Jose Manuel, Bibi, Sanchez Riera (Madrid, 58 years old), keeps clay shoes that he was wearing on November 29, 2003, … On the eighth day, an ambush was installed in Latifiya, 40 km south of Baghdad. He was the only survivor of that massacre, and now, after 21 years, he narrates his vital story in the first person, who transferred him to the army, CNI, Iraq, and Iraq, after the attack, generated a distance from the stress that he retired with 48 years who are continuing today to maintain Raya. Jose Manuel, his father, does not leave three children in “Three days of November” (Espasa), a book dedicated to his family, “The Book that has suffered from most patients”, which praises his seven comrades who were killed. On November 29, they went in SUVs from Baghdad to their bases from Diwania and Nawaf. The seat was occupied behind participating in the Blue Chevrolet Tahoe, where Alfonso Vega, Jose Carlos Rodriguez and Carlos Barrow went. On the other hand, it was a white Nissan, traveling Alberto Martinez, Jose Lucas, Luis Ignacio Zannon and Jose Ramon Mirino. Lented counter -action.
– The convoy suffers from an ambush in Latifiya, a small city south of Baghdad …
– Yes, we dealt with the right corridor when we suddenly hear the noise of the old engine that accelerates every pill, and it is located in the left corridor and begins to shoot ourselves. You don’t know what is happening or where the shots come to you. But in an immediate passage of the lack of control in the way you should act with. ”Alfonso, who was driving his car and was a specialist in driving driving, is accelerating so that he can warn them of our attack. The shots continue and at one time say“ They have given me on my back ”, hit the flight and leave the Chevrolet road. We appeared about 70 meters from the road, near some houses and in the middle of From water and clay …
– He loses his weapon.
– I was completely shocked and when I got out of the gun in my hands, I fell into the pond and lost my jungle. Then the attacker was placed in the shoulder and continued to open the fire against us. I think they shot with Kalashnikov. Not because of the sound, but because of the rhythm. He was shot. When we were able to wake up again, we saw that Alfonso had died and that Jose Carlos, who was traveling behind him, was seriously injured. I lying on the seat to be more comfortable. At that time, Nissan appeared from our colleagues. Carlos told me that I approached, went up and saw that Alberto, the driver, had died, and Bibi Lucas, who was behind him. I went back to Chevrolet to inform Carlos of the situation.
– Did calls made?
– Yes, Carlos tried to contact the Diwania base and the Polish division on which our brigade depends organically, but when things should get worse, they all mistake and that was impossible. Then he distinguished the phone of our link in Madrid, which we attended, but before we could give it our position, the call was cut.
– Meanwhile, they kept shooting them …
– Yes, now they did so from nearby houses. After I lost my jungle, I got one of the machine guns that we had, but it was not a large caliber and was preserved. I can only shoot. In the face of this situation, Carlos told me to walk on the road and ask for help in the gentle.
– You will ask for help under a shower of projectiles … Is there a time to believe that the bullet can give you and that it has ended?
– No, because if he gives you, it will give you the same. You do not enter these recovery operations. You have adrenaline through air and heart to a thousand, and the only thing you think is in the next step.
ambush
“We listen to the noise of the old engine and immediately stroke”
– Only a few meters walk when a group of people started gathering, and the mob is captured.
– Yes, they start to shake, lean, hit me on his head, punches. There was a row of vehicles stopped by the ambush, and an older man came out of a bus, and with each anger, he sealed a shoe in my face …
– I thought they would kill him …
– But this feeling that you will die does not generate anything. You are still surprised that in the face of imminent death, you have a difficult and cold calm, so that you do not remember your family. I remembered part of the second of them. It is the instinct of survival that makes you start from your humanity, and those feelings that can avoid doing what you have to do at that time, and he is “still alive, his uncle.”
– Then a man comes to accept and change his fate.
– This is true, a man of my age, then I was 37 years old, and he looked at my face and without asking anything that he accepts for me on the cheek and left for the same path that he came in. And the kiss of that man, which everyone seemed respect, changed the scene radically. People who hit me disappear.
– A kiss saving his life …
– Yes, but not only the kiss saves my life. I also saved my life that no one kills me when I got to cars.
– After this gesture, a taxi driver offers him …
– I installed in the front seat of the taxi with the open door. But a hundred meters away, I see a police patrol and almost go. The first thing I ask for is the documents and the Iraqi police were actually, but from the alliance. That is, the new police. To get signs, I told you that they attacked us. They knew already. With a gesture, they told me that this is a cable, that all of my colleagues had died.
– They transfer it to a police station …
– There was a policeman speaking English. Make a small story and ask him to talk to the Spanish embassy. While taking steps, stay in a cell with a water jug. Another policeman leaves me with the tobacco package and lighter, touches my hands and leaves. He did not smoke two years. I spent 24 hours smoking.
The gesture of salvation
“They were hitting me when a man accepted me and everything changed.”
– Are you still smoking?
– I was without smoking for five years, and I returned before.
Have you thought about returning to Latifiya?
– I thought not to return there directly. No, no, no. I have post -trauma stress, but this is not a position that controls it. If you are fine now, why will I do something likely to affect emotionally and can get me out of the calm state that I live in? In addition, there is no need to see it because I see it every day. I do not have to do an effort to go to Iraq. Every day I spend two or three minutes there.
Nightmare
One of the few fears you left is that your psychological state can get worse.
Yes, for this reason I hesitate to leave a state of calm. In the process of mental illness, which suffers more than others is the family that revolves around the patient. My fear is that I drop and affect those who spent a very bad time.
– Did you have nightmares?
No, the nightmare is alive. I should not wake up in the middle of the night. I can’t sleep. I went to bed, closed my eyes, and with my eyes closed, I threw an hour in bed, while I said I went here, I will smoke, I am going to where. From the attack to 2014 more or less, I didn’t sleep a good night.
He says he felt cheese to the fact that he was alive …
– And guilt. It is a logical reaction to the painful truth that you are the only one. Do you wonder what you did to be alive? Then the mind begins to generate negative feelings towards you. It is so.
– And why do you think it is alive?
– I don’t know. We call it fate, we call it luck. I have no clear answer.
– Until he put himself in the hands of a psychiatrist who had feelings of despair …
Of course, the crisis takes you to very strange paths. First, they separate you from what you want more because you start to be an object of furniture. I share less than a chair. But it was not sudden. This begins in 2008, five years later.
What happened in 2008?
– I start moving away from my family … to isolate me. It is part of the book that has been harmed by most writing. Because I made what I love most.
I was his eldest son, who makes him interact …
-Yes, Sergio, who was 15 years old, tells me one day at home, “What are you doing?” I read. “This is very good, but in this house, we are four years old, and that’s what you have to fix.” Then he clicks on my head and said: “The curse, if my fifteen son -whom his father should betray and enter a more enormous” recognition “of me, we are wrong.” Then I started going to the psychiatrist.
– And do things improve?
– My family’s position improved, but my professional situation began to get worse. I fully lost the desire to work. There were days that came, running and extinguishing the computer. In other days, I arrived with the car and without turning off the engine and returning home. One morning in March 2009, download the main building scale for the center that started crying. I took the phone and contacted Ruffino, my psychiatrist, and said Rufino, helped me. I wore it and started treatment. I was such a year. I thought about starting procedures to go to the Medical Court and get a decrease in permanent disability. But I was very young for retirement, I was only 44 years old. In 2010, the possibility of going to work abroad arose. I talked to him at home and tried. We went to Uruguay to live. We spent three years abroad, and in 2013 we returned … and a lane, again the symptoms, hoping again … this cannot be. I called Rufino and we started to withdraw. Since 2014, it has retired for permanent disability.
– How is it now?
– good. calm. My happiness is calm.
Do you have any feeling of revenge?
– no. I did not play a weapon again. Not possible.
Relatives of the victims
“I do not see them much, for I am a negative memory and understand.”
Do you usually see the families of your colleagues in the class?
I find a little while I understand. I am not necessary in their lives, because I am very negative memory and memory for them. They know that they have for what they need.
Was this book a step forward in your life?
– Another step. Go ahead, return? I don’t know. Is it a treatment? Yes. Is it a processor? also. It is another step, part of the road.
By the way, learn about our intelligence services well …
– We played in the Champions League, along with the British CIA or MI6 … but with the regional media. The budget is minimal compared to the most driving. Our intelligence service is very good for people who work there. We are very respectful.
What will you do with the shoes that were on that day in Latifiya?
– They will go to a very special place, but I prefer not to say where.
