Benjamin Lichtenwalner

I committed to join the Marines in June of 2001, and went to bootcamp that November. In March of 2003, I was deployed to Iraq where I floated around behind the infantry from Kuwait through Baghdad, retrieving and processing the remains of fallen servicemen. In February of 2005, I volunteered to go back again, this time stationed in Al Taqaddum, Iraq. Throughout the course of my deployments I handled thousands of fallen servicemen deceased from a range of causes (including suicide), handled the bodies of "insurgents", and buried women and children. I was discharged from the Reserves in 2009, and was subsequently exposed to the truths of the military-industrial complex, un-filtered American history, Austrian economics, and more. The sum of these things awoke me to the real nature of war, and the reality of the lie for which I was previously willing to give my life.