Survivor Guilt "For some reason, I’m alive and he’s not"

'For some reason, I’m alive and he’s not'
PRESENT-TRAUMATIC STRESS
Stars and Stripes
Martin Kuz
December 1, 2013

ESPANDI, Afghanistan — The Polish sergeant took one step off the dirt path that the U.S. soldiers ahead of him had scanned for buried bombs. Those few inches marked the line between Jan Kiepura’s life and death. His foot triggered an improvised explosive device that forever separated him from his wife and two sons.

First Lt. Joshua Fosher was 15 feet in front of him; Capt. Dusty Turner was about as far behind. The distance saved the two Americans from his fate. Yet they were casualties in a less obvious sense. The blast inflicted hidden wounds, physical and psychological, that lingered long after Kiepura returned to Poland in a metal box.

Fosher and Turner suffered brain injuries that were slow to heal, injuries that magnified the mental trauma of their close exposure to death. Their ordeal resembles that of thousands of U.S. troops affected by brain injuries during the war in Afghanistan, now 12 years old, and the eight-year war in Iraq that ended in 2011.

In the weeks after the blast, as the two soldiers continued to endure the rigors of a nine-month deployment, they searched for order amid war’s uncertainty.

“He was there, then he wasn’t,” said Fosher, 26, of Exeter, N.H., referring to Kiepura. “When you realize how fast that can happen, it makes you aware in a very real way how everything can end.”

It is an awareness that, for each man, remains bereft of answers.

“For some reason, I’m alive and he’s not,” said Turner, 28, of Center Point, Texas. “For some reason, God allowed me to be here. I have no idea why.”
read more here