marine Corps life would be a grand adventure. My teens, twenties and thirties would be a replay of all the cool parts of Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima and Hue City. The Corps would be my happy home and provide me with everything I needed for at least 40 years. In my golden years I would be a wise old sage, tutoring young warriors.
Of course, it didn’t happen that way. Civilians might be surprised to hear my plans didn’t work out. Veterans are probably doubled over laughing right now.
To make a long story short, here’s what happened: I was 17 when I joined and needed my parents’ consent, so they made me join the reserves. I thought I was joining to be an infantryman, but I didn’t realize until after I swore in that my job would be weapons repair (curse you for taking advantage of a gullible kid, Gunny H). I spent 6 years in the Marine Reserve as a support guy and did basically nothing. I watched Desert Storm on TV and listened to stories about Panama and Somalia from guys who had been there. In 1995 I finished my enlistment, my pride at being a Marine mixed with disappointment at what I had actually accomplished.
That same year I joined the Army National Guard. I spent years serving as a tank crewman, then went to Iraq in 2005 and never got in a tank. My entire deployment was dedicated to escorting supply convoys. There were moments of terror, long stretches of boredom and frustration, and a few close calls. I came home and eventually volunteered to go to Afghanistan with a different unit. And that’s where I finally, after 20 years in the military, found myself behind a machine gun, surrounded by fellow Marines and Soldiers, waiting for the enemy to attack. The machine gun was on a humvee and I wasn’t drenched in mud, but no matter. Later, after a particularly rough firefight, a young Marine infantryman made a profound comment about something I did during the battle: “That was good s**t.” That comment was worth more than any medal I could have been awarded. And it told me I had finally achieved my life’s goal. I had stood my ground in combat.
Of course, a few other things happened to me in the intervening years between the beginning of Marine boot camp and the end of my Army tour in Afghanistan. I spent two whole years in community college but didn’t get a degree (I make sure to bring up my vast educational experience every time I use a big word like “correlation” in conversation). I got married to a beautiful, curvy, surprisingly fertile woman who has two bachelor’s degrees and poor taste in spouses. I became a cop. I moved with my family to several different cities. I became a young father, then a slightly older father of two kids, then an older father of three. Three days after I arrived in Afghanistan I broke down in front of a group of soldiers I didn’t know when I was informed my wife had given birth to our fourth child, the only one of our children whose birth I didn’t attend. I spent 18 months working for the UN police in Kosovo. I wandered the woods of East Texas for two weeks with thousands of other soldiers, searching for fallen astronauts and wreckage from the space shuttle Columbia. At work I was in fights, pursuits, and countless high-stress incidents. I wandered around St. Petersburg, Russia, trying to control my spastic lower intestine. I got in a tug of war over a roll of concertina wire with an old Albanian man in Prishtina. I watched in awe as Apache helicopters blasted enemy positions with missiles and gunfire a few hundred meters from me in Afghanistan. Outside of Baghdad I was stunned to see the night air around my humvee suddenly turn orange as a roadside bomb blew up a truck 25 meters from us. I developed a deployment-long fear of helicopters after a Chinook I was in almost crashed on landing. Back home I arrested a murderess who I’m pretty sure committed a minor act of cannibalism in the back of my patrol car. I just missed being shot by a Taliban machine gunner while sticking my upper body out of a French armored vehicle.
In other words, I lived a life that’s given me tons of subject matter to write about.
I didn’t write a book because I expect it to make me rich. Getting rich hasn’t been my life’s goal. I decided to write a book because what I experienced in Afghanistan was something I had to express, and once I decided to write a story, that was it. I was committed. Proof of Our Resolve is part 1 of the story I felt compelled to write. It’s my attempt to convey some of what I experienced through a fictional platform. And it’s my contribution to what I hope will be a widespread effort by veteran writers to dispel some of the nonsense floating around about combat and combat vets. In future posts, I’ll delve further into specifics about that nonsense.
If you’ve managed to read this entire post, thank you for your time and interest. I hope you’ll take a gander at my book , and return to read future posts. And most of all, I hope I manage through my writing to open a window into what I’ve lived, what I’ve imagined, and what kind of thoughts are kicking around in my head.
-Chris
This is a nice set-up. I like it a lot. I already know I like your writing. I’ll make time to read your first chapter tomorrow.
Sheri,
Thank you and I hope it doesn’t disappoint.
Chris
Chris – I’ve searched your site for an e-mail address but haven’t found one. Obviously I haven’t read the chapter yet – but will do so. I’ll do my best to get to it this week. Please send me an e-mail address – sheri@sheridegrom.com. TX
Sheri,
Email address sent to you. Thanks,
Chris
Great article, if we meet up we can discuss planning lunch at Pinocchio in Pristina, Dragadon.
Man, Pinocchio sounds familiar. I don’t remember which part of town Dragadon was in, although I remember several others. Did we work together over there?
Chris
Chris, I really enjoy your writing. Will you please forward an email address? – danl.zimmerman@sbcglobal.net
Email sent. Thanks for the compliment, Dan.
Chris
Chris, just found your blog today. It’s excellent, I’ve linked you at my place and will send readers your way (all three of ‘em). Now I gotta get your book!
Hey Sarge, thanks for the link and don’t sweat the small number of subscribers. I’ve been blogging since last summer and just now am getting a little attention. It takes time.
If you get the book, please fell free to leave a review on Amazon or wherever you buy it. I’m always looking for honest reviews. Not a plug, but an honest assessment of the book’s strengths and weaknesses.
Thaks for reading and commenting, and I hope to hear from you again soon.
Chris
Found your blog a few minutes ago — only took reading one post to know you are a well experienced and very talented writer.
The book is now purchased (B&N) and I look forward to more.
THANK YOU for your service. If we’d finished the damned job when we were in the general area the first time you wouldn’t have had to be there, but it was politcial choice.
BobF
(USAF retirement order of 1/1/93 says 29 yrs, 4 mo, 16 days, but who’s counting…)
Thanks for your service too, Bob. And please, feel free to drop an honest review of the book when you’re done. Not a plug, but an actual, honest review. Be brutal. I can take it.
Chris
Hello Mr. Hernandez,
Just found your blog via Lawdog’s recommendation. I wanted to express my appreciation for your writing, and your toughtful approach to life and reality. Your respect for people with different point of view speaks very well of you. Good writing and wisdom are seldom found together. I’ll be adding you to my reader feed, and look forward to reading more of your stories and reflections.
Regards,
Marc B.
Calgary Alberta, Canada.
Thank you Marc, I appreciate the compliment. Feel free to come by and comment anytime.
Chris
Glad to see someone writing something real for a change. Welcome brother…
Hey Steven, thanks for the compliment. I’ll have to check out your blog. Busy as hell writing lately, hard to find time to just read…
Chris
Great writing. I especially enjoyed reading about your 2005 Iraq experience which very much mirrored my own. (I served in 2005 there as an artilleryman doing convoy protection and other urban combat operations – no howitzers).
Eric,
In my tank battalion, while we were on convoy escort duties we were called Tankers Without A Tank. But they usually just used the acronym…
Chris, Enjoyed your article and understand your rules of engagement. I will not get into it here as it is the wrong forum, but to restrict any discussion to some level of politeness not required of this President, this Congress and the truth in my dictionary, is to deny reality. Coffee and Conversation would be most pleasant, but I’m not in Texas! I did however, forward this article to several deputies and our county sheriff. It is now required reading.
Steve,
Thanks for your comments. For real, it’s required reading? Can you tell me what agency?
Chris,
Same thing happened to me back in 1966. I was a poor (read lousy) student in high school. I enlisted in the US Army at age 17 1/2. I wanted to be a combat engineer (sapper) and blow stuff up in Vietnam… kill a commie for mommy, that sort of thing. The SOB SSG that enlisted me put me in as a quarry machine operator. Of course I didn’t know that until I finished basic and got my assignment to Ft. Leonard Wood.
Quarry machine operator!!! Who would ever want to be that? I didn’t get to go to Vietnam and blow stuff up. I went to Germany where I was asked repeatedly, “Who enlists to be a quarry machine operator?” I got tired of telling people that that was not what I enlisted to be. I eventually was assigned to a combat engineer unit (when I arrived in Germany they had no idea what to do with me… who needs a quarry machine operator) but guess they thought the 24th Combat Engineer Battalion might know what to do with me. I eventually earned a 12 Bravo (combat engineer) MOS. I took the out when my three year enlistment was up. Ten years after being out I re-enlisted in the US Army Reserve as a combat engineer and spent the next 17 years, finally, blowing stuff up… but it was in Idaho… old dead bridges, old concrete grain silos, old buildings etc.
I just bought your book and can’t wait to dig into it.
Don
Don,
A guy I knew in the Marines joined in the late 70′s to be an arc welder. When he graduated basic and was told his MOS, it was just slightly different. He told the DI, “But sir, my recruiter said I was going to be an arc welder.” The DI laughed at him and said, “Boy, there is no such thing as an arc welder MOS in the Marine Corps. The only thing you’ll be welding is eggs.” The guy wound up being a cook on Okinawa for 4 years straight.
Even though it was a little delayed and wasn’t where you expected, but at least you still got to blow stuff up. I played with C4 a little bit in the Scout MOS school, just 1/4 lb charges. In Afghanistan I hung out with the Counter IED guys and watched them blow captured explosives. That was pretty cool sometimes.
Thanks for the comments, and for your service. Hopefully you enjoy the book, and please post an honest review when you’re done.
Wow, Honesty rules
In a way it could be considered a backdoor draft, since we didn’t sign up for that role, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything now. We would joke that when you make the king of battle do the queens job, you are the transvestite of battle.
Oh, god…not the backdoor draft thing. That’s one of my pet peeves, hearing our service called a draft. Not criticizing you, it’s just that I’ve had bad experiences with people trying to convince me that I was somehow victmized by being sent to war. I have an essay that’s supposed to be published in a good-sized city’s newspaper on March 24th about that very subject. I’ll post it here as soon as it goes up there.
Transvestites of battle, never heard that one. We had an arty batt in my brigade on the convoy mission, and in Afghanistan I worked with an embedded training team from a USMC arty batt, mentoring an ANA infantry battalion. Good times.
Kindle book downloaded. Subscribed to the blog.
Fantastic, glad to hear that Tango. Please let me know what you think of the book.
My first day on the job as a Police Cadet (civilian early hire until 21) working in Police Records Section. I had a Sergeant who was doing the inter-department mail run give good advice to keep a diary so one day I could write a novel about my experiences. Sadly, I never followed the crusty veteran’s advice. Thirty years later, I wish I could remember all of the interesting humorous, scary and gut-wrenching things I experienced. Good luck in your writing career. Thanks for your service. I had nearly joined the Marines before joining the police department. One of my greatest regrets that I never served. Stay safe.
The first honest UNMIK cop in Kosovar history! Si është kjo e mundur? Kidding, kidding. I was KFOR, back in 2003-2004. Saw a link to your site, from Tam K’s blog.
If UNMIK cops ordered me to do anything, let alone beat up or loot some old codger wearing a white cone hat, I’d mostly have laughed. The locals would always go to great lengths to keep from paying taxes to the UN. Not sure if it was true, but we all assumed the unfinished roofs everywhere were a way of scamming out of government taxes. Every time someone grenaded a UN vehicle or compound, we assumed it was some black market deal gone sideways. I did personally know that there were folks in UNMIK helping out the human slave trade in the region. It’s refreshing to hear not all of the UNMIK folks were the bad guys. They got a less than stellar rep, which I’m quite sure blotted out many of the good things they did accomplish.
Good work. Honestly, all of it. You have shown great integrity. I have no doubt mistakes have happened along the line. Excrement happens. You learn from them, and move on. From what I’ve seen from your writings, you’ve developed into a pretty good person. My hat’s off. Keep writing. I’m quite sure you’ll have a number of interesting stories yet to tell.
RD,
my compliments on your Albanian language skills, which I’m sure you didn’t get from Google Translate like I just did. It’s been a long time since I spoke Albanian regularly, I’ve forgotten a lot.
I left Kosovo well before you got there, and heard later about some UN guys being involved in human trafficking. That was depressing. At the time I was there, I was around mostly good dudes. A lot of them developed close friendships with the locals they worked around, both Albanian and Serbian. I think we did accomplish some good things, and working among people from that many countries was a once in a lifetime experience. We had Greeks and Turks working together, Indians and Pakistanis, Russians and Germans. We even got Albanians and Serbs to work together every once in a while. I’ve never been back, and if UNMIK’s reputation fell that much I’m glad I wasn’t around to see it.
Did you have situations where UNMIK police tried to order you to do something? We didn’t have any authority over KFOR, we could only ask for their assistance. I was on a couple of operations with Norwegian and British troops, but we definitely weren’t telling them what to do.
Thanks for the compliments. I like to think I’ve used my experiences and mistakes to become a better person, but who knows. I do still have a lot of stories to tell. It sounds like you do as well.
My Albanian is pretty rusty these days. I still have all the children’s books I picked up at a handful of markets outside Pristine and Gjilane.
Don’t worry so much. Problem is, 20 good acts is wiped out by one bad act. No one remembers the decent stuff, but they tend to remember the UNMIK cops helping the coyotes smuggling underage children. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, I suppose.
Re orders, not directly. Example: A local heavy got assassinated. Rumor was the last six or seven hits failed. So, someone fragged him. Grenade, in public, near a restaurant. UNMIK police “secured the scene”, against KFOR medics, until the guy bled out. Then stopped interfering immediately. We assumed that UNMIK guys got paid off, but that might just be paranoia talking. We also assumed the local Russian mafia ran a fair amount of the country. Which was somewhat accurate. We had unofficial standing orders not to mess with them. Everyone went by that unofficial policy.
UNMIK didn’t quite order us to stand aside, but essentially they did. Our more or less standing orders was to “cooperate with UNMIK”, with the understanding of CYA always and call higher if it’s anything significant. Same rules for other country’s NATO units. The POLUKR Battalion was under Task Force Falcon, so we played better with them directly. So, UNMIK couldn’t actively make us do things, but they could interfere with us doing stuff. By forcing us to not do something and call higher for instructions.
Chris: Thanks for your Statesman article Sunday. I too was a cop reservist in both theaters and the ‘Soldiers are victims” myth is just that. I’m with you.
The other article- Dryer’s, was a public confession he should have kept private; I’m afraid his leaning on Hemingway and self depicted “monster” will not end well. Perhaps he needs a VFW friend and to stay away from the UT English department.
Keep the faith and thanks, Jack DeMuynck
Jack,
I just read Dryer’s article. I know Zack, we were in a veteran writers’ group. He’s a good guy, but obviously we don’t agree on many things (pretty much on nothing, actually). I didn’t see Iraqis treated the way he says he treated them, I didn’t see Americans “torturing” little kids. We gave food, candy and water out to the locals all the time, so much so that we were warned not to do it because kids might run in front of the convoys trying to get it. In Afghanistan we went to great lengths to show respect to the locals, because without their support you lose to the insurgents. Maybe what he says he did was a problem in his unit. It wasn’t a problem in my units. We weren’t reliving the worst parts of the Vietnam War.
I notice that there’s one comment on my essay, and several on his. I wonder which point of view is being embraced by the Statesman’s readership, and which is considered unbelievable.
Thanks for your comment, and for your service. I wish more people would listen to the “we’re not victims” truth.
I just read your article in the Austin American Statesman … thank you for your service and sacrifice to our country and for sharing your insight.
I happened to come across an article you just did for Breach Bang Clear on Doctrine. And although I’m not military (career firefighter by trade, part time police dispatcher, dad, husband, and former USAF brat), but I really enjoyed your writing and can associate that article to the fight on our 2nd Amendment rights. If it’s ok with you, in writing letters to politicians I’d love to be able to reference a link to that article. Anyways, thank you for your service and feel free to drop me an email. I hope to get your book, just don’t know when I’d be able to read it right now. Be safe!