Hello, welcome back to Tales from the Pit. I'm your host, Michael Swaim.

This is your content warning.

This episode concerns military service, a soldier's experiences in Iraq,

and of course the emotional fallout of those events.

So if that might trigger you or you want to take some time with this one

if that's a personal experience that resonates with you,

just know that that's what we're going to dig into today.

Obviously this only represents one soldier's experience and we certainly don't intend to speak for all service members.

Before we get to the interview, I should also say intend to speak for all service members.

Before we get to the interview, I should also say that Christian wrote a beautiful

piece about his experiences in Iraq, which he requested to read at the end of the episode.

So stay tuned at the end for that piece and just know that today's

opening monologue for me is very much a reaction to that piece. That's not something I usually do.

I usually come in with some kind of high premise concept of my own, but this time I was so inspired by what Christian wrote, I decided to just sort of organically respond to it in my own way and I think I decided to do that because

one of the things that's unique about serving in combat is someone who's never done it truly

can't understand what it's like and I think it's fitting

that all I can really do as someone who has never served in the military

is give you my reflection as it were of what I'm hearing from Christian.

So that's what this is. It's a little more free form and performative than you might be used to on this show,

but it's short, so humor me. You're going to be. Coming soon to a theater of war near you, War! The movie or show or what have you.

Warsaw was raw. Why war? What's war? Well, meet will.

Will heeds the call of duty. Modern warfare welcomes will with an open arms race.

...