DON’T TELL ME NO!
Shannon Robinson, Staff Writer
Dan Neighbors - Army Specialist, E4
Dan Neighbors
Growing up on a horse ranch just south of Fort Worth, Daniel Neighbors idolized Westerns. He admired the steadfast, quiet, noble Cowboy code of honor. His conservative family didn’t allow TV during the week, but on the Saturday nights he spent at his Grandparents’ house, he soaked up every Western movie he could. Those cowboys are partially what led Dan to join the US Cavalry.
After the terrorist attacks on September 11th, Dan resolved to join the military. A weightlifting shoulder injury and double shoulder surgery prevented him from enlisting immediately, so he spent the next few years working every job he could—bounty hunting, being a body guard and bouncer, and selling motorcycle parts.
After Hurricane Katrina hit in 2006, Dan was offered a security position to go south and guard a wealthy family; however, this was just for his part-time job. When Dan approached the owner of the parts company he worked full-time for and expressed his interest and need for time-off, their one mistake was telling Dan “No,” he couldn’t go. Neighbors accepted the challenge, quit, and found an Army recruiter that same day.
The Texas Army National Guard recruiter, with an impressive video and a persuasive pitch, showed Dan “the coolest shit I’ve ever seen in my life.” The recruit not only got Dan to enlist as an Army Cavalry Scout but convinced him to “get everything done at once” and attend OSUT training at Ft. Knox that came with 6 months of bootcamp. Around October 2006, Dan headed to Kentucky, which was “cold as fuck” and very unforgiving for a cowboy from Texas. He continued on to specialist school, and deployed to Iraq as an E4 Army Specialist.
In 2007, Neighbors deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom. His first 30 days or so were spent training and acclimating to the upcoming missions. This largely included watching graphic videos day in and day out of what to expect in the field and preparing for the rest of his deployment. He went on maybe a dozen missions before returning to Texas for a brief R&R.
When Dan got back to the US, he was surprised and disappointed that no one seemed to recognize or care about what was going on outside of America. Even his tightknit family he was so close with had moved on through the rhythms of life.
It was one trip to the grocery store that changed his mindset. A woman was griping about the check-out lanes, something so inane and unimportant. It appalled Dan to think that this was the America he was fighting for; these were the freedoms that people were complaining about. This experience, combined with his family’s apathy, switched Dan from a sacrifice mindset to one of survival. When he went back to Iraq, “it was more for me than them.”
When he returned, Dan was the gunner in a route recon team that ran from south of Diwaniya to FOB Scania, right through the hottest zone in Iraq. For his 400-day deployment, they checked the area for IEDs and ambushes, running between the two points to secure it for convoys. They prepared the route and provided extreme security for the traveling convoys.
Despite the intensity in that area of the country, Dan liked the routine. He’d get up, work out, run the mission, come back, work out, sleep, and repeat the cycle. “It was the most settled and chaotic I’ve ever experienced my life. It was awesome. I loved it.”
Neighbors was also included in the aptly named E4 Mafia—the group who was sent to do some of the work NCOs couldn’t. That’s all he could tell me about the crew.
Neighbors remembered one of his last missions, the one that both filled him with hope for the good they were doing and simultaneously destroyed that hope in him forever.
Dan’s wife at the time sent the team a box of teddy bears to hand out to the little kids in the area whenever they went out on recon. There was one “nasty ass bear” that lasted the longest and became a symbol for good luck to the team because as long as that bear was in the truck, the unit had been safe.
During his last mission, they stopped to speak with a sheikh, and a little girl came up to them from a Bedouin tent. “Her dress…looked like sand, her hair was matted, and her skin looked like clay.” Dan knew it was their last mission, so he handed her that last, old bear, and her desert face lit up as if they gave her the world’s greatest treasure. As they moved on, Dan scanned the area and watched her wave goodbye through the scope of his 240 Bravo. At the same moment she was happily waving, the sheikh walked over and slapped her hard to the ground, throwing the bear away. She stood, and her face switched from the sheerest joy to the purest anger and sadness. Dan was furious that she would forever associate a kind act—and the soldiers—with punishment and pain.
Coming home after the war, stoic and grounded, Neighbors moved forward with the façade that nothing bothered him. To Dan, part of the sacrifice is swallowing the experience no matter how hard it is; if you share it with somebody else, then they experience it with you, and it’s no longer your sacrifice. So then, what’s the point of your service? “That’s what patriotism is to me,” Dan solemnly stated.
Neighbors currently works as a Denton Police Officer, seeking to right the wrongs in the city. Every combat veteran has a story to tell, and just a glimpse into Dan’s story shows his commitment to justice and service to an America he believes in. The cowboy code that was instilled in him as a child is still very much ingrained in his fiber as a man. He lives his life with values, patriotism, and a resistance to any threat towards American freedom. Just try telling him “no”—he’ll rise above the challenge and exceed.