Command Sgt. Maj. Chris Fields, On Being Restored

‘Blown up 14 times’ and tough enough to cry
The Leaf-Chronicle
Philip Grey
November 10, 2014

The command sergeant major of the ‘No Slack’ Battalion featured in the war documentary, ‘The Hornets Nest,’ had to fight his way through his personal hornets nest of PTSD in order to help others

A long way from the battlefield, retired Command Sgt. Maj. Chris Fields still fights a war on behalf of soldiers with PTSD with the support of wife Debbie and his involvement with Operation Restored Warrior.
(Photo: THE LEAF-CHRONICLE/PHILIP GREY)

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – There’s a Facebook page out there called “You know you’re the REAL Chris Fields IF” and it good-naturedly celebrates a legendarily tough real soldier with funny quips about his superhuman attributes.

The page was put up by a minister friend of Fields who was trying to get in touch with him and knew when word got around that Fields would find him. Fields laughs about it now, but said he was ready to clean someone’s clock when he first heard about it.

And the page isn’t that much of a stretch of the truth. As a man who has been “blown up” 14 verified times and survived, Fields has earned his “tough guy” bona fides a few times over.

But while his toughness was unquestioned by everyone, after numerous deployments from the Horn of Africa to the sands of Iraq, it was very much in question in his own heart following his last deployment to Iraq in 2008.

That’s when he and Operation Restored Warrior found each other, through the Grace of God as he tells it.

With his wife, Debbie, by his side in a comfortable home in Adams, as he simultaneously petted a kitten named “Cheeto” and a hound named “Tucker,” he told the tale of how his facade crumbled and his inner pain was revealed through the fact that a chaplain forgot his hat in Fields’s office one day at Fort Campbell in early 2009.
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ORW CSM Chris Fields Testimony
from Justin Roberts


ORW CSM Chris Fields Testimony from Justin Roberts on Vimeo.