57 pages • 1 hour read
David FinkelThank You For Your Service
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Traumatized Veterans Haunted by Wartime Acts
David Finkel’s previous book, The Good Soldiers, followed soldiers in the Iraq war. Thank You For Your Service continues the story of some of the soldiers after they return home.
All the men in this book did what was asked of them by the army. They fulfilled their duties and some were even extolled as heroes by the end of their time with their units. But what made them successful as soldiers while deployed in combat zones were the same things that made it hard for them to succeed in civilian life.
When Tausolo Aieti is beginning with WTB, he is thinking about whether this program can even help him get ready for life after the army: “He might enroll in college courses to learn a skill other than the singular infantry skill of closing in on an enemy and killing him, which he suspects has limited applications outside of war” (44). Being good at spotting possible bombs along the road is a great skill while in a Humvee in the middle of Iraq, but if when a veteran is driving along the interstate with their family, and believes they keep seeing bombs, then a skill necessary to survive in one setting becomes the opposite in another.
To become immune to killing is in part what allows a soldier to be effective in combat. It’s also likely to haunt them grievously after their deployment is over. For instance, Danny Holmes brought home pictures, as many soldiers did, which depicted graphic scenes from war. He asks his wife, Shawnee, if she judges him for this. She asks, in return, how many people he killed. He replies he killed quite a few:
“‘Did it bother you?’ she asked.
“‘No,’ he said.
“‘Not ever?’ she asked.
“‘No,’ he said (227).
While this statement might have held true for Holmes while enlisted, the same can’t be said once he’s stateside, as illustrated by his memory of having to kill a man holding a young girl, and having killed the girl as well. None of his fellow soldiers remember such an incident, and some fellow soldiers insist it couldn’t have happened. But Holmes is haunted by it and sees the little girl in hallucinations and dreams on multiple occasions.
Jim George, one of the Vietnam vets at the Veteran’s Home in California, says, “The worst thing about being in it is the killing […] The worst for me was that I got to like it. I got pretty good at it. I hated myself for a long time for getting that good, liking it that much” (218).
Nic DeNinno is in his treatment program, talking in therapy sessions with other soldiers about the horrors of war. He describes how Iraqi police would bring dead bodies into the station, and the horrible state the bodies would be in: “And now I can’t get those images out of my mind. At the time, though, it was: Yeah, this is so cool. This is so cool. I mean, what were we thinking?” (61).
In the Prologue, Adam Schumann struggles with what it means to be a good soldier. Finkle writes of Schumann:
[N]o one regarded him as anything but the great soldier he’d always been, the one who never complained, who hoisted bleeding soldiers onto his back, who’d suddenly begun insisting on being in the right front seat of the lead Humvee on every mission, not because he wanted to be dead but because that’s what selfless leaders would do (5).
His buddy, Aieti, is described by his company sergeant, Jay Howell:
‘There are mental issues, and there are bullshit mental issues. You’ve got to look at the person. Everybody has a breaking point […] You cannot overlook the fact that the guy should have got a Bronze Star or a Silver Star. There is no coward in this guy. The guy’s never failed at anything’ (40-41).
Aieti has TBI and PTSD, among other issues, after having rescued two men. He still wants to rejoin his unit, however. He knew how to be a good soldier. He didn’t know how to stop being a good soldier even after he came home.
Patti Walker, who cares for wounded warriors, has a husband who suffers severe wounds in the war himself:
He doesn’t want to retire. He has been in the army for twenty-three years, the only thing he’s ever done. But it has become clear to him that the army doesn’t have a lot of use for him anymore, so he will get out with one final hope, that he will receive some award at his retirement ceremony, some acknowledgment of what he has sacrificed (136).
To have been a good soldier, particularly in the infantry, may make a soldier completely out of sync with the world he comes home to. The skills of combat rarely cross over into the job market. The ability to shut off one’s normal, moral compass, in order to be a good soldier, without any real training on how to reinstall said compass, leaves traumatized soldiers haunted by past wartime acts and too often leads to serious if not fatal complications once they return to a civilian existence.
Guilt as a Destructive Force
One of the major hurdles to healing traumatized soldiers is guilt. This guilt is perhaps best exemplified throughout Aieti, who is haunted by his guilt in the form of his nightmares of Harrelson asking why Aieti didn’t save him. Aieti cannot sleep well, has violent outbursts when he wakes from nightmares, and sometimes even sees Harrelson when he’s awake.
It can be hard to get better if one doesn’t believe they deserve to get better, or if the guilt is so deep they are too ashamed to share the reasons why they feel it. For example, Nic DeNinno can’t shake the image of the things he did and the way he behaved in the war:
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’ (51).
Later, in therapy with his wife, Nic says he’s afraid to tell Sascha about the war, about his dreams and nightmares. The results of this guilt are clear to see in DeNinno’s case. He has been through two years in WTB, two treatment programs, and has attempted suicide twice. He has a reliance on medication and wants help getting off of the pills supplied by the VA. Guilt has placed such a burden on him that he hasn’t been able to live a full life since returning home.
Adam Schumann also drags around a load of baggage from the war that keeps him weighed down. One day, Saskia finds him in the basement with a shotgun under his chin: “He says something now, something about wishing he had died in Iraq. More things come out. About guilt. About being a bad husband, a bad father, a disappointment; about being twenty-nine and feeling ninety; about being a disgrace” (104).
Guilt is as common a symptom for wounded soldiers as TBI, PTSD, and physical injuries. During one of the meetings under General Chiarelli, when reports are given on the individual suicides for the month, the truth behind so many of the self-inflicted deaths of these veterans is succinctly put: “[M]ost are okay and others are not, and of all the answers offered this day, the simplest one, given by another general explaining another suicide, seems the truest. ‘His pressing guilt. That’s the only way I can put it’” (105).
Sometimes veterans are so plagued by guilt that they even feel guilty for things others regard as heroic. In Aieti’s case, he ends up writing Edwards, one of the two men he rescued from the Humvee. Edwards sustained serious injuries as a result of the blast, but he did not blame or hate Aieti for that. Aieti was sure he did.
It’s much the same for Schumann, who still tastes Emory’s blood from carrying him on his back down three flights of stairs. He feels guilty for Emory getting shot, for nearly dropping him at the bottom of the stairs, and for saving him when he ends up living alone and severely injured. But Emory helps relieve a bit of the guilt by telling him he’s thankful for his second chance at life. When Schumann finally makes a real breakthrough during his program in California, it’s because, in part, through opening up about how his guilt haunts him:
He will tell him everything. His guilt over Doster. His guilt over Emory. His guilt over Jaxson. His guilt over Zoe. His guilt over Saskia. His guilt over the way he grew up. His guilt over all of it, all the way back to the beginning. That’s his decision, to finally stop dying… (222).
Guilt plagues not only the soldiers in the book but their loved ones as well. Saskia ends up on medication, in therapy, and in a cycle of outbursts of anger then guilty apologies. Shawnee feels guilt for going out the night her veteran husband took his life. Some feel guilty for staying with their then abusive veteran husbands for so long.
War takes such a toll on many soldier’s psyches that they often find unhealthy or even dangerous ways to cover the guilt and cope with the pain, including substance abuse, risky behaviors, and suicide.
The Loss of Camaraderie as Postwar Pain
When in war, the soldiers have such a tight bond that it gives them a strength and a comfort that few outside their circle can comprehend. Once back home, that circle of friendship is largely gone. They are alone, even when with family, because no one else understands what happened in Iraq. For Schumann, this loss begins even before he gets home. Before getting into a program, he thinks:
It is such a lonely life, this life afterward. During the war, it wasn’t that way, even in the loneliest moments, when somewhere in the big night sky was a mortar that was on its way down and there was nothing to do but wait for it. Over time, the war came to mean less and less until it meant nothing at all, and meanwhile the other soldiers meant more and more until they came to mean everything (86).
Military brass also recognizes this: “In Peter Chiarelli’s suicide meetings, they talk often about the importance of camaraderie, and how many times has [Schumann] wished for that very thing?” (87). When Schumann goes to see Patti Walker about two job possibilities—one in Iraq, as a contractor, and the other abroad a ship for three months at a time, working in a security detail—the concept of missing being deployed gets discussed:
“‘I miss it,’ Adam says. ‘Holding a gun, and being with a group of guys. It probably sounds homosexual, but—’
‘You know what? Not really.’
‘I miss that—’
‘Camaraderie.’
‘Yes. Being a team, and working together.’
‘My husband has told me that more than once,’ Patti says’” (139).
The old soldiers at the Veteran’s Home in California have a form of camaraderie. Every day, they sit together, sometimes telling their stories, but mainly being together and understanding each other’s experiences, even if they mostly sit, drink beer, and smoke. The camaraderie of the treatment group is part of the healing process itself. To share with others who understand and build new bonds with other veterans seems to fill in some of that empty space that’s been missing since the veteran has returned home.
When Tausolo reaches out to the soldier he saved, looking, perhaps, for forgiveness, or when Schumann reconnects with Emory, and later Golembe, it doesn’t exactly reestablish a sense of camaraderie but it does seems to patch a hole in him. It’s something that many soldiers desperately crave, and are afraid to reach out for because their relationships are no longer regimented and regular. To reconnect sometimes seems forced and awkward; nonetheless, it does seem help.
