My Battles in Fallujah to the Battle for My Soul: The Good, the Bad, and the Ultimate Victory of an American Hero

My Battles in Fallujah to the Battle for My Soul: The Good, the Bad, and the Ultimate Victory of an American Hero

December 30, 2024 • 38 min

Episode Description

On this episode of Our American Stories, our next story comes to us from a veteran of the U.S. Army. He served with the 82nd Airborne Division in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Here’s Fernando Arroyo.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Search for the All American Stories podcasts. Go to the
iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Our next story comes to us from a veteran of
the US Army. He served with the eighty second Airborne

(00:31):
Division in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's Fernando Arroyo.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I remember it was nineteen ninety one and I was
five or six years old. I was sitting in my
kindergarten class when the school principal walked in and Miss Sponse,
my Bandini Elementary School kindergarten teacher. She said, okay, kids,
stop playing, sit in front of the class. And then
the principal stood up in front of us and he said,

(01:00):
and you know, you can be whatever you want when
you grow up. And all the kids are like, wow,
that's cool. And I've always been quiet. I kind of
just looked at the kids, like why are you so
amazed at this? But whatever, and then the class got
quiet and I look up and everyone's looking at me,
and the school principle is looking at me, and I

(01:21):
thought I was in trouble, and then he looks at
me and he kind of he put his hands on
his lap and he bent down and he says, what's
your name. I said, my name's Fernando. He said, what
do you want to be when you grow up? I said,
I want to be a police officer, a soldier, and
a pastor. And he's like, he made a face like, well,
that's weird, and he said, why do you want to

(01:43):
be a soldier and a police officer? I said, because
I want to shoot guns and fight bad guys. He's like, okay,
why do you want to be a pastor? I said,
because I believe in Jesus Christ. So, at a young
age of five years old, I remember watching Desert Storm
on TV. And the coolest thing for me wasn't the

(02:07):
stealth bombers or all the cool missiles and all the
images of explosions. It was the guys on the ground.
Those were the real heroes. Those were the guys that
I thought, man, like, I'm watching Gi Joe cartoons and stuff,
but like, they're the real deal. They're charging towards the gunfire,
They're putting their life on the line. Well, as time

(02:29):
went on, ten years later, I'm a senior at Bell
Gardens High School. It's September eleven, two thousand and one.
I was late for class and I remember walking into
my first period Spanish class, which you know, Spanish was
my first language. I just wanted an easy. I didn't
even get an A. I got like a B. That
was terrible. But then when that class was over, the

(02:51):
bell rang, and now I had to go to my
government class, second period Government. And when I walked in,
all the students, you know, the bell had rang. This
should have been the class should have been empty for
the next class. They were all still there, and the
teacher had his TV out and everyone's glued to the television.
I looked at the screen and I could see smoke
coming out of one of the towers. And then I

(03:11):
saw another airplane hit the second tower and this big
ball of fire, and one girl shouted, who would do this?
And some kids were crying, and then I heard on
the news America is under attack. Then I watched live
on TV as people were jumping out of windows to
their death because they would rather commit suicide than burn alive.

(03:34):
And I felt this deep pain inside me where something
has to be done. And it's going to be me.
So on September twenty ninth, two thousand and one, I
was enlisted in the army. I remember going to the
recruiter and he said, what do you want to do
in my army? And I said, I want to be
a paratrooper. He said, do you know what that is?

(03:57):
I'm like, yeah, you know, you jump out of planes
and shoot guns. And he says, dude, it's not nice.
You're gonna be jumping at night in full combat gear.
You're gonna be the first ones in combat. You're gonna
get shot at. You're gonna be out in the rain
and the snow and the mud. It's gonna be dirty.
Like you don't want to do that. I said, no,
that's what I want to do. He said, look, we

(04:20):
have this contract right now because the army needs cooks,
so we can pay you twenty thousand dollars to be
a cook in the army sign up bonus of twenty thousand.
I said, no, I don't want to be a cook.
I want to be an airborne paratrooper. And he's like,
all right, but don't come back to me later and
say that I didn't try to warn you or talk

(04:41):
you out of it, or that I lied to you.
And then at one point he says, look, have you
ever been on an airplane? And I grew up poor,
I never traveled. I said, no, I've never been on
an airplane. He's like, and you're gonna volunteer to parachute
out of a perfectly good aircraft into battle. I'm like, yeah,
that sounds cool, all right. He pulled out the piece

(05:02):
of paper. He says, this is the contract Airborne Infantry
Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I graduated in June of two
thousand and two, and then in August twenty first, two
thousand and two, I was on an airplane for the
first time in my life, on an airplane on my
way to Fort Benning, Georgia. And I remember when that

(05:23):
aeroplane took off, man Like, I had never experienced that before.
First time flying. I'm eighteen years old, and there's you know,
the plane's shaking, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, what's going on?
Man Like? Is this normal? And then once we were
in the sky, I looked out the window. I thought, oh,
I'm an idiot. The recruiter was right. I should have
never volunteered for this. This is dumb, Heed. He was

(05:44):
being honest. He actually tried to save me. And I
remember on that airplane next to me, this guy could
tell that I was nervous, and he says, what's wrong.
I said, I've never been on an aeroplane before, and
I'm on my way to train a parachute out of
aeroplanes in the Army. And he asked me, are you
a Christian? I said, yeah, I'm a Christian. He says,

(06:04):
did you pray about this? I said yeah. Do you
believe that this is God's calling for you? I said yes.
He's like, then you're gonna be fine, and I felt peace.
But all that piece ended when, you know, after checking
in and getting my uniforms and equipment, it was time
to meet the drill sergeants. And these three drill sergeants

(06:27):
their mission was to train me to shoot, move, communicate,
and kill. We trained as a team. It was brutal
physical training. I remember being a skinny kid, you know,
never having left the state of California, and now I'm
surrounded by people from every state, from all walks of life,
and we're in this together. And that created a brotherhood.

(06:49):
It created a bond we had to rely on each other,
to watch each other's backs. We went through the suffering together,
and suffering builds brotherhood, It builds a team. You have
to suffer together. That's exactly what infantry school does. You
suffer together, train together, and then you're taught you're only
as strong as your weakest link. So all those things
were instilled in me.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
And you've been listening to Fernando Arroyo story. He discovers
nine to eleven in his government class, is a high
school senior and immediately knows what he wants to do,
jump out of airplanes. When we come back. More of
Fernando Arroyo story here on our American Stories.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Here are in our American Stories.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
need to be told. But we can't do it without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give

(07:53):
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American stories and Fernando Arroyo story his book The

(08:16):
Shadow of Death from My Battles in Fallujah, that the
Battle for my Soul is available wherever you get your books.
Let's pick up when we last left off.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
I graduated from infantry school and then it was time
for me to go to airborne school. And it's just
down the road. Somehow, we made it to the hangar
on the airstrip and the airplanes are waiting for us,
and we put on our gear. We get inspected, and
once everyone's inspected, all right, stand up, and we loaded

(08:50):
up on this C one thirty aircraft and we're packed
in there like sardines. And then when the doors closed,
the thought came, I am not going to be in
this airplane when it lands. And then the command ten
minutes and then command by command to stand up, hook up,
check equipment, sound off for equipment. Check. The door's open,

(09:14):
the side doors on both sides of the sea one thirty.
The air just hits us. The plane is shaky. I
look out the door. I can see tiny little houses
and trees. I'm like, oh no, this is oh this
is gonna be terrible. Then I hear stand by like
oh no, okay, the first jumper's ready. I'm like jumper
number ten, and I'm just I don't even want to

(09:36):
look at this guy that's about to jump. I'm looking
at the boots of the guy in front of me
as the wind is making his pants move side to side,
you know, violently. And then I hear green light go,
and then one by one, everyone's jumping out of the airplane.
And I'm walking forward with my static line, just following
the boots of the guy in front of me. And

(09:56):
then I watch him just disappear into this door, like
out into the sky, get sucked out of this airplane.
And I'm next. I just hand off my static line,
I make a right face turn, and I just run
out this store. Just thrust myself out of this plane.
I feel the one hundred and thirty nine winds just
smack me, and I'm flying in this and I could

(10:16):
see the airplane passing me as I'm jumping out, and
I count one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand,
and then I feel a tug and it's my parachute opening.
Oh thank god, man, it was. I felt a sense
of relief, you know, like that was the fear of
wondering whether my parachute was going to open or not.

(10:38):
That was the scary part. But I did that five times,
and that included nighttime jumps, and I made it into
the Airborne. Then after a short ceremony of getting my
airborne wings pinned on my chest, I loaded on a
bus with my gear and I went to Fort Bragg,
North Carolina. And Fort Bragg, North Carolina is the home

(10:58):
of the Airborne and Special Operations Forces. You have the
eighty second Airborne, you have the Army Green Berets, and
you have the Army's Special Missions Unit, a counter terrorism unit.
They're very elite, be mostly the unit in the world.
I was with the eighty second Airborne and I remember
arriving at my battalion and I'm the new guy. I

(11:19):
had to prove myself. I just had to be on
my best and weird enough. I actually I was offered
a position, for a very privileged position, for a platoon
to be in a reconnaissance team that night, the scalp platoon.
It's the battalion Reconnaissance platoon. And all these guys go
to ranger school. They're snipers. They have the best training

(11:42):
and you know they're the strongest and fastest. That's you know,
they're the best. We were trained to be ghost. We
wore gilly suits, we dressed like trees. We were invisible.
That was our job to go ahead of the twelve
hundred man battalion and teams as small as two two
to six man teams and be unseen, undetected, and gather

(12:04):
intelligence about the enemy to give to the battalion commander
so that he could plan his attacks. That's what I
was strained to do. A few months later, it was
time for my first combat deployment, and my first deployment
was to Fallujah, Iraq after the invasion of Iraq. It
was August of two thousand and three, and we landed

(12:25):
in the Baghdad International Airport. We did submissions in the
Baghdad International Airport, hunting some of Saddam Hussein's captains and
Bath Party Saddam loyalists. But then we were giving orders
that we were going to go into the city that
would later become known as the most dangerous city in
the world, Fallujah. I remember my first combat mission. It

(12:47):
was in Fallujah. It was at nighttime and our mission
was called a movement to contact mission, which basically means
search and destroy. And I'm sitting in the back of
a cargo humvey and I'm looking towards the city at
nighttime with night vision, and I could see these glowing
green and red trace arounds coming up from the city.

(13:09):
The insurgents were in the city, shooting their Ak forty
sevens and machine guns in the air, and they were
challenging us to a fight. We had a military intelligence
team intercepting their radios and cell phones, and they were
saying that when the Americans come in the city tonight,
we're going to kill them, and you know, bring it
on their cowards and all this stuff. And I remember

(13:30):
Captain Kirkpatrick. He said, tell them hold on, We're going
to be right there. And the chaplain said a prayer,
Chaplain Knight. He said, all right, man, gather around now,
Chaplain Knight, former Army Delta of the Special Missions unit
that I said, you know, the mostly the unit in
the world, and he felt the calling to be a chaplain,

(13:52):
so he left the unit to be a chaplain and
he was our chaplain. A Texas guy, big bald, white guy,
just muscular. He was just everybody feared him and he says,
let's pray man, and he says, Lord, protect us against
these savages as we go into combat, and guide our

(14:13):
bullets that they may hit them and take them to
the depths of Hell in your name, Amen, Like okay.
So then we get on this s dirt road. All
of a sudden, all the bullet stopped flying. We knew, okay,
we're being watched. They know we're coming. So we go
into the city and we're driving up and down the
streets looking for a fight, and there's no one. It's

(14:35):
like these guys like cockroaches. When the lights turn on,
they just disappeared. And we're driving up and down the city.
I have my night vision on. I could see every
you know, my infrared laser and everybody's infrared lasers were
aiming at windows and watching rooftops and like, where are
these guys? And then I caught a glimpse of a
guy in an alley with a cell phone, hiding behind
a dumpster in the alley and he's on his cell phone.

(14:57):
And then that's when I heard over the radio, we're
being washed. It's coming. And then I heard two explosions
boom boom, and I felt the blast wave in my
chest and I saw two RPGs glowing red. They flew
over my head, like five feet over my head. These

(15:19):
rockets were meant for me and my friends. And then
it was just an eruption of gunfire. And you see
these green and red trace around, these bullets whizzing past me,
and I could hear the sonic boom of the explosions
as the bullets are flying by me, and it was
like an out of body experience. I just did what

(15:39):
I was trained to do. The training kicked in. I'm
shooting at a muzzle flash from ak's, I'm shooting at windows.
We're taking fire from a two story house. I mean,
there's machine guns going off, and we're driving out of there,
trying to get out of what's called the kill zone.
And then I hear maguire yell and he says, there's
the guy running. As he's reloading his anade launcher, he says,

(16:01):
there's a guy running. And I see this guy running,
and I aimed right for his chest. I put my
infrared laser on his chest, tracking him, and I must
have shot him five times, and I watched my bullets
enter and exit his body and he fell into the
swamp and disappeared, and then I heard click, I'm changing mags,
I reload, I come back up to shoot Ceasepire, Ceasepire.

(16:24):
It was over. This was so fast. There was something
bothering me, and I was thinking, like what bothered me?
And I remember shooting that guy and I thought, well,
you know, I mean, if he hadn't shot at me,
I wouldn't have shot him. So it wasn't bothering me that,
you know, I killed a guy, I killed a human being.

(16:46):
What scared me, rather, I think it was it scared
me was how easy it was for me to do it.
It kind of made me wonder who I am. You know,
I just kind of like the thoughts of of who
I am? What kind of person am I? You know,
I'm nineteen years old, fresh out of this small city,
grew up in bell Garden, sleeping on the living room floor.

(17:07):
This is my first time leaving the country. I'm learning
who I am and I'm learning things about myself I
didn't know.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
And you're listening to Fernando Arroyo tell his story, and
what a story it is. From high school watching nine
to eleven and the towers fall to joining while Joining
the eighty second Airborne and within months finds himself in Fallujah,
indeed one of the most dangerous places in the world,
and in battle, and he has his first kill, and

(17:38):
now he's got to live with himself, and he's wondering
what kind of a man he is and what kind
of a man he'll become as more of this comes
his way. When we come back more of Fernando Arroyo's
story here on our American Stories. And we returned to

(18:09):
our American Stories, we last learned about US Army paratrooper
Fernando Arroyo, the nineteen year old Bell Gardens, California native,
having to shoot an Iraqi insurgent well out on his
first mission. Let's return to Fernando.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
That deployment, I would get in several more gunfights, and
I would experience several IEDs and near death encounters and
see the horrors of war. I made it through that deployment.
I came back from Fallujah and I got home for
the two week vacation and I'm sitting in my living

(18:47):
room watching TV. And it was garbage day and behind
my house was an alley and there's a dumpster in
the alley and I'm sitting with my mom and my brother.
I don't think my dad was there. You know, we're
just enjoying family time together watching TV. So the garbage
truck picks a dumpster up and then it shakes it

(19:09):
once it gets up top right to get all the
trash out. Well, when it shook, it was like an explosion, right, boom,
boom boom. I yelled in coming, get down, and I
dove to my living room floor and I said, get down,
get down, and my family's looking at me, and I
started laughing. I said, oh, my bad. Yeah, I'm back,

(19:30):
no problems, hahaha. It's funny. And I got up, sat down,
and my mom's crying. She's like, miho, are you okay.
I said, yeah, Mom, I'm okay, I'm okay. Two weeks past,
I'm back in North Carolina and I'm doing training. And
it was between Iraq and Afghanistan for me during those

(19:52):
that time that I went to Army Ranger School. So
first before you go to that hell, you gotta to
pre Hell, which is pre Ranger. Out of the fifty
guys that went, fifteen of us made it. Then I
went to ranger school. The big leagues and I made
it past the first phase. I passed the land navigation part.

(20:14):
I made it past the Darby phase the first phase.
Then I went to the Mountain phase of Ranger School
and Delanaga Georgia, and I failed Delanaga Georgia, so I
was a recycle. So I had to wait a week
for the next class. And during that week, we eat
three meals a day. But we're so hungry because we've
been eating only one meal a day for so long
that three meals a day is not enough. So at

(20:36):
night we would sneak out and go dumpster diving, and
we'd eat out of dumpsters and man, like, you can
find some good stuff in those dumpsters, especially the one
behind the chowel haul. It's like, wow, they're throwing out
perfectly good cake. So I finally I breathed the mountain phase.
Then I went to Florida for the Jungle phase. I passed,

(20:56):
and yeah, all right, I earned my Ranger tap. I
felt so good, and then I got hit with a
letter saying that I've been stop loss. The Army said,
anyone getting out after June of six is not getting
out of the army. You are hereby stop loss. Stop loss.
The army cannot afford to lose you. We need enough

(21:17):
soldiers to be combat effective, So you're going to Iraq
for a year. I told this to my girlfriend, who thought,
you know, I was going to get out and we
were going to be together, and she was upset just
as I was. But then she said, you know what,
I can't wait for you. I can't do this, and

(21:39):
she broke my heart. So by this point I started
off my relation my army service, praying to God, going
to church, and I hadn't done that in a while.
Like I just God wasn't on the top of my
list of things of people I wanted to talk to
or have a relationship with. And I remember I had

(22:01):
no one else to be angry at but God. I
just blamed God, like this is your fault. If God
is in control of all things, then you're the one
that's keeping me in the army. You're the reason my
girlfriend just dumped me. You know, I was just mad,
and I remember going to war and thinking I'm gonna die.
So that one year deployment was to Beiji Iraq, and
it turned into a fifteen month deployment and I lost

(22:23):
a lot of friends. I remember my buddies, Miller and Garrard.
One night they went out on a counter ied mission.
We were living at an oil refinery for days at
a time and carrying out missions from the Beiji Oil Refinery.
Missions to conduct counter ied missions, kill or capture missions
where we would go into people's houses at night, you

(22:45):
know these bad guys. We use cell phones and other
intelligence means of finding bad guys and snatching them out
of their beds at night, which was really fun. And yeah,
going into a house at night and they're like, there
you are the guy. We have a picture of him,
this is his name. He's making bombs And there he is,
sound asleep, and I just zip tie him slowly, turn

(23:08):
him around on his stomach, zip tie his hands behind
his back, and then I would shake him wake up
and they'd wake up and oh, no, America is here,
like hey, we got you, you know. So that was fun.
War is fun until somebody gets hurt. And that night
Miller and Gerard were blown up. Before we went out

(23:32):
on missions, we always said, I love you, stay safe
because you just never knew what was gonna happen. And
I had told them that that night before they went
out and I said, I love you, stay safe, And
now they were being loaded on a helicopter and I
didn't know if they were going to live because they
lost so much blood. Miller did end up flatlining, but
the medics brought him back. Garard he was fine, so

(23:57):
they both survived. But I didn't know that right, Like
I didn't know. They got on the helicopter and left,
and that was it, and I was filled with rage
and anger, and again I blamed God that deployment. I
lost several friends. We even had a chechen and sniper
hunting us, and he was getting headshots. We were hunting
bad guys that they were hunting us. Fifteen months in combat,

(24:24):
I come back about a month and a half later.
I'm a college student at Crito's Community College. My body
was here, my mind was in Iraq. I couldn't go
anywhere without a gun. Going shopping at the mall was hell.
I would plan my visits. What do I need? I
need pants and shirts? Cool. I'm gonna like I had

(24:45):
a map of the mall. This is where the store is.
I'm gonna come in this way. Park here, I'm gonna
go in this door, make a right. I'm gonna pick
two pairs of pants, two shorts, and I gotta get
out of there. I remember being in like the dressing,
you know, trying on clothes and sweating because I'm just
like I'm taking too long, like if the enemy's gonna

(25:06):
find me here, and like, you know, I need to
hurry up and get out of there. That's like my
I don't know, it was weird, you know. About three
years after I got out, it got at its all
time worse. I finished my bachelor's degree at UC Irvine
in criminology, hoping that I would be in law enforcement.
No law enforcement agency hired me. I applied for several

(25:28):
government jobs, all of them rejected me. The only job
I would get was working at a wholesale a warehouse.
I don't know why she said their name, but I'm
a shopping cart collector. That's what I was doing. I
had combat experience, leadership skills, Army ranger school under my bell,

(25:48):
a bachelor's degree from one of the top universities in
the country, and I'm collecting shopping carts in the army.
I had a mission. I had a brother. I lost
that I was going to church, but I was like
sitting in the back of church with a hangover. I
had no purpose. I felt like I failled it life.

(26:12):
I thought, you know what, I'm twenty six years old
at the time, twenty six, twenty seven. I lived a
good life. Twenty two veterans commit suicide every day, and
that's the statistic. I was about to become one of them.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
And you're listening to Fernando Arroyo share his darkest days
with you, with all of us. He comes back from Iraq.
He's in junior college and even a trip to a mall, well,
he can't do it like the rest of us can.
He's left Iraq, but Iraq it hasn't left him. He
finishes at Calvine, I can't get that job as a cup,

(26:52):
ends up collecting shopping carts. He's lost his mission. He's
a man without a purpose, and twenty two vets commit
suicide every day, and he's thinking, well, he just might
be the next. When we come back, more of the
story of Fernando Arroyo's service and his life after service
here on our American Stories, and we continue with our

(27:39):
American stories and with Fernando Arroyo's story. After years of
combat experience in the US Army, graduating from both Rangers
School and the University of California, Irvine with a criminology degree.
Fernando Arroyo failed to get a job of the police
agency or with the federal government. Instead, he was collecting

(27:59):
shopping carts at a local grocery store. Let's return to
Fernando's story.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
One day, I just had a miserable day. You know,
I'm collecting shopping carts in the sun, Like what am
I doing. I remember going home and just going to
my studio apartment and I was just drinking and drinking.

(28:29):
Close the blinds. I'm in the dark. I passed out
and I had another nightmare. By this point, I was
so afraid. I didn't want to sleep because the nightmares
were so real. I wake up and like just soaked
in sweat with a gun in my hand. I went
to the fridge. I grabbed a beer and then I

(28:51):
closed my eyes as tears are rolling down my cheeks.
My hands are shaking, and I hear the click. I
took the safety off, and I remember my mind with
a pistol in my mouth. I said, God, if you're there,
save me. There was no response, and when I put

(29:12):
my thumb on the trigger and I slowly started to squeeze.
I heard a boom and I opened my eyes and
I dropped the gun and I checked my head. There's
no hole. There's no blood. I looked around, there's no blood.
In my studio. I had a desk to the right
of my couch and on that desk was my Bible.

(29:34):
That bible just flew off and hit the floor, and
that's the explosion. I heard the bang that I heard,
and I remember I just fell on my knees and
I said, I need help. I need help. I pray
to God. I said, I need help. I'm tired of
living like this. And then the next day, my buddy

(29:59):
Louis I knew him from high school. He also served
in the army and now he's working for the VA
and his job was to get veterans connected to help.
And he kept calling me like months ago, like every yeah.
He was just he was starting to piss me off.
He was bothering me, like why you keep calling me.
He's like, dude, you need to go to the VA.
You need to talk to a psychologist. I said, no,

(30:19):
I don't, no, I don't. He's like, look, man, I
know what you did. You're not right, like, I know
you're not. I'm fine, I'm fine. You know, I didn't
share this with anyone. I didn't tell anyone was having nightmares.
I didn't, you know, not even at church. I didn't
tell anyone about this. So finally he's like, he calls me.

(30:39):
He says, come on, I want to I'll pick you up.
I'll buy you breakfast. I said, you know what you
had me at breakfast. So so next thing I know,
I'm at a mental health clinic in East LA and
they give me a packet to fill out. I'm going
to talk to a clinical social worker named Bob. So
I felt, you know this this sheet, this questionnaire. It's like,

(31:02):
have you been to combat, have you shot anyone? Did
any of your friends die? You know, all these questions
and I lied no, no, no, no, no. Are you
having nightmares? Nope? Do you drink alcohol? Yeah? About how
many drinks do you have just a couple on the weekend.
So I submit this packet and then out comes Bob

(31:25):
with the packet and he's like, Fernando, Hi, I'm Bob, Like,
come on, let's go to my office, Like okay, and
he says, well, look, according to your answers. You don't
need us, You're good, I said, great, Can I leave?
He's like, no, no, no, this is the thing I
don't understand, Fernando. And he pulls out my military records

(31:48):
and he says, you went to Iraq twice, Afghanistan once
you were a paratrooper, airborne infantry. You graduated Army Army
Ranger School, you earned the Combat Infantryman's Badge, which means
you are engaged in combat with the enemy. Your military
history does not match your answers. Bottom line. I think

(32:10):
you're full of it, he said, Fernando. I'm here to
help you. I'm here to help you, he said, I remember,
he said, even if you've committed murder, what you say
stays between us. I'm here to help you. And he's
looking at me, and it's just this awkward silence. He
can tell that. The hamster was running in my brain,

(32:31):
like what do I do? Do I leave or do
I stay? And I looked at him and I said,
what do you want to know? And then he said
how many times did you go to war? I said
three times? Did you ever shoot anyone? Yes? Were you
ever shot at yes? Or any of your friends killed? Yes,

(32:54):
are you having nightmares? Yes? About how many hours of
sleep do you get each other? Two to three? Do
you drink alcohol? Yes? How many drinks did you have
Friday night? About thirty six? Who were you with alone?

(33:16):
How many drinks did you have Saturday? The same? Who
were you with alone? He said, you need help? And
I broke down. For the next year, I met with
Bob every week and I would just share everything I

(33:38):
was struggling with, and he gave me perspective. I was
holding myself to the American standard I call it where
what I did in war was horrible, and what I
saw was horrible, but it was a necessary evil. What
I believe we did as American troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan is keep terrorists out of our country. We fought

(34:01):
them out of here so that everyone here would be safe.
We kept America free of another ninety eleven for over
twenty some years. That's what we've done. But when I
came here, I was applying the moral standards of this
country and living here to what I did in war.
And I thought that if I shared what I did

(34:23):
in combat, people would think that I am an animal.
People would reject me. My church would reject me, so
I didn't share with anyone. But it turned out that
was a lie. It was a lie. And as I
started to share with Bob, then I started to share
with others and I found how accepted I was and

(34:46):
how I'm not the only one who's suffering. So I thought, Okay,
this law enforcement thing didn't work. God, you know what
I'm going through, you know how I'm suffering. Heal me, Lord,
help me to heal. And he did. He got me,
you know, into a nice church community. And well, at
my church, the pastor he kept getting sick and I

(35:08):
had to cover for him. It was a small church,
like fifty people, and everyone just you know, they looked
at me to cover to start preaching. I'm like, I'm
going to preach, like what? So I would preach and uh,
I mean it was more complicated than that. But I thought,
you know what, maybe I should go to seminary. The
trauma I went through and the care that I received,

(35:28):
now I wanted to turn around and offer that care
to others. So I went to seminary at Biola University
for to earn my Master in Divinity in Pastoral Care
and Counseling, and I found a veteran community there and
we would talk and you know, just we bonded as
vets and shared our struggles. And I found myself with

(35:50):
veterans helping veterans, and I felt like that was my calling.
When I graduated from seminary, my buddy was working at
the Orange County Rescue Mission and he said, hey, we
need a veterans case manager, which is a pastoral counselor
for veterans coming out of homelessness. So I was doing
that for a few years, and then recently I started

(36:11):
working at Step Forward Academy, where I work with veterans
at the Step Forward Academy and I say, look, you're
a veteran. You have a job, but let's get you
a career. Maybe the job you have you're working in
and you're you know, it's a nine to five. It
pays the bills, But you can be doing something that
pays you even more and is more in line with
your skills and abilities. And that's awesome. To be able

(36:34):
to help veterans better their lives, to find their calling
and their career, and to provide for their families. That's
what I do now. I'm also involved at Mariner's Church
in the city of Tustin, and I've met veterans there
and I lead to men's groups. I'm really big on community.
I'm really big on mentorship and coaching, and that's what

(36:56):
I do now. I got out of the army. I
kind of had an idea of what I wanted to do,
but of course God had a plan, and his plan
superseded mine. And he brought me to my lowest point,
the lowest point in my life, and he saved me
so that now he can use me to save others.
And that's what I do.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
And a great job on the storytelling and production by
Craig Engler, and a special thanks to Fernando Arroyo whose
book The Shadow of Death from My Battles in Fallujah
to the Battle for My Soul. It's available wherever you
get your books.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
And what a scene.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
He set in that room, afraid to sleep, and the
nightmares were so real. A large loud sound that he
thought was the gun going off, but it was a
Bible dropping on the floor. Incomes an angel, and that's
a buddy of his who kept telling him he needed help.
And then another angel, that man in the intake center

(37:55):
who told Fernando he was full of it. In the end,
this began a new life. As Fernando put it, God
saved me so I could save others. The story of
Fernando Arroyo here on our American Stories

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