National Guard Cadet Jason Moody has been in stressful situations before. During two tours of duty in Iraq, he escorted convoys along highways littered with roadside bombs.
“There was probably a dozen times where it was either my vehicle or the vehicle next to me that got blown up by something, or that we had to call in casualty medevac requests. Iraqi people that I grew to really care about while I was there, we had to put them in body bags by the end of the deployment.”
The 28-year-old Henniker native returned home to attend the University of New Hampshire. But coming back, he realized he had no idea what he was getting into. The military encourages people to be in control of situations. A week before school began, he went on what he calls a “leader’s recon” mission. He went to every one of his classrooms and sat at a desk, to know what it would feel like.
“I remember the first semester, I was coming in in slacks, and coming in in button-down shirts. And college students would come in in flip-flops and sweatpants and UNH sweatshirts, and I thought, well, sometimes half of ‘em just rolled out of bed… Now I think I’m just as guilty of wearing sweatpants.”
But Moody says the challenges went beyond figuring out what to wear. He was surprised by student’s disrespect for teachers, something that wasn’t tolerated in the military. He was used to having missions, and being responsible for fellow soldiers. Without anyone depending on him, he began to wonder why he was working so hard.
“Most of your peers in class, you sit there in a lecture hall, it has maybe two or three hundred students, and when you get up, nobody really cares who you sat next to, who you sat behind… coming from a military experience, you always have what we call a battle buddy next to you.”
Moody wanted help. At an academic advising center, fellow students taught him how to take notes and study. He got involved in student government, and became a residential advisor. After three years, he thinks he’s got it down. But figuring out where to go for counseling or disability services can still be confusing. Lonn Sattler coordinates veterans’ services at the University of New Hampshire.
“Everybody is ready to help ‘em. The biggest hurdle is getting veterans who are not familiar with campus life, the campus way of life, first-generation students, getting them to know where to look, who to call. Once we can get our hands on ‘em, we got ‘em in.”
Sattler’s part of a new task force at UNH looking to organize all those services, and to create a website where veterans can find them. The task force also hopes to create a drop-in center, where student veterans can meet to discuss problems or get help with paperwork. Students at Plymouth State University run a similar center. Sattler says right now for example, veterans have a lot of questions about the new G.I. bill that goes into effect next August.
“It’s huge for New Hampshire, because New Hampshire’s one of the states that does not give tuition breaks to veterans, and the old GI bill paid you a stipend. The new GI bill pays your tuition and pays you a stipend.”
Because of those expanded benefits, Sattler says schools around the country are preparing for a boost in enrollment for post-9/11 combat veterans.
1:05-1:26 “I can only guess, but a 20 percent increase over a couple years wouldn’t surprise me. It goes retroactive to 2001, so there’ll be a lot of veterans who couldn’t quite accomplish school on just the GI bill, now the GI bill even pays tuition, so we’ll get all the new ones coming out, plus some of the old ones who are now going to come back because now they can afford it.”
And those veterans who can afford to attend only community colleges may switch to four-year schools. Another goal of the UNH veterans’ task force is to learn to better recognize the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The Department of Defense estimates that up to 30 percent of deployed soldiers experience such symptoms. One is 25-year-old Angelique Carter, from Tamworth. She’s a junior at UNH, studying microbiology. After enlisting in the Navy just before 9/11, she was attached to the U-S-N-S Comfort, where she attended to enemy prisoners of war. She was diagnosed with PTSD shortly after returning home in 2004.
“I’ve woken up my husband a couple of times, waking up screaming, stuff like that, because I see visions of patients that I had had on the ship.”
She says the military won’t take her back because she was diagnosed with chronic migraines. So she hopes to work in a hospital after graduation. U-S Marine Corporal Aaron Keller also faces constant reminders of his time in Iraq. The 28-year-old Concord native was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury after his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb in Al-Anbar province in 2005.
“That one explosion is like getting hit a thousand times by a lineman… What it does is, it jiggles your brain in your head, and it causes the brain to hit the inners ides of your skull, and it causes swelling, and after that, scar tissue, which affects the brain.”
He says it’s impaired his short-term memory, so as a student at UNH Manchester, he takes careful notes and uses flash cards. He feels constantly on guard, and even sits in the back row of classes because he can’t deal with anyone behind him. He sees a counselor regularly is says he’s taking it just one day at a time.
“I feel lucky that I have an opportunity to go back to school because I’ve had a lot of buddies that had perished in Iraq. Just thinking about those guys, living my life for them.”
Another Marine Corps reservist, Daniel Keegan, is 23. He’s from Wakefield, Massachusetts, and he plans to graduate from UNH in December with a degree in political science. For Keegan, the transition to college life has been a welcome one.
“When I would sit in Iraq and think about going back to school, like, ‘oh, I’ll never complain about getting up for an early 9 a.m. class ever again’... You can transition back to the college kid lifestyle pretty quick. It’s definitely an easy way of life… I don’t really have to answer to anybody… I get up when I want, I go to bed when I want, you know… I’m pretty much in charge of myself. There’s a huge difference.”
He acknowledges a lot of veterans find the loss of structure overwhelming. And while he’s adjusted to crowds and loud noises, the echoes of war are never completely gone.
“It’s something that I think fades away over time, but it never completely fades away. It’s still going to be a defining part of you.”
On his left wrist, Keegan wears a silver bracelet bearing the names of a platoon commander and a fellow Marine, killed by sniper attack in Fallujah in August 2006. Underneath it reads, “Through the gates of hell for a wounded Marine.”
“You know, it almost ruins your day when you, when I look down at it. But at the same time it’s a good way of reminding myself not only what I have, but what other people have given me…. Makes you grateful for where you are, and makes me not forget.”
For NHPR News, I’m Avishay Artsy.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo