One of his major concerns these days is fellow service members facing the same demons he does, perhaps not so well. I get to play in dirt and concrete all day, get muddy and dirty and nasty. But now I'm a married man with kids and a job I love to do. "Before I was parental, it was usually two days of being incredibly off-the-wall drunk. It was on Veterans Day, so I'm reminded of it every year. But I can be depressed this time of the year.
The years since he returned with the unit in 2005 have "run the gamut, anything from happiness and elation for just being alive to 'Why am I here and guys I knew didn't make it?' Never in my life have I been suicidal I'm narcissistic, I love myself too much. They calm me down."Īlso serving as anchors are Lauran, a Willis-Knighton labor and delivery nurse he met at Northwestern State University in 2006, and sons Jackson and Harrison, born Oct. But I'll grab my dog, a little service animal, and hold it to my chest. He jokes that the transgressors "should be very thankful I don't have an AR," but he immediately turns serious. "If I can watch the fireworks and see the tracers go up, it's OK but if some dumbasses light them off in the neighborhood, I'm bad." "I don't do fireworks," Tucker says with a laugh, a deep, rollicking rumble that probably became quite familiar to his battle buddies. Today, the 29-year-old experiences terrifying flashbacks when he hears unexpected explosions, such as those that will be common over the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays. I remember blue lights, the interior lighting on the Blackhawk MEDEVAC (medical evacuation helicopter.) The next thing I remember, I woke up to a Corpsman checking me out." I couldn't see anybody, I couldn't hear anybody, and they said I was screaming. Some of the guys said I looked like a rag doll flying through the air. "One of them was actually declared dead but then was revived.
"They were really bad off," he said of the two Marines with him. But still it was bad for the men involved. His buddies were hurt but not killed, suffering more from the blast effect of the IED that was on an elevated road adjacent to a deep ditch, so the blast went upward more than out. The next thing I know, I'm in the hospital." Around 9:30 at night, my SAW (squad automatic weapon) gunner looked down and said 'I think I found an IE. We were getting potshots, taking fire all day. "Sometimes I was the point man, the only one with night vision goggles that night. All the ones we found were either double stacked, triple stacked or daisy chained. "So the details are fuzzy, but I've been told that in the five-kilometer IED sweep, over the course of the day we found 17. The VA doctors said it was stress-induced amnesia. "A lot of what happened I learned after the fact. "I lost three days of my life," says Tucker, now back in Benton with a wife and two young sons, working as a materials tester and inspector for a local engineering firm. Tucker's memories of that IED sweep in Fallujah are a bit muddy now, 10 years later, since the last one they found exploded, luckily not killing anyone - Bravo Company emerged from that deployment with a lot of Purple Hearts and, thankfully, no members killed in action - but changing his life forever. Since it is also two days before the Marine Corps birthday, we will be celebrating with a traditional cake-cutting ceremony," he said before the event. "Right now, I am expecting 87 people 48 of those are Marines and Corpsmen (who) served together in Iraq, the rest are spouses and a few kids. He lives in East Texas and does a lot of nonprofit veteran work. "It is 10 years since we were in Iraq and 10 years since we went into Fallujah," says reunion organizer Nathan Hanson, who was with Bravo Company until 2009 and now is out of the Reserves. On Saturday, he and other unit members held a reunion in Shreveport, where they ate and drank - perhaps a lot - and shared memories and possibly a few tears over what they went through, and what has since been lost, in the Global War on Terror. On Veterans Day, there were five of us occupying a local house, doing patrols on two MSRs (main supply routes) going out and into the city. "I was 19, the youngest by far, six months to a year from anyone with us. 10, the Marine Corps' birthday, as the youngest Marine, I cut the cake with my platoon commander, who was the oldest Marine at the time," says Tucker, an Air Force "brat" who joined the Corps six months after he graduated from Benton High and left service in 2011. Veterans Day on Tuesday will have mixed meanings for Benton resident Andrew Tucker, who deployed to Iraq a decade ago with Bravo Co., 1/23rd Marines, the Reserve unit in Bossier City.
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