Part 9/17:
Jay recounts intense deployments, including multiple tours in Afghanistan, and emphasizes that no one feels completely prepared for war. His resilience stems from a childhood built around adversity, and testing in the military that conditioned him to handle extreme situations.
He discusses the difficulty of post-mission decompression, especially after the high-stress environment of Afghanistan. The phase in Cyprus, meant to be a time of relaxation, often devolved into chaos and excessive drinking, which, while creating camaraderie, also masked the underlying trauma and tension from combat.