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The feeling was fleeting, but with each encierro, I steadily moved increasingly towards a new life in the present. (Jack Rogers)
People ran frantic through the crowded streets.
White and red flashed past as yells of “¡Corre! ¡Corre! ¡Arriba!” filled the air.
I didn’t know what to think as my heart pounded in my head. Then, I heard it–the steady beat of hooves on the cobblestone streets. The bulls of Pamplona were near, and they were charging straight for me.
I began to jog, but I was soon sprinting in Spain’s most-famous running with the bulls. The bulls appeared from around the corner next to city hall, and they were big, at least they appeared that way. For what seemed like a minute, I ran with these beasts and their sharpened horns as they tore down the road to the Plaza de Toros. In reviewing a video, I discovered it was more like 15 seconds, but that was the most exhilarating 15 seconds of my life.
“Not even a bruised rib from an unexpected fall could dampen the thrill.”
— Jack Rogers
I had once been in the Army, a career practitioner of anti-terrorism during the heyday of Islamic State. It was only three weeks after I joined the Army that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gave his famed sermon in Mosul; that sermon set the trajectory for my career.
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I began to jog, but I was soon sprinting in Spain’s most-famous running with the bulls. (Jack Rogers)
However, administrations and priorities change. Not a decade later, American policy shifted from counterterrorism to great power competition. After leaving the Army, I kept my counterterrorism career alive by joining the Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Enterprise, but even then, the writing was on the wall. People who, for two decades, had dedicated themselves to the War on Terror suddenly found the market for their skills had dried up. We were relegated to back offices labelled “break in case of emergency” and tasked with monitoring terrorism rather than combatting it. The world had moved on, and it had left people like me behind.
I was not the first lost veteran to end up in Pamplona. Ernest Hemingway, one of America’s most famous authors, and his Lost Generation were similarly left behind after the Great War. With the death and destruction over and the Roaring Twenties in full swing, those who fought in the literal trenches were left to find their own way while the world moved on from the war in which they had fought and lost their innocence.
Hemingway beautifully captured his generation’s emotions, despair, and ill-psychological health in his social commentary “The Sun Also Rises.” War wounds, hedonism, destitution and fragile friendships tormented his characters as they reeled from the war many years on while Europe and the United States returned to normal. And while they reeled, they watched the bulls of Pamplona run through the streets and perform in bullfight to find some hidden way to cope with the post-war world.
A century later, I, too, was among the bulls of Pamplona. This wasn’t my first time, either. Five years before, I ran my first encierro, the Spanish word for the running of the bulls. It literally translates as “confinement,” an apt description of the situation. Trapped between two walls and surrounded by hundreds of runners, there were only two ways out of the run: dead or alive. The chances of dying were slim, though not zero, and “alive” could mean anything from unscathed to hospitalized with a horn through a leg. It was the most authentic feeling I had felt in a long time.
It had been years since I last engaged in true counterterrorism operations. No longer was I looking terrorists in the face, close enough to touch, working countersurveillance or investigating threats as they emerged; no longer was I living life all the way up. No longer, that is, until I found Pamplona’s encierro.
No longer was I living life all the way up. No longer, that is, until I found Pamplona’s encierro. (Jack Rogers)
Between the fences, in front of the bulls, and amongst the runners, there was an authenticity that was impossible to describe. I had to live in the moment, discerning where the bulls were, how fast they were running, and the actions of my fellow runners in real time. The goal wasn’t just to run in the streets; it was to run with the bulls as they charged.
That was no easy feat, but it was one worth pursuing. For those 15 seconds, I was truly alive, a feeling Hemingway himself observed of the matadors in the bullfights. Nothing else mattered, and the changing world that left me and my kind behind became a remnant of the past. The feeling was fleeting, but with each encierro, I steadily moved increasingly towards a new life in the present.
After my 34th encierro this year, I was finally rejoining the world as it was, no longer living in the past. In running with the bulls rather than from them. Just like Hemingway’s Lost Generation a hundred years before, I learned to run with life rather than from it.
In running with the bulls rather than from them. Just like Hemingway’s Lost Generation a hundred years before, I learned to run with life rather than from it. (Jack Rogers)
Editor’s Note: Service members should consult their command if they are interested in running the encierro.
Editor’s Note: This article was written by a member of the local military community, not an employee of Stars and Stripes. Neither the organization nor the content is being represented by Stars and Stripes or the Department of Defense.
