THE SCARS OF MORAL INJURY: HOW THE AIR FORCE’S SECRET OPERATORS FACE THEIR WORST MOMENTS
MILITARY
By Matt White | June 30, 2022
For more than a decade, Lt. Col. Paul Andrews’ job was to rain down destruction on battlefields. As a combat weapons officer on fearsome AC-130 gunships, Andrews would spot enemy positions with the plane’s sensors and cameras, train the cannons and Gatling guns onto far-off figures and — knowing full well he was about to end the lives of his targets — pull the trigger.
But the missions that haunt him are the ones where he wasn’t there to pull it.
“Our mantra is to always protect,” Andrews told Coffee or Die Magazine. “When I think of my personal experiences, the ones that stay with me are honestly the people I couldn’t protect. The times I couldn’t get there overhead, whether that was a time problem, a geographic problem, or just missing it.”
In particular, Andrews says, he thinks back to an infamous gunfight to which his crew was assigned — but could not participate — in November 2010 in Afghanistan’s Pech River Valley.
https://coffeeordie.com/moral-injury-secret-air-force/
