My name is Cliff.
I'm in the US Army.
I served 25 years.
I'm an OIF Iraq veteran.
The Army allowed me to find direction.
Gave me a little bit more discipline.
I was in aviation unit--
aviation maintenance.
I served there to 2000, when I left to go to work at the
National Guard Bureau in DC.
I was working there that day, when the plane hit.
We were in Crystal City, which is four blocks away.
And we were walking in.
We got into work and we were heading over to the Pentagon.
That was our swing space, because they were renovating
the Pentagon.
Going over there is when the plane hit.
I sent the E7 that was with me back to the building and I
went forward and then helped from there.
I went home late on the 12th, it was early
morning on the 13th.
And took my uniform off.
Put it in the wash.
Took my boots, hat, and gloves off.
Put them in a box in a closet.
And basically didn't talk about it.
The Washington Post ran a paper on a year of the
anniversary of 9/11 and they had families that were writing
in about their family member that had passed away.
And I remember a boy was writing to his mother, and I
had crawled over half her body at the Pentagon and that--
that really started my downward spiral from there.
I wasn't sleeping at night.
I'd have nightmares.
I did not want to go to sleep.
I started drinking more than I normally had.
Because sleep brought on dreams, and dreams brought on
things that I saw.
And I didn't want to see it.
My attitude was changing.
I wasn't the happy-go-lucky guy that I was.
I was getting more withdrawn at work.
People noticed a difference in me.
A guy I worked with, he suggested that I go and get
counseling.
And for me, growing up, men never
talked about their problems.
You never showed emotion.
You just did it because you were a man.
And that made it even harder for me when I
started to have problems.
And going to counseling and not--
counseling is only as good as you want it to make it be.
I mean, you have to be honest with yourself and with the
person you go in counseling with to get the most benefit
out of that.
I think when I first started to go to counseling, I wasn't
to that point.
I was home on leave for Christmas and didn't want to
live with the guilt of not finding anybody alive and
wrote a note and took 20 sleeping pills.
My brother, who's a nurse, came home and found me
unconscious on the couch.
He rushed me to the hospital.
After my attempt and I was in a hospital and then they moved
me to a mental ward, then you realize, I need to
change what I'm doing.
And I went back into counseling and talked
truthfully about what I did, and how I felt, and why I felt
certain ways about things.
It felt like a big weight being taken off my chest to
sit and finally tell the whole story.
Which, in turn, I think, enabled the psychologist now
to better treat me.
And I was diagnosed with PTSD.
You know there's a lot of stigma out there that if you
go get help or counseling it will ruin your career.
I was a CW2 when this went on.
I was lucky that I had good leaders and people that
supported me that went on.
But then I was also honest to my leaders what went on.
I feel it's important that soldiers do know that people
go through dark places at any time in their life.
And that's OK.
That's OK.
That's part of life.
If something traumatic happens to you, whether you are on the
battlefield or you're driving to work or something, that's
part of life.
But you need to realize that some things you can't handle
by yourself.
You can't.
And you need to go to a trained professional to help
you through those things and give you steps so you can deal
with those issues and problems when they come up.
Going to counseling and dealing with what I did didn't
make me less of a soldier.
It doesn't make me less of a man.
If anything, it makes me a stronger soldier and a
stronger man, because I can now deal with those issues and
problems as they arise quicker.
And you realize them.
Both in myself and then in my colleagues around them.
Life's good.
I enjoy life.
It's great.
My son's eight years old.
Wouldn't have him if my brother
wouldn't have found me.
So that gives me a reason to wake up every day.
My wife's great.
The Army is great.
You know, it's just--
I don't think it could get any better.