“A retired Marine with PTSD shares the trauma he experienced in Afghanistan | USA TODAY”

Go back to the first time I left the wire, there in a village doing a patrol, actually came across a little room that was full of kids probably between the ages of three and seven, about 10 to 15 of them that had all been executed. It was obvious point blank range. Been in a few firefights, was on a combat outpost when they tried to overrun it. There's one individual that was obviously firing at me. He would pop up and down behind some cover and fired off a couple of rounds at him and kept popping up and fired again, and he never popped back up. Perhaps most recently on a trip, I was a first responder to a victim of a mortar attack. The individual was missing his left arm, a good portion of his chest. Did what I could. A couple hours later, the individual passed on. So it's things like those that kind of stick with you in your time here. You deal with them the best you can. You try to talk about them. You tell yourself you can handle anything. You're seeing anything and you're going to be all right. And I think for the most part, I'm fine. I've had some co-workers mention that lately I've been maybe a little distant. So it kind of just don't always look like I'm all there. And you know, the stuff is on your mind. It's hard not to think about. It's not all blood and guts. It's what happens here. And you deal with it the best you can, move on. But a part of you always wonders, especially with the last incident with the mortar attack, you always wonder if there's something you could have done.