by Larry Minear
In response to one interviewer’s question, “How do your experiences contribute to your thinking about war and military service?” he answered. “I don’t think war is fun or glorious or anything like that but I am willing to do it again. In fact, I want to do it again. I think the military services are absolutely necessary, especially with the world as it is today.”
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The extraordinary sense of solidarity that developed under duress in Afghanistan and Iraq was the product, in the words of Marine Lt. Col. Robert C. D’Amico, of “sharing bad times with good people. Sharing a difficult situation has a tendency to bond you for the rest of your life.”73 “Being away from home,” explains Air Force Col. William Andrews, “you know you miss your family but you’re with another family. The squadron that you’re a part of kind of takes on a family atmosphere of its own.”74 “The troops are the only source of support and entertainment,” adds Army 1st Lt. Trevor Bradna.75
A dramatic example of the strength of those ties is provided by a young sergeant who was injured by a mortar on the final day of her unit’s deployment in Iraq. Returning home and enrolling in a federal program, the Wounded Warrior internships, to assist veterans back into the workplace, she told her new colleagues at the State Department—from her wheelchair—how grateful she was that her mishap hadn’t occurred earlier in her tour, thereby forcing her to leave while her compatriots were still deployed.76
The solidarity that develops among persons exposed to the same risks often seems to override an individual’s concern for his or her own safety. An e-mail home by an Air Force psychologist stationed with a medical unit in Qatar explained how solidarity affected individual decision making. “No one ever feels like they are doing enough,” wrote Air Force captain Dr. Lisa R. Blackman. “If you are in a safe location, you feel guilty that your friends are getting shot at and you aren’t. If you are getting shot at, you feel guilty if your buddy gets hit and you don’t. If you get shot at but don’t die, you feel guilty that you lived and more guilty if you get to go home and your friends have to stay behind.”77
The same educational and economic factors that figured in people’s original decisions to enlist may also encourage them to reenlist and redeploy. The U.S. Army Information website in January 2009 was advertising “enlistment bonuses of up to $40,000 and 100 percent college tuition reimbursement.”78 Moreover, the deepening economic crisis in the United States tipped the balance for some. In one instance, the manager of an American car dealership in Carmel, New York, a twenty-two-year veteran of the National Guard, extended his tour of duty in Afghanistan, his fourth deployment. “Guardsman would rather face Taliban than U.S. economy,” read the headline.79 In fact, DOD’s projections for 2009 anticipated less difficulty than in recent years in meeting retention and recruitment targets.80
One reflection that captures the bittersweet elements of the reentry process for many veterans is an entry by 1st Lt. Lee Kelley of the Utah National Guard in his blog, “Wordsmith at War.” Returning from a year in Ramadi, Kelley was both grateful and sardonic.
We wouldn’t expect you to alter your lives for us—you’re not soldiers. You don’t have to travel seven thousand miles to fight a violent and intelligent enemy. We’ll take care of that. You just continue to prosper in the middle class, trade up on your economy-size car, install that new subwoofer in the trunk, and yes, the red blouse looks wonderful on you—buy it…. But please remain constant as well, because we have changed…. Just be Americans with all your ugliness and beauty, your spectacular heights, and your flooded cities, climbing the corporate ladder or standing in the welfare line. Live your lives and enjoy your freedoms. We’re not all walking idealist clichés who think your ability to work where you want and vote and associate with whomever you want are hinged completely on our deployment to Iraq. But you know what? Our work here is part of that collective effort through the ages that have granted you those things. So don’t forget about us, because we can’t forget you.”81
Soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq experienced major changes, even transformations. Returning to families, friends, and communities has been an uneven and, for some, tortuous process, in part because those on the receiving end have moved on in their lives. Given the traumatic nature of the soldiering experience, veterans have struggled to discover a new normal and to reclaim their often-eroded sense of humanity. The in-theater challenges identified earlier—the foreignness and complexity of the terrain, the difficulty of identifying the enemy, the ruthlessness of the warfare, the tensions between survival and norm-sensitive deportment—have made the reentry process all the more difficult. For many, the struggle is ongoing. The following chapter examines the institutional resources available to them in the process.
TEN
Accessing Institutional Resources
The reentry paths for individuals described in the preceding chapter take place within the context of an array of institutions offering health, education, employment, and other services. Already struggling under existing caseloads, the capacity and competence of such institutions are monumentally challenged by the return to the United States of over two million soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq. This chapter examines the scale of need, the institutions to which veterans turn for assistance, and the extent to which the system is proving able to expand to meet the heavy demand.
WELCOME TO THE BUREAUCRACY
Most veterans of the Global War on Terror return home intent on picking up where they left off and getting on with their lives. Whether retiring, continuing in active-duty status, or resuming post-deployment lives as members of the National Guard or Reserves, they seek out the institutional resources available to them. For treatment of health issues, many turned to their Tricare insurance. For those intent on pursuing educational goals—some in new areas spurred by their recent experience—the provisions of the GI Bill, with enhanced benefits after August 2009, beckon. Veterans returning to private sector employment count on employers to reinstate them in their jobs.
Some veterans express satisfaction at the benefits and services received. When Army 1st Sgt. Gregory Mayfield returned, he had already made use in theater of a combat stress hospital to help deal with sleeping and emotional problems. “You need to learn to relax,” he was told. “Man, how do you expect anyone to relax?” he countered. “In a place where you get rocketed and mortared very frequently and you’re so attuned to being switched on, you can’t just flip the switch off. I think the first time I started relaxing is when we got back to Kuwait,” and he continued the process back in the States. “I knew I was messed up. The things that I did and the things that I saw pushed me over the edge. But I was wise enough to know that I needed to go and talk to someone.” He sought out and received help. With reference to his PTSD in particular, Mayfield said, “The fact that they have people dedicated to just focusing solely on it now is good testament to the concern at the command level of taking care of the troops’ welfare.”1
Frustration and anger, however, were more typical reactions among veterans upon reentry. The troops were particularly incensed by conditions such as those at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in northwest Washington, D.C., disclosed in a series of articles by two Washington Post reporters in early 2007. Sgt. Terrell Spencer, injured in Iraq, sounded off about “guys at Walter Reed who lost half their brains being made to scrub toilets with toothbrushes and crap. They’re living mold-infested in rats. Those guys can’t even use the bathroom on their own and they’re treating them like asses. What chance they’re gonna take care of me? All I did was break my neck. That’s nothing compared to these guys. These guys need help and they can’t get it.” Spencer was critical as well of the living conditions, both before deployment and after returning, at Fort Dix.2
Sgt. Bobby Lee Lisek, an infantry squad leader in Iraq, returned with major wounds from having “been blowed up about eighty times.” He recalled “waking up at Walter Reed” a month after being medevaced from the frontlines. “I still thought
I was in Iraq.” His wife and (by telephone) his mother filled in some of the details for the interviewer. His condition included major wounds to his skull, shattered bones in his extremities, a prosthetic replacement for one arm, permanent damage to his sight and hearing, and PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury). He has gone through some two dozen operations in Iraq, Germany, and the United States.
Citing the quality of nursing care and his difficulties in dealing with the medical system, Lisek described Walter Reed as “a horrible place.” His family agreed. Lisek’s father, who had returned from Vietnam with major medical issues, had experienced similar problems with treatment and post-combat disability pay. When Lisek learned one day that President Bush was making the rounds at Walter Reed to bestow service awards, he said, “Fuck President Bush. He ain’t pinning my Purple Heart on me. My company commander and battalion commander will.” He considered it a victory of sorts that the president “never came in my room.”3
Veterans express particular frustration that, despite the personal inconvenience and mortal risks they had assumed on behalf of their country, the institutional uptake on their needs was neither prompt nor seamless. “Don’t join the army because you think you owe America” Lisek advised, “because America won’t take care of you when you come back all jacked up.”4 Many veterans sense a bitter irony: In what seemed would eventually become a trillion-dollar war, the department charged with their welfare would nickel-and-dime their needs.
Based on personal experience, “I can honestly say without a doubt,” lamented Sgt. Dax Carpenter, the Arkansas Marine who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, “that mental health within the military units is extremely lacking. I fought for two years all the way to Washington, D.C., to get the 40 percent disability rating from the Marine Corps so they’d put me on a temporary retired list.” What he felt should have happened was quite different. “It should’ve been, ‘OK, you’re hurting. We see that. You’ve done more than your fair share on it. Here’s your benefits and your family’s benefits. You have a nice day, sir, and if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call.’ But it took those two years, a push from Washington, D.C., and they still weren’t gonna give me enough to medically retire me.”5
The experience of veterans returning to Fort Drum in upstate New York suggests that the problems of individuals such as Lisek and Carpenter may not be exceptional. “Of all U.S. Army divisions,” observes one study, “the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, New York, has been the most affected by our country’s crushing recent deployment cycle. Since September 11, 2001, the 2nd Brigade Combat team is the most deployed brigade in the Army, having recently completed its fourth tour.” Deployed for a total of forty months since 9/11 with less than the prescribed time between deployments, the Brigade has had 52 members killed in action, 270 wounded, and 2 missing. Notwithstanding the unit’s almost continuous immersion in active combat and thus its ostensible need for mental health services, however, recent returnees have had to wait “up to two months before a single appointment can be scheduled.”6
The frustrations of returnees have not been solely in the health sector. Third Class Petty Officer Philip Thomas, who served from 2001 to 2005 in Iraq, had similar frustrations upon reentry. Shifting upon return from active duty to the Reserves, Thomas waited six months for his final paycheck. Anxious to become credentialed as an electrician, he enrolled in school at the first available moment. His zeal outran the bureaucratic machinery, however, and, his school wouldn’t let him enter his second semester until it had received the Navy’s delayed payment for the first. “Everything with the Navy is a hassle,” he concluded.7
Some veterans linked such problems to the existence of two massive government bureaucracies, the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the difficulties of interagency coordination. Others suspected a certain political animus behind the bureaucratic run-around. “On several occasions,” observed [Army] Capt. Marc A. Giammatteo, an Iraq veteran who served on the Dole-Shalala commission reviewing the response of the bureaucracy to health care needs, “I, and others I have spoken to, felt that we were being judged as if we chose our nation’s foreign policy and, as a result, received little if any assistance.”8
Struggling with emotional problems following her return from Iraq, Army Spec. Nicole Ferretti sought help from a DVA counselor. Eight sessions were originally planned. However, the counselor stopped after seven, having failed, Ferretti said, to get proper Tricare authorization. “I would have continued had she not made that error and tried to impose the fees on me, but it was too difficult for me to start over with someone new.” She found the costs of continuing Tricare coverage prohibitive in relation to the benefits received and opted out, arranging for ongoing care at her own expense. In short, she said, “the Army hasn’t covered much.”
Ferretti, a Brazilian national, also raised the issue of expedited citizenship that figured in the hopes of a significant number of enlistees. She had lived in the United States since age six and placed her life in harm’s way in Iraq on behalf of her adopted land. “But I would certainly hope,” she said, “that I have my citizenship before I get sent off somewhere else.” With the process often delayed, she regretted that she hadn’t initiated it herself rather than leaving it to the military.9
SYSTEM UNDER DURESS
The institutional apparatus for responding to veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq has given every indication of being unprepared and overwhelmed by the scale of the need. The New Hampshire experience serves as something of a microcosm of the situation nationally.
In early 2005, New Hampshire received some 800 soldiers in its National Guard unit back from Iraq. The suicide of David Guindon, one of five earlier returnees, on his first day back had alerted Guard officials to the life-and-death issues involved. “We started to realize that there was more to this than we thought,” recalled Col. Deborah Carter, the New Hampshire National Guard’s human resources director.10 The focus shifted overnight from ordering bunting for welcome home ceremonies to identifying needs among returning Guard personnel, facilitating immediate access to support networks, and coordinating and expanding available services. “The complexity of going from warrior to citizen in the course of just a few days,” recalled Nancy Rollins, director of the New Hampshire Division of Community-based Services of the Department of Health and Human Services, called for an all-hands-on-deck approach.11
One crucial decision by Guard officials in New Hampshire proved to be their insistence that the standard debriefing for soldiers en masse be followed up by one-on-one counseling sessions for each returnee. Officials were stunned by the results. Of the roughly 800 returnees, 48 required immediate assistance, 398 requested a follow-up phone call during the first month, and 84 had sought help before the first year was out. In all, some 530 of the 800 soldiers availed themselves of mental health services at one point or another. Studying the data compiled, Colonel Carter identified a pattern. The greater an individual’s exposure to combat, the more likely the need for mental health services and support.12
Full Battle Rattle
Gregory Marinich (AFC2001/001/54920), Photographs (PH01), VHP, AFC, LOC.
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As a child, Lynn Wagner dreamed about being in the Army. When she enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1996 at age twenty-two, she was carrying on a family tradition of military service and also, thanks to an enlistment bonus, helping fund her college education. As a student with a strong interest in science, she considered herself a “soldier-scientist”: someone who—armed with the Ph.D. she wishes to pursue—would someday help protect her fellow soldiers.
Her initial assignment was with the 129th Transportation Company, which specialized in transporting M1 Abrams tanks and other heavy tracked and wheeled vehicles using the Heavy Equipment Transporter System (HETS). In November 2003, slated to go to Iraq with the 349th Chemical Company, she was deployed instead as a member of the 737th Transportation Company, which was short-sta
ffed.
Following three months in Kuwait, she spent nine months in Iraq, where she drove large unarmored tanker trucks filled with highly flammable fuel to military bases throughout Iraq. She had to steer her tanker through IEDs and small arms fire attacks launched from the median strip. The experience took its toll. “I was traumatized by the things that I saw and had to do in Iraq,” she says. Upon returning to the States, she was diagnosed with PTSD and underwent two years of counseling. She came to realize that she was “not as mentally healthy as [she] thought.” She credits people in her unit in Iraq and at the VA for helping her through the process. “It’s all about trying to feel safe,” she tells an interviewer gamely.
“Out of the close to five thousand pictures I have [from] Iraq,” she says, “this is my favorite. I think the reason is because I can look at it and it brings me right back. Hardly a minute goes by that I don’t think about Iraq.” Fellow soldier, Spec. Chris Slater took the photograph on Christmas Day 2004, en route to Baghdad International Airport. “The photo shows me in ‘full battle rattle,’ as we say. I’ll always have a piece of Iraq in me,” she comments. Even given her harrowing experiences and her PTSD, “The Army is one of the best things that has happened to me.”
She received a number of medals, including the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, the Global War on Terror Expeditionary Medal, the Global War on Terror Service Medal, and the Iraq Service Medal. She is currently employed in the office of the Army Surgeon General at the Pentagon.