![]() “I got in there and he said, ‘Pack your bags, you’re going home.’ “Why?’ “Your mom had a heart attack, she’s in the hospital,’” said McGuire. McGuire had arrived in Kuwait at his first deployment in 2004 and a week later was still in the process of getting used to the changes when he got a call to report to his first sergeant’s office. He currently works as a fire inspector at Fort Knox. Larry McGuire has worked as a firefighter for decades, starting in 2001 when he reported to an Air Force Base in Montana two weeks before 9/11. They had three children between some of his three deployments and an additional year remote. “We watched his military career change in the blink of an eye.”īoth of them acknowledged the fear that many Americans felt at that time was heightened among military families: deployments, entry security procedures, restricted freedom of movement outside the gates.Īs McGuire stuffed down the memory of the 4-month-old child’s death in 2003, he got on with deployments overseas while Melissa managed daily home and family matters. “-It was probably one of the scariest situations we had ever been in,” said Melissa. “Talk about putting the bonds on you: when you don’t know anybody, you’re 19 hours away from your hometown, you’re on a nuclear base, and you get locked down-” “I hadn’t even officially signed into the fire station yet,” said McGuire. Two weeks later, terrorists hijacked airplanes and crashed them into the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. They arrived at their first duty station in Great Falls, Montana, at the end of the month. ![]() 11 of that year, shortly after graduating technical school, the two got married. Basic training changed his mind and during a phone call April 5, 2001, he proposed to her. When McGuire left for the military, he figured he would never see Melissa again. She was attending college and wasn’t looking for a serious relationship. “There was no way I was going to marry him no way,” said Melissa. She grinned and said she wasn’t that into him at first. Both had graduated high school at different schools within the same town when McGuire met her in a chance meeting as volunteer firefighters. McGuire met Melissa two years before joining the military. “Nobody tells you that Pandora’s Box will get full, and eventually it’ll open up.” I remember thinking, ‘Hey, that worked pretty good.’ So everything I went through after, that’s how I dealt with it. “I just stuck it into a little box in the back of my brain and didn’t deal with it. Not only did McGuire not talk to the counselors about it that day, he didn’t talk to anybody about it, including his wife Melissa. (Photo Credit: Eric Pilgrim, Fort Knox News) VIEW ORIGINAL Tattoos have become a significant way for the McGuires to tell their story of overcoming PTSD with hope and openness. We don’t talk to you people,’” continued McGuire. “- All the older guys said, ‘I don’t need to talk to you guys. “Being a firefighter, especially being new to it, I followed the older guys’ lead -“Ī team of counselors had been called in to help the firefighters work through what they had witnessed. It showed me how fragile life is,” said McGuire. My wife and I had been trying to start a family for about two weeks, when I got rung out for that call. “One of the first major calls I went on in the military was a 4-month-old baby listed as a case. ![]() Some of the Soldiers of Easy Company would suffer from PTSD several years after.įor Fort Knox fire inspector Larry McGuire, PTSD crept up on him subtly beginning in 2003, a little over a year into his Air Force career as a firefighter. Dick Winters, would later say that the constant stress of war had led to Compton’s and others’ breaking points. Suffering from what was known then as war fatigue, he had to be removed from the battlefield and sent home. ![]() Lynn “Buck” Compton in the seventh episode of the TV miniseries Band of Brothers, almost nonstop aerial bombing on their position for several days near the end of the war led him to snap, losing it. Post-traumatic stress disorder can be a tricky thing.įor 1st Lt. (Photo Credit: Eric Pilgrim | Fort Knox News) VIEW ORIGINALįORT KNOX, Ky. For Fort Knox fire inspector Larry McGuire and his wife Melissa, post-traumatic stress disorder has been a hard road on which to travel, brought on by several major events that happened while he served as a firefighter in the Air Force. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |