At exactly the same time then-school teacher Tim Walz was running for Congress, touting that he was a “retired command sergeant major,” I was in Iraq.

We now know Walz was not a retired command sergeant major, that he was administratively reduced to one rank lower, and retired at that rank. Why? Because despite allegedly signing the required documentation committing to meet the requirements of the command rank, Walz later reconsidered, left his unit and ran for office.

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My standard line to people who seem like they want to ask the unaskable question is that I’ve never fired my rifle in combat, which is true. I’ve done two combat deployments, making me a “combat veteran,” but I’ve never killed a man. Outside of several instances of indirect combat – rockets, mortars, ieds, snipers – and at least a couple instances of getting shot at while in helicopters, I didn’t see much in uniform.

(I did once step out of my transient sleeping hut after one night of pitched indirect combat and there was a five foot deep hole where the stairs used to be.)

I did, however, see a lot of the results of war. The injured and maimed. Usually Marines and soldiers with missing parts or gaping holes, but also a lot of kids and innocents. A lot of dead. People I knew even.

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There’s a lot that doesn’t add up about Tim Walz. The media of course is emphasizing that he’s “folksy” and “appeals to the working class.” They also say he can help Kamala “relate” with “veterans.”

Perhaps, but there’s at least one group of veterans he could have helped relate to a return to civilian life: His own unit, who deployed right around the same time as I did.

Some of them felt burned. They alleged that Walz heard about the orders to deploy, and suddenly his political aspirations burned a bit brighter, conveniently so. Others who served with him at the time commended his 24 years of service and his leadership.

Still, something bothers me about a guy at the tippy top of the enlisted ranks passing on a deployment with his soldiers. People who truly value service don’t do that.

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We all came back different that first time. I might not have seen direct, sustained combat, but I did go on several patrols whose only purpose was to identify or hit IEDs on main supply routes. Imagine sitting in a sweltering hot humvee for 15 hours driving up and down the same strip of road hoping to trigger an ambush or an IED.

That, to me, was an abyss in its own right. Then seeing my friends all come back a little different, usually for the worse, made me angry. The only abyss I knew that offered any solace was booze. My first marriage, like many active duty marriages, started disintegrating almost instantly.

For many of us, vices we’d previously had, or had even cured ourselves of, came back. Promiscuity, drugs, fighting, booze, etc. It might seem pretty pedestrian for Marines, but that doesn’t make it good.

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Even Walz’s origin story doesn’t add up.

He says the “secret service” kicked him and his students out of a Bush rally because someone had seen some pro-Kerry flash on them. That story carried him through to his own election.

But the political operative who actually did the kicking out alleges Walz was outside the event in the days prior carrying “Vets for Kerry” signs, which he was literally pictured doing. That operative said he was charged with preventing any protests disrupting the “private event.”

Was Walz really there as part of some benign educational trip with his students? Or was he planning to protest inside the event?

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I dreamt of the dead for several years after I left the service. Pretty routinely too, 2-3 times a week. The drinking also got worse.

I did some military contracting, then went to grad school on the GI Bill. Then my mother was killed in an intersection at the center of my hometown in 2011. Her three boys, all Marines, came home. It took her a month to actually die, but the person on that gurney might as well have died a month earlier. I was familiar with Traumatic Brain Injuries already because I had been in Iraq twice and had seen them.

I went to Afghanistan as a civilian reporter a year later in 2012, where I attached to Second Battalion, Fifth Marines. My intent was to cover the forever war, by that point, and its effects on consecutive generations. I got a bunch of interviews, but it all kind of went to shit when the fighting started.

Yes, I saw a lot of fighting that go ‘round and people near me got seriously hurt. I did do some writing on it, but didn’t finish the larger project because I could barely bring myself to look at the footage.

I always felt like a bit of a coward for that.

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What bothers me most about Walz right now is twofold: 

One is that he once gave a speech that included an anti-gun bit about the kinds of “weapons” he “carried in war.” But he didn’t go to war. I did. My friends did. His soldiers did. We all came back f*cked up and where was he? 

Secondly is he’s winning. He and Kamala, right now, are cruising. Nowhere but up. He’s winning on the lie of service, or being “folksy” or “moderate” or “relatable,” of being anything other than a political opportunist who demonstrably banked hard left the last few years.

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Walz didn’t even show up to sign his own discharge papers.

Yet Donald Trump and J.D. Vance – who served in the same military occupation as I did right around the same time – are facing a Harris/Walz abyss right now. America is on the verge of electing its most left-wing executive branch in modern times.

Trump raised his fist not long ago, blood streaked, and shouted “fight.” If he doesn’t start living that mantra and fast, what happens next to America is on him and his team.

Let’s see if he can be different than Walz. Let’s see if he answers the call.