Thank You for Your Service (7 page)

Tausolo comes into Howell’s office and pulls up a chair. “I talked to my case manager,” he says softly. The door is open. Guys are right outside. “She called me today, and she asked me to ask you if you could send in a packet on me for the WTU.”

“The WTU?” Howell asks, surprised.

“Yeah,” Tausolo says.

“I can do that,” Howell says slowly, thinking, seeing the paperwork that will be involved, “but she’s gotta have more involvement than telling us to do shit. The medical guys are the ones who initiate that. It’s not on us. We sign off on it.”

“Yeah,” Tausolo says, and after some silence, Howell asks him what he wants to do after the WTU.

“I want to see if I can come back here,” Tausolo says.

“Well, I would recommend you try somewhere else,” Howell says. “The reason is that part of your memories is always going to be with this unit. You know what I’m saying?”

Tausolo knows what he’s saying.

“When you come here, you’ll always remember the guys that you were with,” Howell says. “I had Cajimat, I had those guys, to this day, I walk over to that old office of mine and I just start thinking back to the days of that stuff.”

He pauses, thinking about the stuff. Cajimat burned to death, too, strapped in his seat, just like Harrelson. “You need to get away from that stuff,” he says after a moment.

“Yeah,” Tausolo says.

“It’d be a fresh start,” Howell says. “Plus, are you from Kansas?”

“No,” Tausolo says.

“Where are you from?”

“American Samoa.”

“Where?”

“Sa-mo-a,” Tausolo says slowly.

“I know Samoa,” Howell says, “but have you ever lived in the United States, other than Samoa?”

“Uh, no,” Tausolo says. He’s not sure where this is going. But this is the army. In the army, you answer the questions.

“Okay. I mean, have you ever thought of trying to do something else?” Howell asks. “I’m not talking about army-wise. I’m talking about what do you like to do?”

“I took some college classes …”

“I’m talking about recreation. Get your frustrations out. What do you like to do? Do you like to swim? You like the beach? You like that kind of thing?” And before Tausolo can answer, Howell knows what Tausolo should do. “Hawaii! You would love life. Plus there’s a lot of Samoans there.”

He laughs.

Tausolo laughs.

Problem solved.

“Also, Mama might be happier, too. Because Kansas is not for everybody.”

“Yeah, she wants to go somewhere,” Tausolo says. “Germany. Or something like that.”

“Yeah, Germany probably wouldn’t be the best,” Howell says. “Okay, I’ll see what we can do about getting that thing started. You go to the WTU, and it really doesn’t hurt your career at all. Nowadays, mental health stuff doesn’t. You got the back history. That’s why I say, time for you to take a knee for a little while, see what’s up. Okay?”

“All right,” Tausolo says.

“All right,” Howell says. “Welcome back.”

Tausolo gets up, goes out, feels those crawling eyes. How much do they know? It doesn’t matter. He’s not one of them anymore.

He goes to see the WTU, which turns out to have a new name: the WTB. The war grinds on. The unit has grown into a battalion.

It had been created as a unit a few years before, in year four of Iraq and year six of Afghanistan, when the army had twenty thousand wounded soldiers on its hands and realized that its system of rehabilitating them had become overwhelmed. With a billion dollars, it began building thirty-two such units across the country, where care would be streamlined and there would be dedicated medical workers, social workers, and sergeants. “A Triad of Support” is how it was phrased in a press release. “Soldiers have one mission—to heal.”

At Fort Riley, that healing took place initially in a couple of temporary buildings that a weak Kansas tornado could have sent spinning sky-high. Adam Schumann was there then, blurry days that he would recall afterward as “Let’s give you this medication, this medication, this medication.” Even as he cycled through the program, though, a stone-solid, $54 million, four-building complex was being built, and although he had left the program by the time it was finished, he thought enough of the idea to show up and sit in the audience for its dedication. “Fucking nice is what it is” was his pronouncement. “But you can gift wrap a piece of shit and it’s still a piece of shit.”

It was him, an assortment of wounded soldiers, officers making speeches about how these newest buildings in the U.S. Army were “a victory for our entire army and for all warriors and their families,” a red ribbon that said “Warrior Transition Battalion Complex,” and a giant pair of scissors snipping that ribbon right through the “o” in “transition.” Thus did the sad work of war recovery officially become a billion-dollar industry, with promise in the air, new buildings, new furnishings, shined hallways, mowed grass, flowers in bloom, and wounded soldiers who soon began moving in.

The WTB had space for a couple of hundred of them. The unmarried ones would live in barracks, the married ones could live in places such as Geary Estates, and they would stay in the WTB until recovering
to the point at which they could return to the regular army or, more likely, be released into the civilian world. To help them, in addition to the staff, was a commander who would sometimes shut the door to his office, call his priest in tears, and ask for advice on how not to become calloused against the pain around him.

“Irritation. Hypervigilance. Anger. A lot of depression. And personally, from what I’ve noticed, a lot of lethargy, a lot of I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude” was the commander’s list of the symptoms most common to the soldiers filling the place to capacity, and it got more complicated from there. Inspections revealed that one soldier was decorating his barracks room with snakes; another was stockpiling cats; another was selling his pain meds, which was quite a feat considering that just about every soldier had his own legally prescribed stash. Just like the other soldiers, the WTB soldiers wore uniforms, and just like the other soldiers they began and ended the day with formation. But the truth was that they had little in common with the other soldiers, including the soldiers they had once been themselves. Formation wasn’t an exercise in discipline as much as taking attendance to see if everyone survived the previous twelve hours. “Before I forget, there’s a breakfast tomorrow, right here, for all you warriors,” a sergeant might announce to the crooked lines of softening bodies and darting eyes, and then dismiss them into another day of doctors, nurses, social workers, and therapists, all to prepare them for their eventual place among the country’s five hundred thousand glowing dots.

This is the world Tausolo is being pushed toward, and he wonders: How much will the WTB be able to help someone like him get ready for life after the army? He wants to work on improving his memory, which has been getting worse since the explosion. He might enroll in college courses to learn a skill other than the singular infantry skill of closing in on an enemy and killing him, which he suspects has limited applications outside of war. And he wants to bring his dreaming under control. Despite Topeka, Harrelson continues to visit him, asking that same question. “There’s no way of stopping dreams,” Tausolo had said one morning, looking exhausted, sounding resigned. But maybe, with the help of the WTB, he can.

Entry isn’t automatic, however. So many soldiers are trying to get into the WTB—most with legitimate injuries, some willing to fake it for an easy paycheck—that there is an application process, and an interview of some sort that Tausolo hears can be difficult. “Get your hair cut,” one of his old sergeants advises as the day of the interview arrives, and he knows that’s a good idea and means to write it down so he won’t forget it, but he has become distracted by family news from Samoa. His oldest brother has died. The first word, which came in a brief phone call the night before, was that he might have killed himself. Then came an update: someone shot him. Then another update: it’s unclear what happened, but Tausolo’s large, sprawling family would like him to come home.

So on the day of the interview, instead of preparing, he runs all over Fort Riley, trying to arrange for a plane ticket back to the impoverished island in the South Pacific where he grew up, a place of no job options other than the tuna cannery he worked at until, sick of the work and wanting more out of life, he went to see the army recruiter on the island who always made his numbers.

He goes first to his old unit, the 2-16, for the official Red Cross message confirming a death, which he will need to get a plane reservation, only to find out that the message was sent mistakenly to another unit, the 1-16. He sorts that out and drives to another building he’s been directed to, where he waits to talk to a man who is busy on his computer looking at a website for mail-order meat. Wrong office, the man finally says, barely glancing up from a photograph of raw steaks, and directs Tausolo to another building. “Building 212,” he says.

“Building 212,” Tausolo repeats.

Two entrances, the man continues. Go to the one on the far left.

“The far left,” Tausolo repeats.

He goes outside, reaches to put on his beret, and realizes he has forgotten it. He goes back inside, finds it on a table, and heads back out down the wrong hallway. He wanders around until he finds the right one, gets to his car, discovers that he forgot his keys in the ignition, is relieved to see that he forgot to lock the doors. He sighs. He wasn’t like this before. Before, everything was easy.

He runs his hand across his head. “Still have to get my haircut,” he reminds himself.

He drives toward Building 212 and the entrance on the far left when his phone rings: Building 212 is wrong; go to the S-1 shop and ask for someone named Estramada.

“Estramada,” he repeats.

He hangs up and realizes they didn’t tell him which S-1 shop. The battalion’s? The brigade’s? He tries to call back but no one answers. He goes to the battalion S-1 shop, asks for Estramada, and is told there’s no Estramada there. He turns to leave. This time he remembers his beret. “Um, we have an Estremera,” someone mentions then, as he is almost out the door. Estremera? Did he get the name wrong? He goes in search of Estremera. “Don’t you have a board today?” she asks when he locates her. How in the world does she know that? he wonders, but instead of asking, he tells her about his brother, and she in turn picks up a phone and calls Transportation, which refers her to Casualties, which refers her to Soldier Actions, where she finds someone who says that yes, Tausolo can get on a plane. She apologizes for how long this is taking. “I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out,” she says, rolling her eyes and pretending to shoot herself in the head. She tells him which building to go to for the ticket, which building to go to for the control number, and which building to go to for an antiterrorism briefing a soldier is required to have before he can travel. “Too easy!” she says, and sends him on his way to the briefing, except once he gets there he is told he has to take an online test first, and no, they don’t have a computer for him to use.

It’s 1:30 p.m. now. He has to report for his WTB interview at 2:45. There’s still plenty of time for a haircut. At least that will work out. He goes to the barber, gets in line, checks his paperwork, and realizes 2:45 is wrong. He’s supposed to report at 1:45. “Ah God,” he says, and with his hair still too long, he flees the barbershop and makes it a minute early.

Theresa is there waiting for him with some lunch, suspecting he’ll be a while. Eleven other soldiers trying to get into the WTB are there, too, and so are two of Tausolo’s sergeants who were with him in Iraq and have shown up in case he needs people to speak on his behalf.

One of them—Sherfield—tells Tausolo what to do when he’s called in. Present to the general. Sit between the general and the command sergeant major. The general will go first, then the command sergeant major, and then everyone else. Doctors. Psychiatrists. The WTB commander. There could be forty people in all.

The other—Davison—knows as well as anyone what Tausolo has been through. He was in the convoy that day. He didn’t reach Harrelson, either. He got banged around during the deployment, too, and gets headaches so severe now that sometimes he throws up and sometimes his wife has to cover the windows with blankets and sometimes he stands under a shower until the water goes cold and—

“Nobody cares, brother,” Sherfield says tenderly.

“This shit is intense shit,” Davison says. But Tausolo, he goes on, is in a different category. “He’s coped and dealt with some of the most
extreme
shit.”

He looks across the room at Tausolo, who is sitting with Theresa. “When you have a soldier of that caliber, you know when he’s broken, and when he’s broken, he’s gotta be fixed,” he says. “To go from what he was to what he is? Something
had
to have broke. He needs help, and he needs to keep getting help.”

He thinks back to another time he escorted Tausolo to an interview. That time it was a promotions board, long before the explosion. “He was like an M&M in a cardboard box. Nervous as shit. I said, ‘You gotta calm down, killer.’ ” This time, though, it isn’t nervousness he is seeing, it’s bewilderment, so he walks over to Tausolo, reminds him of that day, and then tells him: “This is different. They’re not asking you what you know. They’re asking you how you feel. Just be honest. The straight-up shit.”