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Veteran remembers his fallen friends while helping others find peace
Home wasn't idyllic for Dominic Oto who lost close friends during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he's found peace and is helping others veterans.
Veteran remembers his fallen friends while helping others find peace Home wasn't idyllic for Dominic Oto who lost close friends during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he's found peace and is helping others veterans. Check out this story on jconline.com: http://on.jconline.com/2ArYZr7
Ron Wilkins, Journal & Courier Published 5:56 p.m. ET Nov. 9, 2017 | Updated 11:14 p.m. ET Nov. 9, 2017
Dominic Oto, 42, talks about being a veteran and what it's like to come back from war and settle back into a normal life. Technically, he's still in the Army Reserves, but only for a while. Twenty-five years in the Army and three deployments have taken a toll on him, and he's likely to retire soon.(Photo: Ron Wilkins/Journal & Courier)
LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Dominic Oto lives today because he lost a coin toss.
"The crew list came out, and I was supposed to gun, and (Capt.) Bruno (de Solenni) was supposed to drive," Oto said recalling Sept. 20, 2008, and his 14-truck convoy bound for Kandahar, Afghanistan. "We flipped a coin, and I ended up losing the coin toss, and I drove and he gunned."
Oto, who at the time was also a captain, was bound for the states via Kandahar until a 500-pound improvised explosive blew up at the left rear quarter of the MRAP that he was driving.
"It left a crater the size of an Olympic swimming pool," he said of the explosion that killed de Solenni and two interpreters inside the MRAP. "My 37,000-pound vehicle was tossed 20 feet up in the air, and we slid 20 feet."
The MRAP absorbed the explosion as it was designed to do, which means it split apart, Oto said. But it saved his life.
The explosion left Oto, who is now a lieutenant colonel on the brink of retirement, with a traumatic brain injury, which he openly jokes about. Talking with Oto sometimes takes abrupt changes in topics like shifting gears without using a clutch. That's the brain injury, he said.
He's aware of the quirkiness, and he unnecessarily apologies for the abrupt twists and turns in the conversations.
Oto spent 25 years in the Army — deployed once to Iraq, twice to Afghanistan and served another year in Afghanistan as a contractor while still in the Army National Guard in Oregon. His body is racked with pain from the explosion and two-and-a-half decades of soldiering.
As people think about Veterans Day and read about heroic feats or idolize American heroes, Oto notes that's not him.
"Most of my time in the Army has been as a staff officer," he said. "I have very little combat experience. I got shot at a couple of times. By the time I called in on the radio and figured out what was happening, it was over. I never fired my rifle in Iraq or Afghanistan."
He's not the front-line soldier ferreting out the enemy, per se. He's just a soldier who honorably defended his country, and in the process, lost three friends in two of his three deployments. Two of the men were close friends.
His last deployment ended in 2010, but he spent another year in Afghanistan as a private contractor. He admits he stayed in Afghanistan to avoid coming home.
Most people think of home with a fondness for its warmth, security and stability, but Oto knew home meant pain and grief over his friends.
The friends he lost were fellow junior officers, who were not directly under his command. But he grieves their loss. He admits he has survivor's guilt — asking himself why they died and he lived.
"If there's a cliché veteran — dated the wrong women, started to drink, tried to write a book about it," Oto said recalling what he said to another veteran in Oregon who struggled to adjust to a place free from falling mortar shells and ambushes.
Oto finally found peace with the losses of war and his years in combat zones. The first step to coming to terms with his loss came when he found in his wife, Muna.
"I found the right person," he said, "and my wife gave me the courage to really try and do this. She made me just want to be a better person."
She also highlighted for him how noticeable his traumatic brain injury is and encouraged him to seek treatment at the Veterans Administration hospital.
But there was still something missing, he said. So he turned to Christ.
"When I was at my lowest point and I gave this over to God, I felt like somebody had let me out of a cage of sorrow, regret and anger," he said.
One of his buddies asked him if he really believed in that "mumbo jumbo." He said his faith in Christ has made him a different person. It changed how he saw himself and how he saw the world around him.
"What happened that day (of the IED explosion), I'm reminded of it every day," he said. "I've got chronic pain, headaches. All these other things.
"At the same time, I'm alive, and that's something to be thankful for and celebrated, not to be wasted thinking about what could have been or thinking about what needs to be.
"I need to hunt for the good stuff in my life," he said. "And there's so many good things."
His comrades in arms and his friends have seen a change in him.
Being in combat is a experience that binds people together in a closeness and affection in ways that others can't understand, he said.
"More than any award that I ever got from the military, the admiration of men that I love and respect means more to me than anything I've ever gotten," he said. "And to have those same men tell me I'm at my very best now, when I think sometimes I feel like I'm at my worst, … that's the greatest compliment you can receive."
The appreciation of veterans that we celebrate Saturday isn't lost on college students who were 2 or 3 when 9/11 attacks started in 2001, he said.
He has taken classes at Purdue, and when traditional students learn of his service, they chat him up with questions — lots of questions. He doesn't mind.
"Inevitably, (the conversations) would be 'I know a guy, that knows a guy that has a brother that has a friend that was in Iraq.'
"There's a big disconnect, but not in a bad way," he said of these college students who have known of war all of their lives through news reports. "They do care ... care deeply. It's just been going on for so long. Nobody's got skin in the game. It's not like World War II."
Now on the brink of retirement from the Army Reserves, Oto is a self-employed author, writing e-books and blogging.
He speaks frankly about his experiences, his traumatic brain injury, his adjustments to life in the states and his faith in hopes that it might help others.
He recalled his father, a Korean and Vietnam veteran, who never confronted the proverbial ghosts that haunted him.
"He was a highly decorated soldier, and I know what it's like to live with somebody who's angry and PTSD (Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder)," Oto said.
Life after war for Oto has been learning not to be angry, dealing with his PTSD and helping other veterans find peace with their proverbial specters.
After five years home, life is good.
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