Denton: An Iraq War combat veteran's reflections on Decoration Day
I was on leave from Baghdad on Nov. 30, 2006, when an Explosively Formed Projectile destroyed my up-armored Humvee and killed my gunner. Staff Sgt. John L. Hartman Jr. volunteered for his third tour in Iraq just months earlier, so his fellow soldier and good friend could remain stateside with a newborn. In doing so, he left behind two loving parents, a sister, a wife, a son, and a daughter. Me now being older than John will ever be, the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on March 19, and the state of the democracy that he gave his life for, have all left me struggling over who John would be today.
John was the best, most experienced, and most lethal soldier on my combat advisor team. A fond memory that captures his personality is from the aftermath of a minor roadside bomb attack along Sadr City’s border on Nov. 7, 2006. I commented that explosions in the distance sounded like roadside bombs getting closer to us and after laughing, John deadpanned with, “Nah, those are mortars being walked in on us.” Saddam Hussein’s unguarded munitions had become roadside bombs and then evolved from their initial indiscriminate pressure plate detonators. American ingenuity did its best to overcome those activated by cell phones with high-tech signal jammers, to those triggered by our Humvee's heat signatures with jerry-rigged engine block decoys, consisting of sparkplugs in empty ammunition cans extending five feet off our front bumpers. However, by just the third year of the occupation, chance was the only thing protecting our up-armored Humvees against a well-placed Explosively Formed Projectile. The highly effective roadside bombs consisted of three perfectly positioned pieces of pipe the size of coffee cans, that aimed concave copper plates at the driver, gunner, and truck commander respectively, and their detonation sent three unstoppable molten copper slugs through each occupant. John’s last words over the intercom were, “I’m hit,” and no hospital in the world could have saved him.
Decoration Day, designated for Americans to honor our fallen Union soldiers by placing decorations on their graves, has me wondering where John would have stood had he lived to see the Confederate Flag paraded through the hallowed halls of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Could he be waiting for trial with my Field Artillery Officer Basic Course classmate Chris Kuehne, and his four fellow Proud Boys, for preventing law enforcement from holding the mob at bay inside the Capitol Building? I have previously written how abject failures of our democratic processes, like the Civil War era filibuster, gerrymandering, and our lawless Supreme Court, have created the inequalities that the actual protesters that day regularly grieve. However, three of the four Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy earlier this month, two of the six Oath Keepers already found guilty of the Confederate era charge, and 26 of all 98 Proud Boys charged in the insurrection are military veterans. My generation of veterans had every reason to distrust our government long before the “Big Lie” of the 2020 presidential election, due to the actual lie that was the basis for the Iraq War resulting in 4,431 Americans killed in action, 31,994 wounded in action, and countless more of our lives changed forever.
White Christian nationalism being the biggest threat to America’s democracy was laid bare when Bronze Star recipient and Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people, injured 680, and destroyed one-third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building with a truck bomb on April 19, 1995. Unfortunately, not only did the Global War on Terror divert assets from confronting domestic terrorism, the 20 years of less than 1% of Americans serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has fueled the disproportionate number of military veterans pursuing alternatives to American democracy. Making matters even worse, is that the decades of cable news’ profit driven “culture wars,” scapegoating immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and women just wanting bodily autonomy, likely contributed to the seven reported military veterans joining the Nationalist Social Club-131. Hiding behind their hats, sunglasses, and face coverings, 18 of their members protested with a “Drag Queens are Pedophiles!” banner outside the Seacoast Repertory Theatre in Portsmouth on Dec. 18, 2021, and 10 protested with a "Keep New England White” banner zip tied to the Route 1 overpass on July 30, 2022. Portsmouth’s recent press conference announcing civil rights charges, with their $5,000 maximum fines against the organization, their founder Christopher Hood, and fellow neo-Nazi Leo Anthony Cullinan, should be followed with racketeering charges to dismantle this anti-American white Christian nationalist hate group.
Unlike most Americans who celebrate today as the official start of summer, my survivor’s guilt has me contemplating who my friend would be on this Decoration Day. John may have been a social conservative from Georgia, but in my heart of hearts, I believe he would have remained a true American patriot, not have adopted a “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” mindset, and never have actively joined the growing white Christian nationalist movement threatening our democracy. However, I will never know who John would have become. For that is what it means to have made the ultimate sacrifice and truly be gone forever.
Josh Denton is an Iraq war combat veteran, commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 168, and a Portsmouth city councilor.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Denton: A combat veteran's reflections on Decoration Day
