Brian Redmond was 18 years old when the world changed. He joined the Army in August 2000 as an Automated Logistical Specialist (92A), stationed in Germany with the 123rd Main Support Battalion, when September 11th hit and everything shifted.
“I was in Germany at work, and I had no idea life was going to change,” he recalls. “Everything was locked down, and we were on patrol in the streets of Germany having no clue what was going on. I was more concerned about my family back home in Jersey.”
What started as a way to avoid college debt and gain discipline became something else after 9/11. “Never would have thought going into the military that I’d be going to war,” he says. “I figured I’d take the military route, get discipline, then go back to school.” The attacks, he says, shifted his mindset: you are in the military, not knowing what will come.
The deeper impact of that day would resurface years later in ways he couldn’t predict. “I signed up to fight for a country that doesn’t love me,” Redmond reflects. The weight of that realization would complicate his understanding of service, sacrifice, and belonging in ways that wouldn’t fully manifest until he returned home.
The Reality of War
Redmond deployed to Iraq twice during his nine-year career. The first deployment came with a harsh education about the reality of combat. His unit was tasked with convoy operations – delivering fuel, water, and supplies beyond the wire where IEDs lined the routes and everyone knew convoys would be targets.
Then reality hit in the most brutal way possible.
“We ended up losing a soldier,” Redmond says quietly. “That kind of shifted the mindset also – losing someone who I worked with, who I saw on a daily basis. Reality kind of sets in that this is the real deal.”
The soldier was killed when an IED went off during a convoy mission. Shrapnel struck him in the back of the neck, an area not covered by the body armor they’d been issued. “We hadn’t been instructed how to wear the plates correctly,” Redmond explains.
The loss hit everyone hard. “It put everyone on edge because again, here we are, and no one really knows what we’re supposed to be wearing. We need to figure out what we’re supposed to be doing out here and how we’re supposed to be doing it.”
Redmond was 19 years old, watching a fellow soldier die was the furthest thought from his mind. “Most of us were still babies, between 18 to 19 years old, being in Iraq, not knowing what’s going to happen. You don’t think about war when you’re not thinking about war.”
Living in Survival Mode
You’re only required four hours of sleep. There were times we were up for 30 hours straight. You’re pulling guard, working all day, and pulling guard all night, and still have to be alert and vigilant because the mission comes first. Yeah, you’re allotted four hours, but that doesn’t mean four consecutive hours. You see things that aren’t there when you’re up all night. So pulling guard the second time, watching over a bridge that separated U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi people in the wee hours are there. You think you see people but you don’t. You’re just tired. Because of the weariness of the day, you begin to be delusional.
The psychological impact of losing that soldier changed how Redmond approached everything in Iraq. On his second deployment, he found himself in a situation that crystallized the mental shift combat creates.
“I was on convoy, and we were leaving Tikrit,” he recalls. “A boy, maybe 10 or 11, was walking toward me shaking a plastic bottle with rocks inside. I’m pointing my weapon at him saying ‘Put it down, put it down,’ because I don’t know if that’s going to trigger an IED or signal for an attack.”
The child might have just been playing, entertaining himself with rocks in a bottle. “But I had my weapon trained on a 10-year-old child,” Redmond says. “After what happened to that young man we lost, I was prepared to take the life of a child who was holding what might have been a bottle of water.”
The conditioning was complete. “In your mind, you were terrified of a ten-year-old child,” he acknowledges. “You were prepared because you don’t know – they’re willing to sacrifice for what they believe, and this is what you have to do.”
The Relentless Pace of War
What civilians rarely understand is how the military machine operates without regard for human psychological limits. After completing his first deployment, Redmond thought he’d have time to process what he’d experienced. Instead, he learned that in military life, mission requirements override personal recovery.
“When I returned from my first deployment, I got stationed in Texas. I went home and was on leave, but when I got to Texas, they said ‘Yeah, you’re going on deployment.’ I was home in September, and deployed again in November. Your unit is already out there.”
The rapid turnaround gave him no time to mentally prepare for another combat deployment. “I just needed to get my mind wrapped around being there. Can I just have time to recoup from my experience?” But the military operates on operational timelines, not individual healing schedules.
When he tried to address his concerns, the response was predictably institutional. “I went to leadership and they said they didn’t care. I was on the manifest – that’s the list of soldiers who were deploying.”
Even spiritual support followed military protocol. “The chaplain asked if I was suicidal and I wasn’t.” But the question revealed the military’s limited framework for addressing psychological strain – crisis intervention rather than preventive care or processing support.
The Sacrifice No One Talks About
After nine years, Redmond reached his breaking point. “Leadership was shifting, the way things were being done was shifting. I felt like I gave them enough time, and it was time to take care of myself.”
He understood something fundamental about military service that civilians rarely grasp: “The military is good to you, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to know when to hold them and when to fold them. You’re a body – if something happens, there’s a new person that’s going to enlist, and your job will be their job.”
When I ask him what he sacrificed for his service, his answer comes without hesitation.
“You sacrifice yourself. You sacrifice your life, your family. You sacrifice love. You miss out on loved ones passing away and you can’t be there to grieve. You can’t be there if you’re on deployment and your child graduates.”
The impact on family relationships runs deeper than missed events. “Your children grow up and they may not understand it in that moment. They may understand later that dad had to sacrifice because they were called to put their lives on the line so that others had the freedom to do what they do. But in the meantime, dad couldn’t be here, mom couldn’t be here.”
The conditioning begins in basic training and never stops. “Mission comes first. That was our motto. No matter what you had going on, we had to go. You sacrifice family, you sacrifice identity. The job demands being away, and then you come home and you want to relax, but the people waiting for you don’t really know you.”
When Family Becomes Strangers
The psychological distance that military service creates shows up in unexpected places. Redmond recalls his wife finally having the opportunity to pick up her own children from daycare while he was at work, only to have the staff tell her, “We know the kids and dad, but we don’t know you.”
“This is what the military does,” he explains. “Mission comes first. So despite what she had going on personally, she had a job to do which kept her away.”
The conditioning runs so deep it affects basic human responses. “In the military, you can’t cry. They say there’s no crying in the military. You can’t cry. So how do you show emotion when you’re in an environment where it’s frowned upon?”
This creates a fundamental disconnect between military and civilian emotional processing. “In survival mode, emotions don’t necessarily dictate survival. Survival is ‘I gotta get this done.’ So whatever I have to sacrifice in order for me to be okay, I have to sacrifice that. If you’re sitting in your emotions and for me to be okay, I’m willing to sacrifice how you feel.”
The Conditioning That Never Ends
Military training creates what Redmond calls a “heartless” mentality designed for survival. “Military, you are trained to kind of deal with certain situations. So in a sense, the military can kind of make you heartless because things happen. And so you have to get over it.”
The pace of military operations leaves no room for processing loss. “You can’t really dwell on certain things because something has to get done. Tomorrow is something new. When you talk about wartime and something doesn’t go right, we can’t sit here and cry about it because your life is on the line, so we don’t have time to sit and cry because tomorrow is another mission.”
This conditioning becomes deeply embedded. You don’t have time to grieve. There is a ceremony and a song, but the moment it ends the mission still has to go on.
The Hidden Triggers of Civilian Life
Years after leaving service, Redmond discovered that the emotional wounds of military service could surface in unexpected ways. The psychological conditioning that helped him survive in Iraq created complications he didn’t anticipate in civilian relationships.
“I was dating a Muslim woman, and that took me back to 9/11, where it was deemed that Muslims caused the attack,” he explains. “During my time of service, how emotions were still heightened. Certain situations brought deep issues.” The relationship forced him to confront the ways military conditioning had shaped his responses to entire groups of people.
These experiences taught him that healing isn’t linear, and that the psychological impact of service extends into areas of life that seem unrelated to military experience. “Reading my own story, I was like man, I understand, I see.”
Recognizing the Broader Crisis
Redmond’s awareness of how military conditioning affects veterans became more acute through an encounter at the VA in Charlotte. “There was a guy in Charlotte who had PTSD real bad, that he killed his girlfriend. He served time here in Charlotte. Last year, I was at the VA and saw him and realized he was a humble guy trying to get benefits.”
The encounter was jarring in its ordinariness. Here was someone who had committed an unthinkable act, yet in the VA waiting room, he appeared as any other veteran seeking help. “I realized that during his time of service, emotions were still heightened. Certain situations brought deep issues.”
The experience forced Redmond to confront uncomfortable truths about how military service fundamentally changes people. “You were never a violent person, and then you come home and things are out of whack, and people think you’re crazy because you may have seen things, and this is why I’m the way I am. And you’re sitting behind bars thinking that this isn’t who you would’ve become had you not joined the military.”
It’s a sobering recognition of cause and effect without excusing consequences. “It doesn’t exonerate you for what happened. But people can understand why they are the way they are after they joined the military.”
The experience reinforced Redmond’s understanding that military conditioning creates vulnerabilities that don’t disappear with discharge papers. “I’m aware that people are mentally disordered. And they need help. I don’t condone anyone who doesn’t seek help and they’re dysfunctional in their relationship with others, including themselves.”
The Toll on Relationships
The impact of this conditioning becomes most apparent in intimate relationships. Military training teaches soldiers to move through loss quickly, to not dwell on grief, to always be ready for the next mission.
This carries over into civilian relationships in devastating ways. “When a relationship is over, tomorrow’s another day. What are you doing tomorrow? You still have life. You still have things that need to happen.”
The emotional disconnect becomes almost mechanical. “I’m used to picking up and moving. I’m used to temporarily being in situations and then things change. Military-wise, things change without your input. We don’t want to go here, we got to go here. So you’re good at adjusting as you go along.”
When orders come, soldiers go – regardless of birthdays, anniversaries, or family needs. “I can’t tell my family, ‘Hey, I got a deployment and I can’t go.’ They’re like, ‘We don’t want you to go.’ Well, I got to go.”
This conditioning makes long-term emotional investment feel risky. “You’ve already gone through loss and you can handle loss. Being careless, you basically sabotage relationships because you don’t want that feeling of loss again.”
The Hypervigilance That Follows
Even years after leaving service, the psychological conditioning remains. Redmond still deals with hypervigilance that makes civilian life challenging.
“There’s certain things that come with it – large crowds, always being on alert when driving and aware of my surroundings. I don’t like not knowing where I am, not being comfortable with a person walking behind me.”
The triggers can be unexpected and intense. “The last time it really was triggered was during the Keith Scott incident with all the helicopters and commotion. I was like, ‘I just want this to be over with. I’ve heard this before.'”
The nightmares have faded, but the fundamental change in how he processes the world remains. Military service rewired his brain for survival in ways that don’t easily translate to civilian life.
Finding Pathways to Healing
Despite the challenges, Redmond has found ways to manage the psychological aftermath of service that don’t rely solely on traditional medical approaches. His perspective on healing is both practical and spiritual.
“Spirituality played a major role. I’m grateful that I have praying parents, and grateful to know how to pray, and having the belief that God hears my prayers. My design was the experience to have the conversation with someone else who’ve gone through and cope with what I went through.”
He emphasizes multiple approaches to mental health: “There are things that can take your mind away, take your mind off of it that gives you peace. Walking, going to the gym, writing and eating… drink some tea or holistic treatment because pharmaceuticals don’t always work. Some of that medication does more harm than it does good.”
The daily practice of survival itself has become a form of victory. “Life seems tougher, and every day you open your eyes, you’re still winning because you’re still here.”
The Responsibility to Seek Help
While understanding the challenges veterans face, Redmond maintains clear boundaries about personal responsibility for getting help. “The saddest thing is that some people are okay being not okay. I’m not saying that it’s not okay to not be okay. Don’t get me wrong. But if you’re not okay to where you’re a danger to yourself and others, it’s not okay.”
His encounter with the veteran who had killed his girlfriend reinforced this perspective. Understanding someone’s pain doesn’t excuse destructive behavior, and seeking help becomes a responsibility not just to oneself but to the community.
Living Conditions Most Can’t Imagine
Part of what civilians don’t understand about military service is the basic living conditions that become normalized during deployment. Redmond recalls realities that sound unimaginable to those who’ve never served.
“There were only certain days that we could take showers. Taking showers was a privilege you took for granted – a bottle of water that sat out in 110-to-120-degree weather. You’re standing on a pallet with no walls, nothing covering you, washing yourself with a bottle of water and some soap.”
Basic sanitation was primitive. “Using burn pits for human waste because we had no working latrines. We had to wash clothes with a bucket, a bar of Ivory soap, and some water because we had no laundry units.”
These conditions were temporary, but they illustrate the level of sacrifice and adaptation military service requires. “All of this stuff came later. But yeah, I learned that a bar of Ivory soap would get my clothes clean.”
The Question of Preparation
Looking back, Redmond questions whether anyone was truly prepared for what Iraq would demand. “I don’t think we were fully trained. I think they did the best they could with thinking about the possibilities of what could happen, but there was no way to be fully trained because once we got there, it was a whole different world.”
Some of the senior Non-Commissioned Officers had never been to war, so we were learning combat procedures from people without combat experience. It raised questions none of us could ignore.
This lack of preparation extended to basic equipment use. “We hadn’t been instructed how to wear the body armor correctly. We need to figure out what we’re supposed to be doing out here and how we’re supposed to be doing it.”
The Weight of Memory
When Redmond talks about his deployments, he can still see every detail. “I can go back to that moment, I can see it, I can feel all of these things, but it doesn’t affect me to the point where it removes me from the rest of the world.”
His ability to function despite traumatic memories is something he’s grateful for, knowing that many fellow veterans struggle more severely. “It helps me to share some of these experiences because people have no idea what went on, besides what movies show you. And it’s nowhere near what actually happened.”
His openness about these experiences serves a purpose beyond personal healing – it educates civilians about realities beyond what movies show, which is nowhere near the reality.
Brian Redmond’s candid discussion of military psychological conditioning provides crucial insight into the sacrifices service members make and the challenges they face reintegrating into civilian life.
Resources for Veterans & Mental Health Support
Crisis Support
- Veterans Crisis Line: Dial 988, then press 1 | Text 838255 | veteranscrisisline.net – 24/7 confidential support
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: Dial 988 – Available nationwide for anyone in crisis
Trauma & PTSD Support
- Vet Centers: va.gov/find-locations – Community-based counseling for combat veterans and trauma survivors
- Give an Hour: giveanhour.org – Free mental health services for veterans and families
- National Center for PTSD: ptsd.va.gov – Education and treatment resources
Relationship & Family Support
- Military Family Life Counselors (MFLC): Free, confidential counseling for military families
- Team Red White & Blue: teamrwb.org – Community building and support for veteran social connections
- Military OneSource: militaryonesource.mil – 24/7 support for service members and families
Connect with Brian Redmond:
- Background: Army Logistics Specialist (92A), 9 years service including Iraq deployments
- Current Focus: Acting and creative expression through Big Faith Productions