Through Veterans' Eyes

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Through Veterans' Eyes Page 23

by Larry Minear


  Many veterans convey a keen awareness of what they consider the privilege of having been personally involved in the making of history. Taking stock of his deployment in Iraq, Army Spec. James R. Welch of Toledo, Ohio, remarks that “I’m honored myself to have been a part of history.”20 “It’s an honor to be able to serve and to be a part of history,” says Army Chief Warrant Officer Two Jeffrey Beard, “and an honor to fight for freedoms my fathers and forefathers fought for and so many soldiers died for.”21

  “What was it like when you arrived in places like Abu Ghraib and the Sunni Triangle, Fallujah and Baghdad?” Marine SSgt. Brandon M. Bass was asked. Referring to L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz tale, he replied, “It was that feeling of when Dorothy said, ‘We ain’t in Kansas anymore.’”22 Indeed, many who served in Afghanistan and Iraq described what Army Sgt. Jeremy Lima called the feeling of “Pinch me. It’s real!” On arriving at Al Asad Air Base, where his security battalion would be based, Lima remembered saying to himself, “Wow! I can’t believe I’m here.”23

  “I have been involved in so many historical events,” reminisces Marine Lt. Col. Robert D’Amico in his Veterans History Project interview conducted by his daughter Becky Ann. He mentions specifically 9/11, the Gulf War, and the conflicts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. “Do you feel as though you’ve missed out on anything?” she asks. Yes, her father said, “I have missed out on birthdays and kindergarten graduations and the like which you can never get back. But everyone misses them. I’ve missed significant events but for the right reason. I’ve done things and been a part of history that I never would have imagined growing up.”24 Capt. Ryan Aument believes that he made the right selection among the military services because of his reading, as “a student of history,” that the Army had produced the largest number of makers and shapers in American military history.25

  Several vets express the view that their up front and personal involvement in these events was particularly irreplaceable. “Especially if you serve in a conflict,” says Navy Commander Mark Kirk, “you have that realization that everyone else may read a book or see the History Channel and see how the story turned out while you were in it. You realize that nobody knew what the hell was going on, and how it would turn out was completely in doubt. No one had the big picture.”26 His comment offers a caution to historians of the conflicts not to let the wisdom of hindsight diminish the uncertain outcomes of events as they were being experienced.

  The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate service members at their best—or, in some instances, at their worst. Keeping both aspects in tension guards against tendencies to lionize—or demonize—the troops. “Instead of thinking of soldiers and veterans as ‘warriors,’” counsels the Easter Seals organization in New Hampshire, “we must remind ourselves that they are fathers, mothers, coworkers, or the girl next door, who may be desperately struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or living near poverty level in need of groceries, or who has just been fitted with a prosthetic limb.”27 That humanness emerges in a variety of ways as veterans recount their involvement.

  While many veterans are anxious to share their experience with family and friends, community and country, some have no absolutely no inclination to do so. Army Sgt. Cody Allen kept a journal faithfully while in Iraq, only to leave it there when he left. “I don’t want those types of memories,” he explained.28 Upon returning, some have resisted joining veterans’ organizations because they do not want to keep the memories alive. Others have rejected therapy because the retelling of traumatic events forces those events to be relived. For some, the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq has been so raw and intense as to discourage sharing it even within the most intimate circle of family and friends. Some veterans identify guilt (for example, at having returned while others have remained in the fray), shame (over the effects of the violence on civilians) or fear (of the impacts of sharing their stories on their future careers) as inhibitors to telling their stories.

  Veterans acknowledge the heterogeneity of their experiences and their reactions to what they encountered. “I think that it’s good to have a kind of archive of people’s views,” observed Eric Heath. “My views probably differ from another veteran’s views. More importantly, you have a completely different perspective from someone who has never experienced the military. A veteran can give you a positive view of some of the good things that are going on over there. And maybe, if people are smart enough and intuitive enough to want to know both sides of the story, they can see the world and what’s going on in it from a different light and maybe not so negatively. Even though it is a negative situation, you can still get a somewhat positive slant from hearing it from a veteran.”29

  If a veterans’ perspective on events offers something not available otherwise, that perspective itself remains partial. “After we got hit the first time,” said Sergeant Mayfield describing an ambush in Sadr City, “it was, you know, forget a bunch of understanding what we’re doing over here and the big strategy, and let’s just keep each other alive.”30 By contrast, given the preoccupation of the boots on the ground with their own safety, Jude Ferran stressed that “the importance of taking the ‘big picture’ view is key to understanding why we do things and what we need to do.”31

  The interviews confirm the observation of the DVA official quoted earlier: “Most people who have survived this experience will be changed by it, whether crossing some psychiatric threshold or not.”32 Whether or not they have shared their disquiet with others, most veterans now carry around within them a piece of Iraq or Afghanistan.

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  As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment—a moment that will define a generation—it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

  —President Barack Obama*

  * * *

  WHY LISTEN?

  Why is it important to listen to the voices of veterans? The veterans themselves and the experiences they recount provide some answers.

  First, we can learn a lot from them. Their perspective has something special to offer not available elsewhere. Veterans are an essential element in this country’s social fabric and history, points out Marine Sgt. Dax Carpenter. “You will not have a country if you take away its veterans. If we don’t have veterans that’ll be there when America needs them, then we don’t have a country. A veteran is a person who has put their life on the line and said, ‘No matter what, come hell or high water, I will be there for whoever needs me whether it be at home like Katrina or afar like Iraq.’” Quite apart from any individual military contribution, veterans are an essential part of the country’s collective national memory. “History is written by man,” notes Carpenter. “But usually the person that does the writing wasn’t there.”33

  The military itself, in posting its own historians on the ground among the troops and in its increasingly systematic debriefings and lessons learned exercises, is coming to appreciate the importance of the identifying and reflecting upon the experiences of veterans.34 The New Hampshire National Guard, interviewing its troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, was rewarded with a rich collection of experience and recommendations upon which this narrative has drawn. The Veterans History Project offers a huge oral history resource from participants in the current and earlier wars.

  Indeed, the recent upsurge of interest in oral history itself represents an important resource. Initiatives currently under way that examine particular groups of soldiers and particular issues—the views of reservists in a California unit called up to serve in Afghanistan and Iraq,35 the experience of PTSD among selected veterans,36 and the political ac
tivism of selected veterans returning from the field37—bode well for the larger task of pondering the experience of veterans and taking their perspectives into account.

  Veterans offer a point of entry for Americans into a wider world about which they are often unaware. Spec. Gonzalo Gonzalez, a gunner in an Army escort unit, feels that people have difficulty understanding what the troops have gone through because “they’ve never seen things, they’ve never been anywhere.”38 Newspaper readers in northern Vermont were treated by one of their National Guard soldiers to a mini-tutorial on Islam. “People need to know what is going on and how everything impacts a soldier,” observes Army Lt. Col. Rick Mayes. “The more knowledge that’s out there, the better decisions can be made. All the information is just coming from single sources now. It’s not coming from the soldiers themselves. It’s not coming from what you’d call ‘the other side.’”39

  “A student who has a gunshot wound from a battle in Fallujah,” observes Dartmouth College president James Wright, who undertook to enroll veterans in his school, “is going to bring something intangible to any classroom discussion.”40 Vietnam vets played a similar role in earlier classrooms. “Teaching a course on Vietnam with Vietnam vets in the classroom,” recalls one professor at a state university, “brought a greater sense of reality to my teaching of the material and a greater level of engagement in the issues among the other students.” Vietnam veterans can help broaden our own perspective and reduce what they themselves identify as the provincialism of the country. “The life experiences which Vietnam veterans have,” observes Dax Carpenter, “are invaluable to us new generations of war veterans.”41

  Second, coming to terms with the experience of veterans represents an essential step in reclaiming our own sense of humanity as citizens. For many of the troops, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being fought “off the screen, off the books, and off the radar.” During the first eight months of 2008 alone, wrote Charles Pierce in a Boston Globe Magazine article, “The Forgotten War,” ninety-three soldiers back from the war had taken their own lives, with precious little reaction from the body politic as a whole. “Taken as itself, the war seems to exist in another place. The war is something that happens to someone else. It almost seems as if the war has slipped the country’s mind.”42 It rings hollow, veterans seem to be saying, for the public to profess to take service member needs seriously while exhibiting so little interest in the ongoing wars themselves.

  At numerous points in recent years, national and local demonstrations against U.S. policy have gathered citizens, including some military personnel, spouses, parents, and other family members, behind signs reading “Not in our name.” Demonstrators have specifically challenged the Bush administration’s March 2003 declaration of war against Iraq; its abrogation of international laws, institutions, and processes; and its pursuit of strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan that have led to disproportionately high numbers of civilian casualties. Such demonstrations represent a reinvigoration of a sense of humanity among American citizens in the face of the prevailing lack of public engagement in the issues of the conflicts.

  Indeed, with the Obama administration committed to reducing U.S. troop strength in Iraq but also to increasing the number of boots on the ground in Afghanistan, the time is ripe for a wide-ranging public debate. The systematic processing of the rich and diverse experiences of soldiers in these conflicts affords a vehicle whereby the American body politic may begin to come to terms with recent events. The advice offered by former Army paratrooper Stan Goff to his own son and his son’s cohorts serving in Iraq might be directed as well to American civil society: “Don’t surrender your humanity.” Instead, begin the lengthy and necessarily painful process of reclaiming it.

  What would a newly engaged public mean? The outcomes of informed and spirited public dialogue on the conflicts are not self-evident. Considerations of humanity might point in divergent directions. They might lead to phasing down the level of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and/or Iraq. Alternatively, however, concern for the safety and future well-being of Americans and Afghans alike might point toward continued or increased U.S. military presence in the region. Or again, considerations of humanity, the earlier discussion of hearts and minds activities suggests, might lead some to advocate increased levels of assistance by troops to local communities. By contrast, others interpret the experience to suggest that health and education programs carried out by soldiers draw such communities more deeply into the conflict.

  Concern for the well-being of U.S. military personnel and of Afghan and Iraqi civilians does not necessarily dictate one set of policies over another. This fact underscores the reality that humanity is not the private preserve of peace activists. A Times (U.K.) article on Gen. David Petraeus, former commander of U.S. troops in Iraq and then head of the U.S. Central Command, is headlined, “It will take humanity as well as guns to beat the Taliban. The thinking man’s soldier explains the limitations of shooting and killing.”43

  Finally, the viewpoints of veterans are essential for the nation to take into account as it reexamines its own priorities and policies. What can be learned from the decade of the Global War on Terror to guide U.S. preparation for and engagement in future conflicts? If the use of a Cold War framework has proved problematic for the United States in understanding and responding to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, what are the take-away lessons from these two conflicts for the framework of the future? What can be learned from the war in Iraq for the approach to Afghanistan? Many veterans consider their experience, however positive or negative, as a resource to future generations.

  Broadly speaking, the experiences of veterans in Afghanistan and Iraq sound a cautionary note as the nation looks to the future. Many veterans express the view that their service has removed something of the mystique and allure from soldiering for them and, they hope, for future generations. Their accounts of the effects—on them no less than on their adversaries—of violence and destruction, injury and death, require pondering. “The experience makes me a whole lot more against war in general. It would be a last resort for me,” concludes Marine Sgt. Adam Paulson. “The first-person perspective has definitely changed my life in thinking about that kind of thing. How big a responsibility it is for someone to declare war or wage war!”44

  The heartfelt wish expressed by Jonathan McMaster, a Marine injured in Iraq in 2004, deserves pondering. “I wish that civilians and policymakers understood, at an emotional level, the tremendous toll and cost of war on those who actually experience it.”45 Specialist Robert Acosta notes that in addition to his Purple Heart, he carries with him a constant reminder of his experience in Iraq. “All the reasons we went to war, it just seems like they’re not legit enough for people to lose their lives for and for me to lose my hand and use of my legs and for my buddies to lose their limbs.”46 It would be a loss to the country, observed Greg Mayfield, if veterans kept their experiences to themselves. “They need to share it, so that people know. Maybe people will understand eventually how traumatic it is, and that will keep other wars from being fought.”47

  Looking to the future, there are broad policy questions about the United States and its role in the world to be debated and resolved. Is waging a “global war on terror” the appropriate response to current threats to U.S. national security? Should the architects and implementers of U.S. policy be held accountable for the costs and consequences of the global war on terror and, if so, how? What should be the balance between hard power and soft power? Is there a continuing need for neutral humanitarian assistance, devoid of political agendas, or will hearts-and-minds activities by the military, approached as an integral element of counterinsurgency strategy, be adequate? What are the roles of international institutions and traditional canons of soldiering? Should the draft be reinstated? What should be the response of a modern Western military to a low-tech enemy? Are some conflicts so asymmetric and so hazardous to U.S. service members that they should not be joined?
/>   Questions of a more programmatic nature also demand attention. How should the United States respond to adversaries who use tactics calculated to provoke bad behavior on the part of American soldiers, implicate them in abuses, rob them of their humanity, and diminish them in the eyes of the world? What is the accountability of senior civilian officials who encourage or countenance the torture of interrogation suspects? If the military is to play an expanded role in assisting civilian populations, how may their competence in such traditionally nonmilitary functions be enhanced? What should be the role of civilian contractors in formerly military tasks? What is the media’s role and under what circumstances should journalists be embedded in military operations?

  Finally, there are specific practical matters to be addressed. How can military personnel be better trained for the unfamiliar and dangerous environments in which they must function? Should the media be given or denied access to the process of repatriation of the remains of U.S. soldiers killed abroad? How should the increasingly high cost of treatment for modern battlefield injuries be met? Should U.S. community groups collect relief items for distribution by the troops? Should the coveted Purple Heart be awarded to those whose combat wound takes the form of PTSD rather than of a lost limb?48 Should family caregivers whose ministrations make it possible to avoid institutionalizing the wounded be reimbursed for their labors?49

  Paratroopers

  Justin Thompson (AFC2001/001/43583), Photographs (PH98), VHP, AFC, LOC.

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  Justin Thompson was a member of the Army’s Second Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne), which was based at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan from March to November 2003. His unit’s mission within Operation Enduring Freedom was to search for and destroy weapons caches that could otherwise be used against coalition forces. Although the fighting was only sporadic, he found the conditions in Afghanistan “very rugged and dangerous.” “The combat wasn’t really combat,” he recalls, describing it as “more them firing at a vehicle from about a mile away.”

 

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