UNBREAKABLE

War is

West of Kandahar, Afghanistan, during his second deployment in 2010, Capt. Hendon’s company saw regular combat. It was ugly.

“In my battalion, 18 men left 27 limbs in the valley. There were IED fights, gun battles, several times a week.”

But it was the waiting, all the while thinking, “I might die today,” that really tormented the soldiers psychologically.

“You’re thinking, ‘Shit, I wish it would just happen.’ There is this constant buildup of anxiety. When you fight, at least that is a release.”

Hendon was drawn to the military experience as a youngster.

“Texas boys like to play shoot ‘em up,” he says. “But for me, it didn’t go away when I got older.”

WWII veterans were his heroes.

“My grandfather, he died before I got to know him, but he fought in WWII and Korea. My grandmother worked a civilian administrative job for the Special Forces schoolhouse. They were part of the Greatest Generation.”

Hendon insists his trials don’t match up to those of his predecessors.

“I’ve seen two [air quotes] combat deployments. But could I ride a boat up to Omaha Beach and get off? I don’t know if I have the cojones to do what 40,000 of them did,” Hendon says. “When one of those WWII vets says he’s proud of you, that’s like Stephen Hawking calling you smart.”

Early on, the military attracted his competitive spirit.

“I always saw it like sports — I like a challenge, doing what others won’t do because it’s too hard.”

Terrorists hit New York City’s Twin Towers during his junior year at Lake Highlands High School. His mom was a flight attendant, he says, and the incident frightened and angered him and made him want to “go start shooting terrorists.”

As a student at the United States Military Academy, he says, he began to see a more holistic view of what it meant to serve.

Being cut from the football team at the academy nearly derailed everything, Hendon recalls. He considered transferring to Texas Christian University, where he might continue his collegiate sports career.

“That was when I really had to think about what I wanted to do. Ask myself, why did you come here? To play football or to serve? You either want to serve or you don’t,” he says, “and I did.”

With the free time previously dedicated to football, he joined the Combat Weapons Team and became a competitive shooter.

He graduated in 2007 and deployed to an area near Sadr City, Baghdad in 2008. It looked nothing like the war movies of his youth.

He led a platoon charged with polic- ing a neighborhood, trying to maintain relationships and prevent crimes. “And you drove around all day hoping you didn’t hit an EFP.” Explosively formed projectiles, warheads (supplied by Iran) designed to penetrate armored vehicles, peppered the area. “A guy in our platoon was killed by one right before I got there,” Hendon says.

The patrols — through disconcerting terrain, past bombed-out businesses and raw sewage in the streets — represented “a new way of fighting” in Hendon’s mind.

He did not like it. But, he says he typically followed his orders and tried to be a good leader to the 19- and 20-year-olds in his charge.

“Combat is the kind of thing everyone wants until they get it,” he adds.

Eventually, he got it. It was mid-summer when he deployed that second time to the Arghandab River Valley, an area north and west of Kandahar city known as the Taliban’s birthplace, Hendon says. “This place was a sanctuary for the Taliban.” Despite the rampant fighting, the hours in wait still tortured him.

“Even with regular firefights, you’re spending 98 percent of your time playing XBOX, being bored and trying not to think about it. It’s like 2 percent terror and adrenaline.”

Though he endured steady violence, knew men who lost multiple limbs and others who accidentally detonated devices that blew up their friends, Hendon managed to survive and not lose anyone in his platoon.

Is it possible for service men and women to return home and lead a normal life after months and years of physical and mental turmoil? The experience of war has a profound effect, Hendon says. But he believes that in many cases, war-related PTSD and mental illness is “a preventable disease.”

Preparation, he explains, is one deterrent.

“I studied trauma beforehand. I knew what I was going to see and experience, to some extent. That made it easier to deal with.” Purpose, outside military service, is also key.

“A squad leader from my company took his life last Thanksgiving,” Hendon says. “I think a huge reason veterans are killing themselves is a loss of purpose. It is easy to get lost in patriotism and put everything into the military. Then the moment you leave — no purpose.”

Today Hendon serves on the board of the nonprofit Legacies Alive, which supports families of fallen veterans and ensures that those who died are remembered. The biggest fear of those who have lost loved ones is that they will be forgotten, he says. Hendon advocates for families who are trying to build memorials or somehow commemorate the departed.

“We’ve lost 7,000 in the war on terror, and the idea is that every one of these people matter enough to be remembered forever.”