/// HEALTH & WELLNESS
Saving Private Campbell Gulf War vet cheats death, devotes life to slaying demons
BY ELIAS WEISS
D URING OPERATION DESERT STORM, retreat was never on the table. approached a minefield or a trench or a bunker. For Army Pvt. David Carroll Campbell, only after the war did retreat become an option. Not from battle, but from life. Racked with PTSD and drowning in addiction, Campbell’s post-service life was a warzone of its own. He cheated death in Kuwait, only to wrestle with it back home. Not for the youngest, lowest-ranking private in his platoon. Not for the first guy out of the tank every time his squad When he was declared legally dead after an explosion, he wanted to live. When his suicide attempts post-combat failed time and time again, he wanted to die.
brutally by his father while his mother turned a blind eye. To get away from abuse at home, at age 15, he found a gig taking photographs for the Los Angeles Times. He was pretty damn good with a camera. Two years later, he prepared to escape the abuse permanently and take his talents with him. Promised a job as a combat photographer, enlisting in the Army was the obvious choice. His first day of basic training was Aug. 2, 1990. That was the day Iraq invaded Kuwait. Campbell was quickly forced to trade lenses and shutters for minefields and demolitions. But he didn’t have a problem with that. By November, he was in Saudi Arabia. INTO HARM’S WAY Just a stone’s throw from the Iraqi border, under fire from the Republican Guard’s heavy artillery, Campbell had his first brush with wartime trauma. “The tank was hit. Everybody was blown in half and begging for help as they died,” he said. “We were all going to die that day, there was nothing we could do about it. We had to accept that.” But in the nick of time, the U.S. Air Force arrived with Apache and A-10 attack aircraft, and they started “blowing the shit out of everybody,” Campbell remembers. Always a shutterbug, he got three good rolls of film of the Americans’ decisive win. The platoon hung a right toward Kuwait, tasked with blowing up everything Iraqi inside that country — bunkers, equipment, tanks, Iraqi officer trailers and whatever else they could find. “It was awesome, just blowing up everything,” Campbell said. It was only awesome until a friendly fire explosion broke his skull and sent him to the brink. “I was blown up and killed and dead for five minutes,” Campbell said. “There was blood on my face. I had no pulse, no nothing.”
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We were all going to die that day, there was nothing we could do about it. We had to accept that. ” DAVE CAMPBELL
The poor man never got what he wanted. It turns out, defeating Saddam Hussein’s
Republican Guard wasn’t enough. He had to conquer his own mind. And when he did, for the first time in his life, he got what he wanted — the chance to offer others the kindness life never offered him. ENLISTMENT DAY “I should be dead,” Campbell said matter-of-factly during a recent conversation at his Chandler home. One hand clutched a can of energy drink while the other pet the head of his black Aussie-lab mix, Caleb, whose chin rested on the arm of his wheelchair. Soldier’s Best Friend, a nonprofit based in Peoria, played matchmaker for the pair. Campbell is among 300 veterans and active-duty service members in Arizona paired with shelter dogs since 2011. “Dogs can teach you. They can lift you up and bring you peace,” Campbell said. It took most of the grizzled veteran’s 51 years on Earth to find that peace. He feared for his life before and after combat, not only during it. As a child, he was sexually abused and beaten
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AMERICAN VETERANS Summer 2024
Summer 2024 AMERICAN VETERANS
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