Touching the Dragon: And Other Techniques for Surviving Life’s Wars. James Hatch and Christian D’Andrea. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2019.
Touching the Dragon: And Other Techniques for Surviving Life’s Wars by James Hatch and Christian D’Andrea is a work of two parts. In part one, Hatch narrates his special operations experiences during the mid-2000s as a U.S. Navy SEAL and dog handler in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hatch’s story culminates in part two with a lengthy recovery following a career-ending wound to his leg from a failed mission to recover Bowe Bergdahl. Hatch and D’Andrea frame the work as two distinct struggles: the special operator in war and the battle for physical and mental wellness following war’s end. Both arcs presented life-threatening dangers to Hatch, and to the book’s credit, neither is written in such a way as to seem “deadlier”—though, by the author’s own admission, he was better prepared to be a service member than a wounded and recovering vet.
Though the book’s language is plain and readable, it is at the same time saturated with brief, direct, and blunt single-sentence quips that conclude most of his sub-chapters, such as “‘This is what happens to Taliban.’ Tombstone-style. Wild West Indeed” and “the only thing that could have sanitized that place was about 8,500 units of Fahrenheit.”[1] From Hatch’s time as a service member, the reader easily gleans several potential lessons. One, the U.S. ought to leave fanatical areas of the globe alone and only commit to action when actors from those regions do the U.S. harm. Two, war is not a video game. Three, senior military leadership is too often removed from the fighting on the ground performed by service members like himself. Hatch’s prose brims with vivid imagery to make these statements come alive.
On military brass, Hatch visualizes a nerve center on an Afghanistan Forward Operating Base. He calls it the Death Star. From inside, Hatch watched with fascination as military leaders, with their clean uniforms and impeccable haircuts, hooted and hollered like sports fanatics while remote aerial weapon systems livestreamed destruction rained down on America’s enemies. Fair enough; in the film Star Wars, Grand Moff Tarkin stood in an immaculate uniform and icily watched from the cold vacuum of space as his technological marvel destroyed Alderaan and its people. Hatch often follows these observations with the kind of musings that seem designed to elicit a nod from the reader.
Want to keep the U.S. out of fanatical areas of the globe? Then, according to Hatch, “Arm the fathers of girls in schools.”[2] Were all fathers of daughters living among fanatics armed by the U.S., Hatch asserted “those cultures will largely self-correct.”[3] This is ironic, because the second half of Hatch’s work is shaped entirely by armed men—none perhaps more important than Hatch himself. In May of 2010, angry, drunk, and high on meds, Hatch took a loaded pistol to himself and stood over the garbage cans in the backyard so “not to make a mess in the house.”[4]
Hatch took a gun to himself out of anger, depression, and pride. His mind read like a verdict against himself for failures while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In one instance, he fired at an enemy combatant engaged with his dog; the bullet went through his intended target and struck his dog, mortally wounding the animal. While on a mission to recover Bowe Bergdahl, Hatch took a round to the leg fired from close range. The bullet shattered his femur. Eighteen surgeries were needed and, at multiple points, the danger to his leg threatened Hatch’s life as well. The time spent in convalescence gave him ample opportunity to spool endlessly. His mental state deteriorated as his body healed.
Hatch played the part of the recovering vet for others, but his suicidal ideation—a clinical term used to describe thinking about or planning suicide—defied simple answers. Our emotionality exists for many reasons, but, as Hatch discovered, it is often not reasonable. Alone in his own head, he could not find a path forward. The answer for Hatch was simply not simple. Following his suicide ideation, and under close psychiatric care, he asked himself, “How the hell did I get here?”[5]
Working with experts and his loved ones, Hatch used myriad ways to address his suicidal ideation. He admitted his vulnerability to his wife and his friends and loved ones. Through them, he confronted the thoughts that tormented him. He maintained meaningful connections to the people who cared for him and allowed them to be the help he needed. He engaged in help-seeking behavior and broke down preconceived notions about mental health and its importance. He simplified his life. He channeled his love of animals into fulfilling work aiding dogs like those he worked with so closely. He stated, “One of the big debts I owed was to the dogs, and not just because they’d saved my life repeatedly.”[6] He significantly reduced self-destructive behaviors and engaged in meaningful work and hobbies. To get his life back, Hatch questioned his biases and himself, and actively sought answers. Based on the work’s conclusion, one gets the impression he is still searching. That answer is not simple, but it is correct.
James Hatch at Yale (Ryan Chiao/Yale Daily News)
There is an inviting quality to plain-spoken wisdom. We see it these days in succinct and quippy memes and social media posts that distill for us complex personal, national, and global challenges in 280 characters or less. Yet, as satisfying as it may be to blindly accept uncomplicated truths, one of the great dangers in having our biases confirmed is that we stop asking questions of a complicated world, which is how we actually learn, grow, and come to meaningful solutions to problems both simple and complex.
If I might conclude with a pithy statement of my own: As a historian of military history, medicine, and suicide, I was pleased to encounter Hatch as an author, rather than a statistic.
Michael Doidge is a contract historian working for the Department of Defense, where he writes on the history of U.S. military medicine. His work on the history of suicide in the military has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Washington Post. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: Jon Snow Touching the Dragon (Game of Thrones)
Notes:
[1] James Hatch and Christian D’Andrea, Touching the Dragon: And Other Techniques for Surviving Life’s Wars (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2019), 103, 66.
[2] Hatch and D’Andrea, Touching the Dragon, 144.
[3] Hatch and D’Andrea, Touching the Dragon, 144.
[4] Hatch and D’Andrea, Touching the Dragon, 205.
[5] Hatch and D’Andrea, Touching the Dragon, 213.
[6] Hatch and D’Andrea, Touching the Dragon, 265.