The Bennington Banner is one of the local dailies that is part of my routine news regimen. I often start my day with the Times, WSJ, Reuters, and of course all the blogs (this being the first I check) for global news and then make my way down to local sometime midday. Today a compelling interview with a local soldier returning home brought those communities together.
SUNDERLAND — For many, coming home after a year abroad can be overwhelming and even disorienting.
But for Willis S. Conklin Jr. of Sunderland, disorienting doesn't even begin to describe his return to the quiet community he calls home after serving over a year with the U.S. Army in Baghdad.
It's a worthwhile read, my commentary below.
I don't know Willis Conklin, but growing up in the same area and attending the same school, his story seems all the more tangible. He recently returned home from a one year tour of duty and spoke about the adjustments and accommodations he has had to make transitioning from warzone to quietzone.
Conklin, a 2001 graduate of Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, is currently an Army Private First Class with the 66th Artillery Brigade attached to the 4th Infantry Division in Ft. Hood, Texas. He enlisted in January of 2005 and, after months of basic and specialized training at Ft. Sill, Okla. and Ft. Hood, he was deployed to Baghdad in November 2005. He served in a battalion of over 1,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Macedonian special forces soldiers.
"It's an adjustment to be back home, for sure," Conklin said in an interview at his home on Wednesday. "They always say that you can come home again, but home isn't always waiting for you when you come back. The magnitude of change at home is crazy. When you're over there, it feels like the world has stopped. Then you come back home, and so much is different."
As a case in point, Conklin described his experience conversing with two of his best friends the day after he returned to Vermont. "It was good, but ... I felt as if I'd aged beyond them, that I'd had experiences that made me feel older."
Relating to others regardless of their age has also proven challenging. "It's difficult to make people understand your experience ... unless you were there, there's no way you can know," he said.
I've met and spoken with a few local veterans (all of them younger than me) who have returned from a tour (or tours) in Iraq. Most are eager to share stories, sometimes recreating scenes from a mission in a fashion so animated you might forgive them for missing the 'action'. But when the questing of returning for another tour comes up, the mood becomes sober and the answer, often with little deliberation, reveals much more frustration and resignation than the media might otherwise imply. While some, like Conklin, aren't afforded the luxury of choice, you get the sense that many of these returning soldiers don't express the same optimism that others in the media might wish to portray.
While Conklin says that some of the comparisons of the situation in Iraq to the Vietnam war are well-founded, he sees Iraq as having the potential to last far longer.
"Vietnam was a politically-based war, and the sectarian violence in Iraq is religion-based and goes back thousands of years," he said. "The way I see it, this could all go on for thousands of years beyond now. Our country was founded on the premise of the separation of church and state, and (the Iraqi) society puts so much emphasis on religion that politics (without religion) is a joke." This is one reason that Conklin sees cooperation for the U.S. and Iraq as being problematic.
As for U.S. involvement in the conflict, Conklin's prognosis was grim.
"Depending on who's elected in '08 ... I could see us being there for a decade or more."
He was undecided on how long the U.S. should stay the course in what increasingly looks to be an unwinnable war.
Moral dilemma
"I feel karmically that we should solve some of the problems we created there ... on the other hand, you'd have to do a number of things that are impossible to do without crippling our country financially and morally."
When first asked about his opinion on the war, Conklin laughed and said, "No comment." However, as the conversation progressed and he delved more deeply into the issues raised by his time in Baghdad, Conklin's tone changed.
"What it really boils down to is that the sooner we get out of there, the less money and human life will be wasted," he said. He added that his battalion alone had lost 15 to 20 men in the year he served with them.
I won't even pretend to comprehend the emotions and thoughts with which this person wrestles everyday. But I have to wonder what goes through a person's mind when they listen to their President telling the nation that the year ahead will "require difficult choices and additional sacrifices". Somehow I think those words have a meaning unique to soldiers like Willis Conklin that the man speaking them will never, ever understand.