Interview with a War Veteran

Q: What is your full name?
A: My name is Alex Ignacio Macias.

Q: When and where were you born?
A: I was born in Houston, Texas. March 17, 1975.

Q: What is your occupation?
A: I am a shift manager at Costco.

Q: Are you married and do have any children?
A: I am not married, I have no children, I have a fiancé, and we hope to start our family within the next five years.

Q: Do you speak any other languages?
A: I speak Spanish.

Q: Tell me a bit about the place where you grew up? How did it affect your life?
A: I grew up in East Houston, Texas. I played baseball in middle school and high school. There was this really big kid that lived down the street, his name was Pansas, which means bellies in Spanish. He used to pick on me and my brothers when we were younger. He was a lot taller and fatter than anyone else on the block, even more than most of the parents. Throughout my late teens and early twenties, I felt defensive towards people taller and fatter than me.

Q: What is something that you experienced in your life that you would consider historical?
A: I served in the U.S. Navy from 1995 to 2000; I served in the U.S. Army from May 2001 to May 2005 and did two tours in Iraq.

Q: Have you ever suffered from discrimination?
A: Some kid called me a “beaner” in the 8th grade.

Q: Tell me how you entered the military service. How and why did you join?
A: I had graduated high school in 1993 and tried to go to college. I failed miserably and lost my financial aid eligibility within a couple of years. I was working at a machine shop that my dad’s friend owned. I was earning $6.00 an hour and headed nowhere. My parents were ashamed of me, all their friends’ kids doing a lot more with their lives than I was. When I wanted to sleep in on the weekends, my dad would wake me up and start yelling at me for no reason. One day, this guy I went to high school with came by my house to see me, he had joined the Navy and was home on leave. He told me about all the places he had been in only two years, and all the girls he was meeting. I made up my mind right then and there. The next morning I was at the Navy recruiter’s office, I told them I wanted to leave that afternoon, but they said I that I would have to wait a few weeks. A month and a half later I was on my way to Great Lakes, Illinois for boot camp.

Q: What were some experiences at boot camp that changed you?
A: During swim training, we had to swim in circles for what they said was 50 meters. The swim instructors told us that if we got tired, or if we got in trouble during the swim to call out for help and they would reach out to us with a long pole for us to grab and they would pull us out of the water. We had been swimming for what seemed like forever. My arms and back were hurting so much; I didn’t know how much more I could swim. I heard a guy behind me start screaming that he was getting a cramp in his leg. He cried out for help. He really was scared. The swim instructor moved the pole close to him and instead of helping him, when the recruit tried to grab the pole, the instructor started hitting him with it, and jabbing the pole straight into his face. At first, I thought the instructor was really trying to help him, but then he started yelling, “Swim, Fat ass! Swim!” I could tell that the instructor was hitting him hard because his nose started to bleed, then blood started coming out of his head. At that point, I knew exactly how much more I could swim, as much as I had to to get out of there alive. At the time, I thought I had made a big mistake joining the Navy, I thought, “these people really don’t give a shit about us, they want us here to treat us like dogs.” Later, after I had been gotten out of boot camp and into the fleet, and was participating in “real world” missions, I realized that those swim instructors were trying to teach us that in the end, if we’re going to survive, we will have to learn to find it in ourselves to want to live. We can’t give up every time we feel a little pain, sometimes you just need to say, “F*ck the pain, I want to live!”

Q: What were your first impressions of Iraq?
A: I don’t remember, I remember just following the crowd. I was kind of just going with the flow. I was excited, a little bit nervous, but I really didn’t know what to think of the country until a few weeks later when we went on our first mission.

Q: Did you see combat? Are you willing to share some of those experiences?
A: I saw combat a few times. They all happen so fast, you don’t really think about what’s going on until its all over and you talk about it during the mission debrief. The first time anything happen, I was manning the .50 caliber gun on my blackhawk, and we were flying low over Balad, just patrolling, looking for people that were violating the curfew. At the time, no one was supposed to be out after dark. We had done missions like these at least two dozen times before with no incidents. I guess I was getting bored, and I didn’t expect anything to happen. I was singing to myself, which is something I always do while flying, it relaxes me and it helps the time go by quicker. I didn’t hear anything, but you can’t hear anything anyway over the sound of the helicopter. It was a bright night, the moon was full, and there were no clouds in the sky, so we could see everything, but it also meant that anyone on the ground could see us, and that wasn’t such a good thing. Then I heard the pilot on the radio say that he saw something moving about 600 yards to the east. I thought it was going to be a cow or a goat or something. They have livestock roaming the city; you see them all the time. I told the pilot over the radio, “let me check it out.” I wanted him to turn the aircraft around and move in towards the target with me and my weapon on it. He did, and we were moving in slowly. It’s weird that you don’t hear anything over the sound of the helicopter unless it’s on the radio, but I could have sworn that I heard the pilot yell, “oh, f*ck!” And right then, I just started seeing flashes of lights, I still couldn’t hear anything, but I could tell they were shooting right at us, I could see the tracers going past us. I just started shooting at the flashes of the flashes of lights. We still weren’t close enough to see who or how many we were getting hit by. We were still approaching and I was still shooting, and I saw two vans with the doors open; the flashes were coming from inside the vans and from behind them. I kept shooting. My .50 cal was getting hot, and all of a sudden, the flashes stopped. The pilots called in the ground units and they had showed up, I hadn’t even noticed. When we got back to base, I found out that the co-pilot had gotten hit in his right calve. The fight had lasted only about 40 seconds, but it felt like an hour. The aircraft had gotten hit in about 4 or 5 other places. It was so freaking crazy.

Q: Did you learn some Arabic, make friends with an Iraqi or eat any local dishes?
A: We were issued a card with certain phrases that we were expected to have to say, like, “Put down your weapon,” “I mean you no harm,” “I am an American.” We were supposed to memorize them, but I never did. We were also issued a letter that we would use in case we were ever left stranded somewhere. It was written in four or five several dialects of Arabic, it promised a reward to anyone to who help me by giving me food, water, or helped me return to base safely.
We weren’t allowed to eat any locally prepared food.

Q: Do you feel the same about Iraq and the war as you did before going to Iraq?
A: At first I felt angry at the Iraqis, I had the mentality that a lot of people in Texas have, the “nuke em’ all” attitude. Now I’m really starting to question why we’re there. I really don’t understand any of this. Now I’m a little bit angry at the politicians and the president that keep sending people over there to fight. I feel like they’re using us as a tool to accomplish their own personal goals. And they’re not putting any of that kind of energy into solving any of the problems we have here. I’m not sure of their motives anymore.

Q: How do you think the war will end? What do you think will happen?
A: I don’t know. I know it’s messed up to say, but even though Saddam Hussein was evil, and gassed his own people, at least he kept them in line, they weren’t killing each other. There was no question of who was in control. Now, it seems like the attacks in Iraq aren’t necessarily targeting us as much as they’re targeting each other. Now, its more like they’re fighting against each other for control of their country, and we just happen to be stuck in the middle of it.

I think the difference between the history I read in history the textbook and the history of the person I interviewed is the changes that the interviewee has gone through throughout different stages in his life and because of different experiences he has gone through. When he was younger, he pretty much went along with everyone else and accepted the views of the people around him as fact. Later on in life as he got a little older, he began to change his views and began to not necessarily understand, but to question what was going on around him and he began to want to understand because history is actually affecting his personal life. He could have died out there many times, like a lot of other people are dying now. Textbooks are generally written by people who read information from other textbooks. Once a textbook is written, it is written. A textbook will teach you about what is documented in history, it won’t teach you the lessons you will learn by being part of history for yourself.

To me I accept Alex’s history as “real history”, not only because he and I served in the Navy together, I understand what he has gone through. If I wasn’t as close as I am with him, I would never ask him about his experiences in combat. If someone I didn’t know asked me about my personal experiences, I would be offended. The only reason he spoke to me about it, was because we both have been through situations together where we weren’t sure if we would live. I will not even speak to my own family about my experiences in detail. But somehow, I know if I ask him, and he knows that if he asks me, its no big deal, it still feels like we are still on the ship talking about what happen when we went flying that day. History from a textbook just seems to be written with documented facts and numbers, not experiences and feelings.

For someone to be part of history, they have to participate in the world. Take part in what’s going on. No one should want to just sit around watch TV all they’re life and one day when they’re 80 years old, tell they’re grandkids, “Yep, I remember when that was in the news”, when they come home talking about what they learned in history class. No, I want to be able to tell my grandkids, “I was there, and this is what really happened”, or “this is what I did when that was happening”, or better yet, I want to be able to tell them, “Why don’t you read the book I wrote about what really happen?”

I don’t know anything about my family, besides my immediate parents and their parents. I don’t want that for my grandkids, I want them to be proud of the life I lived and the impact I left on the world. I read a book when I was in high school called, The Motorcycle Diaries, by Ernesto de la Serna or Che Guevara, about a motorcycle trip he and his best friend took all around South America, somewhere in the book, someone said, “first let the world change you, then you can change the world.” I think that sums up how to be a part of history.