Notes to Byrne IX ( hypnotic suggestions induced during alcoholic black outs.)

If you tell yourself, choose to tell yourself something over and over again and combine that with alcohol the outcome can be explosive.

Two days into our two weeks, of training to get us prepped for Kosovo, our sergeant in charge (E-7 Sergeant First Class, two ranks away from Sergeant Major) of us decided to take us all to a bowling alley. I took it upon myself to get drunk too quick and proclaim to em’ all that I was the officer in charge of the mission. No one outranked me. So damn convinced I was. If you tell yourself, choose to tell yourself something over and over again and combine that with alcohol the outcome can be explosive. Somewhere in the time we were there I fell down face first. Carpet burned my face. I learned sometime later that that the sergeant in charge (E-7 Sergeant First Class, two ranks away from Sergeant Major) wanted me off the mission and kicked out of the US Army. My platoon sergeant back in Fort Lee talked him out of it. Therefore, to keep me in line the other sergeant on our team wrote me up for everything. I saw it as I always saw it. It was me against them. I never completely understood the dire importance of following directions until I got clean and sober, and applied the 12 steps in my life. As a teacher I see the result of good and bad. Regardless, they were able to keep me abstinent in training and on the deployment. I did take notice of a civilian who got kicked out of training for coming to work drunk.

I somehow put myself in situations where I rubbed elbows with colonels and high placed officers who had met and went to training schools with my battalion commander back in Fort Lee. Thought it would give me an advantage.

After a day of flight and crossing over several time zones we made it to Macedonia. From there one team, four soldiers, attached to an infantry unit in Macedonia. The other soldiers, to include myself and another sergeant were sent to Kosovo. We were responsible for fatalities of soldiers and civilians of the United Nations. Fatalities were packed with forty pounds of ice in a steel transfer case. Then they were driven down to Macedonia. From Macedonia, they were taken to the airport to be shipped to Landstuhl Germany. Countless civilians were missing limbs. There was a mountain that seemingly could be seen from anywhere in Kosovo. It looked like the mountain on the Coors beer commercials. Armies, as part of Ethnic Cleansing, had spread hundreds of mines all over that mountain, and all over towns near the mountain. Gypsies would walk the streets washing car windows, and doing what they could do to get money. There was a mother who always had a child in her arms. Whenever we left base in military uniform we had 260 rounds of ammo, a shrapnel vest, a Kevlar helmet, and our M-16 rifle. We had to keep our rifles on us twenty four hours a day. If we didn’t we would get very harsh UCMJ punishment (lose a lot of money and do chores type of punishment).

First night in Kosovo, we…