War Stories #2: Boots on the Ground
Ongoing reflections on going to war, and the twenty-year fight to come home
You didn’t want to be here, but it’s happening
The journey has been exhausting, but your brain reminds you anyway: You’re just getting here. You look down and see your boots on the ground of the battlefield.
It feels a little bit disorienting- partly because you’ve been sleep deprived for weeks in anticipation of being here, and then you literally haven’t slept in days traveling here, and partly because you never thought you’d be here.
But your brain, again- the nagging, relentless voice in your head- won’t let it be a dream: Hey, you ARE here, so what now? Can you handle this?
Everything inside you wants to say, “Well, no, I don’t think I can.”
At least that’s how it felt for me. It was sometime in the middle of the night on 29 December, 2004, and I was standing on the ramp of a C-130 that had just delivered me, Major Wayne Lee Warren, Jr., 45 Sierra Foxtrot (Air Force code for neurosurgeon), as a member of the 332nd Air Force Expeditionary Medical Group to Balad Air Base, Iraq. I stepped off the plane into the cold desert air and looked down to see my boots on the ground of a foreign country in wartime.
And not just any place, either. Balad was nicknamed “Mortaritaville,” because it was mortared or rocketed every day, the most attacked base in Iraq at the time. Several service members had been killed when a mortar landed on the base just weeks before, and the pictures and warnings from command to take those Alarm Red sirens seriously flooded back into my mind as I took in the first view of my new duty station.
It still felt like a dream, all the way through the processing and the base tour and the lectures we sat through to learn the various ways we could get ourselves killed on the base (mortars, rockets, small arms fire, sand vipers, insurgents). A brief tour of the hospital and my face-to-face encounter with the first wounded soldiers and enemy combatants I’d seen in theater (I had taken care of troops in Germany and stateside with war wounds, but these were fresh from the battlefield), and I finally made it to my quarters, a 10x10-foot metal trailer.
I lay there trying to sleep- more exhausted than I’d ever been but wide awake in fear and wonder- covered in body armor since I’d seen the pictures of what rockets did to those trailers. I was Lee Warren, for crying out loud, a left-handed kid from a town of 2,000 in Oklahoma. I wasn’t supposed to be here, strapped with a 9mm Beretta handgun and deployed to the busiest wartime hospital Americans had operated since the Vietnam war, but here I was.
You’re deployed too, friend
Just as I wasn’t the only one on the plane, you weren’t the only one in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. The report was bad, those words you never thought you’d hear pronounced over your life- cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis. Or maybe it was the lawyer’s office; you never expected to get served with papers and now you’re hiring an attorney to represent you in the divorce you don’t want, the lawsuit you still can’t believe is real, the bankruptcy you never saw coming.
Whatever the context, the war IS real and it’s happening NOW, and you’re lying in bed staring into the void anticipating the sirens going off for the next attack,
And after a while, your thoughts begin to clarify:
Okay, I’m really here, so what now?
If I have to fight even though I didn’t want to, how do I win?
Is there even such a thing AS winning? If so, what will my life look like after?
The answers to these questions (and the many others we will discover) will define your response to, survival in, and ultimate personal outcome of your war. You will realize that no one is deployed alone, and that assembling the right team will be crucial to your success in the coming fight. You will learn things about yourself that only war could have revealed. And you will, in one way or another, come home from the war someday; or at least you’ll try.
But before you come home, there’s the fight.
And friend, it’s a fight worth engaging.
Your battlefield may not look like Iraq, but the principles of survival and victory are universal. Neuroscience teaches us that the battle begins in the mind. Your brain, shaped by what you think about most, can either be a tool for your healing or a weapon against you. As Paul writes in Romans 12:2, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
That transformation begins with the thoughts you allow to take root and the beliefs you choose to hold onto.
Your brain's neuroplasticity—its ability to change and adapt—means that every thought, every action, every prayer is a step toward rewiring your responses to pain, fear, and uncertainty. When you take a thought captive (II Corinthians 10:5), you’re not just choosing better mental pathways; you’re laying the foundation for resilience and hope.
This is how we bring self-brain surgery to the fight, and hope is the key.
I realized in Iraq that Psalm 144:1 was coming true- “Praise be to God, my rock, who prepares my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” I hadn’t felt prepared for war- personally, professionally, emotionally- but when the time came, I knew what to do.
And I found that holding onto the hope that those promises of equipping and providing would keep coming true was the key to my survival. I grabbed onto Psalm 71:14, "As for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more," because hope isn’t the absence of struggle; it’s the defiant belief that the struggle has meaning. It’s the armor we wear and the weapon we wield when life feels too hard to bear. Hope transforms "I can’t handle this" into "I’ll take the next step."
So here’s the call to action: Keep fighting.
Whatever your battlefield looks like, don’t let the enemy—whether it’s fear, illness, grief, despair, or the actual Devil of Hell—convince you that this is the end. You’re not fighting alone. Assemble your team: friends, family, faith, and professionals who can help you navigate this season. Lean into prayer, scripture, and the truths that have sustained countless warriors before you.
As for what winning looks like? That’s different for all of us. For me, it wasn’t about conquering every fear or challenge; it was about learning to trust the One who fights for me. It was about finding meaning and purpose, even in the hardest moments.
So strap on your armor, friend. The war is real, but so is the victory. And someday, when this season is over, you’ll look back and see how far you’ve come. You’ll see the battles you’ve won, the lessons you’ve learned, and the person you’ve become.
For now, take the next step. Say the next prayer. Find the next moment of gratitude, and hold onto the hope that has the power to carry you through.
Next time, we’ll talk about the team, getting into the fight, and how to survive the mortars and rockets that are coming.
And if you want to see pictures and read the story of my time in the fight, No Place to Hide is the history of my (literal) war.
Lisa and I are praying for you. If this resonates with you, let us know how we can pray for you or encourage you in your fight by replying to this post. You’re not alone.
Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope),
Lee
Psalm 71:14 ("As for me, I will always have hope.")
From the banks of the North Platte river on Moon River Ranch in Nebraska, USA
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We’re going all in on believing that we have the tools to change our minds and change our lives. Living from a mind-down perspective changes everything, and it will help you harness the transforming power the Bible promises in Romans 12.
And the good news is, you can start today.
Be sure to check out the archive of previous posts if you missed last week’s letter.
If you need a treatment plan to help you overcome any kind of trauma, tragedy, or massive thing in your life, check out my latest book, Hope Is the First Dose.
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This is powerful!