This week, four soldiers were killed and 16 were wounded at Fort Hood, an army base in Killeen, Texas. The hardest part of this tragedy, on the surface, is that these soldiers were not only attacked on domestic soil, but also met injury and death at the hand of a fellow soldier.

Ivan Lopez, the soldier who fired the shots and ultimately took his own life, was not a combat veteran. According to the U.S. Army, Lopez did not see direct combat during his four-month deployment to Iraq. Lopez had sought treatment for post traumatic stress disorder, a condition that he had self-diagnosed.

I did not know Ivan Lopez. I cannot know what he lived with in his own head. I will never understand turning a weapon on your brothers and sisters. Again, I cannot speak to the bonds formed between soldiers. I only know of my experience as a Marine. The title of United States Marine is earned and, once earned, cannot be taken away. Quite plainly, Marines share an unbreakable bond that most citizens will never understand. I have endured direct combat with enemy forces, and those that shared in those engagements with me will forever be a part of who I am, undeniably, until I stop breathing. These bonds go deeper than friendship. As a Marine, I volunteered to go fight and die with other Marines. These men and women come from varied walks of life. Some Christian, some atheist, some socially awkward, sociopathic, some all-American types.

Colorless, Marines are only varying shades of green. Skin color, personal beliefs, these matters are of no consequence in combat, where the entire earth is a shifting hell wrought with explosions and small-arms fire.

In this momentary hell, there is nothing more to a Marine’s existence than the men or women to the left and right. Home is no longer a real quantity. Instead, home is the patch of mud, or sand, that for seconds is a series of instantaneous life and death decisions, trigger pulls, troop movements. I can hardly make sense of my brothers that died in combat. Therefore, I cannot make sense of the recent attack at Fort Hood. Ivan Lopez took the lives of his brothers and sisters. For that, there is no acceptable explanation.

That there was an altercation before Lopez fired shots is of little consequence. Lopez already had something inside him that broke his allegiance to mankind, to his fellow soldiers. As a Marine, a combat veteran, I am simply reminded that war never really ends. War simply adopts new locations and instruments of implementation.

mmacdona@mavs.coloradomesa.edu