Battling a different kind of war

Sitting between a camera and a backlight, Robbins, an Iraq war veteran now training prospective Marine Corps officers at Norwich University, recalled how difficult it was to come home after his deployment, how home seemed like an altogether different place.

"It's like you're building a bridge back again," the 23-year-old said in a deep, gravelly voice. "There were times I felt like an alien."

For Plachek, a senior at the military college helping film a documentary about veterans' readjustment to civilian life, Robbins's story was a cautionary tale. In a few weeks, she will join the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, and expects to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"They just want their old life back," she said, shaking her head in sympathy. "But I don't know if they even know how to come back."

Plachek is one of 30 Norwich students producing "The War at Home," painstakingly chronicling the struggles veterans face when they return stateside. Over the past six months, they have interviewed 17 veterans in lengthy, emotional sessions that trace their journeys from enlistment to the present.

Many interviews resemble confessionals, students say, and draw tears on both sides of the camera. For many veterans, remembering their experiences - the noise, the fear, the death - is almost like reliving them.

In a grim symmetry, many students who are conducting the interviews, hearing first-hand accounts of the horrors of combat and the struggle to leave it behind, are likely headed to war themselves. The veterans' stories, students say, has opened a bleak window into their likely futures. Their hardships, the students understand, will someday be their own.

"In a couple of months, I could be in their boots," said Steve Weber, a senior from New Jersey who will join the Marine Corps next month. "What they have to say can be hard to hear, because that's going to be me."

Before the documentary, Weber had planned to join the Marines active duty. Now, he is leaning toward the reserves, and interviewing for jobs in media production.

In recent interviews at the central Vermont college, which some 200 veterans attend, students recounted heart-rending details from the 70 hours of footage they have assembled. One soldier described the last few seconds of his friend's life. Another detailed the first time she shot someone. Many spoke of their inability to calm or slow down when they got home after months of combat vigilance. Some told students things they hadn't told anyone before.

Bill Estill, a Norwich communications professor overseeing the project, said veterans at the school are typically loath to discuss readjustment issues, and try their best to ignore them. Some admit to some form of post-traumatic stress, but are adamant about not seeking counseling, he said.

"They are used to life-and-death decisions, where things are black and white," he said. "When they get back, everything is gray. And they keep everything within."

The goals of the documentary, Estill and students said, are to show the difficulty of readjustment, and to let struggling veterans know they aren't alone.

Students take a relaxed approach to the interviews, asking broad and sympathetic questions about veterans' background and reasons for enlisting in an effort to make them feel comfortable.

"You have to earn their trust," said Virginia Wong, a senior who served a year in Iraq before attending Norwich. Wong, who served in Iraq as an Army specialist in 2004 and 2005, joined the project after some initial interviews went poorly, Estill said. Unaware how reluctant veterans would be to admit problems, students asked questions that were sometimes taken as overly blunt and prying, leading to some uncomfortable exchanges.

Wong, a 24-year-old from Hawaii who plans to be a military intelligence officer after graduation, helped smooth out the rough edges, Estill said. Knowing first-hand that many veterans find it difficult to show weakness, she proceeded cautiously. Gradually, she let veterans know she shared their struggles, and their hesitance to accept them.

"You're taught to drive through the pain," she said. "It's just part of the culture."

As Robbins described his life after Iraq in a plain, matter-of-fact tone, Wong sat straight-backed in a chair across from him, listening intently. Stories like his, Wong said, are at once cruel and comforting reminders.

"It's almost like reliving it," said Wong, who drove fuel trucks near Tikrit in Iraq. "But it also makes me realize I'm not alone."

Among students who have not served, many treat the interviews as instructive. Understanding what the veterans went through, they say, can only help them handle the stress of a combat zone and become better leaders.

"The best way to learn is to learn from them," said Brad Panasiti, a soft-spoken, thick-armed redhead bound for the Marine Corps. "Once you put those bars on, it's not about you anymore."

Still, he is keenly aware he may well follow in their footsteps.

"Sure," he said flatly, "that could be me."

Glen Eckmeier, a 23-year-old senior from Connecticut who will begin field artillery training in August, was also of two minds.

"We're not going in blind" to the potential consequences, he said. "This is something you don't start to do unless you know."

Still, it was clear the veterans' stories had left a deep impression.

"They still want to be the person they were," he said sadly.

Joseph Burleigh, a 22-year-old senior from Kingston, N.H., had planned to join the Air Force. But after interviewing veterans, as well as relatives of slain Vermont servicemen for a previous student documentary, he is abandoning his military dreams.

"It all changed," he said. "It was too much."

Under the glare of camera lights, Robbins recounted how he signed up for military when he was just 17, wanting to be a Marine because they were "the toughest and the strongest." He wanted to fight in Iraq, and felt guilty and bitter when he was sent to Japan.

"We didn't join to not go," he said. "We wanted to suffer as well. If you joined for the right reasons, you want to be on the front lines."

Upon returning home, he recalled how he felt out of touch with his oldest friends. While they all swapped stories about college parties and weddings, all his were military. But he never considered his struggles severe enough to warrant counseling.

"No one wants to feel like they are a problem," he said. "Or that they have a disease."

Looking on, Plachek seemed moved by Robbins's honesty, strength, and sense of duty.

"It's a privilege," she said, "to hear their stories."