Charlie Mike

by Joe Klein

  And then there were others who simply did not work out at all. Two of the first six just took the money and ran. One was going to start a Student Veterans of America chapter at his Ivy League college—and simply disappeared. Another was going to do peer counseling at a VA hospital in Maryland. He showed up for a while, but his appearances became intermittent and then stopped.

  Eric was frustrated by these failures. He knew that veterans were being pelted with gifts—The Mission Continues was being pelted with gifts: tickets to the ballpark, golf balls, blankets, cash like the $500 Chris Marvin had sent to the food bank. He figured that a lot of veterans saw The Mission Continues stipend as just another gift. “Oh sure, I’ll do some service work,” they’d say—and they might even intend to do it, or try it for a while, but they were not conditioned to see it as a rigorous, military-style commitment. Chris Marvin’s line, “It’s a challenge, not a charity,” resonated with Eric. The challenge had to be TMC’s in-your-face opening offer to any veterans who were looking for help. This wasn’t a freebie. This was purposeful work.

  But there had to be more to it than a slogan. Eric needed to learn for himself how a fellowship actually might work. How could you monitor the thing and make sure that valuable service was being performed? What else could TMC provide the fellows in addition to a stipend? And what about the local agencies hosting the fellows—obviously, someone had to stay in touch with them and find out if they thought this was working. Ken Harbaugh and Chris Marvin had found the first five TMC fellows. Eric hadn’t been responsible for any of them. “We need a St. Louis fellow,” he told Rachel Wald.

  There was a sociologist named Amanda Moore-McBride over at Washington University’s Brown School of Social Work. She had studied the effects of civic engagement on AmeriCorps members. Eric visited and told her about The Mission Continues. “Hey Monica, c’mon over here,” she called out to her colleague across the hall. “You’ve got to meet this guy.”

  Monica Matthieu was a speed-talking, no-nonsense Cajun, who had actually worked with veterans and had her heart broken by the opacity and intransigence of their psychological wounds; her default position was a defenseless, loving skepticism. She had met more than a few vets who had come home and wanted to help others who had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan—half of them were stuck and scarred and scattered, trying to figure out how to help themselves as much as others. But Eric Greitens was something different. He was an academic, for one thing—the fact that he’d written a doctoral thesis about the treatment of children in refugee camps meant that he understood research and how to determine whether something actually worked or not. He could speak her language. But more important was his idea, which actually had a working precedent. A third Brown School colleague, Dr. Nancy Morrow-Howe—the place was cluttered with hyphenated sociological brilliance—had studied the impact of civic engagement on the elderly. There was a robust and hopeful literature about the beneficial effects of community service on senior citizens: those who helped out in their communities were healthier and happier, and they lived longer.

  In one Ohio State University study, two groups of elderly patients in senior day care were asked to make gift baskets. One group made the baskets for themselves; a second group was told they were making the baskets for homeless people in their community. The second group experienced a greater sense of satisfaction and psychological well-being than those who were simply making the baskets for themselves.

  The similarities between elderly people and wounded veterans were eerie. They were both operating at less than their optimal capacity—physically and sometimes mentally—and both were very much aware, and depressed by, the things they could no longer do. Senior citizens tended to lose their sense of purpose and community when they retired. They felt isolated. They grieved for friends and family lost. Matthieu hadn’t put the pieces together before, but it made total sense: community service might be a terrific antidote for post-traumatic stress. And this was fresh new sociological turf—there was no formal research, no literature on this subject—which was the functional equivalent of a perfectly spiced crawfish gumbo for a bayou sociologist. “What can I do for you?” she asked Eric.

  “I need a St. Louis fellow,” Eric said. “This is where we’re going to be based, and I want to have a strong presence here. I want to monitor this thing, see how it works, see how we could make it better.” This was just what Matthieu wanted to hear. She hoped Eric would agree to monitor his fellows with strict sociological metrics to see if it was actually working.

  “Yes, I want to do that, but first I need some fellows,” Eric said. “You work with veterans. Do you know anyone who might be right for a fellowship?”

  “Actually,” she said, “I think I do.”

  Tim Smith was pure St. Louis. He came from the south side, from a solid family. His dad managed logistics in a warehouse; his mom worked for a Catholic charitable organization. He was a very good athlete, a basketball player for the University of Saint Mary in Leavenworth, Kansas, but not exactly a devoted student. He wandered away from school and started working in an Irish pub back home, where he met Terri Farias. They were just friends at first; then Tim enlisted in the Army—he missed being part of a team—and started sending Terri letters, and they fell in love. They were engaged before he was sent to Iraq; the assumption was they’d get married if he came back.

  Tim wasn’t wounded, at least not physically, in Iraq, but he came back strange. His best friend, Doc Grayson, had been killed with seven others by an IED in Sadr City in April 2004, one of the bloodiest months of the war. Their unit moved to Mahmudiyah in the Triangle of Death, just south of Baghdad. The war was very bad there, too. FOB St. Michael—their Forward Operating Base—was pummeled by mortars and rocket-propelled grenades every day. Tim was never physically injured, but he was seriously rattled—and that began to manifest itself physically. He developed an allergy to dust. His eyes swelled and shut with severe conjunctivitis whenever he went outside. Tim figured his body was telling him something important: don’t go outside.

  The conjunctivitis continued when he redeployed to Germany, where Terri joined him—in fact, his eyes began to swell and shut every time he had to go out to the gun range. His unit returned to Iraq, but Tim stayed back in Germany, managing the chow hall.

  Tim and Terri were married in Germany. They lived there for nearly two years and had their first child, Tim Jr. Terri didn’t notice much of a change in Tim at first, aside from the conjunctivitis; he was happy in his work, had good friends in his unit, and had a precise daily routine.

  But Tim began to change dramatically when they returned to St. Louis in February 2007. Loud noises jolted him; there were nightmares and anxiety attacks. He slept with a gun under the bed. He wasn’t funny and outgoing the way he’d been before. Much of his personality had been deleted—and he couldn’t tell her why and wouldn’t tell her what had happened over there. He couldn’t tell her much of anything.

  He was also having trouble finding work, or even rousing himself to go look for work. They went on food stamps and were ashamed of it. On the evening of July 4, 2007, the extended family gathered for a picnic in their backyard, which was adjacent to Sublett Park, where there would be a big fireworks show. As the sun set, and just before the fireworks began, Terri noticed Tim rush back into the house—something was definitely wrong—and she decided to follow him in. He was sitting on the bed, weeping. She had never seen him cry before, and it terrified her. “What’s wrong, Tim?” she asked, but he didn’t answer.

  She sat there until the sobbing left him, like a slow-moving storm turning to drizzle and then steam on a summer night. It was the fireworks, he told her. He couldn’t even handle the damn Fourth of July fireworks show—it was right out there, and obvious, the noise predictable, but it brought back all those months of being mortared. He looked at her, bleary, lost. “We’ve got to do something about this,” Terri said.

  They went to a counselor at the Veterans Administration, which w
as where Tim met Monica Matthieu. She was struck by how determined Tim was to push past the PTSD and get on with his life. He had just found a veterans’ preference job at the central post office, working midnight to six. He began taking classes in the morning at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. He was fifteen credits short of a BA in social work. After class each day, he would go home, study, sleep for four hours, then report back to the post office at midnight. “What should I do when I get my degree?” he asked Matthieu.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I’m not sure, but I do like helping people.”

  She told him that he should think about getting a master’s in social work at Washington University.

  “Really?” Washington University was where the rich kids, the smart ones, went. Tim figured it would be a real stretch for him. He was still feeling semi-paralyzed, especially when he was alone in the middle of the night at the post office. He was still semi-terrified every time he left home.

  “Why not?” Matthieu asked, and in asking, she knew. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.” And she did. Tim worked on his grammar and writing and read the books she told him to read. “This guy,” she thought, “is the only man I ever met who does exactly what I tell him to do.”

  He was still suffering, though. There was a morning at UMSL when he left a building after class, and the sun was at a certain angle or something—he wasn’t quite sure—but he was back in Iraq, freaked and sweating profusely. He ran back inside the building, gathered himself, took deep breaths, and went to his next class. Sticking with it, day after day, took incredible courage and determination, Matthieu thought. Tim persevered without a fuss.

  So it was a no-brainer when Eric Greitens told her that he was looking for a fellow. She told Tim about the program, the idea of veterans volunteering in the community. She told him he should meet with Greitens, and of course he did.

  “Tell me about yourself,” Eric said, opening the first significant interview to take place on his old brown leather couch in St. Louis. Tim spoke hesitantly, in a swallowed Midwestern mumble, but he told Eric the whole story: what had happened to him in Iraq and, more significantly, what was happening to him back home. He found that talking to Eric was easy, even though he was an officer. Tim told him more than he’d ever told Terri.

  “How would you like to do a Mission Continues fellowship?” Eric asked.

  “What’s a fellowship?” Tim replied.

  Eric explained the program, and Tim said, “Wow. That sounds like a pretty good deal. I’d love to do that.”

  “Well then,” Eric said, extending his hand, “welcome to The Mission Continues. Where do you want to serve?”

  Tim wasn’t sure. He mentioned several possibilities: he had volunteered at the Boys Club in the past, teaching basketball to the kids. But he was also interested in working with some of the veterans he’d met at the VA. Eric said he would help Tim figure it out, and they went together to both the Boys Club and the VA. Tim was amazed by the amount of attention that this Navy SEAL Lieutenant Commander was lavishing on an E-5 Sergeant. He was also a bit daunted by Eric’s expectations for him. But it felt good. One night Eric took Tim and Terri out for dinner at a restaurant in St. Louis’s famed Italian neighborhood, the Hill. It was the start of a new life, Terri thought. Tim was animated, excited after all those zombie months. He was cracking jokes again. She had almost forgotten that side of him.

  Tim decided that he wanted to work with his fellow veterans at the VA, where he’d been offered a job as a volunteer peer counselor, sitting in on the group sessions, sometimes even leading them.

  “Well, that sounds pretty good to me,” Eric said. He told Tim the fellowship would be funded by the Travis Manion Foundation—and that there were several other duties he would have to perform in addition to the service. Eric wanted him out in the community, spreading the word about The Mission Continues, finding more potential fellows at the VA, working on service projects.

  Tim was game for all that, even if he wasn’t sure that he’d be very good at it. His first public appearance as a Mission Continues fellow was particularly daunting, at the St. Louis Country Club, where about fifty potential donors had been gathered to hear Eric’s pitch and also—this was the hard part—listen to an actual Mission Continues fellow.

  “Do we all sit at the same table?” Tim asked hopefully, as he, Eric, and Rachel Wald walked in.

  “No,” Eric said. “You sit there,” pointing to a front table. “I’ll sit at this table, and Rachel, you go over there.” Tim was wearing his only suit, which he’d bought for job interviews, and his only tie. The people at the table were very nice. He was reluctant to talk about his time in the Army, lost when they talked about investments, but better when they talked sports, and he was sweating. He went back and forth to the bathroom, mopping himself off and fussing with his tie.

  Eric spoke first, and Tim thought he was very effective. Then he introduced Tim, and as they passed each other at the podium, Eric gave Tim a “go get ’em, I know you can handle this” nod. And Tim went, nervously, into the fire.

  He wasn’t terrific. He made it through, and the audience was sympathetic. But he hadn’t learned how to talk civilian yet. His language was laced with military acronyms, FOBs and COPs and RPGs, E-5s, and Chinooks. “You did a good job,” Eric said, “but one thing I noticed you could do better is speak in terms they understand.” He continued to bring Tim along to his public relations events. And each time, they would do a postmortem. “You were a lot better on the military talk,” Eric would say, “but you still seem a bit frightened. Don’t be. These people want to like you. Don’t be afraid to be enthusiastic.”

  And Eric found, just as Monica Matthieu had, that every time he asked Tim to work on something, Tim worked on it. He would never be a polished speaker, but he became a more confident one. The sweat tsunamis abated. Soon Eric was sending Tim out by himself to meet with local organizations—the Red Cross, the St. Louis zoo. “I need you to sign up ten organizations as possible hosts for future fellows or sources of volunteers when we organize service projects,” Eric said, and Tim did it. By the time his fellowship ended that autumn, Tim had been offered a full-time job as a peer support counselor at the VA and had been accepted into Washington University’s Master of Social Work program.

  Eric was named Grand Marshall of the St. Louis Veterans Day parade in 2008. He decided to use the occasion to celebrate the first anniversary of The Mission Continues, and he invited his core group of friends and fellows to come to St. Louis and celebrate.

  The wisdom of moving to St. Louis was obvious by now. He never would have been the Grand Marshall of the Veterans Day parade if he’d stayed in Washington. The Mission Continues was receiving a steady stream of local press coverage. The St. Louis business community was pitching in with donations. A World War II veteran named Jack Taylor who had started Enterprise Rent-A-Car—named after the USS Enterprise, on which he’d served—gave Eric a $50,000 donation. With real money coming in, Eric decided to hire a young social worker named Paul Eisenstein to run the business side of the operation. Greitens continued to work as a volunteer.

  On Eisenstein’s first day in May 2008, Eric handed him a very military and rather official Commander’s Intent memo that began with a mission statement, followed by fifteen goals. Most were very specific, including:

  “Raise $500,000.”

  “Create 15 successful Mission Continues fellowships.”

  “Involve over 100 wounded and disabled veterans in service [projects].”

  “Produce over 5,000 hours of volunteer service.”

  “Ensure that we meet the highest standards of nonprofit governance. (Be on track to achieve the equivalent of a Gold Star or Five Star rating from at least two, hopefully three, charity review boards.)”

  Eisenstein had never been exposed to the military before. He had been an AmeriCorps volunteer, which had impressed Eric: “You served your country.” He found the unblinking specificity of
the Commander’s Intent document bracing. This wasn’t going to be some sloppy do-gooder deal. Would he be able to accomplish all those goals in seven months? Probably not, but he liked being pushed. (And in fact, he aced fourteen of the fifteen.)

  Eric seemed a big SEAL in a small city, Eisenstein thought. He watched as Eric recruited local businesses and political royalty like the Danforth family, owners of Ralston Purina, to the cause. Eric also convinced Southwest Airlines to provide round-trip tickets for The Mission Continues friends and fellows who came to the Veterans Day celebration. He seemed to go into every meeting with the absolute expectation of success, and he handled crises with Obi-Wan calm. This, too, was something Paul had never seen in the not-for-profit world.

  The crowd was sparse enough on Veterans Day that the TMC core group made an impression. Steve Culbertson and Ken Harbaugh had come in from Washington; Kaj Larsen came from California; Chris Marvin, Mathew Trotter, and Tim Smith were there, as was their first woman fellow, Sonia Meneses from Tennessee, who had lost most of her hearing in an explosion downrange. And they were all, unwittingly, in a uniform—black leather jackets and jeans. They looked like a motorcycle gang. Eric was dressed like a politician: blue suit, white shirt, red tie, no overcoat. He figured that he was going to have to do something about how his people looked.

  But he also felt gratified: the fact that they’d all come dressed the same way seemed a silent ratification that something important was happening. The Mission Continues not only existed—the Center for Citizen Leadership would soon die a quiet death—but it also had achieved a unique, tough-minded outlaw status in the world of veterans’ service organizations.

  The official Mission Continues polos and T-shirts would be a sharp royal blue. The logo would be a compass pointing a few degrees off course. Eric’s idea was that if you change your course just a little bit, as Tim Smith had done during his fellowship, you would wind up in a completely different place in life. Beneath the compass was a slogan, courtesy of Chris Marvin: “A Challenge, Not a Charity.”