Beyond the Yellow Ribbon
Chuck Haga, Grand Forks Herald
Feb. 3–Minnesota Guard program becomes model for helping Iraq returnees maneuver through readjustment obstacles
The phone rings in the St. Paul office of Maj. John Morris, a chaplain with the Minnesota National Guard and point man in the Guard’s effort to “reintegrate” soldiers returning from Iraq.
The caller is a woman from Crookston, wife of a soldier who came home last summer after an extended tour.
“We’ve been walking on egg shells, and we can’t take it anymore,” she tells Morris, her frustration billowing like black smoke from a sabotaged Iraqi oil well.
“The kids come to me for everything, like they’ve been doing the past two years,” she said, as Morris recalled the conversation. “He doesn’t want to spend time with our friends; he thinks their interests are trivial and they don’t know anything about what his life has been like.
“He says, ‘I just want to be with my war buddies.’ “
How can we help? Morris asked her.
“Send him back to Iraq.”
That’s not a common suggestion for resolving post-deployment domestic strife, Morris said, but the late-December conversation does illustrate the challenges facing returning troops who must adjust to “a new normal.”
How the meltdown was contained also illustrates the early success Guard leaders claim for their Beyond the Yellow Ribbon program, which after six months has become a model for other states around the nation, including North Dakota.
“They needed help,” Morris said of the struggling Crookston couple. “We were able to arrange counseling for her, and we reached out to the soldier, too. He’s working now, and he’s going to school.”
Getting reacquainted
Thanks to last year’s troop “surge,” more than 2,600 troops of the Minnesota National Guard spent more time in Iraq than any other National Guard unit.
They’ve been home for six months now: biking and skating with their kids, talking budgets and dreams with their spouses, trying on new jobs or schools or returning to old roles. Hundreds of North Dakota soldiers also are home from war in Iraq and Afghanistan, becoming reacquainted with the people who waited for them.
The returning soldiers are defined to some degree by their time away, by what they saw and did, by what they lost and what they gained. Each carried things home from Iraq: a new measure of pride, resentment over the extended deployment, the memory of a lost comrade, regret over missing a daughter’s birthday.
The adjustment isn’t always smooth, which is why Minnesota developed its Beyond the Yellow Ribbon program to help soldiers maneuver through potential difficulties. The name recalls the yellow ribbons hung from main street light poles and trees in the yards of families with loved ones in harm’s way. The ribbons may come down after the parades and private homecomings, but the country — especially those who remember the aftermath of Vietnam — feels a continuing commitment to these returning troops.
Funding to take the Beyond the Yellow Ribbon program national was signed into law last week, and Chaplain Morris is scheduled to explain it at an upcoming meeting of the National Governors Conference.
Maj. Gen. Larry Shellito, adjutant general of the Minnesota National Guard, began developing the reintegration program after talking with Maj. Gen. Mike Haugen, who recently retired as leader of the North Dakota National Guard. Haugen told him about some of his soldiers — among the first to be deployed — coming back with personal issues.
Shellito also saw something in some of the first Minnesota soldiers returning from Iraq: a look he recognized from more than 30 years ago, in the eyes of fellow soldiers returning from Vietnam.
“We had a soldier returning from Iraq who made a presentation, and there was an ambivalence to him,” Shellito said. “He was detached. He had that look.
“I truly believe the vast majority will adapt and do well,” he said. “The tools of this program remove a lot of the fear and angst they may feel. Once they identify that ‘It’s not just me, it’s the situation,’ it puts it in a whole new realm of being able to deal with things.”
Another lesson from Vietnam: Continuing community support for the returning troops is critical, Shellito said.
“To be valued is immeasurable.”
Continuing adjustment
Despite solid support from friends, employers and the extended northwestern Minnesota community, life after deployment still is an adjustment for Sheila Johnson. It’s been six months since her husband, Spc. Monty Johnson, came home to her and their three small children on a farm near Newfolden, Minn., but she still sometimes compares notes with other Guard families.
“Some days, some of the families are still moody and crabby,” she said last week. “Other days, it seems like I’m the only one having trouble.”
For Staff Sgt. Nathan Modeen, 35, East Grand Forks, “the adjustment has gone better than I thought it would,” though he’s still getting used to the kids — Hannah, 11, and Sam, 5 — being “bigger and older.”
Modeen and his wife, Jennifer, “talked about how things would be when I got home,” he said. “I think we do a pretty good job of communicating, of talking things out. But you can’t be gone for two years, away from the people you love, without it requiring some adjustments.”
Beyond the Yellow Ribbon “is a good program,” he said, informative and helpful but also symbolic: “I see it as an understanding on the part of our leaders that the commitment continues. All of the positive comment we’ve heard, in fact, from the governor on down, has been pretty awesome.”
Capt. Aaron Krentz, who ran the reintegration program for troops returning to northern Minnesota, said that soldiers have trouble readjusting despite all the goodwill and support from home communities.
“You come back filled with confidence and pride in the job you’ve done, and maybe you go back to work at a place where your old coworkers have moved on or been promoted up the chain,” he said. “There’s often a sense of alienation. Where do I fit in now?
“It happens at home, too. It’s difficult for the spouse and kids to transition back to the way things were. Some spouses don’t want to give up the responsibilities they’ve taken on, while others want to download everything they’ve been taking care of for a year or more. They’re tired. But the soldier is tired, too.”
The program helps returning soldiers connect with such resources as veterans’ benefits, job training and counseling. The Minnesota National Guard has “embedded” mental health counselors at 22 armories around the state, including those in Crookston and Thief River Falls.
The Guard also brought returned units back together after 30, 60 and 90 days for seminars on employment, parenting, relationships, anger management, substance abuse and other roadblocks to a successful re-entry.
Saving lives
Krentz said he is convinced the Yellow Ribbon program has been more than cosmetic. Much more.
“Based on our statistics and calls to our counselors, I believe we’ve saved lives,” he said. “We’ve saved families. We’ve saved children.”
They couldn’t save everyone. Krentz, who returned home late in 2005 after a 15-month deployment, including a year in Iraq, especially mourns the loss of one ex-soldier who was deployed with him.
“He was so excited about what was waiting for him at home,” Krentz said. “His perception of what he was coming home to — family, friends, work — was pretty clear in his head.”
But things didn’t work out as the soldier expected. He got into financial trouble, which led to drinking and trouble in his personal relationships, Krentz said. Last spring, after a high-speed chase through central Minnesota, the veteran was shot and killed by police as he brandished a weapon.
Members of the soldier’s family disputed suggestions that his problems were related to his deployment. But Krentz wonders. “He performed so magnificently in Iraq. But obviously, the separation created stress, and things just didn’t work out as he expected when he came home.”
With understanding communities and a little help, most returning soldiers adjust without great difficulty, Guard officials said. But some do have trouble, especially those who may suffer some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder.
An often debilitating mental condition, PTSD can involve feelings of guilt, flashbacks or an inability to relax or relate to others, including loved ones. Surveys done by the Army in 2004 indicated that 20 percent of returning soldiers suffered from clinical anxiety, depression or PTSD. Continuing studies suggest the percentage of returnees suffering such mental health problems is closer to 30 percent, with many of the troops not showing signs of problems until four to six months after their return.
And the impact goes beyond returnees. Testifying before a congressional committee in May 2007, Dr. Thomas Insel, head of the National Institute of Mental Health, said that 700,000 American children had at least one parent deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and physicians could expect “a ripple effect of mental illnesses on family members.”
Other returning soldiers may suffer from traumatic brain injuries (TBI) after exposure to exploding roadside bombs that otherwise left them uninjured. A screening tool developed by the Pentagon and implemented last April at the Fargo Veterans Administration Medical Center has identified about 200 soldiers so far who may have sustained brain injuries in combat.
Often difficult for doctors, family or the troops themselves to recognize, TBI has become the “signature wound” of the Iraq war.
Initial reticence
Many of the returning troops of the Minnesota National Guard’s Red Bulls were reluctant at first to accept help offered through the Yellow Ribbon program.
“The last thing they want to hear is what they have to do when they are at home with the families,” Krentz said. “I was the same way. I was going home to my family and that was all I needed.
“We almost had to put our body armor back on to take the heat we got.”
Morris, the chaplain, said he also felt the heat. “We took a unit that was extremely hostile — especially after their time in Iraq was extended — and they didn’t want any help at all,” he said. “Soldiers can be very direct, and at first they told us, ‘Hey, this is a bunch of crap. I don’t need it.’
“But of 660 soldiers (in one Red Bulls unit), more than 500 showed up for the 30-day training we offered, with about 300 family members,” he said. “We had a good turnout at the 60-day training, too.”
Counselors steered some soldiers to new jobs. They helped others get into school and walked many through bureaucracies for health care and other benefits. “We gave out 170 free Minnesota hunting licenses,” Morris added.
Family members often were more receptive to a helping hand than the returning soldiers were, he said. “They had seen things when the troops were home on leave — things like anger, feelings of isolation. They thought, ‘Boy, this is going to be harder than we thought it would be, pulling this family back together.’ “
Also, family members “had been more exposed to media and had heard stories from other families about soldiers coming back with problems,” Morris said. “They had a better idea of what might be needed.”
Nearly 80 percent of the returning Minnesota National Guard troops expressed interest in going to school, Morris said, and the state college system has attributed its 4.6 percent increase in enrollment last fall to new veterans.
About 30 percent of the troops coming back are unemployed and need help finding jobs or getting themselves ready for the workplace. “Some soldiers go back to the jobs they had before and they don’t like it anymore,” Morris said. “The work seems dull, mundane — not important like what they were doing in Iraq.
“They were on CNN every night for what they were doing over there. They aren’t on CNN now.”
Substance abuse is a significant problem, Morris said, “especially for the families living through it.” But the biggest challenge for many lies in the already complicated arena of personal relationships.
“The young single guy has been gone for two years,” Morris said. “All his friends have moved on with their lives, while he’s been frozen in time. He’s been away in this environment that nobody else can relate to. He’s wondering, ‘How do I catch up? How do I connect with my old friends, make new friends?’ Most work through all that pretty well. But some don’t.”
It can be even more complicated for the married veteran, whose spouse has had to learn to survive without him. “He’s wondering, ‘What’s my role here? What’s my role with the kids?’
“I talked to a guy — and this is very common — he said that Christmas brought it all home. The kids were around all the time and they were driving him crazy.
“He said he looked at his wife at one point and said, ‘You’ve changed.’ She looked right back at him and said, ‘You’ve changed.’
“He said, ‘All I wanted to do was go back to Iraq.”
Leading the way
Timothy Teig, a Veterans Administration outreach worker in Fargo, has traveled extensively in northwestern Minnesota to counsel returning soldiers. He expects to continue that work in North Dakota.
“Both states are leaders in this,” he said. “The governors and adjutant generals have taken a very proactive attitude and they’re doing a remarkable job. Home communities, too, on a whole have responded favorably to the veterans. Everybody wants to know: ‘What can we do to help?’
“I’ve talked with maybe 3,000 soldiers over the past year and a half, and most are aware of the various services available through the county and the VA,” said Teig, 46, a 22-year military veteran who retired after a 2005 deployment to Bosnia. “Also, families and communities are more aware of potential problems and the referral help that’s available.”
Returning troops may need help dealing with back pain associated with wearing the body armor required in Iraq, especially those who served extended or multiple tours. They also need help readjusting to life outside a war zone. “There’s nothing to turn off that switch” in a combat soldier who was drilled to be ever alert to danger, Teig said.
“Things like driving techniques — they’re used to driving real fast, swerving to avoid trash by the side of the road because it could be something that could hurt them or their fellow soldiers,” he said. “You start driving 90 miles per hour in the slow lane with your wife and kids in the car, that can be a problem.
“We need to remind them that this is a safe place, and over time their sense of safety will improve.”
One measure of the program’s success: “Vietnam vets have told me, ‘I wish we had something like this when we came home,’ ” Teig said.
Soldiers returning from Iraq may not face the level of disdain or hostility that many Vietnam veterans recall, he said, but the wrong words still can be jarring.
“Some people say something inappropriate, or they begin a conversation in a political nature,” he said. “You need to remember that these people weren’t involved in the politics of it. They were told, ‘It’s your turn to go to war.’
“Somebody somewhere along the line might ask, ‘Did you shoot anybody? Did you kill anybody?’ It’s a pretty intimate question. If you actually had to pull a trigger and take the life of another human, that’s not something you want to talk about casually.”
Attaining a “new normal” is likely to be a continuing challenge. “We don’t know how long these wars and conflicts are going to go on,” Morris said, or how long the experience of combat will affect returned soldiers.
“It’s going to take a tremendous amount of effort over the next 10 years to take care of these people.”