The Things They Carry

Outside of Baghdad's RPG-Alley, Army Staff Sgt. John Kaiser stood in the squad leader's hatch of his Stryker armored vehicle and searched for targets for his gunner to engage. Under attack from insurgents using machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, Kaiser saw the high-explosive 120 mm mortar round drop into his line of vision.

The shell exploded just feet from the front of his vehicle.

Kaiser's head and shoulders were exposed to the full force of the blast. A jagged piece of shrapnel tore through his ballistic sunglasses, destroying his right eye and crushing the surrounding bone structure before coming to rest against the membrane encasing his brain. Torn free by the force of the explosion, the vehicle's antenna array struck him in the jaw, shearing away bone and tissue. Before he could fall back into the vehicle, an Iraqi insurgent's bullet ripped through his right shoulder.

"We'd been in so many firefights without so much as a scratch or losing a guy," Kaiser recalled. "It was just like ‘Wow, I guess I'm not bulletproof.'"

Six major surgeries and five years later, the 33-year-old Kaiser is halfway through his first quarter as a student at Clark. Kaiser plans on becoming a licensed physical therapist, and wants to help wounded veterans recover from their injuries.  

An uncannily realistic prosthetic eye rests in his reconstructed right eye socket and stares fixedly ahead. Braces hold his teeth in place as a temporary measure while he awaits an operation to reconstruct his lower jaw. He no longer carries a rifle, but he carries the scars - the burdens of his own difficult recovery - and he carries them alone.

"I had to sit myself down. There was a moment of silent reflection at Walter Reed (Army Medical Center), because that was the first time I actually saw myself," Kaiser said. "And I was just like, ‘Your family doesn't have time for you to feel sorry for yourself.'"

Many veterans carry emotional wounds along with the physical ones. Living for months under the constant threat of violent death often leaves vets struggling to readjust to civilian life.

Justin Brooke, 31, served for ten years as a Pavement and Equipment Engineer in the U.S. Air Force. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan before being medically retired in 2008, and is starting his first quarter at Clark. After not receiving adequate care from the military or the Department of Veterans Affairs following a serious injury in Afghanistan, he chose to pursue a career in holistic medicine to help other veterans recover from both physical and psychiatric injuries.

In Iraq, his unit often came under mortar and rocket fire while constructing base defenses and fortifying outposts. Car bombs were a constant threat. Even mundane moments could quickly turn terrifying: he was once injured taking cover from a mortar attack while leaving the shower.

Brooke is quick to downplay the severity of his own experiences, especially in relation to service members in front line combat units. He still struggles with trauma symptoms.

"I wasn't infantry. I wasn't in an assault force," he said during an interview on campus. "I was target practice."

In 2006, Brooke witnessed an attack on an entry check-point to an American base. A car packed with several hundred pounds of high explosives charged into the check-point and detonated. An Iraqi National Guardsman whom Brooke had befriended stood just feet from the blast and was killed instantly.

"For me, my biggest thing is that I tried to protect other people," Brooke said. "If you're in a position where you see your friend gets hurt and you weren't able to protect him, that's where the mind part comes in."

Brooke's unit was tasked with the clean-up. "Wiping someone up is tough," he said.

Brooke struggles daily with the after-effects of his experiences, and conditions around campus often serve as triggers for post-traumatic stress. Like many combat vets, he suffers severe anxiety around crowds and worries that his frustrations with other students will cause him to lose control of his temper. He often retreats to his car to calm himself between classes.

"You come back and you don't want to be that weird uncle that ended up moving out into the middle of the hills and is an absolute recluse," he said, glancing warily at another group of students seated nearby. "You also want to represent your service that you did do, because you joined with noble intentions."

Despite this, Brooke has spent the last two years isolated in his house, leaving only for doctor appointments and physical therapy. He avoids reminders of his experiences by shutting himself in.

"I was walking out of my front door, I was watching the neighbor kids play. They were playing G.I. Joes or whatever," Brooke said, struggling visibly while his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. "They were playing with their guns and one of them drops down in the middle of the street. And the other kid runs over and he's like, 'Medic! Medic! Man down!' And just-"

Brooke covered his eyes with one hand while motioning to his head with the other. After a moment, he inhaled sharply and gestured to the tears welling in his eyes.

"I avoid it because I don't want to do this."

When asked if he'd prefer to finish the interview somewhere less public, he shook his head.

"You gotta deal with stuff, you know," he said. "No, I'd rather face the demons here."

Veterans often struggle under the burden of expectations placed on them by society.

Female veterans can face conflicting demands in their roles as soldiers and as women in the civilian world.