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Georgia: Life after the war zone

By: Lauren Gregory
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George Tomlinson

When he returned from Afghanistan in 2006, Sgt. 1st Class George Tomlinson could see right away that the life he planned to pick back up had somehow escaped him in his absence.

After 15 months of quick-and-dirty mess hall meals, he found himself becoming impatient with what felt like agonizingly slow service at restaurants he once loved. Other drivers on the road suddenly seemed more inept than ever. And his wife’s newfound capability to handle household matters on her own — not to mention her decision to quit smoking — threw off his sense of normalcy completely.

But the Tennessee National Guardsman, who lives in Chickamauga, Ga., really began to look at his post-deployment life differently when he realized that his young daughter had become uneasy about the cold, steely-eyed expression he carried home without realizing it.

“She said, ‘Hey, you act real mean now. You look at people different,’ ” Sgt. 1st Class Tomlinson recalled.

Once back home, he found himself trying to interact with others in the same harsh, authoritative tone he had used with Afghanis.

So the second time around, when Sgt. 1st Class Tomlinson returned home after three months of training followed by a nine-month deployment to Iraq with the Guard’s 1/181st Field Artillery Battalion, he took a new approach to re-integration into civilian life.

“I learned from my mistakes the first time,” he said. “You come back home thinking you want to get everything back to normal, but normal’s gone.”

culture shock

Such problems are common among troops returning from a war zone, according to Connie Robinson, a licensed clinical social worker in North Chattanooga who specializes in couples counseling for both civilian and military families.

Whether a veteran develops Post-traumatic Stress Disorder — which experts say cannot even be diagnosed until at least a month after his or her return — there always is going to be some sense of post-war culture shock creating a divide among family members, Ms. Robinson said.

“When (a service member) comes back, he has been exposed to things that his family can’t ever, ever understand. Even if he wasn’t traumatized by war, (it could be) in terms of the extreme poverty and all of the destruction he has witnessed,” she said. “It’s really hard for people coming back from trauma to just seamlessly integrate back into American life, because everything looks different to them.”

And everything looks just as different to those who have been waiting at home, said Gail Wright of Soddy-Daisy, whose husband, Staff Sgt. Paul Wright, deployed to Iraq with Sgt. 1st Class Tomlinson.

“It was hard to get used to him not being here,” Mrs. Wright said. “It’s like I had to change my lifestyle. And then when he came back, you had to readjust to that and start doing things that you wouldn’t have to do while they were gone, like laundry and fixing them dinner after work.”

The differences feel especially jarring for nonactive military personnel such as Sgt. 1st Class Tomlinson and Staff Sgt. Wright who, unlike their active duty brethren, do not come back to live on a militarized base. Instead, they were forced to jump straight back into civilian culture following their return over the Memorial Day weekend.

Though both men returned almost immediately to their full-time jobs at the Chattanooga Armory — Sgt. 1st Class Tomlinson as a master gunner and Staff Sgt. Wright as a supply coordinator — they said they are still trying to come to terms with the stark contrast between that work and their daily lives in the war zone.

“You’ve got to take it slow and easy,” Sgt. 1st Class Tomlinson concluded, eliciting a nod from Staff Sgt. Wright.

Staff Sgt. Wright had spent his deployment ordering and managing supplies for his unit, which staffed Camp Bucca, a detention facility in southern Iraq.

the military’s new outlook

Staff Sgt. Wright said he has been fighting a combination of boredom and anger since his return and feels useless because he can no longer fulfill what had been his purpose since last summer: to back up his brothers and sisters in combat.

But he takes consolation in the fact that, unlike his return from deployment to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s, the U.S. military seems to be sensitive to his situation.

“They’re more receptive (to readjustment issues),” Staff Sgt. Wright said. “They met our needs a little more ... I guess maybe someone woke up and realized how it can affect you.”

In 2004, the U.S. Marine Corps first developed Marine OneSource, a counseling, information and referral service for Marines. Last fall, the Department of Defense decided to adapt that program into a resource for all branches of the military, according to Military OneSource consultant Stan Sharpe.

The Defense Department hired Mr. Sharpe as a OneSource consultant for Tennessee residents in November 2007, when the program began a 15-state trial. Last month, the OneSource program was expanded to include service representatives in all 50 states to provide informational briefings for returning service members, he said.

The briefings are designed to expose service members to the readjustment resources available to them, including financial and career counseling, grief and crisis counseling and advice on dealing with everything from stress to planning for a child’s college education.

OneSource also will provide assistance with moves and other life changes, going so far as to research which child care, senior care and even pet care facilities are the most recommended in any given community.

“This wasn’t available for a long, long time,” said Mr. Sharpe, a retired National Guard soldier who, as a Vietnam veteran, recognizes the need for counseling and support as much as Sgt. 1st Class Thompson and Staff Sgt. Wright.

“The Department of Defense finally realized that there was something lacking as far as supporting the service person and their family,” Mr. Sharpe said.

The issue has become especially pressing as the Iraq War and the Global War on Terror wear on, necessitating continued deployments of both active and reserve personnel.

renewed focus on part-timers

Though the defense, veterans affairs and labor departments have collaborated for the past decade to offer workshops and briefings for returning troops, senior Pentagon official Jane Burke told federal legislators in May that the readjustment programming was not designed to deal with the needs of National Guard and reserve forces until recently.

A new Web site, www.turbotap.org, was launched in 2007 to provide easier access to readjustment information across the board, Ms. Burke said in a report from the American Forces Press Service.

Ms. Burke, the Pentagon’s principal director for military community and family policy, announced May 16 that financial and transition assistance programs were merged to further benefit veterans, according to the report.

“Returning to private life after serving in the military is a very complex undertaking,” she said. “To assist them in doing so, we must empower our service members with the tools and information they need to develop individual solutions to the challenges they may face as they return to civilian life.”

Part of the new initiative includes classes on such specific topics as how to greet wives and children during homecoming celebrations, Staff Sgt. Wright said. That’s a useful tool for those who worked hard to disconnect themselves emotionally while abroad in order to avoid missing their loved ones, he said.

That kind of instruction serves an important purpose, Ms. Robinson said. When couples reunite, she said, “they have to completely renegotiate ... The person who’s been away has to start becoming emotionally attuned to their spouse again in a way that they weren’t (while deployed).”

Staff Sgt. Wright said he appreciated that the military actually surveyed his emotional state upon his return and seemed to care about offering help.

Sgt. 1st Class Tomlinson said he, too, liked the idea, but was left wondering if the gestures had more to do with avoiding liability for future problems than actual concern. He said the classes he attended prior to his return home did little to help him deal with missing a year of his now-13-year-old daughter’s life.

“All those classes are, is a cop-out,” he said. “They fill you up with so much information, and you don’t know what to do with it.”

And yet Sgt. 1st Class Tomlinson said he would never trade any of his experiences, nor would he ever sour toward the military, which he said has provided him with a very fulfilling career.

“We like what we do,” he said matter-of-factly. “To work for your country is the greatest thing anybody can accomplish.”

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