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November, 2004
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Soldiers
Once ... And Young
By Tai Moses, AlterNet. Posted October 12, 2004.
After serving a 12-month tour of duty in Iraq last year, Marine Lance
Corporal Jeff Lucey returned home to his relieved family with no injuries - or
at least none that were visible. "When we didn't see him tremendously
traumatized when he returned, we thought, 'Oh, thank god,'" says his
father, Kevin Lucey. "And then it exploded."
For months the 23-year-old battled his wartime demons; nightmares, bouts of
depression and anxiety, and crushing guilt - classic symptoms of acute
post-traumatic stress.
"He told me he was a murderer," says Jeff's sister, Debra.
"He said, 'Don't you understand? Your brother's a murderer.'"
On June 22, 2004, Jeff Lucey lost his battle. He hanged himself from a
rafter in the cellar of his family home.
"He did something, or he saw something, that destroyed him,"
ventures his mother, Joyce. "So that when he came back, he took his own
life."
The story of Jeff Lucey is the emotional centerpiece of Patricia Foulkrod's
short documentary, "The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War," a
collection of interviews with Iraq combat veterans whose experiences have, up
until now, remained largely invisible to the American public. Producer/director
Foulkrod lets her subjects tell their stories without interruption or
prompting, and the effect is nothing less than devastating.
Like most of the young vets in "Ground Truth," Rob Sarra went to Iraq trusting in the rightness of his mission. Today he is a tormented man, haunted by a
memory.
Sarra's unit had just been in a firefight when he saw an elderly burkha-clad
woman carrying a bag on her arm walking toward a nearby armored vehicle. The
soldiers raised their weapons and began yelling at her to stop. Sarra, a Marine
sergeant, then made an instantaneous and fatal assumption: if the woman did not
respond, she must be carrying a bomb.
She did not stop.
Sarra had a clear shot and he took it. As soon as he fired his second shot,
his fellow soldiers opened fire and cut her down.
"She fell to the dirt and as she fell she had a white flag in her hand,
that she had pulled out of her bag," says Sarra, staring past the camera
into the distance. "At that moment right there I lost it, I threw my
weapon down on the deck of the vehicle, I was crying, I was like, Oh my god
what are we doing here."
Pressure Trap
One of the most treacherous aspects of battling the insurgency is that much
of the combat takes place in the streets, intersections and marketplaces of urban
neighborhoods - places that are often crowded with innocent Iraqi civilians.
"There are no clear enemy lines," says Steve Robinson, the film's
narrator and executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. "The battlefield completely surrounds the soldier: it's above you, it's below you,
it's to the left, it's to the right. It's 360 degrees you don't know where the
enemy is. That is an incredible amount of pressure to operate under."
Robinson believes that post-traumatic stress disorder will be this war's most
destructive legacy, just as Agent Orange afflicted Vietnam veterans for
decades, and Gulf War Syndrome still sickens soldiers who served during the
first Iraq war.
Having lost their son, the Luceys worry about what other veterans and military
families may be going through. "We're just wondering," Kevin Lucey
says, "to what extent are so many young men and women coming back [unable
to] deal with the experience of being over there?"
Denver Jones, a specialist in the National Guard whose spine was shattered
in a truck accident in Iraq, describes seeing a soldier drive over an Iraqi
child who had walked into the roadway. "But the Army told us," Jones
says sadly, "if someone got in front of the truck, to run over them."
US Army Sergeant Terry Atchison confirms the directive: "If someone
jumps out in front of your vehicle, regardless adult or child, then É just run
'em over. When you value life, you don't really want to do it. But then again,
if you value your life enough, you'll do it. It's a very hard decision. I'm
glad I never had to face that decision."
"This war just emotionally destroyed me in a lot of ways," says
Marine Lance Corporal Michael Hoffman. "I just break down some nights
knowing that I took part in something like this; that I took the lives of
people. I see pictures of Iraqi children in hospital beds, and I can't help but
wonder - was it my unit that did this? Was I part of this?"
Yet the same military that trains these soldiers to be killers, gives them
little support when they return bearing the scars of psychological wounds.
National Guardsman Paul Rieckhoff, who came home in February, kept hearing
from guys in his unit who had suffered injuries over the course of a year of
combat and were fighting to get adequate medical treatment, disability pay or
benefits from the Army. So the fiery, articulate lieutenant founded Operation
Truth, to help his fellow servicemen and to educate the public. Rieckhoff-who
is still on active duty and could be sent back to Iraq-is appalled at the
shoddy treatment that wounded veterans are receiving from their government,
especially National Guardsmen and reservists.
"You come home and you have to deal with the nightmare that is the
Army's bureaucracy," Rieckhoff says. "They've got to battle, bite,
beg and steal to get taken care of or even to get looked at by the VA. And
that's just unconscionable."
Blood Memories
At 18, Robert Acosta didn't think his future in Santa Ana, Calif. looked too
bright, so he was an easy mark for Army recruiters and their promises of
excitement and adventure. After being deployed to Iraq, Acosta lost his hand
and the use of his left leg when a grenade thrown into his vehicle exploded
before he could toss it back out the window.
Acosta believes that the American public does not understand the enormity of
this war's toll. "People hear 'injured' É but they don't realize that
'injured' is missing both his hands, or his legs, or whatever," he says.
Double amputations, crushed spines, and severely disfiguring burns were some
of the physical trauma Dr. Gene Bolles saw on a daily basis as the chief
neurosurgeon at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany. The average age of the soldiers
he treated was 19 and a half-just kids, he says, who put their lives on the
line not for abstract concepts of patriotism, but for the powerful bonds of
camaraderie.
"Kids don't go to war and put themselves in danger for the good of the
country, or anything else," says Bolles, a civilian doctor who is also a Vietnam veteran. "They go there because they've learned to love their buddies É And
when they get hurt, they feel guilty because they're hurt and they can't be
there for their unit. It's an intense training process. And all of a sudden,
it's over. They're hurt, they're wounded, they're out of the service and it's
over. And that, in and of itself, is very traumatic."
Brokenhearted War Story
Even at just 30 minutes long, "The Ground Truth" packs a powerful
cumulative punch. This is documentary filmmaking that has no need for showy
cinematic tricks or grandstanding; the narratives are eloquent, raw, and
unforgettable just as they are. Says Foulkrod, who is working on a
feature-length version of the film, "I don't want you to ever look at a
veteran again, from any war, in the same way."
She's right; you won't.
"These guys are brokenhearted because they really love their country
and they really thought this was going to be a good experience," Foulkrod
continues. "You can play hardball and say, well, what did they expect? And
that's a good question: what should they expect?"
US Army Reserve Specialist Rebekah Roberts didn't expect much of
anything-she wanted to serve her country. She joined up during the invasion of Afghanistan, convinced she was doing the right thing, "because of what happened on
Sept. 11."
If Roberts was a true believer in the cause when she left for Iraq, she harbored few illusions by the time she returned home. President Bush's dogged
assertions that the war is going well are a slap in the face to soldiers like
Roberts who know firsthand that we are losing ground every day; that the
military is overdeployed and weakened by rising numbers of casualties; and that
Iraq has become a quagmire of ruinous proportions.
Roberts, who appears in the documentary at an anti-war demonstration
marching in her battle fatigues, agonizes both for the troops still fighting in
Iraq and for the Iraqis.
"I just believe in my heart I was lied to by somebody," she says,
her voice choked with emotion and anger. "There's people over there dying
now, in the heat of battle, getting shot at. The last thought maybe in their
head is, Why? What's the whole purpose?"
Visit TheGroundTruth.org to read more about the project and to order a copy
of the 30-minute DVD or VHS. Purchases and donations will help fund the
feature-length version of the film. Copies are free to veterans and military
organizations through October.
Tai Moses is a contributing editor of AlterNet.