Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a six-part series about war veterans who are members of UC Irvine’s Veterans Student Union.
Expecting to see family and friends soon, a unit of soldiers takes a break in front of a Post Exchange in an Iraqi base.
But not all of them make it home. Mortar fire is common in Iraq. It’s random, the targeting is frantic, and most soldiers learn to live with it as an everyday occurrence. The blasts usually inflict more panic than harm.
But this time the mortar struck the unit, causing severe casualties.
“They were just passing through — there was nothing they could do,” Sgt. Johnny Yang said. “That pissed a lot of people off.”
Yang isn’t sure what to make of the feelings he felt and the things he saw while in Iraq from March 2004 to April 2005. He wanted to capture the people who did this. He wanted to find those who caused this pain and bring them to justice.
But he isn’t sure where justice could be found.
“People think it’s this two-dimensional, war-type thing,” he said. “It’s not like that.”
Yang is referring to the confusion soldiers face in determining the enemy. He was trained to know the bad guy — at basic training they used Soviet dummies to practice warfare.
“For us, they don’t teach us the gray areas,” he said.
But in Iraq, terrorists or insurgent groups use the country’s desperate shape to manipulate its citizens, he said. They pay farmers and local citizens to fire on the troops, and to set off rockets and mortars, he said.
So when Yang gets angry about his fellow soldiers getting hurt, it can be difficult to determine whom to blame for the attacks.
“They are good people, some of them,” Yang said. “Out of desperation, they are seduced to take money. I can’t really blame them. It mixed my feelings about wanting justice.”
Yang has never really talked about the war prior to his interview. When he came home, most of his friends lacked interest in the topic. He doesn’t like telling long stories, so when people asked he didn’t say much.
After coming home he kept to himself and eventually transferred from UC Riverside to UCI. He felt isolated before, but feels more conformable at UCI, especially since he joined the Student Veterans Union and met the other veterans who share his experiences.
