{"id":28599,"date":"2019-10-14T12:42:45","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T16:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/?p=28599"},"modified":"2019-11-22T09:20:14","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T14:20:14","slug":"we-had-a-lot-of-bad-bad-days-dane-snowden-recalls-life-in-war-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/2019\/10\/we-had-a-lot-of-bad-bad-days-dane-snowden-recalls-life-in-war-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We had a lot of bad, bad days’: Dane Snowden recalls life in war zone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Dane Snowden is one of the supervising electricians in the UTC Facilities Planning and Management Department.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Dane Snowden had been sitting at his desk, he\u2019d be dead.<\/p>\n

Any other day, he\u2019d be handling his daily duties inside the building on the U.S. Army base outside Pul-e-Alam, Afghanistan. Any other day, the mortar round would\u2019ve crashed through the building\u2019s plywood walls and scorched a path right across his desk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have taken my head right off my shoulders,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Luckily, he and other soldiers were off base on a security mission to protect others while they met with a local tribal council. Normally, there would\u2019ve been many soldiers inside the building when the round exploded.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually there were like 20 people in there at any one time with computers or something,\u201d he says. \u201cIt probably would have killed four or five in there and injured a bunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

After 9-11, Snowden, an electrician in UTC\u2019s Facilities Planning and Management Department, encountered his share of mortar and rocket attacks, IED explosions and gunfire during his four tours of duty in the Middle East with the Army National Guard. Friends died; he saw and attempted to rescue Soldiers where their bodies were severally dismembered.<\/p>\n

In two separate instances, he was blown out of his office chair when rockets landed about 30 feet away. What most people don\u2019t understand, he says, is that, even if the rocket doesn\u2019t obliterate you, both the concussive force and noise of the blast leave lasting damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything inside of your body has been shifted. You feel it. You’re sick for like two days,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd bells are ringing in your ears. To this day, I’ve lost some hearing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he insists his experiences weren\u2019t different than thousands of other soldiers, male or female, serving in combat zones. And, like so many who suffered in battle, he suffers from PTSD and has been in counseling since he returned from duty for good in 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came back with the typical solider disabilities, and that kind of led to really bad depression. That and the stress of coming home from combat, you know,\u201d he says. \u201cJust coming home from combat is hard to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back and forth<\/strong><\/h3>\n

For 40 years, Snowden\u2014known as \u201cSnowman\u201d in the Guard\u2014served in the military in one shape or form and in one place or another. After 9-11, he was deployed six times, the first came three months after 9\/11. Between 2003 and 2011, he was mobilized six times; the last four he was sent overseas, once to handle personnel tasks in Africa\u2019s Djibouti, the others to Iraq or Afghanistan, where he worked in construction, base security, managing personnel and handling transportation issues, among several other jobs.<\/p>\n

By the time he retired in 2015, he\u2019d earned the rank of lieutenant colonel. He earned two Bronze Stars, awarded for actions and performance while in a combat zone. In his time away from deployment, he earned a degree from Tennessee Wesleyan in applied technologies, focusing on electrical and electronic engineering.<\/p>\n

Each time he returned from active duty between 2002 and 2009, he immediately went back to his previous job at the Mars\u2019 M&M\u2019s plant in Cleveland, Tenn. But bouncing back and forth from active duty to civilian life is hard, he says. The first time he came back to the plant, he knew that things were going to be different.<\/p>\n

\u201cI reported back to Mars as a shift lead with Iraq heavily on my mind and a new concept on life, and sometimes the smiles just weren\u2019t there anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

On every trip home, there were difficult adjustments to make.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a schizophrenic. You have to be able to think \u2018military\u2019 and then shut it off and go back to your job,\u201d he explains. \u201cAnd then your leadership principles are not the same. In the military, it’s life and death, a lot of the things you do could people get hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brian Vann, supervisor over the electrical shop in the UTC Department of Facilities Planning and Management, says Snowden\u2019s leadership roles in the military make him a good employee here.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s still got that same mindset. Give him a direction and just leave him alone,\u201d Vann says. \u201cHe leads.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snowden doesn\u2019t talk a lot to him about the military, Vann says, but he doesn\u2019t get the impression that Snowden is hesitant to talk about it. They just don\u2019t spend a lot of time together because they\u2019re usually on different parts of campus, doing their jobs.<\/p>\n

Overall, Snowden is \u201csincere, very friendly. He never meets a stranger,\u201d Vann says.<\/p>\n

Under fire<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When Snowden was overseas, many of his deployments were at Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) where bureaucratic military operations are run. Although they maintain a three-mile radius around them, FOBs often sit within striking distance of rockets and mortars. The rocket attack that could have killed Snowden was in an FOB in Logar Province, Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first got there, you couldn’t drive two miles out the gate or you would get blown up,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

One job in Baghdad, Iraq; Snowden\u2019s FOBs was to track all rockets and mortars fired without a direct line of sight at the target, a tactic known as \u201cindirect fire.\u201d A FOB where he served in Afghanistan was located in an area with one of the thickest concentrations of the Taliban network. \u201cSo in that FOB, we took 171 indirect rounds in 282 days,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

One night in his tent where he slept, he was Skyping with his wife when alarms started going off around the base and began zeroing in his unit\u2019s quarters location.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Honey, I’m going to have to get on the ground.” And she said, \u2018Why?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Well, an alarm is going off. We are getting bombed. I need to go to our bunker real fast.\u2019 She goes, \u2018Don’t turn your computer off,\u2019 and I said, \u2018So you want to watch this tent blow up? That’s what you’re going to watch.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the warning, she stayed on the Skype link while he ran outside the tent, heading for a bunker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t get 10 feet when a round hit the tent right next to mine. Thank God, everybody was in their perspective buniker; there wasn’t anybody in the tent when it blew. The whole tent caught on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

The threat of dying was a constant while he was in Iraq and Afghanistan, he says. And not just for him. A friend of his in Blackwater, the U.S. company that provided security for private military contractors in the Middle East, was killed by an Improvised Explosive Device, or IED, which were often planted along roadways.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember sitting at my desk, typing away, and all of a sudden there was this huge blast,\u201d Snowden says. \u201cIt blew him and four guys completely up and melted the vehicle down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another friend died when he was coming off leave and returning to base. The helicopter the soldier was riding in crashed into the side of a mountain.<\/p>\n

Snowden says he still has dreams about the first dead soldier he saw. \u201cI cut him down from a tree because he hung himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of bad, bad days.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dane Snowden, an electrician in UTC\u2019s Facilities Planning and Management Department, encountered his share of mortar and rocket attacks, IED explosions and gunfire during his four tours of duty in the Middle East with the Army National Guard.<\/p>\n

Continue Reading <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1105,"featured_media":28805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_slider":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_featurette":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7712,8244,64],"tags":[94143,94144],"class_list":{"0":"post-28599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-campus","8":"category-faculty-and-staff","9":"category-honors-and-awards","10":"category-news","11":"tag-dane-snowden","12":"tag-facilities-planning-and-management","13":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\n'We had a lot of bad, bad days': Dane Snowden recalls life in war zone | UTC News Archive: Jul 2007 - 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