Enlisting in November of 2001, shortly after 9/11, Chapman joined “for God and Country.”

“My father is a Vietnam vet, a volunteer, serving in the early 1970s. He was home in 1973, when I was born,” said Chapman. His grandfather, Richard Leach, served with Merrill’s Marauders in WWII. “He was a good man, my grandfather. As a kid, I didn’t get him. But as an adult, we clicked.”

Beginning in 2004, Chapman was away from his family, including his infant daughter, for about 18 months. Approximately 12 months of that time was spent in Ar Ramadi, Iraq.

Though he acknowledges that “a magazine article naming Ar Ramadi as the most dangerous place on the planet may have been urban legend,” for Chapman, it was not. It was “located in the western side of what is referred to as the Sunni triangle. It also falls in the southwest corner of what was called, by some, the triangle of death.”

This proved true on Chapman’s first day in Ar Ramadi when a fellow soldier was hit in the neck by mortar. “He was gone, vaporized.” The only part remaining was “a boot, and maybe a dog tag,” he said.

“A mortar,” explained Chapman, “is a high-angle smooth-bore indirect-fire weapon. It was the single-most casualty-producing weapon on the battlefield. Rather than firing directly at a target like a rifle or RPG (rocket propelled grenade), a target is hit by shooting up in the air and down onto your target. [It was] nicknamed ‘high angle hell’.” And “IEDs (improvised explosive devices) were everywhere.”

Chapman was a Sergeant E5 with the 3-172 Infantry when he arrived, “and I was very good at my job,” he added. But Chapman’s youthful confidence got him into trouble. Two weeks after arriving, “I got ‘volun-told’ to go on a mission with the Marines,” which is how he ended up “attached to the second Marine Division, 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade anti-terrorism unit MTT (Military Transition Team), Iraqi 1-1-7. I was mouthy,” he admitted, and this was a lesson that he needed to learn.

Chapman’s first task with the MTT was to build the Non Commissioned Officer Corp, enforcing rank structure. He found himself in charge of a company of 60 to 120 Iraqi soldiers, depending on how many showed up that particular week.

Although the Iraqi army had an officer rank structure, the enlisted men were just soldiers, called “Jundees.” Primarily Shiite, from the Baghdad area, they were “underequipped, undertrained and mostly kids.

“Most of the Iraqi officers led with a stick,” using fear to encourage their poorly paid men — who earned the equivalent of about 200 U.S. dollars each month. “It made jobs much more difficult,” explained Chapman.

Of his time with the MTT, Chapman said, “There were six U.S. army soldiers and eight marines in charge of 720 Iraq soldiers.” With 4 infantry companies, “We did everything under the sun that you can do in boots, including but not limited to presence patrols, clearing houses and drawing fire.”

They were supposed to be there for training, “but there was none of that going on,” said Champman. “We were too busy.”

After two weeks with the MTT, Chapman began working with an SFC (Sergeant First Class) E7 whose name was very similar to his own and who Chapman believed took unnecessary chances. They were assigned to work with eight to 26 Iraqis.

During one particular incident, they were being shot at near a gate at a Combat Operations Center. While Chapman took cover to avoid being shot, the other sergeant did not. He was lucky, on that occasion. A couple weeks later, Chapman and the other sergeant were at a local school where their Iraqi soldiers were handing out school supplies and soccer balls “as a show of good will.”

The Sergeant was shot in the side, where his Kevlar vest did not provide cover. “The bullet,” said Chapman, “went through his heart and both lungs killing him. That was when I changed. I became very angry and very quick.”

Chapman and his men went from house to house, kicking in doors, looking for the sniper. “We found a room with sniper cards – diagrams of landmarks with distances used by snipers to calculate their shot — scratched into the walls. There were [also] lists of prices,” he said, including how much they would be paid for shooting a U.S. soldier.

“We found it as a group, me and my Iraqis. We had a strong bond, and the Iraqis appreciated and respected the iron fist. They liked it when I got angry,” he said sadly. “Unfortunately, we didn’t find the shooter.”

“River city black” meant that communications were down because a soldier had been killed. The code words and procedure was intended to stop notifications to family members before the Army had a chance to deliver the bad news. Due to the similarities in their names, there was some confusion as to which soldier was killed.

When Chapman arrived back at base his Sargent Major handed him a phone and told him to call home, in spite of the “river city black.” Ultimately, the other soldier’s wife learned of her husband’s death from a reporter who tracked her down as she walked her dog.

“And that,” he said, “was just the beginning.

“I got shot at every single day — I was a bullet magnet. Usually it happened when I lay down to get some sleep. For a period of time I was sleeping in a conex box,” something akin to a big metal shipping container, that had been outfitted with bunks. “I’d lay down and hear the bullets coming through the box.”

The conex box area was located by a long dirt road which Chapman and his men patrolled every day. They were dug in, with an observation tower, like a “crow’s nest” built in.

On one occasion, “We were hanging out in the conex box when there was a big explosion that was so close that you could feel it in your chest,” Chapman said.

About 15 feet away, they found a wide hole in the road that was about 4-feet deep. “We started walking circles around it, looking for munitions, body parts and other clues as to what had caused the explosion. My buddy found a heart – a donkey heart,” he said. The donkey’s misfortune had most certainly saved the lives of servicemen.

Later, the Iraqi who was up in the crow’s nest told Chapman, in broken English, that he had seen a guy drive up in a pick-up truck and dig a hole. He hadn’t made the connection. “They just didn’t get it,” explained Chapman.

By that point in time, Chapman’s company had experienced so many deaths within their group that they figured out, mathematically, when the next American would die and how many would go home. The answers: very soon, and none.

“If I made it home it was going to be just luck,” he predicted, and “out of that group, 4th company, I’m the only one left.”

Of his Iraqis, however, “We had pretty good success, with minimal injury or death. Although they’d shoot each other a lot, accidentally.

“As a soldier going over there, you accept death – dying is easy, living is hard … whether it’s living with everything that’s happened to you or with the decisions you made.

“It was after that deployment that I had a hard time being me again – it haunts me and has changed me. It was mentally strenuous, every day. The only break in anxiety was when things got crazy and all you could do was go, [with] no time to consider danger, no time to hesitate. Adrenaline was the only reprieve from anxiety.

“Iraq was such a mess, and I really didn’t think I was going to make it,” he shared. Some soldiers called home a lot, but Chapman called only about once every three weeks.

“I still have shoe box full of letters that I’ve never opened … I had to be 100 percent engaged, 100 percent of the time, and I couldn’t be in two places at once.” And so the letters sat, unread.

For the family he left behind, “It was brutal. People give a lot of credit to the soldiers,” he explained, “but not enough credit to the families.”

After his deployment to Iraq, Chapman also spent eight to nine months in Afghanistan. He returned home from that deployment on December 23, 2010, with multiple right elbow and shoulder injuries. Those injuries led to his retirement from the army.

When it comes to making use of his military training in the civilian world, “I have the luxury of being employed by Corporate Intelligence, an agency that performs background checks and investigations and provides security, both as a consultant and as a licensed security agency.” Corporate Intelligence works in businesses and schools doing every-day action planning and investigations.

“The army gave me some valuable skills, including an awareness to danger and threats. I also learned how far I can push myself without breaking and it made me better at what I do now. I was extremely lucky,” said Chapman.

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