EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was authored by Ashland University senior Brynn Meisse. This story discusses Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and includes war flashbacks, profanity and sensitive imagery.
May 10, 2003; Samarra, Iraq
As the sun sets on the sandy desert horizon, darkness quickly follows on its tail. Bright stars sprinkle the dark sky with constellations taking the shape of mystical creatures that only come at night.
However, the stars are replaced by red and yellow streaks resembling flaming arrows coming to claim one’s life.
The ear-shattering crash that follows the high-pitch whistling of a mortar keeps Pvt. Andy Leidigh wide awake in the old, abandoned, bombed police station that he and his three-man team call home.
As the youngest and lowest-ranking member of his squad, Private Leidigh sleeps closest to
the wall where the shells fall. The crashing mortars shake the walls, leaving him questioning if this is his last moment on Earth.
But it wasn’t his last moment alive and he wasn’t in Samarra, Iraq.
It was May 2024, and Leidigh was safe in his house in Ashland. His wife and 16-year-
old daughter were asleep in the next room. However, after Leidigh heard something on the news that piqued his interest, he opened his computer and zoomed into Samarra on
Google Maps.
It transported Leidigh back to a time that will forever haunt him.
A third of veterans (29%) who served in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom
will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at some point in their lives.
Leidigh was no exception, but he took advantage of the chance to be treated.
Before the war
PTSD didn’t always have its claws in Leidigh’s mind.
He grew up on a small family-owned farm in southern Ashland County. Hard work and determination were established early in his life.
“I grew up on a dairy farm. I didn’t have a college fund of any sort. I was working since I was 15 regularly just to have a car and gas money,” he explained.
Leidigh knew that if he wanted to go to college and explore the world, he would have to find a way to pay for it independently. One way was to join the military, so that’s exactly what he did.
At 17 years old and a junior in high school, he swore his life to the United States Army.
“I didn’t have another way to pay for college,” Leidigh said. “My parents wouldn’t pay for anything so if I wanted to get out and go see the world, I had to find my own way.
“The military seemed like the best way to do it.”
The summer after his junior year, Leidigh packed his bags and went to basic training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina for nine weeks.
Before he left, his older brother, who served in the Army, told him the secret to survivin basic training.
“‘It’s a complete head game,’” Leidigh said.
He took the advice to heart: Wake up, get dressed, do drills, shine shoes and do it again.
“It’s not that hard,” he said.
He followed orders and completed his workouts, which, because of his work placement, held him to a “higher standard than the regular military.”
The standard percentile is 50% but Leidigh’s Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) required him to score 70%.
His MOS was the Psychological Operations (PSYOPs) unit, which designated him as part of the Army’s ‘marketing team.’
Leidigh’s job was to talk to the Iraqi people and gather information that would be useful to the U.S. military’s mission.
After Leidigh graduated high school in 2001, he spent the summer months training at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
The John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center taught him military intelligence, cultural analysis, advanced interpersonal communication, social media and marketing.
He was trained to get inside people’s minds and use the access to advance the interest of
the U.S. government.
Operation Iraqi Freedom
The world forever changed on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda attacked the United States and killed 2,996 people. Leidigh knew this attack would forever change his life.
Three days into his college career at Hocking Technical College, Leidigh received a call. His sergeant was looking for him.
“I came back to the apartment [after class] and my brother called me. He was like ‘Hey your sergeant is looking for you’ and I was like ‘it’s Wednesday,’” Leidigh explained. “I called him and [my sergeant] told me to pack my stuff and report to the unit this weekend. I thought to myself ‘You got to be shitting me, I just started school.’ ”
He was going overseas to fight for his country.
In January 2002 — halfway through his freshman year — Leidigh was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina to await his orders.
“I was nervous and excited, but I was also 19 years old and didn’t have much clue about the world. I lived on a dairy farm most of my life, so just going to North Carolina for training was out of town for me,” he said. “I was taking it all in.”
After three months, Leidigh finally received the order for departure.
“I think the most interesting feeling was boarding a civilian flight with a rifle. They didn’t have planes for us,” he reflected. “They loaded us up on a civilian flight and we all walked in with all our gear and rifles.
“To make it safe we had to take our firing mechanism out of the rifle, put it in a zip lock bag and put it in our pocket so we didn’t accidentally shoot someone.”
Boots hit the ground in April 2002. Almost 340,000 troops were deployed, making it the biggest deployment since the Vietnam War.
Leidigh said the U.S. military was mobilized but unprepared.
“I mean they didn’t have the gear for us. We were still wearing Vietnam-era flak jackets,” Leidigh said.
When Leidigh arrived in Iraq, he and his three-man team were tasked with discovering intelligence through civilian communications.
“We were a three-man team that came in, to support [the battalion] and do the PSYOP
stuff. We worked by ourselves with [the battalion] as our security,” he explained.
But they didn’t gain security until Leidigh’s second tour serving in Iraq. Until then, they drove around unprotected to carry out the mission.
Their job was to drive around the desert and look for civilians willing to talk to them. However, they didn’t know who the enemy was.
“Unless they were pointing a gun at you, we assumed that they were friendly,” he said.
The team relied on interpreters to understand Arabic conversations when they didn’t run into civilians who spoke English.
“Arabic isn’t necessarily a hard language, I mean I didn’t know Arabic but after being there for two years, you understood a lot of their body language and tone of voice,” he explained.
Along with evaluating body language and tone of voice, Leidigh and his team specialized in propaganda efforts.
They would use radio broadcasts, loudspeakers in the trucks, backpack speakers and flyers to spread their message.
Iraqi civilians played an essential part in the war. They were willing to talk and help in whatever way they could because most wanted Saddam Hussein out of power.
“Here’s a big secret most Americans who don’t get out of their own culture don’t understand … people are people,” Leidigh said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a hostile country, there are still really good people.
“I’ve met some of the greatest people overseas. They just want to go to work and feed their families just like everyone else.”
Despite the atrocities of war, Leidigh saw the good in mankind. But one day still haunts
him.
Oct. 24, 2003; Samarra, Iraq
The scorching sun beats down on Sgt. Leidigh. Its relentless rays turn the endless desert
sand into a shimmering ray of gold, wrapping him in an almost unbearable warmth. His chapped lips remind him that the desert takes everything. It creates a shell of the person you are.
The rumble of a tank and a shout from a man snap Leidigh to attention. Squinting, Leidigh looks to see who is entering the Detachments HQ.
A man dressed in a tan, brown and green uniform rushes to Leidigh with urgency in his eyes. He informs Leidigh of a low-ranking official who stood on top of an army tank.
As Leidigh reads the report, he recognizes the name. It was a soldier he trained. However, that isn’t the only thing that stands out to Leidigh in the report. It’s the reason the report is filed.
Attached to the tank is a body — the corpse of an Iraqi.
The captain drives the vehicle through town to cause fear and threaten the Iraqi people. The United Nations has rules against this. It’s considered inhumane.
But that doesn’t stop the captain.
Mind Wars
When Leidigh returned to the U.S. in March 2007 after serving his second tour, everything was the same, yet different.
People carried on with their lives. They weren’t worried about someone hiding around a
corner with a gun, or mortars being dropped on them at any moment.
“I spent two years of my life expecting to die every day,” Leidigh said.
Those memories haven’t left Leidigh. They forever altered his mind, leaving it in a constant state of fight or flight.
Some of the symptoms of PTSD are intrusion, persistent avoidance of stimuli, marked alterations in arousal and reactivity as well as negative alterations in cognition and mood.
One of the symptoms that Leidigh suffers from is intrusion – the re-experiencing of events through flashbacks, traumatic nightmares and recurrent intrusive memories.
One of his flashbacks happened on the way to his job at Patterson Dental, where he works as a senior service technician and lead project manager.
“I was in my work van in Cleveland. There was construction in the next lane. I was at a stoplight when they dropped a large rock or something into a dump truck. It was a huge bang and I thought I was getting blown up again,” Leidigh explained.
“I just sat there trying to calm myself down, breathing heavily and then people started honking at me. That pissed me off. I turned right down the next road and sat there for like 30 minutes.”
His symptoms didn’t stop there.
Along with intrusion, Leidigh couldn’t break the habits that were engraved in him.
He still rolls his socks, takes his hat off when he enters a building, walks and turns a certain way. The biggest habit he hasn’t been able to break is situational awareness.
The American Psychiatric Association points to hypervigilance as a symptom of PTSD.
“Most people go into a new place, see some friends and go directly over to them. I still like to make sure all the exits are there and who all looks funny,” he explained.
Leidigh cannot relax in new places. He is always watching his surroundings and on constant alert.
One of his worst PTSD attacks came during a meal at Jake’s Restaurant in Ashland with his wife.
“They sat us over in the bar area, no big deal or whatever. Mid-conversation they cranked
the music so loud that we couldn’t hear each other,” Leidigh explained. “My wife said, ‘my
face instantly turned and she was like, Do we have to go?’ and I said yes. I had to leave. It set me off. It was like an anxiety thing.
“Something is out of your control, something bad is going to happen.”
What Leidigh could control was where he felt safe.
One of the places in Ashland that quickly became a haven for him was the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), specifically Post 1067.
“The VFW is one of the places I felt safe and comfortable. It gave me someplace to go and the majority of the people here experienced something,” Leidigh said. “All the regular members here have been overseas, been shot at or blown up.”
This place and the people remind him that he isn’t alone. Others could relate to him and sympathize because they too had a similar experience and suffered from PTSD.
His PTSD affected his relationship with his family.
“Should I be feeling this way?” Leidigh asked himself.
Leidigh missed out on many things in his daughter and wife’s lives because he was uncomfortable in unfamiliar places.
“It’s one of the things I regret, not getting treated sooner because I see pictures of my daughter when she was younger at Disney on Ice,” he said. “I look back on it and think ‘I should’ve gone to that.’ It looks like she had a lot of fun.”
Leidigh even struggled with getting out of his own head to talk to people. Yet in the military, his whole job revolved around talking to strangers.
“I talked to nobody. I wouldn’t even talk to my wife. I’m surprised she stayed with me,” Leidigh said.
He knew it was time to get help when his PTSD affected his relationship with his daughter and wife.
“I could tell something was different,” he explained.
An opportunity to be treated
That question marked the first step in seeking help.
He received counseling from the Department of Veterans Affairs, but it wasn’t enough. Leidigh still carried the weight of war in his mind.
However, one day he was talking to Tim Chandler, the founder and president of Silent Watch. The group advocates for awareness of veteran suicides and Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB), a treatment for PTSD.
Chandler said SGB is not a cure for PTSD.
“But it does help alleviate the symptoms of anxiety, depression, sleeplessness and anger — all those associated with PTSD,” Chandler explained.
SGB is a one-time procedure that consists of four shots into the stellate ganglion, a bundle of sympathetic nerves in the front of the neck.
The sympathetic nerves are responsible for stress response.
The treatment reduces norepinephrine levels and increases sympathetic nervous system activity.
Leidigh was skeptical, but Chandler persisted. Eventually, Leidigh relented and gave it a try.
He experienced immediate relief.
“It made me a believer. A seven-minute injection changed my life,” he said.
While Leidigh still feels the anxiety and tension that comes with a PTSD attack, the SGB treatment helped to accelerate the comedown period of the attack, allowing him to calm down sooner than before.
Over time, the treatment relieved tension, especially in his shoulders.
“That’s one of the things I try to tell people about the SGB shot. You don’t realize the tension you are holding in your shoulders,” Leidigh explained.
He didn’t only get the treatment for himself but also for his wife and daughter.
“My two girls deserved a better life. That’s why I did it,” Leidigh said. “I regret not getting the shot sooner because I missed out on my daughter growing up.”
He might regret not getting the treatment sooner, but joining the military was something that doesn’t trigger second thoughts.
“I don’t regret it. Not a day in the world. I’m here today doing what I’m doing because of it,” Leidigh concluded.