Thank You for Your Service (8 page)

Tausolo watches as the first soldier is called into the room. Ten minutes later he is out, and a woman is approaching him with the decision. She shakes her head. He’s a no.

In goes the second soldier. He’s limping and wearing a cast.

He’s a no, too.

In goes the third.

A yes.

In goes the fourth.

No.

Tausolo is the ninth.

His turn now.

“Okay. Take a deep breath,” he tells himself.

In he goes.

Is it forty people in there? He won’t remember. Did he salute the right officer, sit in the right place? He won’t remember that, either, or the first questions, which couldn’t have been more accommodating.

“What do you hope to gain by coming into the WTB?” someone whose name he won’t remember asks. “In your understanding of things, what can we do to help facilitate your healing process?”

Everyone in the room has a packet of papers to help them make sense of this soldier who has suddenly appeared before them, number nine, who followed number eight, who precedes number ten, who is saying something about how he hopes the WTB will prepare him for what might come next in his life. Which is what every soldier says. There’s his military record for them to consider, his record of mental health appointments, details even of a bar fight he got in one night when he was drunk, and how many times have they seen versions of that? There’s also something called a “Warrior Screening Matrix” that scores a soldier’s need for help. Anything above a score of 1,000 is supposed to be a shoo-in, or as it says on the form, “Failure to assign or attach Soldier to WTU likely to decrement the medical plan of care.” Tausolo’s score is 1,400. A formality, then, it would seem. Except the questions become more probing and the way they are asked shifts, too.

“You were put in the hospital?” someone asks. “Okay, tough one to answer, but I gotta ask you: Have you thought about hurting yourself since then? Have you thought about suicide?”

“Uh, negative,” Tausolo says.

So much for the straight-up shit.

“Talk to me about alcohol,” someone else says.

“I’m … I’m not drinking anymore. I stopped at Topeka.”

“Is your family here at Fort Riley?”

“My wife is here, and, um, I just found out last week that my brother passed so I’m going home on emergency leave.”

“I’m sorry—”

“And home is American Samoa.”

“Where was that?”

“American Samoa.”

“Is your wife going home on emergency leave with you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Is she also from American Samoa?”

“Yes sir.”

“Okay, with the alcohol use, what are you doing to keep from using it? Other than just sheer willpower? Are you involved in AA? Are you using any of the support channels?”

“Just my wife.”

“Everybody has to have a whole bunch of tools in their toolkit, and if you only have one or two tools, you don’t have a lot to choose from,” someone now lectures Tausolo, and instead of offering the assurance that he has plenty of tools, that he came home from Topeka with a folder of information titled “Self Esteem,” and a folder titled “Relationship,” and folders titled “Healthy Living” and “Core Issues” and “Stress Management” and “Seeking Safety,” sixteen folders in all of tools, and more tools in the form of therapy, and more tools in the form of medications, he just listens with that look he has had since the explosion.

Sometimes Tausolo sees Harrelson in the daytime, too, just for an instant. Sometimes he sees him from a distance. Sometimes he sees him close up. “Why didn’t you save me?” Harrelson is always asking as he burns. Sometimes Tausolo understands that the person really asking the question is Tausolo himself.

The interview is nearly over.

“Three deployments?” an officer asks.

“Yes,” Tausolo says.

“At your young age?”

Tausolo shrugs.

“Thank you. That’s all I need,” the officer says, and a few minutes
later, Tausolo is out in the hallway watching the woman approaching with the decision.

“All right,” she says. “You were accepted.”

Davison hits Tausolo on the chest. “All
right
!” he says. “That’s it! Here we go! Get it fixed!”

He hugs Tausolo while Theresa, wary, tired, takes it all in from a distance. “I just hope. I just hope,” she had said the day before Tausolo came home from Topeka, and she wonders now: Is this how hope feels?

“I don’t know,” Tausolo says. He is driving back to Geary Estates. He needs to pack for Samoa. He needs to patch the living room walls. He needs to fix the bedroom door. He needs to look at himself in the mirror each morning and tell himself he’s worth something, like the Vietnam guy learned to do. He’s a hero, after all.

He drives past a sign announcing that it’s Suicide Awareness Month at Fort Riley.

“I don’t know,” he says again. “But right now, I feel better.”

The way it worked was that they joined the army because they were patriotic or starry-eyed or heartbroken or maybe just out of work, and then they were assigned to be in the infantry rather than something with better odds like finance or public affairs, and then by chance they were assigned to an infantry division that was about to rotate into the war, and then they were randomly assigned to a combat brigade that included two infantry battalions, one of which was going to a bad place and the other of which was going to a worse place, and then as luck would have it they were assigned to the battalion going to the worse place, and then they were assigned to the company in that battalion that went to the worst place of all. If you listen to the eulogies, so much of war is said to be accidental. Poor Harrelson. Wrong place. Poor Cajimat. Wrong time. But to a member of Bravo Company, which spent fifteen months in a sorry, bomb-filled neighborhood called Kamaliyah, the war felt eventually like the wrong everything. Adam Schumann and James Doster were in 1st platoon. Tausolo Aieti was in 2nd platoon. And Nic DeNinno was in 3rd platoon, where he thought of himself not as starry-eyed but as a patriot, a true patriot, and then he punched his first civilian in the face, and then he pushed his first civilian down some stairs, and now he is back in the United States, crying and saying to his wife, Sascha, “I feel like a monster.”

He is in Pueblo, Colorado, in a twenty-three-bed psychiatric facility called Haven Behavioral War Heroes Hospital. It’s on the top floor of a six-story building, where the exit doors are bolted and the windows are screwed shut to keep patients from jumping out. This is day seventeen
for Nic. He was sent here from the Fort Riley WTB because his mood swings and talk of suicide had become so alarming, and he has eleven more days here before he’s supposed to go back.

Nic DeNinno

Twenty-eight days, then, total, to get it fixed, as Sergeant Davison would say, and if war is accidental, so is what happens afterward. Tausolo got Topeka when he needed critical treatment. Nic is getting Pueblo. Both programs claim to be successful and use similar treatment models. But they are different in basic ways, and with more than two hundred programs across the country at this particular moment claiming to help soldiers, the army has yet to figure out which ones are more effective. Topeka is a seven-week program. Pueblo is four weeks. Topeka is part of the VA system. Pueblo is private and for-profit. Topeka mixes Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers with Vietnam veterans. Pueblo is entirely Iraq and Afghanistan. Topeka’s program has been running for years and is settled in. Pueblo’s is new, one of a wave of programs begun when the extent of psychological damage being caused by Iraq and Afghanistan was becoming apparent. Is one program better than the other? Is seven weeks better than four weeks? Is mixing up soldiers and veterans from different wars better than isolating them? Is a program established before Iraq and Afghanistan better than one started as a direct reaction to them?

The answer, in Nic’s case: Topeka was full. Pueblo had a spot.

“The following items are provided,” read the instructions Nic was sent before leaving Fort Riley. “Shampoo & Body wash. Deodorant & Body lotion. Toothbrush & Toothpaste …”

He saw the theme here.

“Contraband items:” the instructions continued. “Weapons or any object which could be used as a weapon. Razors. Hangers. Neckties, scarves, belts, shoe laces, strings in sweatpants. Any ropes, strings, or chains. Neck chains longer than 24 inches. Panty hose or long stockings. Glass of any kind. Any electrical appliance using an electrical cord. Any sharp object. Plastic bags—any and all …”

He saw the theme here, too.

Sascha drove him to the airport, and as she stood at the terminal window watching him walk toward the plane, she might as well have been Saskia watching Adam or Theresa watching Tausolo. She felt her heart
sinking. They had met a week after Nic got home from the war, when she heard that some soldiers were back and went online to see who they were. She had a soft spot for soldiers. Her father had been one. Her grandfather had been one. Most of her uncles were either army or National Guard. When she met Nic, she liked that he was big and muscled and spoke thoughtfully and had a tattoo on his back that said “Unity and Peace.” He had gotten it when he was growing up, he told her, before he ever thought of becoming a soldier, and she liked that about him, too. As for the dark circles under his eyes, she found them intriguing. “You do know that something’s wrong with him,” a friend told her at one point. He didn’t like crowds. He had nightmares. Yes, she did know, she said, and she was concerned. She was coming out of a failed marriage to a soldier who had returned from Iraq angry and abusive. She had two young daughters to worry about. But there was something about Nic that made her want to stick with him, and so she did, through his flashbacks, and drinking binges, and a drug overdose that was his first suicide attempt, and then she married him, and now she was six months pregnant and hoping that Pueblo would make him realize he could tell her anything about the war, anything at all. That she wanted to hear it. That she could take it.

“Report to the East Entrance by the flag pole and statue of Mary,” continued the instructions Nic had gotten, which he carried with him to Pueblo. “Go to the elevator, 6th floor, left out of elevator and pick up phone dial ‘0.’ ” He dialed “0.” A door swung open and was bolted behind him, and before long someone was explaining how the program worked. For the first three days he would be monitored day and night and could have no contact with anyone outside of the program. After that, he would gain privileges through good behavior, or lose privileges through bad behavior, up to what was called Level III, which included the privileges of computer use, cell phone use, trips to the Loaf ’N Jug convenience store on the far side of the parking lot, unsupervised shaving, wearing shoes with laces, and having visitors. Days would begin at 6:30 with physical therapy and end at 11:00 with lights-out. There would be group sessions with the other twenty-two people in the program on
dealing with anger, setting goals, and, most essential of all, talking about what had happened, over and over. Finally, Nic would be expected to keep a journal—and out of profound need, or just the desire to again wear shoes with laces, he begins doing that right away.

He writes about his anger:

He writes about a mission:

He writes about a nightmare: