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A Father at War | The Long Road Home 360


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] I'm Sergeant Benjamin Harris, United States Army infantryman. I was 26; my daughter was born two months before we deployed. It's in those first couple days certain details I can remember very clearly, and then certain things that I would think I remember I don't remember at all. It's like a puzzle, and I don't necessarily know the order of a lot of the things I remember; I just remember they happened.

Wasn't until that day that I realized the potential of being out with a 20-guy patrol and being surrounded by 30 or 30,000. That's when I get security. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] That was when it got real for me. I wasn't ready for the mental side of it that first time that you realized these people are trying to kill me. That was really hard for me to accept at first, and they're gonna do whatever it takes, even if it means that you kill them first.

[Music] And then kids started getting involved; that's my nightmare— that they used kids to fight against us. I never expected to be in that situation. I don't think there's any way to be ready for that. [Music] A kid, 10 or 12, that was running back and forth across the alley firing at us, that was my first instance of seeing kids shoot at us. I remember very clearly shooting back, and very shortly thereafter, I can't say exactly how long, a slightly older man came out and dragged the body away crying and came back and picked up the weapon, pointed at us, and was getting ready to fire. He went down, and an older man, probably in his 50s, came out and started to drag his body away and then picked up the AK and turned towards us and started to shoot.

[Music] I remember sitting up there thinking I just killed three generations of a family. [Music] It takes a long time with some of the stuff to finally accept everything that happened. Somebody handed a ten or twelve-year-old kid an AK and magazines and said, "Here, go do that." I have thought about that kid every day since because I look at my children and I think, you know, he was 10 years old then; he would be 23 now. What would he be doing with his life? Because you're making a choice between you or the guy next to you or that kid. It's the most permanent thing ever. Whether or not I made the right decision, it will never feel right to me.

[Music] Acceptance takes a long time. The last year or so specifically, I've come a long ways towards being at home within yourself. Reaching home is reaching that point where you're comfortable in your own skin after everything that happened, and that long road is the process that it takes to get there. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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