Danny Leifer was a recon Marine who joined the corps at age 18. After being deployed twice to Afghanistan, a big part of his recovery was therapy and fly fishing and tying.
This is his war story, in his own words.
“I felt so trapped in this state of just constantly responding to stimuli. It doesn’t feel like choice. Doesn’t feel like autonomy. I was in this place for a long time. Years and years where all I could do was react. There wasn’t this sense of safety. There wasn’t the sense of calm. That transition was extremely hard. For whatever reason, I got through it. And I’m awake and I’m here now.
“Joined the military. I wanted to experience that lifestyle, that culture. I was young — 18 when I signed up. Talked my recruiter into giving me a recon contract. So in 2010, deployed to Afghanistan for the first time. I got to experience combat just a few hours into my first mission. We had some ambushes that really stand out.
“I can’t remember if it was on the Marine Corps birthday or on Veteran’s Day. We’re at this compound, and we have this local. He’s telling us that Taliban are everywhere and we want to move from the compound that we’re at to this other compound just a little bit further down.
“This local leads my buddy, the point man, across the bridge. My other buddy is crossing the bridge with his saw and in an instant, the ground just just rises up around me and bullets are impacting everywhere. I can just make out this compound a few hundred meters down the canal from my position. And I jump up in the air and I just roll into this depression down to my right.
My buddy is crossing the bridge with a saw — just jumps into the canal. And my buddy who’s the point man who just crossed the bridge is a good 20 meters out in this field and just drops like a rock. And we’re calling to him and we’re not hearing anything. And so worst case scenario is going through our heads.
“Fire dies down. We’re hanging out there for a little bit, making sure it’s clear. And we hear Steve call back to us. ‘I’m all right.’ Guy had bullet holes in his drop pouch. He got lit up and just for whatever reason, not a single one of those machine gun rounds hit any of us.
“I come back to Oregon in July 2012 and I think that’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. Switching from this culture of accountability to the loneliest I have ever felt. A lot of that feeling of uncertainty and that anxiety of being back in society just came from not having those people that I loved and trusted and and worked with near me.
“I was doing therapy and a support group at the vet center. Someone over there mentioned that they were going to be doing a fly tying night. I didn’t know anything about fly fishing. I didn’t know anything about fly tying. Had these materials out in front of me. Hook, thread, hair. And after just a few minutes, I had assembled them into this little bug. I’m sitting there looking at this elk hair caddis fly that I had just put together and it felt like a reminder that I can affect change in my environment.
“So I went fishing with some of the veterans from Project Healing Waters, and we got to catch fish, eat fish using tools that we created ourselves.
“There’s something so empowering about creating. I think creation is so important for humans. We’re not organisms who can only respond to stimuli. We are these complex individuals, and the act of creation, of making things, making art, making expression connect us to each other and to the universe in just a beautiful way. And that was really the beginning of my healing journey, was just this little bug, tied of thread and dubbing and hair wrapped around a hook. And it was this reminder that I’m not stuck. I can change my environment.
“It’s really great to have community and have people that are looking out for you, and that it doesn’t have to be my platoon. It can be the people around me, wherever I am.
“I still tie flies. I love it. Advanced a little bit more from elk hair caddis and it’s just this constant reminder of how far we can go and how far I’ve come.”