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Coming Home (Part 2)
65 Plays1 year ago
Host: Ray Haberski
Guests: Cliff Morlan and Jennifer Manning
Audio Engineers: Jason M. Kelly and Kelly Kerr
- Vietnam Echoes | Coming Home. PBS, 2017. https://www.pbs.org/video/coming-home-fpwmje/.
- Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674979840
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Transcript
Introduction to Justice and War Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Justice and War in American History podcast. I'm Jason Kelly. And I'm Ray Habersky. War has long been an indelible part of America's story, shaping national identity, values and principles. The experience of war has transformed the lives of each generation. And because of this, it has historically elicited impassioned debates and conflicting perspectives.
00:00:28
Speaker
This podcast aims to explore this history by bringing together a diverse range of voices, veterans, active service members, citizens and scholars. Through our conversations, we will consider the ways in which war has shaped and reshaped notions of justice. In the process, we will engage with broad themes such as duty, heroism, suffering, loyalty and patriotism.
Comparative Analysis of Wars
00:00:50
Speaker
Our broad framework during this season is to compare and contrast the histories of the Spanish-American
00:00:56
Speaker
Philippine-American and Vietnam wars, wars that had a profound effect on the people of the United States. The National Endowment for the Humanities has generously provided funding for this project, making it possible to have conversations about the effects of war on American veterans, their families, and the generations who bear witness to conflict.
Guests' Military Backgrounds
00:01:16
Speaker
So this is the second part of our conversation on an episode called Coming Home. We have two more guests, and I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves. So Jennifer, why don't you start us off? All right, thanks. I'm Jennifer Manning. I am a senior over here at IUPUI. I am a veteran of the US Army for 10 years. I've done one deployment to Afghanistan in 2009-2010. Really happy to be here, guys.
00:01:41
Speaker
All right. And Cliff? Hi, I'm Cliff Moreland. I'm the office coordinator for the Multicultural Center and the LGBTQ Plus Center here at IPUI. I'm also an IPUI alumni and an Army veteran. I did five years in the Guard and Reserve, five years on active duty, disabled vet, no combat deployments, but I was deployed to Korea for three years on a one year tour.
Transitioning to Civilian Life
00:01:59
Speaker
Okay, so this episode is about one of the universal experiences of anybody who serves in the military, right? It's leaving it in some way. And while I understand that not everybody completely leaves it, so I'll go into the guard.
00:02:15
Speaker
military police, things like that. There is a moment when you know that you're no longer going to be doing what you just had been doing for a certain number of months or years in the military. And we're interested in hearing your stories about what that is like, that transition from service to whatever comes next. So Jennifer, could you tell us a little bit about that moment or that transition when you knew that whatever you were doing,
00:02:40
Speaker
was coming to an end and you were going home and what that going home or coming home was like? Yeah, sure. So it was 2010 and we had just done 12 months in Afghanistan and our missions required us to be what we called outside the box, outside the wire, a lot. We were in the box outside the wire, a lot. What does that mean? It means that we were off of a military base and actually in the population. So where?
00:03:08
Speaker
Well, I was in a place called Gardez in the Paktia Province. It's right there on the east side, close to the Pakistan border. But we normally would stay out in country with our
00:03:23
Speaker
our Afghan police forces. Because I was a military police officer. So we were always doing ops with them. We would stay with them for days or even weeks at a time. Outside of the base. Outside the base. Occasionally, they brought us some stuff to refit. But other than that, for the first probably couple months I was in country, I was not on base. OK. Except for one or two days every now and then. So you're always guarded. You're always very
00:03:52
Speaker
you have to be on top of everything because your life does depend on it and it's a high stress environment.
Jennifer Manning's PTSD Challenges
00:03:58
Speaker
Now coming home, um, I happened to get back in Indiana cause I, when I came back, I went to Germany because that's where I was stationed at beforehand. Um, so coming back, I came back to Indiana, uh,
00:04:14
Speaker
July 3rd. So I got there right in time for 4th of July. And let's just say it was not the best experience in the world. Okay. Um, because no matter how much I tried to turn it off, you just can't, when you have spent 12 months of it being programmed one particular way, like even the sound of a snapper, you know, that you throw on the ground, I just like,
00:04:40
Speaker
stop. I froze. It's not like there was anything I could do because I didn't have anything on me. Yeah. When I came home, I purposely made sure I was not carrying a gun and I wasn't doing this and doing that because I wanted to try to acclimate myself back into society. How long were you in Germany before you flew back?
00:04:56
Speaker
Um, well, I spent nine months in Germany before our deployment and then I spent three months in Germany after our deployment. Okay. On a base in Germany. Yes. On a base in Germany. It was a, it was a, it's called bomb holder called the rock. It's hell. It's a, it's something. Um, but yeah, so, and then you land in Indiana.
00:05:13
Speaker
And then I land in Indiana. What was it like walking through the airport who greeted you? My family did actually. My girlfriend at the time and her son were there. My mom was there. My stepdad, my siblings, my dad. So Jennifer, I'm going to ask you, you know, I think many of us have this experience of walking out of like the little
00:05:34
Speaker
No, it wasn't one of those things where I just drop all my bags and run. I mean, I was smiling and laughing, of course, because I was really happy to see them. It was more they were running. I didn't drop my bags because I was like, these are heavy. If I drop them, I'm not picking them back up. Did you feel like, okay, so these are the people who I'm going to be spending a lot of time with for now on.
00:05:58
Speaker
No, I just, because I knew my time with them was limited because I was getting ready to go to another base.
00:06:06
Speaker
Another base overseas? Oh, no, no, no, I was actually getting ship stateside. I was going to Fort Riley, Kansas. Okay. Where I got to spend three years. So it was always, I always would come home to my family, but it would always be for a weekend. Okay. Every few months or a week every year kind of thing. So there was never a lot of time to go home. But like I said, when we came back from Afghanistan, this time that I went home, my parents actually saw
00:06:37
Speaker
what had happened to me in a sense.
Cliff Moreland's Reintegration Struggles
00:06:39
Speaker
It was 4th of July we were out camping because that was a family tradition at the time. All during the summer we'd camp. That's kind of where we were. There was a fireworks show at the campsite. I
00:06:53
Speaker
don't remember a whole lot about a part of it, but when I kind of came to, my parents were, my mom and my stepdad were both kind of on me, holding me, trying to give me some form of comfort because I was not there. I was back in Afghanistan. Like for some reason I was hearing gunfire and whatnot. So it was, it's definitely a hard transition, which sadly enough, a lot of veterans of OIF and OEF go through is,
00:07:23
Speaker
transitioning, trying to almost deprogram yourself. Sure. And you have to do it yourself. You, you do. I mean, the VA, they have good stuff and I'm thankful for the VA because, you know, they, but not a lot of VA's are as decent as Roudebush here in Indianapolis. Okay. I, my best friend is out in California. She has to go to us, a counselor, whatever,
00:07:49
Speaker
off of the VA. She had to get a referral, which took forever because she couldn't get in. We've been hearing stories about that. Yeah, it takes months. And even then, sometimes when it's finally their turn, they have to call and cancel. So I guess I kind of lucked out on that one. But yeah, I'm not so lucky. I've got friends that have not been so lucky. Cliff, I mean, do you have a story?
00:08:12
Speaker
yeah i'm going on and on here let's i don't know that's okay so my coming home story is a little different i had just reenlisted in the army in korea for another three-year tour i planned on staying in and retiring and then was going to the doctor because my knee was bothering me a lot after falling down a mountain and after a year and a half of them misdiagnosing my knee as a runner syndrome they finally took an x-ray and realized i'd broke my kneecap in six pieces
00:08:37
Speaker
So they sent me to the hospital. They did surgery on it. The, one of the stitches on the kneecap got infected. So they literally had to rip my kneecap open and let it heal from the inside out. So I had a scar about an inch and a half wide on my knee that had to heal up. So I was in a knee brace.
00:08:52
Speaker
This is, where were you in South Korea? In South Korea, okay. So I was in a brace from my hip to my ankle with my leg unable to bend for six months while that was healing up. Okay. I had so much atrophy in my thigh and my thigh was only 12 inches in diameter. So when they took the brace off my leg, they said, well, good news, bad news is the good news is your, the scars finally healed up. There's no sign of any infection anymore. The bad news is you'll never walk again because your thigh muscle is completely dead.
00:09:32
Speaker
This is all in South Korea. Wow.
00:09:36
Speaker
on the base on the base all through the military but they finally said well good news you know you are getting some movement back in your thigh but you've been out of commission for so long now we're sending you to Fort Sam Houston for a medical board to kick you out of the military for being unfit for military duty so so when you're when you're leaving South Korea you're flying to Texas yep
00:09:56
Speaker
I flew straight from South Korea to Texas for this, for this hearing or whatever. Yeah, for this medical board. I get there, they assigned me to a military board there and Brook Army Medical Center in Houston, Texas. I get there and they're like, yep, here's the evaluation. We're kicking out of the military. We're going to rate you at 10% disabled. So you get no retirement. You get no disability benefits. You get nothing. You're on your own. See ya. And then they say you have two options. You can either stay here till your contract expires.
00:10:26
Speaker
which is about three months, they say, or we can PCS you to home or give you a permanent change of station to your home address. I was like, well, just send me back to my home address because I don't want to stay here for three months for nothing. So they sent me back to my home state. Well, I grew up in the sticks in Arkansas. There's no airport anywhere nearby at the major airport.
00:10:45
Speaker
So I ended up flying into Missouri and there was nobody at the airport to meet me. None of my family showed up. I ended up having to get a shuttle bus from the airport to my hometown. And even then I got there and there was nobody there. And this is all with your leg in some sort of huge brace.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, well, I had the brace off by then, but I still wasn't able to walk very well. So I was still limping pretty severely. So yeah, nobody was there to meet me. I just was on my own. So definitely welcome back was not there for me when I got out.
Veterans' Issues with VA and Stigma
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah. And you got to your house. Is that where you stayed? I finally got to my, well, I got to my parents house, my stepdad, my mom's house. And they finally said, Oh, Hey, welcome home. It's like, that was it. You know, you're supposed to pick me up at the airport, but you know, yeah.
00:11:25
Speaker
And then I ended up moving out from there and I moved to Indiana, but just because the environment was not a good environment for me to be in, especially right out of the military. So I moved up here to Indiana in 2003, about nine months after I got out of the Army.
00:11:38
Speaker
So I will say that the two of you have stories of coming home that may push against what we assume, you know, in the sort of popular culture version of coming home. It's not instant jubilation. Things are not as you would want them to be. And but Cliff, so after that, you did re-enlist again.
00:12:00
Speaker
I tried. I actually tried to re-enlist numerous times, but due to my military board, they rated me as non-re-enlistable. So I couldn't go back in the military, even though they said I wasn't disabled enough to get a disability benefit or get medically retired. They said I was ineligible for re-enlistment due to my medical injuries.
00:12:18
Speaker
So I followed my VA claim, and it took them about three years to send me my first review letter back, and they said, no, all denied, no service-connected injuries of any kind. And I'm like, then why did you give me a medical discharge if I had no service-connected injuries?
00:12:32
Speaker
It's the army. Nothing makes sense. So it took me about five years of fighting the VA to get a 10% disability rating from my knee injury. And I kept fighting them over the years. I went to service officer training through the American Legion to be able to represent myself for my disability claims. And I'm currently listed at 90% disabled, but I didn't get 90% disabled until last year, which is almost 20 years after me getting out of the service. Yeah. Yeah. That's a long coming home.
00:13:01
Speaker
I was going to say that happens a lot with usually the people who were in the 90s or the 80s or whatnot, because I'm commander for my local American Legion. OK, so both of you serve as officers in the American Legion? OK, very good. All right. And there are some Vietnam vets, some 80s and 90s vets and whatnot that are still working with the VA to try to get. I've got a guy in my unit. His name is, I won't say names, actually. I was about to. But he is in a wheelchair.
00:13:30
Speaker
Can't use his legs. He's a Vietnam vet. Mm-hmm. Very disabled. Yeah, and he did not for the longest time get a hundred percent disability Even though he can't do Much of anything you can move his hand To steer him, you know where he needs to go or to hold something, you know light not anything too heavy Yeah, so the VA can be very uh
00:13:56
Speaker
Stubborn. We'll go with stubborn. I like stubborn. Yeah. I mean, how do you make sense of the stories that either you're part of or that you're party to when we sort of generalize about how grateful the nation is for any service that people do, and yet when people leave the service, which is the moment where the nation is supposed to show its gratitude,
00:14:24
Speaker
It doesn't seem to happen. I mean, how do you, how do you make sense of that? For me, a lot of it depends on the area you served in. Like Jennifer was saying, you know, our Vietnam vets and our Desert Storm vets, when we got out, we had to fight tooth and nail and the majority of our veterans got their disability claim denied no matter what. And we had to keep filing an appeal and keep fighting and fighting to get our benefits. But with a lot of the younger vets now, because I'm still helping veterans with their disability claims,
00:14:49
Speaker
I got vets now that they're getting out and I'm helping them submit their claim and they're getting 70, 90, 100% on their first try without ever getting denied. So I think a lot of it depends on the area you served in. And then with the military mentality of suck it up and drive on, most of us never go to the hospital unless we absolutely have to.
00:15:07
Speaker
So we sustain these injuries in the military, but then we never get them documented while we're in. So when we get out, we go to follow VA claims, say, look, you know, my knees are bad. My back's bad. I, you know, this, I broke my foot or whatever. And they're like, well, there's no record of it in your military record. Well, yeah, there's not because I never went to the doctor because I didn't want to be made fun of and humiliated by put into a separate squad.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, there was, we called him Sick Call Rangers, the ones who went to the doctors a lot. That's a lot more politically correct than what we could imagine. I had something different, but I went with our PG listing there. But no, yeah, it's a very big stigma if you go to the doctor, if you go to a therapist. Like, it took a couple years after I got back from Afghanistan before I started seeing a therapist on post. And it was because my friends forced me to because I had
00:15:58
Speaker
gotten so angry and so much pent up everything that I was driving away the people that loved me. I was still in the army, mind you. I was still active duty in Kansas, all this stuff. But outside of work, when I needed to be a civilian, I was not. I was still, I was drinking a lot to try to keep the demons at bay, I guess the best way to put it. Because sadly enough,
00:16:28
Speaker
That's why a lot of vets coming home today have issues is they can't quell their demons. There's a lot like, and even Vietnam vets will tell you, there's a lot that happens to you when you're there that sadly enough, you have a memory and it ain't going away.
00:16:46
Speaker
So historians of war and medicine and things like that. So we look back in records now, right? Every war has had the interior wounds, right? And we didn't... Shell shock, I think is what they call it. Yes. In World War I, they finally sort of acknowledged that, right?
00:17:07
Speaker
Obviously the Civil War it was all over the place, but it wasn't really dealt with and of course every war has this I mean there were these stories of the polyonic wars, you know soldiers abandoning posts leaving I mean a lot of them just simply left, you know, the the forced march back towards France after the invasion of Russia, but I think what I want to ask you is I
00:17:30
Speaker
That legacy, that tradition, even though we know that every war has this, we still, as a society, as a government, as a service, haven't come to terms with what we know happens every time we put people in harm's way.
National Gratitude vs. Actual Support
00:17:47
Speaker
So what gives?
00:17:50
Speaker
I mean we have evidence every war harms people. They're scarred for life in ways of course they wouldn't be necessarily if they had stayed stateside or been civilians. I think some of it is you know they just don't want
00:18:06
Speaker
to deal with it in a sense. Like you should know what you were getting yourself into in a sense. It's not our fault you joined. It's a volunteer military. You knew we were in war. You knew we were in war and you volunteered. But Vietnam's a little different obviously. It was World War II and everything was a draft. So it's not like they had a choice.
00:18:29
Speaker
Right. And it varies between service. I've got a lot of my friends that were Marines and their mentality is I'm like, dude, you're messed up. You need to go follow VA claim. They're like, no, I knew what I was signing up for when I signed up to be an infantryman. I knew I'd be going over there and killing people and that I'd have to deal with the after effects later. And they still refuse to go follow VA claim for their disability compensation because they said in their mindset, that's what I signed up to do. Now I deal with it on my own. Yeah. I mean, that's any, a lot of people in the military's critique of themselves.
Roles in the American Legion
00:18:55
Speaker
I mean,
00:18:57
Speaker
So I'm interested in the roles that you both play in American Legion.
00:19:01
Speaker
Well, I'm the commander of my local post. I started off as Sergeant of Arms about six years ago now, six years ago, and worked my way up. I have a great team of officers. I've got all these people. And that was actually my support group when I got out. OK. So that is something that you do in the Legion. It helps. OK. Yeah. We always encourage everybody to come to our Legion meetings and stuff.
00:19:29
Speaker
it's hard to get to the younger vets. The younger vets, when they think American Legion, they think a bar where guys are smoking and getting drunk and telling old stories about back in my day, there was a girl named Charlotte, a man named Charlie, you know, kind of stuff. So you have to
00:19:50
Speaker
show them and convince them that there are benefits to being in the Legion. Is one of them helping them come home in a certain sense? In a sense, yes. Because a lot of veterans, I speak from my own experience and then as well as some of my friends and people I talk to, we don't talk to non-vets about what's going on. Like my grandfather was a Korean War veteran. He was a Marine in Korea. And he did not talk to
00:20:21
Speaker
my family about his experiences really. He would tell like PG stories, but he wouldn't really get into stories. But when I came back from my war, he opened up to me and told me all kinds of stories about when he was in Korea and just his feelings and his fears, you know? Because he knew that I would understand them because I went through the same thing. And that's what we do in the Legion.
00:20:51
Speaker
we acknowledge that you just sometimes need somebody to talk to and we want to be those people kind of thing.
Community Service by Veterans
00:20:58
Speaker
I mean, Cliff, similar. I mean, it sounds like you're also hoping to file disability benefits. Yeah.
00:21:06
Speaker
I've been a, I've been a post commander. I've been sergeant in arms. I've been adjutant. I've been the chaplain. I've held numerous positions in the post level. I've also been a district level vice commander, membership chairman and executive vice commander this year for the 11th district, which is the entire Marion County. So I stay active in the Legion. Absolutely.
00:21:24
Speaker
For us, we don't have a brick and mortar location for people to come to. So our focus is going out into the community and volunteering because a lot of our young men and women, they have that desire to serve. That's why they joined the military. And a lot of them got out on medical discharges so they don't have that purpose in their life. So we started volunteering in the community. We adopted a cemetery that was abandoned.
00:21:45
Speaker
And a lot of our men and women go out there and we clean the tombstones. We've helped reset tombstones. We've, you know, taken down trees. We've brushed, you know, cleaned up brush and stuff around there. It gives them that sense of purpose and that sense of honor when they see this cemetery completely changed from being overgrown where you couldn't even see the tombstones to where now it's meticulously well maintained every week.
00:22:04
Speaker
And then, even like this weekend, this Saturday, we're installing a tombstone for a World War II veteran who passed away in the 70s, who's never had a tombstone since he was laid to rest. And we're installing it this weekend. And then a couple months back, we installed a tombstone for a Civil War veteran whose tombstone was broken over the...
00:22:21
Speaker
past 150 years. Right. And while we were installing that, we were able to find his wife and daughter's tombstones that were leaned up against the fence and we were able to get those reinstalled at their plots. So now the families, you know, very good. Yeah. That's awesome. So that's a lot of what we focus on is community service. And then we volunteer a lot with different organizations on IPY campus, like the ROTC program and the IU police department with the cadet of the semester award program. So that's our focus as a Legion Post here at IPY.
00:22:48
Speaker
Well, I want to say thank you to both of you for sharing your experiences. And this has been real interesting. It's very different than the first two that we had on. And I think that you've given us sort of another channel to think about as we get into some of the later episodes in the series, thinking about those institutions that are in between civilian life and the military, like the American Legion, that have become really important that we don't always think about. But thank you.
00:23:18
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. It's great being here.
Conclusion and Resources
00:23:22
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Justice and War in American History. Please stay tuned for our next episode, which you can find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or through any of your favorite podcast providers. Please be sure to rate the podcast and to be in touch with us if you have any questions or feedback. You can find more information about this podcast and the broader Justice and War project at justiceandwarseminar.org.
00:23:46
Speaker
If you are a veteran or concerned about a veteran who has experienced a mental health crisis, there is 24-hour support through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Dial 988 and press 1 or text at 838255. For more information on support from the VA, visit mentalhealth.va.gov. And, as always, special thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities for making this project possible.