In April of 2004, Army Ranger Stephen Elliott was deployed with the 2nd Ranger Battalion to Afghanistan.

The objective of Operation Mountain Storm was to kill or capture Osama bin Laden.

On April 22nd, Stephen's squad was attacked by enemy combatants, which resulted in four casualties,

one of whom was former NFL safety, Pat Tillman.

It was told very plainly by all of us what happened and it was concluded very clearly that

it was friendly fire. That was the first time that the possibility that maybe I had fired on

Pat and maybe hit him in, you know, what was practically darkness, had occurred.

That's when the real, for me, the real survivor's guilt started kicking in.

That's when the post-traumatic stress really started kicking in.

That's when the nightmares started kicking in.

That's when I started self-medicating with alcohol.

It was the point when you're pulling a handgun out of your gun safe at home and

just thinking about the fact that this could all be over really easily. Not because I didn't

have things I wanted to live for, but because I didn't know how to rest. I didn't know how

to make it stop. You know, a lot of questions. A lot of questions like, why? Why

did that happen? Why me? Whose fault is it? Is it my fault? Am I solely to blame? Is the

chain of commands fault? Are they to blame? Are we both to blame? How do I deal with the guilt that

I feel for having done what I've done? How do I deal with the shame that I feel for not just having done something potentially that harmful, but am I the thing that I did?

We all have the same need to answer the same question of who am I and why am I and why am I here? And in being here, what do I do with the

fact that I hurt people, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes on purpose, and they hurt me? What do I do

with that? This is part two of a conversation we had with our good friends, Stephen and Brooke

Elliott. Theirs is a story of tragedy, depression, heartache, grace, and redemption.

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