He radioed for help and began to carry what was left of his friend across the Arghandab River. That’s when the next bomb went off. Platoni was there when a Black Hawk helicopter brought the remains back. Body parts were blown into so many pieces, she said, they had to be swept out of the helicopter.
These days, when Platoni speaks to her own therapist, she mostly talks about her mother’s death. Because she’s already told him about Fort Hood.
About a smoky room and 214 rounds of gunfire. About floors slippery with blood. About a pregnant woman begging for her unborn child’s life. About her assignment to be the shooter’s direct supervisor when deployed to Afghanistan. About her colleague who died rushing the gunman with a chair.
About the FBI and witness statements. About the people she saw yelling and vomiting and crying and breaking things. About the morning after. About roll call, where commanders read names alphabetically.
About how if a name was repeated three times, it meant that person was dead.
Platoni wears a bracelet on her wrist honoring the five people from her team who died at Fort Hood. She only takes it off for airport security. And when she dies, she’ll be buried in it.
For years, Platoni has advocated for Fort Hood victims and their families to receive Purple Hearts and access to the benefits that come with those prestigious medals. A few years ago, I called her for a story about a local soldier injured during the shooting in Killeen, Texas. This soldier didn’t receive the help he needed back home, and this soldier killed himself in 2013.
At the time, Platoni told me, at least four service members who were at Fort Hood that day and three members of their families had killed themselves.
“There will be more,” she said.
In September, I met Platoni in her office warmed by space heaters. In one framed picture of Fort Hood, Platoni hugged a nurse who used underwear as a tourniquet to treat the wounded. In the living room, she printed out a news article and handed it to me.
The story described a letter written by the Fort Hood shooter, a man now awaiting execution in a Kansas prison. In this printout, a white box covered the man’s face in a photo below the headline:
Fort Hood shooter congratulates Taliban from death row
“We have won,” the shooter wrote.
A punch to the stomach does not accurately describe what it felt like reading that. Platoni almost threw up. She chose to go to Afghanistan after witnessing such horror for one reason: She believed it was the shooter’s mission to stop their mission.
And she would not be stopped.
Even today, at 69 years old, she makes a guttural sound when asked if she would go back to war.
“Hell yeah,” she says. “Where’s my bag?”
…
Platoni has spent the last few weeks crying on her drive into work.
Today, as with most days, she's been up since 4 a.m. It’s a cold morning the day before the 12th anniversary of the Fort Hood shooting. Platoni checks email in her office before a session with her therapist. The door is locked.
I had asked her husband how long she can keep this up.
“I don’t know,” he said, before a long pause.
“As long as she can,” he said eventually.
Sitting in her own waiting room on plastic couch covers, Platoni holds a cellphone in her hand. She usually paces during these sessions because she has trouble sitting still.
Platoni tells her therapist about letters addressed to 91 members of Congress, all the ones who served in the military. The letters detail how the government’s handling of Fort Hood hurt veterans like her. The letters are written, but she hasn’t mailed them. She doesn’t know if she will.
“I don’t know if I can face another failure,” she says.
After therapy, she plays a video on her computer from one of the units she embedded with. Helicopters fire down into the ground and grenades explode. Soldiers yell.
“Welcome to hell,” she says.
“I wish I could go back.”
Toward the end of the video, there is a memorial set to the song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Platoni looks like she might cry. More than the soldiers who died, she is thinking about the ones who survived.
Looking through old war photos, she comes across a picture of Capt. John Gaffaney , the man who died in front of her. The man she couldn’t save. After a moment, she looks away.
The anger. The paranoia. It’s all still there , more than a decade later. It always will be.
Platoni tells me this, and she tells me about memorial services. About guns in boots and then going back to work in the desert. She tells me about desert life.
Desert life is using plastic bags for toilets and tossing those bags onto burning piles of feces. Desert life is breathing airborne fecal matter for months. Desert life is military life, and it’s surviving on stale Cheerios and Fruit Loops because mealtime is interrupted by mortar fire. Desert life is a body bag filled with a young boy only a few months removed from high school graduation. Desert life is a mountainous landscape of tanks blown up and reduced to the size of banquet tables.
Desert life is dreaming of a shower once every six weeks. Desert life is thinking about killing yourself. Desert life is sleeping with a loaded gun closer to your head than a pillow. Desert life is an alarm clock of gunfire.
Desert life is realizing it’s actually the silence that scares you most.
Even though American troops have withdrawn from Afghanistan, Platoni tells me it feels like she’s back at war. She tells me she feels betrayed. She tells me she worries about another 9/11.
She tells me this. She can’t believe she’s telling me this. She tells me the Fort Hood shooter was right.
The Taliban won.
…
If you are depressed or having suicidal thoughts, help is available. Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7, confidential support via text by messaging 741741. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 800-273-8255.
