Seems like a million years ago I did that one live show but I recall at one point discussing Mars in association with depression. I said something like, “Hell yes, Mars is a drug. What do you think adrenaline is?”

Last night the soldier told me about his first time in combat. “Real combat” he said. More than just a few bullets flying around.

“Yeah, I broke my ankle and didn’t realize it for 3 days,” he said. “I was on so much adrenaline… hell, I just didn’t notice that thing was broke.”

“Tell me.”

“Well we were going to jump in and then we were not going to jump in, we were going to land. So we took our chutes off and got ready to land except then we were not going to land because they’d put these junk cars all over the runway… scattered.”

“Smart.”

“Yeah, plus they had anti-aircraft and we weren’t expecting that. They were firing at us so we decided to jump again except for we were going to have to jump at 500 ft or less,” he said.

“Uh huh?”

“Yeah, and that’s low. But the anti-aircraft was up high and if we flew in low they couldn’t angle down and hit us. They wouldn’t be able to shoot the plane but on the other hand you need about 800 ft to jump but we were going at 500 or less… they told us not to put our emergency chutes on because they would be no time to pull them anyway.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, so we jumped and it was fast. Soon as you pulled your chute, you were on the ground. It took like a blink to land and I guess I broke my ankle. We landed right on a runway, no time to do anything to land properly and there I was.”

“What then?”

“Well I looked around and it hadn’t quite dawned on me yet. But I thought I should get rid of my chute so I hit the quick releases and then I saw all these holes in my chute.”

I laughed.

“Yeah, and I thought what the hell is this? That’s when I realized they were shooting at us. Those were bullet holes and at this is when I realized I was in a war.”

“What did you do?”

“Well first I got down. I can’t believe I wasn’t killed standing there the way I was. It was never that easy to kill me again but anyway, once I got down then I could see the bullets hitting the runway all around. They were shooting at us all right. I was in a war for sure.”

“I see. So?”

“So I saw this guy on the ground, he was behind this (forgot the name of the vehicle) but he was firing a machine gun and he was by himself so I ran over to help him. It’s best to have 2 people with a machine gun. One to fire and the other to feed the bullets. So anyway, I started helping him with that and then he quit firing. They quit firing when there is just a few inches of bullets left to you can attach another (whatever it’s called) but he quit firing and there was two feet or more of bullets. I didn’t know why he quit firing but I attached another (whatever he called it) as fast as I could and he still didn’t fire. He had his head down on the machine gun, so I picked his head up and that’s when I saw he had no face. His face was completely gone.”

“Oh my God. What did you do?”

“I got him out of the way and started firing the gun myself. I shot the living shit out of everything I saw. Every muzzle flash I saw, I shot at it. I just kept shooting and shooting until there were no more muzzle flashes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah and eventually we moved forward and when we did I saw three dead guys lying there and I knew I’d killed them. I didn’t see them die, it was dark but I knew I killed them for sure.”

“How did you feel?”

“Nothing. I was in a state of shock. I was in shock for three days, just reacting to my training because we were going non-stop with no sleep for three days and then when things slowed down… that’s when I realized I had a broken ankle. I had to have broken it on that jump, I figure.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”