(bright tones) - It wasn't until I was on the airplane, flying over, that I had that moment to myself of, "Holy crap, I'm 19 and I could die."

I was proud of that because, for me, I thought there'd be no better way to honor my family than dying in combat, to show that I was willing to sacrifice myself for my family, for their safety and all that.

So, I was proud of that.

But it took a lot from me when that didn't happen.

As much as I tried, I tried every chance I got.

(air swooshing) (ominous music) Hello, my relatives.

I'm a descendant of Mdewakantonwan Sisithunwan Wahpethunwan Council Fires of the Seven Council Fires of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota Nations.

I'm from the Pazi family from where the river bends, and the place that they dig for the yellow medicine.

During the summer, between my junior and senior years, when I made that decision that I'm gonna join the military in hopes that I could prove myself as a man, as a warrior.

So I spoke with my family about it and because I was only 17 at the time, I had to have my mother sign the paperwork to allow me to go in.

The one request that she made is that I didn't go infantry and it was a hard pill to swallow, but I decided I'll not go infantry for her.

So I ended up signing my contract that summer and I shipped out for basic training a couple weeks after completing high school.

- Hey, Auntie Vanji, hey, Uncle Wilbert, it's Drew.

Things are going great for me.

My job is in the communications field.

I provide communications for the guys up on the front lines and everything to relay back to headquarters and calling in anything that they need.

- Well, I'll introduce them again.

Of course, you know Drew and Shakina, Nalen and Steven.

Okay, you can go.

(laughter) - That's a wrap.

- That's a wrap.

- It's over.

(laughter) - [Family Member] Okay.

- In November, 2004, we arrived in Kuwait and we spent a month in Kuwait to get acclimated to the environment.

It was an experience to cross from Kuwait into Iraq.

It was like three o'clock in the morning.

It was just eerie quiet and all you hear over the radio is, "Were getting ready to cross over, keep your eyes open and get ready for anything."

The people were just so resilient in having nothing and still being able to do so much.

And be able to see that, it was different 'cause you just thought, and what we would kinda train is anyone can be an enemy and no one's looking to be your friend.

And it was kind of a shock to the system when kids would try and play soccer with you or kinda just engage with you.

And everyone was a lot more friendlier than we initially thought they were gonna be, but at the same time, there was just a eerie undercurrent in the surrounding, in your environment where you know you were being watched.

I think it was maybe that April timeframe.

One of our sister units, Charlie company, they got hit with a roadside bomb, and they lost some guys.

That kinda changed the mood for all of us because we weren't a combat unit, we're communications.

We provide, you know, we're the nerds in the trucks providing all the voicing data capabilities.

So when they got hit, it kinda shook the entire battalion, the 50th Signal Battalion.

So I volunteered for convoy duty and became a convoy gunner for the convoys.

And we were running communications supplies to our other sister units and sister sites out there that's spread across from Fallujah up to Balad, even further up north and down south to Baghdad.

(brooding suspenseful music) On one occasion, over an Ashraf, our unit, they lost their antenna to a dust storm.

So we loaded up everything and drove out there and the Ashraf was probably under two hours away.

Driving out there, we would see, you know, people just doing their daily business.

But when we came back through, there was nobody, and there was an apartment complex there, and there's not a single soul outside.

That's where we learned, start listening to your environment because they'll help you tell you what's about to happen.

And just as we all got that sense that something was wrong is when the roadside bomb went off, (bomb cracking) and it hit the vehicle ahead of me and it blew off the whole front end of their vehicle.

Thankfully, nobody was too injured, and the vehicle was still somewhat operational.

So once that assessment was made, we just hit the road going and made that turn and flew down the road and got out of there.

And that was the first roadside bomb attack that we got to experience.

And it puts everything into a different perspective.

When you have that concussion wave ripped through your body, dust and disorientation sets in, you become very skeptical of everything on the road 'cause they were utilizing everything and anything they could from animal carcasses where they would stuff animal carcasses with artillery shells and lay 'em on the side of the road.

So you just think it's a dead animal and then boom, you'll get hit.

Or just piles of junk on the side of the road, trash bags and stuff like that.

You're looking at that garbage bag, but you're also looking to see if you can see any wires or start looking around the surrounding area to see, you know, how are the people acting or are there any people around.

So it becomes a hypersensitivity to your surroundings, which over there you need to keep on 24/7, 365 and then you become addicted to that, that hypervigilance.

And it's hard to shut off.

My unit, we were the Alpha Company 50th Signal Battalion under the 35th Signal Brigade under the 18th Airborne Corps.

We were first team airborne.

We were so confident in our ability to get our communications up.

From the time that we jumped outta the plane until the time we hit the ground and get that first communications up, we often had it within 15 minutes easily to be able to get that all done.

But in order to be able to do that, you gotta be able to back up what you're doing.

So that physical toll, it takes to be able to do that, helped forge who we became as brothers and sisters.

Because when you're jumping out of an airplane at 800 AGL, above ground level, with 120 pounds of equipment to last you for three days, you fall a lot faster than everyone else.

(chuckles) You know, I'm still in communications with so many of 'em.

We still talk all the time because of our shared experiences, our shared hardships of, you know, hiking 12, 15 miles and then working out and doing all that.

And just the day in, day out, jumping up to two, three times a day, it takes a toll.

When I first joined the military, I was 5'10.

I'm 5'8 right now.

That's pushing it.

I've shrunk that much just from that constant weight and pressure on my back of jumping with my heavy equipment.

So now in my older age, I feel it a little bit more.

But when I was young and dumb, I was rocking with the best of them, and it was an honor to work with them.

And I think about my brothers and sisters all the time.

Coming back, it was difficult because you're so proud of everything that we did, we accomplished our missions, we experienced life at this height, the perfect highs and its perfect lows.

But it was challenging to go through all that with your brothers and sisters and lose them to drunk drivers, lose them to suicides 'cause it just couldn't take everything that we experienced.

There was a big push to get more troops back into Iraq so we knew eventually our number would be called again.

So we just focused on training, doing more missions, pushing ourselves harder, pushing ourselves faster, and then partying just as hard, partying just as much as we could oftentimes for the fun of it.

But we all knew, most of us were partying to cover up the hardships that we experienced.

It's unfortunate to not be able to have people be able to understand what it does to you as a person.

It's a difficult path to walk because you start removing the humanity out of people.

You just start seeing them as you're either green or you're red, and you're blue and you're on my side.

When you start seeing people that way for so long that you're just a bag of meat with vital organ points that, if I shot you there, I know you're gonna drop and you're not gonna be an issue anymore.

- [Leader] Raise your right hand and repeat after me.

- The end of my first deployment, moving into my second deployment is when I got promoted to sergeant.

And now, I'm in charge of making sure my soldiers get home.

I'm no longer one of the soldiers, I'm now in that role of, I'm the sergeant, I'm the caretaker of my troops.

So I started to remove even more emotions out of it.

My team was, about 14 of us.

And of the 14, I was selected to become the personal security officer for the sergeant major of the Iraq Theater, MNF-I, Multi-National Forces Iraq, sergeant major.

That fall of 2007 is when we started attending different training courses for personal security.

So I got tasked with providing personal security for the sergeant major of the Iraq Theater, the senior enlisted advisor, who at that time was Command Sergeant Major Marvin Hill.

He selected me to become his personal security officer.

So I became his shadow.

Wherever he went, I went, I would go through and secure the areas before he came in.

Oftentimes, it would just be him and I flying somewhere.

We would fly somewhere, get on the ground, get with the unit that's there and then that unit would take us into their battle space and show us what they're doing in their battle space or do patrols with them, visit the hospitals for the injured.

Kinda be a show of force.

Show of force, you know, show of morale for the units that we are visiting that, you know, stick it in 'cause oftentimes units will get hit with multiple casualties, and he just shut down, they didn't wanna go out anymore.

He would have to go out there and try to reinvigorate that motivation for those units to get back out there.

So we would travel quite a bit.

(gentle brooding music) There's not a base in Iraq that I haven't been to more than two, three times.

You go do missions with so many different units, you see so many different faces.

And then we would get the casualty reports, and you would see those same names on the list of, man, we were just doing a mission with these guys and now they're no longer here.

Onto the next one, and you become so callous to it that I guess I could see myself changing in so many different ways that, although I was good at my job, I was losing who I was.

My mission was to make sure that this guy gets home every single day.

Whatever bullets are thrown at him, I gotta make sure I'm the one catching them.

So when you're going to the mindset that this man's life is more important than everyone else's, you start seeing everyone else as just collateral.

I didn't have rest of my team to hang out with so I becoming a little bit more isolated.

Having to then come to terms that I'm gonna have to process a lot of what I'm experiencing every time we left the wire, I'm gonna have to process that on my own so I can make sure that the very next day, when the sergeant major wants to go out somewhere, I'm there and I'm ready for him.

Sometimes we would take a little six-seater jet 'cause it'd just be him and I.

And then we would fly up there.

And every single time that we flew into Mosul, every single time we would try to land in that place, we would take fire or mortar fire, We'll go up there, up on the rooftops in Sadar City just to scope things out.

And well, if he's gonna go out there, I better go out there first to make sure, you do a little sniper check to make sure that if somebody's gonna get hit, it's gonna be me.

I would blatantly put myself into scenarios where I should take fire and nothing would happen.

And having that lingering feeling of, oh man, this is another mission where this might not happen for me, started taking its toll, especially towards the end, 'cause my second deployment was a 15 month deployment.

So we were there a little bit longer.

So I had a little bit more opportunity.

As many dangerous locations that we went through, it wasn't happening.

I'm thankful for the ability to be able to sit here and tell this because if I had it my way, I wouldn't be here.

I think about how selfish that is at times because of the life I've created now with my family, the connections I've been able to maintain with my friends.

(audience clapping) (ceremonious music) I got off active duty service at that time.

I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina and I didn't move back home.

I needed that time to myself to figure out what I was gonna do.

Was I gonna kill myself or make it through?

And I lost that battle numerous times to the survivor's guilt of why me?

Why did I survive?

I didn't understand what my purpose was, why I made it through all that.

We lost so many good people.

I hated myself for a really, really long time.

As much as I tried to drink my problems away, do every drug I could get my hands on to mask the pain I was experiencing, all the partying I did, I still tried to do that.

And for years of just kinda throwing everything away and just floating around, eventually bit by bit, I started to piece it all together that it's probably happening for a reason that I must have some other purpose.

So I slowly started to clean myself up, get myself together, try to search out that answer of why or what's my purpose here.

And still working on that still.

But in the meantime of walking that path, I've been able to create happiness around me and create my own happiness through my family, through my friends, reestablish those connections, make new connections and take this wonderful gift called life to purpose When my kids can hopefully look back and say, "My dad tried, he does his all."

And I'll be happy.

(gentle melancholic music) I have 50% disability with the VA, with two combat tours.

I suffer from PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury, from the various concussion waves that I experienced rattling my head around.

Hearing loss in both my ears.

(huffs) I have a puncture wound on the back of my eyeball, compressed vertebrates in my spine, bad knees.

But those aren't covered because I played sports in high school.

So they say that the injuries that sustained from my back and knees aren't service connected.

You know, jumping outta planes with 120 pound rocks might be a contributing factor to that.

I didn't believe in the system, I didn't believe that it would do anything for me.

So it took 10 years of my family asking me to go, asking me to go.

And then I met my wife and it took her a couple months.

But then, eventually clicked with me that as I have my family now, my own family, I needed to start taking care of myself so I could take care of them properly.

Our Akichitas, our warriors were initially were protectors and providers.

They weren't always looking out to just create war, they were there to protect their people to provide for their people.

And that's the mindset and mentality I'm trying to carry on now to be there for my people when they need me, if they need me, whenever they need me, and provide everything I can for them to help us as a collective people prosper and move forward from our histories.

Sometimes I think about my relatives who went to boarding school and then later served in World War II, and they talked about all the atrocities that happened in World War II, but they would never speak of what happened in the boarding schools because of the racism.

I experienced a lot of racism growing up, and it hurt to be marginalized like that.

And a part of me going into combat was hoping that I could be seen as an equal versus some derogatory term based off my skin color.

It was confusing to shake the hands of the same people that would call me those names 'cause they were proud of the service I did versus couple years prior, they didn't even see me as an equal.

It was a hard internal battle to fight on a daily basis 'cause the military is so multicultural.

It is a beautiful place where you have so many different people of all different walks of life coming together.

You meet people that the first time ever be on an airplane, and we're jumping out together.

Or, you know, they've never done this and never done that, and you get to share those things with them, and the color of their skin blurs away.

You just start seeing people who they are, soul to soul.

In my journey of rediscovering who I am, I've been able to create a spirituality within myself that I've nurtured through coming back, coming back home.

Through that process of reconnecting with my lineage, my tribe, I've been able to create those environments of nurturing my spirituality.

And through that process, I've been able to come to the understanding that there is a reason I'm still here.

There is a reason why I'm giving another day to better myself.

(gentle choral music) When you step back and look at the vastness of everything that we have and everything that we are, you start seeing these little breadcrumbs in the silver lining that's like been able to guide me to this point where I can talk about it.

'Cause I tried my best, numerous times, to make sure I wouldn't be sitting right here.

So I'm thankful for all the people and all my relatives that have been there for me through the thick and thin 'cause I made it hard for them, numerous times.

To have the gift of their perseverance through it all, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them.

So I'm definitely thankful for all of them.

I'm able to see all the beauty that's around me, and the nature and the river, the water, the rocks, all of 'em.

They provide that sanctuary of understanding.

That sanctuary of growth.

No matter how much you need, they'll be there for you.

If I have a hard time, I'm like, man, just go out there and go out the yard and sit on a rock and just take it all in.

And being able to have that experience and have that connection with the land that maybe my fellow, my fellow family members, friends, counselors, and all them can't convey to me, for some cosmic reason, I'm here, I'm getting another day.

So thank you for that.

And thank you for providing the strength for me to be able to have that minute moment of recognizing that there's so much more out there and for some reason I'm given the gift of being able to experience this and every day that may come after that, that gift of life.

(gentle choral music)