YouSaid · the spoken record

Kelsi Sheren

lines on the record: 316
first: 2021-10-14
most recent: 2021-10-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I don't know if hate and anger do that justice. I don't know another word, but I don't think those two words do it justice to the extent that I was feeling. I got to a point when I got attacked by a woman with some scissors, like the idea across my mind, I could bootstomp her to death and not feel anything about it in front of her, all of her family and her kids.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so after that operation with the British, I went back to the Canadians. I didn't go back even remotely close to who I was when I left And that was really troublesome for a lot of people around me because the level of anger and hate that came out of me was palpable when I just walked by. I got shockingly quiet. You understand how you're learning how”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, that's how I remember him. I would like to, I have a picture that I post every year about him. I see that. Two and two together, does that make sense?”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was a young kid too. I think it was his first deployment as well. Like he was a young kid. And He was just Going to clear the road for the rest of us, right? Like, not like you know you're in war and you know that you're outside the wire and you know things could happen you understand that to the extent you can understand that When it's happening, it's something very different”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the ramp ceremony. When I lost my mind, literally I lost my mind. And I was screaming that he wasn't all in there. I'm happy now knowing that he was. But I held on to that for 10 years.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I had when I realized he wasn't there, when I realized that was what was left of him. I found out afterwards there was other parts that were outside and went back. I think he said went back and they got, they ended up getting the rest of him. So that made me happy because I just found this out this week. So”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it's been, I mean, it's 2021. This was an 09. And I've worked on this. And I mean, I've been in like treatment religiously just to be able to keep me alive for this decade. And so it's not like it's like, oh, you never even tried to get better. It's like, I never used to leave my house. I used to call people that looked like that. Horrific names in public. Used to want to kill people on a regular basis. I'm fairly happy individual now.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we were sitting inside the compound, and one of the medics looked at me, and you could see, and I still do it now, and I'm working on not doing it, but I do it when I get really overwhelmed because I didn't have any gloves on, I had blood all over my hands and just like body and stuff. So you came over and he just gave me like sanitizer. And I started rubbing. And so I do this when I'm stressed. I'll rub my hands. And I still can't do, I still can't eat food with skin on it. And I can't salmon and stuff. Anything with skin, I can't touch it. And like if I'm making meat at home, like for my husband and my son, like I have like meat gloves and then I have like a fork and a knife and I'm like cutting it. Like I never touch it. I can't touch it.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I know there were two flights. I only thought there was one, but apparently there was two flights. So when on one, his body went on one. And then I think he said went on the other. And then they took off. And then when they leave, though, they rain hell down on anything they can see on the ground. And that is a beautiful sight because they had mortar rounds coming down. And it just, it was getting really, really bad. And then as soon as the Black Hawks took up, all of a sudden it just stopped. Went Like deafening quiet.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We said, okay, we're just gonna have to run. We're gonna have to fucking run the road. We're gonna have to have to run it chance it. So we ran it. And that was the close, well, that was, I guess, not the closest, but it felt like it was the closest. I could hear the whiz of the rounds going by me. It's a weird noise when they're coming at you than when they're leaving you. And so that slowed everything down for me. And then one of the guys accidentally dropped the edge of the stretcher and everything fell off into the ditch. And then we had to go back down and get it back up. And so we kept running. And we finally got back into the compound that that sniper was sitting off on the right-hand side. And we got all in there.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We just collected everything we could, but I did remember screaming, we didn't get them all, we didn't get them all. There's no way we got them all. We did not fucking get them all. And I remember one of the guys looking at me being like, we got them. We got him. I'm like, we didn't fucking get him. We didn't get him. Like, no, we got him. And I couldn't say it enough. So I grabbed as much as I could, I slung one of their weapons and it was just a twisted heap. And I had his helmet, someone else's helmet in my arm. And then I had... My weapon in front of me. Was carrying it, and then we piled everything we had onto a stretcher. Those things are super fucking flimsy anyway. And there was a couple guys in front of us, and there was a couple behind me, and I was kind of in the middle.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't register Because I had some people contact me and be like, you didn't tell it right, and war is subjective, and war is from your perspective, and war is messy and horrific. Graphic and violent and Painful Brain remembers what it wants to remember, and your brain allows you to remember what it allows you to remember, and there's reasons that you don't remember everything. And so We were getting hit. We were getting, it was bad. And some of the guys, machine gunners, had come up to do cover fire. And I know. We were calling in for air support Come pick up the guys because they had to go. And”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No panic with these guys. These guys were the most switched on motherfuckers I've ever seen in my life. We started grabbing and remind me, he said, you know, Night, he goes, when people say that's the worst part of your day, that wasn't even the worst part of your day. Do you remember when you handed me the bag of intestines? I do though. Thank you for that.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because they deserve that. They don't deserve to have a piece of them drugged behind a truck for propaganda. It's not fair.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I couldn't comprehend what happened. I knew he wasn't there anymore because they looked at me and said, what's here's here? Start grabbing pieces we need to fucking move. And so I handed the boot over. They took it. And then I started just grabbing anything out of the walls because those little rectangulars just had flesh hanging from it. And I didn't have my gloves on because I only used them to search.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Messaging me, and he's been incredible. He's one of the best soldiers I've ever served with. He was a higher up, so he was running part of this. He's messaged me and he was giving me some information. And he's like, I was in there with you. And he goes, I remember because you handed me the boot. And because I walked over and I, all the rounds were like we were being shot at. Mortars were coming down, but it was this slow motion. And I remember walking over to the hole in the ground. Seeing his boot in the ground It was his leg was still hanging, but just below his knee was still in it. But the boot was perfectly laced up. The boot was fine. And I just Held it and I turned and I looked at the guys, and I was like, We could reuse the boot.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These tall, they look like cannabis plants, but they're not. But it just very thick bush. And I felt like I was running in slow motion. So if you picture one of your video games where like the tunnel vision and then you're just, you can hear your breathing as hot. That and you're running and you can't move fast enough, and you're like trying to get there. We hit the road, and the rounds are coming down, and mortars are coming down, and they're like, okay, on three run. So we run on three, and we run into the compound. I mean, into the great put. And I remember looking around and very seriously going, Where is he? Just genuinely asking, I think it was”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dealing with it well. And they're like, all right, all right, go, go, go, go, go. So we went and we, and I helped out with that to other individual, kind of helped him down, started doing medic work on him. And he just kept saying, where's he was in such a state of shock. I've never seen somebody's eyeballs so big in my life. She goes, where's hi, he's good, buddy, he's good. He's good. Picture like a super thick Scottish accent, though, because these guys were just. And when they talk fast, it's even worse. And then so I ran over and we jumped down into the ditch along the side of the road because the road hadn't been cleared. And we're running through.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This one IED, I still don't know what it was, went off Flew. The guy at the door. He kicked out. He was all broken and bleeding and a mess. That point, the radio started going crazy. Like, I could hear the guys yelling and screaming, trying to figure it out. And then you could hear the numbers being called. KIAA number, number, number, number. I don't know anybody's service number. I don't know what's going on. Next, you know, mortar rounds start like coming down. And like live fire starts happening. And I'm like, holy fuck, things are popping off. And I remember just looking at being like, we need to go, we need to go now. And I just got this like, like, I was like, we're going. And they're like, hold on, Burns. And I'm like, we're fucking going. Like I wasn't.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem, and that's why you have such PTSD issues with the soldiers we have now. Because you're in the environment in which it's very similar. So”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you fuse them all together, there was enough juice to make it go. Then they would attach that to like phosphorus or gasoline or whatever they could that would make a big boom. They would use, yeah, that's why you never kick garbage on the ground. You'll never see me kick something on the ground. You'll see me walk around it always. If I ever see a pile of rocks or something that looks like it shouldn't be there, I won't walk near it, even now because they use that pile of rocks to remind people there's something there. We don't know what that means, but we know that something's there. And very often they would use anything, garbage wires. We had to burn everything for a reason.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were thinking to use everything they could. There was a cigarette pack they had used. They lined the inside with tinfoil. And when you stuck on the tinfoil, it had a piece of wire and it was enough of a spark to set off a line of batteries that we had thrown out that were all dead.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do my best. They're improvised explosive devices. They can be used pretty much out of anything to make anything. So garbage. When we got to Afghanistan, they did the ID meeting with us. They're like, these are what we're finding that they would show us diffused IEDs. So they would see those big blue drums filled with gasoline buried in the ground. You would see a wire. It would go to a pressure plate. You hit the pressure plate. That would hit that and it would go. You would see IDs. Some of them were ridiculous. The engineering that went into some of these was hilarious because they were thinking.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then the blast hit him on this side. And so it took him out and pulled his kid off, pulled his helmet off, pulled everything off, fucked him all up big time.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the ID went off. And what had happened was they put an IED inside of a grape putt and the grape put has rectangular holes in the wall. And there's just like one door and it's this tall mud hut with just all these like holes in it. And they had put an IED underneath a pile of sticks. And had a metal detector. The Brits carry them. I've never seen, I think other countries have them, but I've only ever seen them use it. And that's how we were kind of detecting if there was an ID. We must have hit it, the sticks or something, and it set it off. And it just, it was over. There's no way he felt anything. And then there was another guy at the door bent down on one knee. He was facing and kind of watching for.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We would set up, and then we'd be firing. I wasn't really involved in a lot of the firefights until after this. After that, the rest of the week, I was like, I was angry and I wanted them all to go and I wanted to be in every position to take them out myself. So I put myself in every position. So I made sure I was on the roof. I made sure I was there. I made sure if, hey, you need something. I'll fucking run it. I don't care if I die anymore because as soon as that happened, my light switch went It didn't matter anymore to me”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my friend was blown into a million pieces, so I just had pieces of him So there was no There was no differentiator of like this was his thigh, or this was his torso, or there was like, there was none of thigh. There was only one instance with the boot. At that point, we had been in some firefights. We had been taking some rounds, but it was more like.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you hold people's bodies in your hands with no gloves on, you know what that feels like. When you touch raw meat again, it's the same thing.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no way that shit's true. There's no way that she was involved in that, and then that, and then, and that, and then, and that. Well, let me explain. I was one person. Being passed around to units. I was with a ton of different people. I had no calms. And I was just being told where to go. And I just happen to be like a shit hit the fan magnet, it felt like. And then I found out later it was not just me, it was all of us were getting it. So that made me feel better. Because then I was like, well, I have a lot of survivors' guilt. That's like a thing that's still stuck with me. I've worked through a lot of shit, but survivors guilt, that's a big one for me. Certain food is a big one for me. Yeah, skin on food. Chicken with skin on it.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Big piece of a body. I think it was the torso just kind of fly through the air. Land into the field. And as soon as that happened, all hell broke loose. It was like the, they were sitting and watching and waiting. And they do that. And I say they, I mean the Taliban. They do that. They love that because then they can record it for propaganda and they can use it against us and they just love being able to take our people out. And we had the interpreter sitting beside me and he had the icon radio on. And as soon as the blast went off, I heard just the scream of like I heard it. And I knew what that meant, but I couldn't. didn't understand what was about to happen. I couldn't wrap my brain around what was about to happen because I had never been outside the wire. And people are like, people say to me now, they're like,”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Line of sight, could be IEDs, it could be anything. When I was leaning up against the wall We had sent a couple people ahead to go and clear the road so that we could all go along it and then clear the gray pup off to the left-hand side. Are doing that because they use those locations to put IEDs so that when you're going to search it, it's just a better chance of you blowing into a million pieces, essentially why they love that. Put bombs in small places, send people into small places, small places go boom. They paint the walls. So we were just kind of sitting and waiting. And then I turned, happened to turn, and I was looking in that direction, and I heard the ground shake before I even realized what I was seeing with my own eyes. The ground shook. And I saw.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Road went straight. That combines here. There's another road here on the right hand side in front of it. And then this road went along here. And this was a wide open space. Just a huge, we hate those. You hate those because it's too much space. It's too easy. It's like fish in a barrel. You don't want to be in that field.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's only one of those in each unit, or if there's even one in each unit. I got passed between units so that they could have access to me for both. And we were kind of sitting and we were waiting for the all clear to move. And at that time, the compound wall I was leaning up against. I had my backup against. I wasn't facing the direction where actually blew up. I was had my back to it and I had happened to turn and look to the left. And on the right hand side, crossed the road of where we were leaned up against was another compound two stories high. People inside, a sniper on the roof, and a spotter. Was a handful of us on this wall. And in front of me Was a road”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. That's no problem. I will tell you that I am going to leave some of the names out of the people because They have reached out and asked that I do such. I've also been informed of other things I forgot that happened during the thing that were way worse than I thought. So I'll try to add those in because that's new information to me because my brain is blocked it out. But I've been told, which is good because it's better detail. So we were doing a movement that morning and we were going from compound to compound. I was never told what we were doing. I knew what my job was. I didn't know the operational overview. I didn't know who we were looking for. I wasn't there for that. My job was specifically to look after the women and children and to provide support if need be. When you have certain people, so i.e. the bomb dog handler and the bomb dog, and then you have the medics and then you have like a female searcher, that”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You look at there's this photo that generates around right around suicide prevention month, which is September, and it's always like a photo of like Robin Williams and Bourdain and all of these other individuals who are comedians who all took their lives. And they're all smiling. They're like, this is the face of depression. There's a way our brains work where humor is a necessary part of survival, whether it's used for joyous things or it's used for ways to cope through life. For me, the military humor was one of the things that helped get me through, and it still does to this day, frankly, because humor. Humor makes some of the horrific things I say not seem so horrific. People can digest it rather than being like, you need to be locked up somewhere.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was funny during the time. Now, when I look back at it, I was like, come on. That was a, I mean, I get it because they had already been there. And like, so afterwards I can see how it's funny. Now with like the suicide epidemic and the veteran community now, I'm like, oh, I don't post that photo”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And then I was just explaining to you that the way it is run, you're going to love this. When we walked up to those tents for the first time, People that were there before us left us a noose I have a photo Like hanging from the tent, like at the front of the tent. Like, welcome”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those people are weak, and then they just need to be weeded out. I thought we talked about this. The strong will survive, the weak will die off.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so she stood there and took a picture, but then she grabbed the camera because I flipped it and showed it to her, and her eyes got huge, and she grabbed it and she ran inside. And they're like, oh, that's gone forever. Like, that's, it's over for you. And then she came out and she kind of snuck out. And I went in and grabbed it. And the mom lifted up her burqa and was showing me that she like shaved her legs to be more Western. And I was just at that moment Don't know that I could have realized how much that moment affected me. How much that moment would affect me later on in my life? Until it's been later on in my life.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can have these. I'm going to stand here and make sure you do. And I remember asking can I take a picture with her? I asked the trip, can you ask her? Can I take a picture with her? And she was very confused. And when you look at the photo, you see her face. She's very stunned. Very stunned. And it was a, it wasn't my camera, it was my officer's camera. It was a hot pink fluorescent pink camera. So I pulled this like a huge pink thing and I'm like. Let's take a picture.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the front lines. But I got borrowed to go specifically search women and children. So they had me. And one of the little girls kind of snuck out and was kind of sitting near me. And I was eating something. And I had like these little candies, and they're called little sweeties. The British have them in the ration packs. I don't know. They're good, though. And she saw me eating them. And so I gave them to her. And then her brother came over and slapped her upside the head and took him from her. So then I just went over and slapped him upside the head and just pointed my gun at her while she ate them all. I was like, no”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was with the British at that time, and we were on that operation that gets highlighted quite a bit. And we had stopped, and the ICOM radios were pinging. And ICOM radios are a radio that we have an interpreter on that. The Taliban, basically we can hear what they're saying. It's their comms. It's us tapped in. When it's really clear, they're close. When it's scatty and they're far enough away, normally you know they're not planning an attack, although you never know, really. And we were going door to door, kind of like what they're doing now. And we were pulling people out of their houses. And we knew there was people in there that were active Taliban and we knew the icons were pinging. When we got in there, they had hidden all the women and kids and locked them inside the house. Because often nowadays women, the women, they would hide things on them that they shouldn't have because no one would be ever there to search them because there isn't a lot of women.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, if you look at the location of it on a map, it makes more sense. Wrap your brain around it I met plenty of people who had never even seen a picture of themselves when I was in that country. So, I mean, how much more are they going to understand if they don't know what even exists outside?”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where I was, there were mountains in the distance. It was just very sandy, very flat, and there was a couple small compounds on the outside. It wasn't a lot to look. Was a long road that you knew that got hit all the time. There wasn't a lot to look at.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One tower. So you would do four hour shifts with a fire team partner in the tower depending on whatever, but you would do it every day. So I would look out into the rest of Afghanistan at that opportunity. Otherwise, it was just like your walls.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that was like the, I mean, I'd heard it on when we shoot and when we zero in weapons and we do all that stuff. But I had never heard it, heard it like that before. And then you would see the guys, the Americans would roll out every day and go on patrol and come back, look, back, back. And so you would see them, you would hear them, they would tell the stories, those types of things, but I never experienced it because we never got attacked like our base never got hit. We were really lucky that way. There were other ones around us that were getting hit, but we weren't getting hit that we were very fortunate. At least we didn't get hit when I was there. I believe the entry got, there was an attempt. There was an attempt at some point in a past, but I wasn't privy to that. But we were in the OP Towers, so we had to do our own security. But because we were such a small subset of Canadians and we always had to have people running the guns and ready to run the guns at all times, we only had to make”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not that I was oblivious. That's the one thing I would say I wasn't. I'm very aware of my surroundings. That's something that's always been taught to me from a very early age because I traveled a lot with my dad in the truck. And so my dad would be like, You're gonna go into that bathroom and I'm gonna watch you come out, and you're gonna watch everyone around you because people get kidnapped. Like that's just the reality I was always very paranoid.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the ones they issued us were these big things that had like a headpiece like here. But you have to wear your helmet when you're firing.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't wear them. That's just what some people were. People, when you were as low as me, like we weren't privy to conversation, like we were just told what to do and you do it. So when you're doing on the OP tower, you have a radio you pick up and you call in and then you put the radio down. But for a hearing protection, I mean, I would put an earplugs, but those things are so violently loud that earplugs, they don't do it justice.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we had this tiny little subsection of it. And the rest was so it was like this, and then all American here. And when we got there, we landed. The guns were already there. So you ripped out the unit before you. So those guys were just leaving and we were just replacing them. So we knew the guns. They were Canadian guns. We understood, you know, how to run those. That was fine. When we got there, though We had come in on Chinook, and Chinooks are super loud. And they're like, we're hearing protection. They don't do not? No, this is not reality. Like, this is why I'm partially deaf now. Like, this is not reality.”
2021-10-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source