AT THE END OF A WAR STORY
By
Beth Martin

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing - Master of Arts
2017

ABSTRACT
AT THE END OF A WAR STORY
By
Beth Martin
War stories play a large part in the American cultural consciousness. Each war has its
own narrative, of triumph or tragedy, that casts shadow over any individual person’s story. The
stories that fit the overarching narrative are acknowledged or rewarded. Those that fail to
conform are left out. The War on Terror has resulted in a narrative of tragedy: isolation, PostTraumatic Stress Disorder, and damage. Cultural pursuit of “war stories” that conform to this
mold has created distance between military and civilian spheres.
Here, I outline the cultural conceit of a “war story” and illustrate its failures in addressing
the narrative needs of military and military adjacent populations. I then describe the
methodology and practice of ongoing oral history project that blends the concerns of cultural
rhetorics, narrative theory, and oral history. And finally, I examine the kinds of storying that
have resulted in the course of this project and the work these stories do in a communal
framework. In doing so, I seek to create a framework for future scholars that seeks not just “war
stories” but a comprehensive narrative that acknowledges nuance beyond trauma/triumph.

Copyright by
BETH MARTIN
2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Exigency ·······································································································1
Chapter One
The Failures of War Stories ·················································································2
Telling the Wrong Story············································································2
Including Rhetoric ··················································································5
Researcher Positionality ············································································8
Chapter Two
Dealing in War Stories ·················································································· 10
Defining War Stories ··········································································· 10
Historical ················································································ 11
Contemporary ··········································································· 14
Current Frameworks ············································································ 17
Oral History ············································································· 18
Rhetoric/Composition ································································· 20
Chapter Three
Working Through War Stories ········································································· 22
Methodology ····················································································· 22
Narrative & Trauma ··································································· 24
Family & Relationality ································································ 26
Methods ··························································································· 27
Histories ················································································· 28
Transcripts··············································································· 29
Case Study························································································ 30
Contexts ················································································· 31
Connections ············································································· 33
Conclusions ············································································· 36
Chapter Four
At the End of a War Story··············································································· 38
Reaching a Beginning ·········································································· 38
And Reaching an Ending ······································································· 40
APPENDIX ······························································································· 41
WORKS CITED ·························································································· 72

iv

Exigency
—nightmare will consist of the rap of white-gloved knuckles against the front door. Your
nightmare is everyone’s nightmare. Use charms to keep it at bay with: yellow ribbons and blue
stars and red candles in front windows and—
—you will be wearing his battered Tarheels tee on the Tuesday you overhear a woman
talking about how she saw you in the Commissary, buried up to your elbows in sour green apples
(his favorite fruit) and crying, and—
—forgive her, forgive them all, because everyone’s living the same nightmare, and—
—they’ve been in blackout for three days now while they contact the families of the dead
and you’re praying that it’s not him, that it is anyone but him, and the guilt of such prayer is
enough to gnaw but not enough to stop and—
—your fingers slip into the left front pocket of your jeans so you can pull out your own
nightmare-banishing charm: a cat the size of your thumbnail, one front paw raised up, painted
white and wearing a curlicue smile. You were told that a beckoning cat saved an emperor. Surely
this cat’s mate, tucked into his rucksack half a world away, can save him. You breathe deeply
and the phone rings and it’s his voice on the end of the line. “I love you, I love you, I love you,”
you sob and—
—live in fear that one night, maybe tonight, the white cat will lower its paw and walk
away into the twilight and on the porch there will be two men in dress uniform, and your—

1

Chapter One
The Failures of War Stories
When people ask what it’s like, being a military brat, I think of how it feels to always be
watching my dad’s back disappearing into the floodlit night toward a school bus painted black
like a hearse. I think of the found family that flies halfway across the country to watch me
graduate. I think of potholes, and slamming refrigerator doors, and pairs of boots lined up against
the wall of a gym to tally up the dead. I think of small towns where the most interesting things
were Hail & Farewells and Change of Commands. I think of praying that when the line went
dead it was someone else’s father, anyone else’s father, because I’d do anything to deal in guilt
instead of grief. I think of homecomings. I think of all the memories I don’t have.
And mostly, I think of how impossible it is to tell the story people want to hear.
Telling the Wrong Story
Eight people have asked me if my dad ever killed anyone “over there.” My fingers flex,
curl in, and my knuckles ache with a punch I haven’t thrown. People only ever ask questions like
this when they want a specific kind of story. (Running across a dusty battlefield to save a
downed comrade, a crying baby, a dying country.) Option A: they want something heroic.
Option B: they want something ugly. I’ll never be able to decide which story is worse.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t know that story and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell it, which is
what I say through a smile that’s really just baring my teeth. Feeling spiteful, I add that only
civilians ask this question. In doing so, I make “civilian” the foulest word in my vocabulary. I
don’t regret it.
This is the failure of a war story, embodied.

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Suppose one draws back from these eight, who are easily vilified and easily dismissed, to
look at the broader culture. Flip through a newspaper, see: the failures of the Veteran’s
Administration (VA) to properly care for an ever-growing population of wounded. Go to a
theater, see: American Sniper and Hurt Locker. Read an award-winning book, see: here are the
broken, the lost, the dying of America’s wars. There’s a coherent narrative being constructed
about the series of wars and engagements known colloquially as the “War on Terror”. It’s one of
consumable grief that encourages questions like, “Did you ever kill anyone?”
America has been at war since 2001. But this is not 1943. We are not in a state of total
war with propaganda on street corners, restrictions on paper and coffee, and thousands of citizens
in detainment camps. Nor is it 1965. We are not in a nationally unpopular war with protests in
universities, drafts to be accepted or dodged, and hundreds of politicians deciding the best way to
fight a war from their D.C. offices. It’s 2017, and the War on Terror continues to wage while the
rest of the country has long since moved on.
As of 2009, over 1.9 million troops had been deployed into combat (Returning Home
from Iraq and Afghanistan, 17). This number has only increased in the intervening eight years.
And no one comes back from the war whole. There’s post-traumatic stress disorder. There’s lost
limbs and lost friends. There’s traumatic brain injury. There’s lost hearing and lost memories.
There’s survivor’s guilt. There’s lost, lost, lost.
Journalist David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, outlines the dilemma as such in
his book Thank You for Your Service: “Home now, most [soldiers] describe themselves as
physically and mentally healthy. They move forward. Their war recedes…. But then there are
others, for whom the war endures.” (30)

3

And indeed, when they come back, they deal with all the things they’ve lost. Sometimes
they stay in the military, where at least everyone understands, and they try all the current
techniques meant to compensate for what’s been lost: frequent psychological evaluations,
support groups, motivational posters. All with debatable results as suicide and other destructive
behaviors remain at a high among service members and veterans. Sometimes they leave the
military and go back to a ‘normal’ that forgot there was a war.
Regardless of where the service member ends up one of the greatest struggles they face is
how to put words to what they lived. If they should put words to what they lived. If they can put
words to what they lived. Each person works to create a framework that they weave their stories
onto. They try—and fail, and succeed—to translate their experiences into something that can be
understood by their community, their family, and ultimately themselves. A successful framework
has room for new stories and new understandings. It can last decades and withstand the way grief
is always rediscovered.
Storytelling in this mode must be understood to be always-already a communal act, one
that “reaffirms [the storyteller and audience’s] belonging as a community” (Livo & Reitz, 14).
It’s tempting, in modern Western understandings of isolated trauma and individual triumph, to
situate this project entirely onto the singular (storyteller) rather than on the communal
(storytellers). Yet in order to push back against the failure of war stories—the failure to create as
an individual a narrative framework—one must engage with story as community, and therefore
with (being at the end of) war stories as communal.
There remains extreme exigency for this kind of reimagining (war) stories and the
purpose they may serve for traumatized populations. I have born witness to and participated in
the creation of this process time and again. From that, I feel I can claim that military and military

4

adjacent populations who succeed in creating a narrative framework also tend to succeed in
reintegrating with ‘normal’ and/or ‘civilian’ life. Furthermore, I feel I can claim that the
complexities and paradoxes of these stories must be acknowledged not only by individuals but
by broader institutions, including those academic institutions that seek to work with this
population, in order to conduct ethical research.
The purpose then of this project is three-fold. First, to outline the cultural conceit of a
“war story” and illustrate its failures in addressing the narrative needs of military and military
adjacent populations. Second, to describe the methodology and practice of ongoing oral history
project that blends the concerns of cultural rhetorics, narrative theory, and oral history. And
third, to examine the kinds of storying that have resulted in the course of this project and the
work these stories do in a communal framework.
Including Rhetoric
Academic work with military and military adjacent populations, currently referred to as
veterans’ studies, has thus far been restricted primarily to already established points of contact.
Medical and psychological studies dominate the field. Journalism (and journalistic long form
texts) make up another significant portion. These are followed, in vague order, by creative nonfiction, oral history, and classroom composition. Myriad other disciplines contribute on occasion
but in such small numbers it would be difficult to call them a definitive approach within
veterans’ studies. While all disciplines that make up veterans’ studies serve a valuable purpose,
areas of silence remain. Rhetoric(s) stands poised to make visible those silences.
First, clarification of terminology. The name “veterans’ studies” carries with it a specific
implication of the population: one of military service members who have retired, received a
discharge, etc. This reflects a larger truth within the field, wherein established points of contact

5

mean that most research does have to do (near) exclusively with that population. However, it is
used in this work as a disciplinary catchall for any work that deals with military or military
adjacent populations. This includes current and former service members of all military branches,
their immediate families, and civilians who are employed by or otherwise work closely with any
of the military branches or military affiliated organization. It’s important here to recognize that if
one considers soldiers the center of this field, then the further a position is from soldier the more
nebulous a connection it might be, so that someone who’s grandfather served in Korea may or
may not be included into “military adjacent” based on a number of variable contextual factors.
Second, a clarification of culture. The modern American military is one that in some
ways would be wholly unrecognizable to the American military circa Vietnam or even Desert
Storm. The modern American military is a standing volunteer force, many of whom choose the
military as a career and many more of whom serve for two to five years, that makes up an
estimated 1% (Sapolsky) of the total US population. Most active duty personnel (and their
immediate families) live and work on or near military bases/posts. Over half of them are married
and nearly half have at least one child (Returning Home from Iraq and Afghanistan, 21). Much
social activity focuses around military sponsored events and groups (Hail and Farewells, Change
of Commands, Wives Clubs, etc.). All these factors lend to a close-knit community that relies
primarily on the in-group for support and views the out-group with, if not suspicion, then at least
a certain amount of wariness. To ignore this, or to focus on the individual, does criminal
disservice and fundamentally misunderstands the function of the military. Researchers hoping to
work with this population outside of individualized contexts—treatment either medical or
psychological, or in a civilian context such as a classroom or program—must understand both
this sense of community and of accountability to the community.

6

It would be impossible to enumerate all the contributions various rhetorical practices and
ways of knowing might contribute to our understanding of veterans’ studies. With this in mind,
this project has chosen to focus on three rhetorics that best apply to both the practical research
and the intellectual and ethical questions of said project: oral history, cultural rhetorics, and
narrative theory. Each rhetoric is based primarily upon keystone texts that are further examined
in Chapter Two and put into practice in Chapter Three. These rhetorics also blend and overlap,
informing one another and the research, while creating a kind of meta-story to this work. In brief,
the reasons for choosing these three rhetorics are as follows.
Oral history represents both the (starting point of a) methodology and the methods
employed by the practical research. The initial project was a collection of nine oral histories as
told by current and former military service members and their spouses. Oral history provided not
only the means of research, but also provided frameworks for interpreting said research. While
oral history work is often perceived as archival and therefore elitist (Ritchie, 156) it can also
serve as a means of preserving and understanding community (Ritchie, 223) through
collaboration and restorying.
Culture rhetorics serves as an interpretive and intellectual framework. Powell et al in Our
Story Begins Here articulate cultural rhetorics as a methodology and practice based on four
points—decolonial, story, constellations, and relationality—that serve to move from a singular
mainstream rhetoric with “alternatives” to a way of meaning making that takes in “as many
stories as possible…[with] a solid understanding of the relationship between those stories.”
Cultural rhetorics thus provides academic language for understanding and contextualizing what
the oral histories had elicited.

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Finally, narrative theory broadly contextualizes storytelling and its attendant concerns.
(E.g., the use of storyteller for individual and community, the ways and means of storytelling,
and the ways in which story can be articulated as a dynamic subject.) By calling attention to the
performative reality and communal nature of storytelling (Livo & Rietz, 204), narrative theory
makes explicit the connecting and shifting understanding of teller and listener when it comes to
storying. It also provides a more explicit link between oral history and cultural rhetorics than
might otherwise be articulated.
Researcher Positionality
I am a military brat. More specifically an Army brat. The term refers to a child who
grows up within the military culture as a result of parents who actively serve in the military. It
usually does not apply to the children of reserve members, and almost never applies to children
born after a service member has been discharged or retired. Like most identities, it comes with its
own built in signifiers and assumptions.
See: military brats are (supposed to be) adaptable, self-sacrificing, disciplined. They
know how to dress for Purple Heart ceremonies and they automatically put their hand over their
heart for the national anthem. They prioritize the whole above the individual.
And: Army brats punch at least one bully in their lifetime as a rite of passage. They say
SNAFU and FUBAR before they know what that means. They do obstacle courses for Family
Fun Day. They hug the wrong person’s legs at least once as a child because everyone looks the
same in camo. They learn what not to say to civilian kids. They mock and prop up the Air Force
brats by turns. They protect their own.
I try to articulate all the things that make up this identity but it is one that, for me, is
twenty-four years in the making. It’s a shared identity, constantly renegotiated, that stands in a

8

liminal space. Because it’s true that I am not a soldier and I have never served in a combat zone.
Yet it’s also true I am not a civilian either and I never will be. The war found me across oceans
and continents and it’s made a home beneath my breastbone.
This makes me, like other military brats, an insider/outsider. I am in-group. The weight of
shared language, history, and geography ensures this, whether I join a service branch or remain
in the civilian world. I am out-group. There are places I’ve never seen and things I’ve never
experienced because I am not a soldier. Because I will never be a soldier. Because my dad’s eyes
are haunted the one time I mention joining the military, maybe, one day. Because there are some
boundaries of experience I cannot cross.
Due to my in-group status, I approached this project with intrinsic knowledge that would
be generally unavailable or difficult to access for the civilian researcher. I am familiar with
military vocabulary, social nuances, and the geographical spaces of military bases/posts.
Furthermore, I possessed relational connections with people who, by their own admission, would
be unavailable to civilian researchers. These are obvious benefits of my positionality.
My status also led to some results that, while positive in the context of this project, by
nature cannot be replicated. During the course of interviews, I was at times called upon to
recreate stories, an act only possible due to shared life experiences. Similarly, recommendations I
make later in the text—as to mutual vulnerability, a sense of accountability, community
building—will likely be difficult for civilian researchers to recreate.

9

Chapter Two
Dealing in War Stories
I’m singing a song I’ve already forgotten the words to. It goes like yellow ribbons on oak
trees—or were they maple trees, saplings really, lining a suburban street?—and coming home to
a bluesy guitar strain. It’s a song off one of my dad’s CDs. The ones he bought because repressed
nostalgia is about singing these songs while waiting for his father to come home.
My mom stands in the front hall crying. In her hand is her red cellphone, and she says:
“You remember Sergeant Wyles? Corey.” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. It’s good because
the words are hung in my throat with ribbons like nooses. “He and Cooper died. There was an
IED. They’re…they’re going to ship them both back.”
Sometimes they don’t ship the dog back. At least that’s what I’ve heard. So it’s a thing to
be grateful for, that they’re shipping the both back, that they won’t be alone in that plane. I can’t
think beyond that because it’s not real beyond that.
I make dinner. I write down the reminder for her to call the rear detachment officer about
the funeral. I count up the dead: a twenty-two-year old sergeant with a dusty grin, a bomb dog
who stole dinner rolls from the mess hall, and a boy who listened to songs on the radio about
coming home.
Defining War Stories
I know what a war story is, intrinsically, but I can never find the words that’ll explain it
to other people. (Civilian people.) When I try, it comes out like:
A war story is the man in my class who cracks his first genuine smile when I say,
“Marines, huh? They like that haircut you got now?” Because we’re the only ones in this room,
in this building, who’re speaking the same language. There’s relief in his laugh and later he asks

10

if he can write about his time in the service. I say yes, of course, no need to ask. So he says that
he’s just worried, because civilians don’t get it, they never do. (I am different. I have been
different from the moment I spoke his language.) “I get it,” I say, “You’ll find a way to make
them get it.” This might be a lie. We both know that. A war story is watching him for signs of
PTSD and cracking jokes about the Chair Force and wondering what might’ve happened if he
ended up in another class.
That is a war story, but it’s not a war story in the way that other people understand it. To
be a war story, a good one, there needs to be triumph or trauma or both. But those are shaky
terms, so they need defining.
In a war story triumph means the Hollywood glamour. It’s heroism through sacrifice, and
bravery, and honor stripped of its and greyness. In a war story trauma means the individual
(anti)hero. It’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and dead comrades, and questionable choices
made on dusty battlefields. In both, it is the “thankyouforyourservice” that bleeds together.
One might say that a war story happens at the intersection of triumph and trauma. Yet
intersections, as noted by Powell et al., “[trap] subjects who are literally held in place, skewered”
while obscuring the myriad, shifting relationships that make up storying. The image is a visceral
one—pursuit of a war story, of a definable point and meaning, pins the participant down. Makes
their boundaries legible while ignoring the human cost. This intersection is a fairly recent
invention, one that owes much to historical narratives of war and to the modern conceptions of
the War on Terror.
Historical
Discussing war stories, or at least contemporary American conceptions of such, requires
some historicizing. Wars carry with them an overarching narrative—of failure, of success, of

11

forgetting—that overshadows any single individual story. How wars are narrated and storied
effects the broader culture, and vice versa, leading to the necessity of context. When speaking of
the contemporary War on Terror, veterans’ studies, etc., there are two wars that provide the most
expedient lens by which to examine historical war stories. World War II and Vietnam are in
many ways the defining American wars of the 20th century in terms of continuing cultural
impact. Both wars had a definitive hand in shaping the field of veterans’ studies, in large part due
to the fact that they represented opposite ends of the triumph/trauma narrative.
Veterans’ studies, or at least the precursors of it, began in the wake of World War II.
Works such as Studs Terkel’s The Good War and Paul Fussell’s Wartime blended the academic
lines. The questions they had—about what two world wars in scarcely two decades could mean,
about what was owed to the dead and to the living, about what it meant to live through hell and
come home—couldn’t be answered by standard modes. Later, in the wake of the Vietnam War,
veterans’ studies gained another academic jolt. Around this time came the heavy focus upon
medical and psychological approaches in clear response to the shattered psyches and bodies of
those returning. While these wars shaped the field, they also shaped the American cultural idea
of what it meant to tell war stories.
Paul Fussell wrote in Wartime that the veterans of World War II struggled with the
“Norman Rockwell’ing” of their experiences. It was a process by which the country placed a
shiny, heroic patina over returning service members without allowing them the darkness they’d
faced. This conceit of the “good war” pushed a narrative of triumph that often conflicted with
soldiers’ lived experiences. Giving stories contrary to the narrative of a just war won rarely had
the desired impact. Despite this divergence coming to light over time, particularly as more
veterans shared their stories with oral historians and the like, the narrative had already been set.

12

WWII remains valorized in the cultural canon—the recent critical success of brutal but
triumphant war movie Hacksaw Ridge, about a heroic medic who earned the Medal of Honor
during WWII, attests to that much.
Tim O’Brien wrote in The Things They Carried that the veterans of Vietnam struggled
with the fact that no war story allows for “some small bit of rectitude [that] has been salvaged
from the larger waste.” This time around, the country would not allow for their soldiers to feel
anything but the grief and the madness. Focusing on trauma reinforced the distance between
returning soldiers and the civilian populace, even as veterans found themselves shuffled into a
critically underfunded Veterans’ Affairs office to deal with said trauma. Writing of the era
reflects the sense that any kind of “accomplishment” on an individual level—beyond sheer
survival—could not be acknowledged or placed onto the larger tapestry of the war. General
sentiment seems to have softened in the intervening years, but interestingly the frame of trauma
remains. Veterans of Vietnam are now all too often objects of pity.
Certain factors affected the narrative created around each of these wars. WWII was just.
Vietnam was not. WWII ended in a resounding victory for the US on all fronts. Vietnam did not.
But the wars shared similarities that often go unacknowledged. The draft was used in both wars.
Nonetheless, WWII was marked by “patriotic volunteerism”. Vietnam was marked by “draft
dodgers”. The narrative frame is so complete, so overwhelming, that it’s easy to forget that the
situations were vastly more complicated than the history books would suggest.
These historical war stories continue to shape our modern American ideals of war.
There’s a sense of hunger for the glory of a war to make the world better, and a sense of horror at
what war can do to both soldiers and civilians, and an understanding of what it means to see both
of those writ large on the cultural conscience.

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Contemporary
Gaining a broad contemporary understanding of American war stories is, in some ways,
less straightforward than historicizing. In large part this has to do with immediacy—the war is
still not over, though certain engagements are, and thus we are continually reinventing what
exactly the narrative of this war is. It also has to do with the sheer length of the war which led to
a shift in which mediums are used to codify it. Thus, the below is an attempt to contextualize the
modern American war story while acknowledging its’ gaps and unknowable.
The “War on Terror”—here defined as the engagements of Afghanistan and Iraq since
2001 and 2003, respectively, though acknowledging that other engagements have resulted and
fallen under the same umbrella—has been going on for nearly sixteen years. It’s considered an
ongoing engagement, despite troop “rollbacks” in 2014, and one that seems unlikely to end
anytime soon. The early days were marked by fervent national support verging on the jingoistic.
By the time the Surge began in 2007, it had slipped from the front page of the news to
somewhere around page five. And in 2017, many have forgotten that we are still engaged in an
active war.
In many ways, the war’s length makes it feel both inevitable and inescapable. One enemy
defeated only for another to take its place. No amount of money, weaponry, or boots on the
ground able to end a war with increasingly unclear goals. Narratives of patriotism and honor
have given way to narratives of isolation and damage. Thus the War on Terror has established
itself as a transitional war. Unlike WWII, forever pristine in its triumph; and unlike Vietnam,
forever damned in its trauma.
The transition is mirrored by the media surrounding the war’s narrative. News outlets
dominated the early portions: Presidential press releases and videos of cheering Iraqis as the

14

statue of Sadam Hussein toppled. As the war dragged, general public support for and interest
died out. In response, new outlets found new stories. Journalists who retained interest began to
write long form works (notably Stephen Junger’s War and David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers)
and thus the onus for representation shifted into the (non)fictional sphere.
In keeping with this cultural shift, I choose to make an explicit rhetorical move of
following that larger cultural shift. Given the chronological distance between the early days and
when I write, it would be impossible to discuss contemporary views of war stories without
acknowledging that the fictional stories have overpowered the factual ones. Discussions of the
fictional accounts can generally parsed into three kinds, outlined below.
First, the triumphant. American soldiers (explicitly identified as such) play the heroes in a
number of modern films. Some, such as the Transformers film series, position the soldiers as
combatants in a war in the Middle East without specifically stating their involvement in the War
on Terror. It’s worth noting that the Transformers series, like its ilk Battleship and Independence
Day: Resurgence, rely on battling an alien menace and other fantastical foes. Attention is
carefully drawn away from real life conflicts. Others, such as the Nicholas Sparks’ novels The
Lucky Ones and Dear John, situate the soldiers within the War on Terror. These narratives make
explicit ideas of patriotism, service to a higher ideal, and honor. Soldier protagonists may be
traumatized by their experiences, but upon their return home they are able to recover from that
trauma and embody the romantic lead with relative ease. They codify the appropriate triumph
narratives: palatable and complete with a happy ending for the audience.
Second, the traumatic. While trauma has made its way into theaters by way of movies
such as The Hurt Locker, it is most often reflected in literature. Beginning in roughly 2009, there
was a marked surge in war literature based on the War on Terror. Books such as Redeployment

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by Phil Klay and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, and The Yellow Birds by
Kevin Powers received broad critical acclaim. Redeployment won the National Book Award,
while both Billy Lynn and The Yellow Birds were finalists for the same. These books, and their
kin, were written primarily by military veterans and sold on “authenticity” that blurs lines
between fiction and nonfiction.
Most deal with individualism in the midst of war—with the isolation and damage that has
so come to define the War on Terror. Specifically, these works reinforce the idea of damaged
individualism, wherein the lone anti-hero struggles to come to terms with the war. In most cases,
they lack any kind of support system or else suffer within a broken system. Many end without
resolution. If anything is salvaged, it only serves to underscore that the individual must overcome
their trauma on their own. In effect, it advocates for bootstrap mental health, suggesting that the
chasm between the damaged individual and the rest of the world can only be overcome by some
innate strength of character. Notably, all the works listed above involve protagonists who fail to
overcome that chasm and thus are left to uncertain fates.
While the reality for many modern veterans, it’s also the only narrative rewarded and
pushed forward by the explicitly civilian world. Awards are given for trauma, money is given for
triumph, and recognition is given to those who best emulate the set model. Consistently holding
up these narratives as the “most authentic” leaves no room for alternate (healthier) stories.
Third, more nuanced portrayals. It can be difficult to find these, as all too often hidden
they fail to achieve mainstream commercial or critical success. Nonetheless, they usually do well
among military and military adjacent populations. Novels such as I’ll Meet You There by
Heather Demetrios and short story collections like You Know When the Men are Gone by
Siobhan Fallon break away from the duality of triumph/trauma. Their works emphasize

16

community and mutual vulnerability. They acknowledge the terrible along with the great. The
success of their work among military populations suggest very real spaces of lived experience
that has not yet been acknowledged or dealt with by the mainstream.
In many ways, the third category serves mostly to underscore the problems of the second.
Current frames for war stories exploit the pain and separation experienced by the military for
entertainment value. It functions off an unsustainable and unethical model that seeks the
sensational at the expense of the compassionate.
Current Frameworks
Veterans’ studies relates directly to military or military adjacent populations. In the
majority of cases, perhaps due to access, this tends to be restricted to veteran populations. (Thus
the name of the field.) As with many other ‘studies’, veterans’ studies is less an independent
discipline and more an interdisciplinary made up of other interdisciplinaries.
As discussed in Chapter One, medical and psychological texts make up the vast majority
of the currently available body of work. Journalism, oral history, journalism, and other related
fields make up the rest. It shares significant overlap with similar ‘studies’ including trauma
studies and warfare studies.
Though the field has been around in one form or another since the 1950s, it’s gained
particular traction since 9/11. Recent developments to the field include minors in veterans’
studies offered at Eastern Kentucky University and University of Missouri St. Louis, the
National Center for Veterans’ Studies at the University of Utah, and the inaugural issue of the
Journal of Veterans’ Studies.
Given the breadth of disciplines that contribute to the field, I’ll address only two here,
oral history and rhetoric/composition. Oral history’s relevance to the topic at hand is obvious,

17

and it’s worthwhile to elaborate upon the ways that oral history and veterans’ studies have
informed one another. Rhet/comp, meanwhile, represents the majority of rhetorics contribution
to veterans’ studies and thus requires some examination.
Oral History
Despite the relative historical importance of oral history to veterans’ studies, it shows up
far less frequently and less accessibly than other, more recent disciplines. Part of this is the
intensely archival bent of oral history, which led Donald Ritchie in his seminal work Doing Oral
History to note that in America, at least, oral history was deeply shaped by library archives
associated with universities. These early archives were general collections, for posterity and for
prominence, that were almost entirely inaccessible to anyone not associated with the university.
Even as the field as a whole has experienced as shift, oral history has “remained closely
associated with archives.” (156) However, oral historians also initially chose to focus on people
of political, economic, or societal importance. This only changed with the success of oral
historians such as Studs Terkel (of The Good War) and Alex Haley (of Roots) who chose instead
to “[write] history ‘from the bottom up’” (23). Nowadays oral histories—and the archival work
they often perform—focus on more general life histories and, meant for generalized historical
research, rarely require importance from their participants.
Despite the shift in participants and the broadening of subject matter, the fact that oral
histories were originally meant for archives and therefore for archival work remains evident in
how the histories are presented. Or rather, not presented. There’s a noted preference in scholars
for reading transcripts rather than listening to recordings (Ritchie, 64). This is unsurprising in a
landscape that continues to value alphabetic texts above other mediums. However, this can prove
troubling when it comes to moving outside the archive.

18

Community projects, such as Ritchie references, often focus on piecing together an
overarching narrative of the community in question. This may focus around a particular time
period, event, or other cultural marker. Other tangentially related histories are often deprioritized,
if included at all, in favor of creating a more holistic view. Collected histories are then further
edited and curated for presentation. Doing so mediates the experience for an audience. It cuts
through the many banalities that can result from oral history’s approach, but it also tends to bring
up questions of inclusion and motivation. Both historians and the communities they work with
constantly (re)mediate the work (Ritchie, 157), seeking to tell the appropriate story.
In the case of working with military populations, this can often result in the kinds of war
stories outlined earlier in this chapter. Digital archives of the Library of Congress such as
Experiencing War: The Global War on Terror feature numerous oral histories, memoirs, and
other digital memorabilia in a loosely defined and collected project. Among those featured
prominently are stories of the combat zone and links to other archives on World War II and
Vietnam. It is presented as a holistic look at the War on Terror, yet each interview has been cut
for time and content, often without explicit reasons why. Listening through the archive, I found
many war stories in isolation, left to stand testament in a way that seems purposeless. This is not
to suggest that the archive does not accomplish important work. It records life, or at least some
partiality thereof, for many veterans. Yet it also works as a testament to the kinds of available
archives oral history currently works within. Places where stories are kept but not practiced.
Oral history brings valuable dynamics to the table. Focusing on the individual’s story, or
even the community’s story, allows for a less predetermined approach. Questions may be
designed to elicit particular ideas, but the (unedited) history itself allows for unique perspectives

19

that elude more mainstream research methods. Furthermore, valuing the story as it is—rather
than as it could be—allows for a sense of mutual storying.
Rhetoric/Composition
Current work by rhet/comp in the field of veterans’ studies remains decidedly lacking. It
appears in special issues, such as the Special Issue on Veterans’ Writing in Reflections; or as part
of the ensemble in the Journal of Veterans’ Studies. (Both of which, interestingly enough, were
published in late 2016.) In both cases, its’ impact remains restrained to composition classrooms
and their ilk.
Work focusing on better transitioning veterans into first year writing classrooms, or
making instructors more ‘veteran friendly’ (whatever that means), or starting writing programs
that allow veterans to write through their experiences in a supportive environment. Rhet/comp
focuses near exclusively on the veteran population of the War on Terror. I had imagined this
would lead to the same confusing mish-mash of trauma/triumph that plagues the overall narrative
of the War on Terror. It does not.
Rather, the rhet/comp approach focuses almost exclusively upon the idea of trauma. The
featured article—which was actually a poem, unattached to any kind of rhetorical analysis or
other essay component—in the Reflections special issue was “Heart of the Enemy” by Jenny
Pacanowski. The poem discusses the line between viewing children in a combat situation as
children or enemies. Though it was by far the most blatant example of trauma as narrative, it was
not alone. Other articles included writing as a way of bearing witness (to trauma) in Karen
Springsteen’s “Veterans’ Writing and the Rhetoric of Witnessing” and writing through
(traumatic) spinal cord injuries in Mapes & Hartley’s “Re-Authoring Narratives: Reflective

20

Writing with Veterans with Spinal Chord Injury”. This pattern was also reflected by the work in
the Journal of Veterans’ Studies.
Again, it’s important to note the impactful work being done in these texts. They relate a
vital idea of attempting to bridge between civilian and veteran spheres of influence in one of the
few places they can: a composition classroom. I see that vitality when I think of the Marine in
my class, the trauma he inscribed on the page, and the ways in which that text worked within the
classroom space. It’s a war story and it’s worth contemplating.
But it is not the only war story, and rhetoric(s) on the whole has much more to offer
alongside composition classrooms. It is with this in mind that I move on to my own research and
the ways rhetoric(s) were employed in the quest to find a new kind of war story.

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Chapter Three
Working Through War Stories
Let me tell you a story.
I am fourteen. My dad and I are at the hospital on Elmendorf. (The Air Force base.
This was back before it became a joint base with the nearby Army post to conserve
resources.) We pick up my mother’s thyroid medicine in the last errand of the day. It has
been a very long day. (My dad drives around potholes with manic intensity.)
We walk out the doors at the back of the hospital by the ER. The back is where all
but ten of the parking spots are handicapped. (Because this is still after the first deployment.)
There’s a man near the doors and he drags along a prosthetic leg that fits wrong.
I don’t know him. My dad does. They talk. My dad asks where he’s going. (“P.T.,
sir. Hoping they’ll refit the leg while they’re at it.”) The man thanks my dad. We leave.
As we walk toward the truck, to drive home (around potholes) with my mother’s
medicine, my dad tells me a story. He tells me about sitting in the middle of a firefight,
holding a man’s leg together with sand streaked hands and sheer force of will, waiting for
the helicopters. He tells me about the others in the squad who formed a ring around them to
return fire. He tells me about how two of the men died on a later patrol. He tells me about
how lucky he felt to save the man. He tells me about how he thought he’d never scrub the
blood out from under his fingernails. My dad never tells this story again.
I never know how to tell this story.
Methodology
In conceiving of my thesis research as an oral history project I also took on the
methodological frame of oral history. This frame emphasizes a sense of duty toward both the

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person being interviewed and the person who may one day access the history. It focuses on the
mundanity and greatness of ordinary individuals. And, as my oral history mentor Jeffery
Charnley said in reference to consent forms, “We call it a Deed of Gift because it’s something
they are giving the field.”
It can be difficult to articulate any strong particulars of what makes up the methodology,
likely because so much of it is invested not in theory but in practice. I find myself focusing on
those moments of minutiae such as the Deed of Gift form in all its implications. Am I reading in
too much if I say that it represents an explicit positioning of the participant’s life experience as
inherently valuable? That this, on some level, suggests that a story is worthwhile in and of itself?
Or to say that oral history makes a deliberate rhetorical move in this moment to ask permission
to tell that story over, to make something of it, to constellate it within other stories? On one level
this is a necessary part of the paperwork that goes into oral history. No more notable than audiorecording equipment or notes taken prior to the interview. Yet the positionality behind its
function implies a worldview that feels deliberately relational.
Articulating this methodology outside of these specific moments requires a set of
language that seems unavailable within oral history itself. Thus I turned to cultural rhetorics and
narrative theory in order to better express the methodological concerns in the research. In turn,
using the language and concepts of cultural rhetorics and narrative theory led to a blending and
blurring of the methodology itself.
Because of this complicating, I choose to approach the methodology by its themes rather
than by parsing out each rhetoric in turn. In doing so I acknowledge the ways in which these
rhetorics inform one another and constantly remap against and with each other. The below

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represent the foremost concerns of this work and the ways in which the methodology shapes and
answers those concerns.
Narrative & Trauma
Throughout this work I’ve been telling stories. Some of them are my stories, and some of
them are someone else’s stories, and some of them belong to both or either or all. These are
stories I’ve told before. These are stories I’ve never told. I never had to buy in to the idea that
stories are all we are, as Thomas King says, because I’d always already known that. More than
that, I believed it. I still believe it. Storytelling is not simply an act of memory for me, contrary to
Ritchie’s assertions (19), but rather an act of community. Each time I tell these stories I give
them out into the world in hopes that this time they will—
What? And there is the drop that comes with telling war stories. What purpose do they
serve and why tell them? In Chapter Two I suggested that a war story happens at the intersection
of triumph and trauma. Powell et al. suggest that intersections can result in a kind of butterfly on
the pin board skewering. As with Thomas King, I know this implicitly and they give language
with which to discuss it.
But first I must step back. Let us examine that intersection and the ways in which that
pinning becomes horrifically explicit. Stephen Junger, a journalist considered one of the
premiere voices regarding the War on Terror, writes in Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
that the struggle faced by modern veterans is a lack of understanding among the civilian
populace. More specifically, he suggests that this lack of understanding stems from the intensely
tribal nature of the military and the intensely individualistic nature of modern American society.
(I may step in here to say that I can agree with his assessment of the military, at least, which does
focus on the in-group with a ferocious loyalty.) There’s a fundamental disconnect, he implies,

24

between the intrinsic values of military populations and the extrinsic values of civilian
populations (28). In order to illustrate this concept, he uses Native American tribes as examples
of the violent but idealized (and singular) culture that best represents such a ‘tribal’ mindset.
There’s a story being told here—about war, about homecoming, about soldiers—that tries to step
outside the Western mode while rigorously confirming the Western mode.
Let’s go a step further. David Finkel’s Thank You For Your Service spends the first
chapter telling the story of a soldier who struggles with extreme Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
So does the second. And the third. It chronicles relationships breaking apart. People breaking
apart. The impartial outside observer witnesses. No amount of impartiality stops the gut drop
moment where a soldier, just returned home and seeing “a chance at absolution” in his wife,
instead finding himself greeted by a bereaved widow desperate to know how her husband died
(21). Triumph gives way to trauma.
If the examples provided by Finkel are the pain that comes from trying to pin down a war
story, then Junger is the pain that comes from trying to justify that pinning. Cultural rhetorics
provides a welcome alternative at this point. Instead of intersections they talk of constellations.
To constellate means allowing both practices and relationships to matter, and to allow
“those relationships…to shift and change without holding a subject captive” (Powell et al.) It’s a
lovely image—star-stories thrown up into the firmament, mapping points drawn and redrawn,
shifting understandings as constellations migrate. Though not made explicit by their text, it lends
nicely into narrative theory’s understandings of the ways in which storytelling leads to a kind of
back and forth between storyteller and audience. After all, within a single story a person may
hold many roles.

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Furthermore, constellation allows on some level for compensating for trauma. Ringle &
Brandell discuss the difficulty of telling traumatic stories in Trauma: Contemporary Directions
in Theory, Practice, and Research. Beyond any number of reluctances to share their story, those
who have experience trauma often have difficulty articulating that trauma due to issues of
memory and of language. They cannot create a coherent, linear narrative of the traumatic event.
(Or, indeed, anything surrounding the trauma.) This is obviously not uniformly true, but it is true
often enough that constellating becomes a useful point of methodological reference. Rather than
insisting on a singular truth that can be reiterated again and again, one can focus on the ways in
which storying might change in response to trauma and to find rhetorical meaning in those
changes. Doing so would allow for a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which narrative
contributes to the sharing of war stories.
Family & Relationality
Given that the population I interviewed is made up of people I’ve already established
relationships with, it didn’t come as a surprise that many of them relied on me to supply certain
intangibles about their experience. This went beyond the expected provisions of translating their
terminology or helping to remind them of dates. Instead, there was a frequent expectation for a
kind of call and response.
This pattern only became clear to me once I talked to veterans whom I did not interview
but did discuss my research with. I was still familiar with many of these people. Yet not so close
that it would be immediately expected that they would turn to reminiscing. Instead, the call and
response took on a more generalized air. It was dependent on holistic experiences of the military.
Remembering 9/11, remembering the first deployment, remembering all the gossip always
winding its way around the base.

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In essence, I often found that they expected me to help fill their stories with those of my
own. This pattern can be found in the recordings. A rhythm of “you know” and “you remember”
and “you were there.” There, it’s somewhat toned down, a function of performing differently
while recording for posterity. Yet in both pre and post recording discussions, those interjections
and calls for shared stories became more frequent. It was, in some senses, an exchange of scars
as much as stories.
As I continued to collect the oral histories, this sensibility of mutual vulnerability became
an intrinsic part of the methodology. Even as I say this, I acknowledge it would be extremely
difficult (if not impossible) for a civilian researcher to emulate. Civilian researchers seeking to
perform this kind of call and response would need the assistance of people “in the gap.” By this,
I mean family members (whether spouses or grown children) and other intermediaries (including
veterans themselves) who can fill this space.
Methods
While the above methodology may lend itself to a number of potential methods in
application, I have thus far employed only two. This is primarily due to time constraints and the
shape of the project here analyzed.
The project itself is a collection of oral histories as related by current service members,
veterans, and family members. Participants were drawn initially from my own family and friends
with plans of expanding the participant pool in later incarnations of the project. As a starting
point, my own relations proved an ideal starting point. The participants had shared histories and
life experiences, not only with myself, but with one another. This emphasized something I had
already known but which had been rarely acknowledged in the literature. Namely, that “war
stories” are more often community stories, with a shared burden of remembrance. While this

27

could be replicated with more participants who share less direct connections, this would have
required more time and resources than were available.
Histories
Oral histories were conducted—from initial contact to completed sign off—over the
course of roughly a year (April 2015 to March 2016). Ten people were asked to participate. Nine
were able to participate within the above timeframe, with the last being postponed for a later date
in light of deployments. Unsurprisingly, given the length of time, this method underwent the
most change from planning to execution.
Initially, I intended to perform two to three interviews with each person. The interviews
would take place over the course of one to two weeks. I also intended for all of these interviews
to happen in person. Much of this ended up being unfeasible or unnecessary.
While each oral history came with its own contextual nuances, a pattern developed.
Participants were contacted in person. We would often have discussions later (usually in person)
about the project and its’ purposes. These discussions were informal, unrecorded, and meant to
assess the general comfort levels of participants. Prior to conducting the oral history, participants
were given an Informed Consent document and an opportunity to ask questions.
The oral histories themselves were scheduled to last thirty to forty minutes. The vast
majority ended up falling slightly short of this—around twenty to twenty-five minutes. Seven of
the interviews were conducted over the phone. The remaining two, which include the one
analyzed for the purpose of this thesis, were done in person. Each history followed a similar
format. Participants were asked to introduce themselves with their name, date of birth, and
connection to the military. This was followed by six standard questions and follow up questions
as needed.

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This method reflects a particular sensibility cultivated mostly from Donald Ritchie’s
Doing Oral History and conforms with current best practices in oral history. However, it also
makes use of Irving Seidman’s Interviewing as Qualitative Research. In response to the issues of
a straight oral history approach, as outlined in Chapter Two, I chose to combine techniques from
both oral history and phased interviewing in order to reflect the complex nature of the stories
collected. From Ritchie comes the assurance of treating a participant’s story of a worth end inand-of-itself, as well as an openness to tangential stories that don’t necessarily reflect the exact
goals of the researcher. From Seidman comes the concept of a whole life approach (as opposed
to focusing on a particular, defined era and/or event). In ideal circumstances, the method would
also reflect Seidman’s conceit of conducting multiple interviews that each serve a different
rhetorical purpose and allow the participant to become comfortable with recording.
Transcripts
After the oral histories had been collected via audio-recording they were transcribed for
posterity. While it can be argued that transcription is merely another step in the collecting of
histories, I view them as a distinct (if not entirely separate) method, given that transcription
comes weighted with conscious (and unconscious) rhetorical choices on the part of the
transcriber.
Ritchie says as much in Doing Oral History, pointing out that “[e]ven the most slavishly
verbatim transcript is just an interpretation of the tape” (66) and that “transcribers might handle
the same material in different ways, including punctuation, capitalization, false starts, broken
sentences, and verbal obstacles to presenting spoken words in print” (67). Thus, there’s
something of an admitted art to transcribing interviews.

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Thus far I have done my own transcription of the histories. In doing so, I chose to follow
best practices for transcription as stated by the Oral History Association. This included
formatting and ways of transcribing noises such as laughter. Even so, I made deliberate choices
that went beyond best practices. Some were questions of research ethics. I have redacted certain
information available in the original recording, such as identifying information of people who
had not consented to be recorded. Others were stylistic. I made use of ellipses, generally
considered unnecessary, to distinguish between sentences which trail off and those that are cut
off. If the more general format denotes oral history, than the particulars reveal deliberate choices.
Perhaps the most important choice made in the piece was the inclusion of annotations.
These were initially meant only to make visible and intelligible the linguistic quirks unique to
military speech. However, the more I transcribed, the more I realized that it wasn’t simply a case
of acronyms or slang. Therefore, transcript annotations include historical events, clarifications on
dates, descriptions of daily military life and work.
Case Study
The methodology and methods described above have been applied in the course of an
ongoing oral history project. In order to discuss the results thus far, I chose an oral history that
seems most indicative of overall patterns, and analyzed it. I chose to focus on context (the history
itself), connections (how it related to other stories), and end with some conclusions about the
implications of these patterns.
The chosen history is that of Edward Scott Martin, my father and an Army veteran who
served fifteen months in Iraq during the 2007 Surge, whose story embodies the inherent
contradictions I stumbled across repeatedly in my work. While I discuss portions of the history in

30

detail below, the history was over an hour long when recorded, making analysis of the complete
work difficult. Readers may access the full transcript in the Appendix.
There are some logical reasons behind choosing my father, my dad, to be representative
of the project as a whole. His oral history is the longest by a substantial margin (almost thirty
minutes), and as part of this includes a level of detail and story throughout that marks it as a
particularly rich site of analysis. Due to the circumstances of the interview the audio quality of
his oral history is better and therefore the transcript reflects a more accurate reading of it. The
stories he tells negotiate boundaries between what’s already reflected within the literature of the
field and what has yet to be explored, opening a space in which to discuss how those boundaries
are navigated.
And yet I confess. I did not choose my dad’s story as representative for those reasons. I
chose it because in so many ways his story is my story. My war stories, the scars I carry and
hoard and share, are a direct result of his war stories. It feels sometimes like I will never get the
war out of my marrow and perhaps in some ways that’s a bond we share. I began this project
because I wanted to understand him and understand myself.
Contexts
We decide to do the oral history on March 10th, 2017. I’m on vacation with my parents
for spring break. It’s a sunny day in Hawai’i and we’re meant to go to the beach later that day.
I’ve written down what needs to be included into the introduction and nudge it across the glasstopped dining table. “Any questions?” I ask, for what feels like the twelfth time but is probably
only the third.
I’d also interviewed my mom this morning. Normally that would’ve forced me to slip
into the skin of researcher, historian, rhetorician instead of daughter. It did, but only for the

31

twenty minutes it took to collect my mother’s history. Now I’m back to jitters. I wonder if I have
a right to do this. I wonder if I can do this justice. I wonder if—
“No,” he says. “We’re good.”
So it begins. The recording is one hour, twelve minutes, and four seconds long. In it, I ask
the six standard questions.
1. What did you know about the military prior to joining?
2. What expectations did you have?
3. What surprised you?
4. What was the best part of military life?
5. What was the worst part?
6. What’s one memory that’s stuck with you?
The follow up questions come in the heat of the moment. They are clarifications, most of
the time, but sometimes they pursue half-finished stories. My jitters smooth into professionalism.
I have interviewed three people so far and I think I know what to expect. I don’t. There’s
a theatricality to his history that the others have lacked. It doesn’t strip the authenticity, as some
would assume, but rather emphasizes it. There are jokes, references, and callbacks; and I laugh. I
am audience as much as researcher. I am witness more than I am audience or researcher.
I don’t expect war stories. But that lack of expectation is manifold. The construction of
my questions avoids those most often used to elicit either triumph or trauma. No one I’ve
interviewed thus far has offered up the traditional narratives of battlefields. And this is my dad.
We’re on nebulous ground. My position as his daughter allows me access another researcher
would lack. My position as his daughter disallows me access to things he may want to shield me
from. We stand in this liminal space.

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Connections
Around the fifty-minute mark of the recording, he begins to talk about coming home on
mid-tour leave. Like most people recounting history, he’s woven in and out of past tense, telling
some stories as though they’re immediate and others as though they’ve long past. (Memory is
tricky that way.) But for the first time, the narrative slips entirely into present tense. Something
clamps around my lower spine, nerves or just worry, even though we’ve already gone through
IEDs and the loss of soldiers. How hard could an airport be?
(Very hard.)
This story takes place in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, sometime in June. When
returning on mid-tour leave, soldiers fly commercial airlines, and thus go through airports both
friendly and unfriendly in uniform. Some airports, particularly when dealing with cohesive
groups of soldiers going out on deployment, will block off entire terminals for the use of
soldiers. This airport did not. As a result, he and the others on mid-tour had to go through a
group of people who’d come to greet them.
Here, I take a step back. It’s important to note that I’m what one might call an “engaged”
interviewer. I frequently make nonverbal noises, encouraging or questioning or simply proof of
continued active listening, that show up in the recording to various degrees. Most often these
noises do not make it into the transcript—they’re already half lost, more of an echo of the idea
that in this moment I was nodding or tilting my head or widening my eyes. Engaging. But there
are, of course, times where my varied tones of “mhm” came through loudly, clearly, in the
pauses. They served actual function there, however difficult it is to define, and so I made them
explicit within the transcript.

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It’s with both these concepts—that of moving into the present, and that of explicit
engagement—in mind that one must work with the text. Preceding the below is a block of time
(roughly two minutes), where he had spoken uninterrupted and with very little pause. At this
point, however, he begins the transition from the more straightforward manner of earlier into the
present tense, interaction heavy manner of storytelling.
SCOTT MARTIN: We had to go through a gauntlet. An absolute gauntlet of people.
And it was scary. It was frightening. Remember, crowds in combat equals target equals
death.
BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

No crowd.

BETH MARITN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

No people.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN: Any time you see a crowd of Iraqis, one of them has an AK-47.
And he wants to kill you. You hate crowds. You don’t go into crowds. Crowds are where
suicide bombers click their button and blow everybody up. Stay away from crowds.
BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

During this particular exchange, there’s a roughly two second pause between each “call”
(his speech) and “response” (my speech) that emphasizes the expectation of the pattern. The
tension is clear, even within the transcript, particularly when compared to another exchange only
a minute later. This exchange was notable less for call and response, and more because it took
place entirely in a whisper.
SCOTT MARTIN:

So I go into the USO and it’s filled with soldiers. And you know what? It’s
quiet. It’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop. People are talking in
whispers. [five second pause] This is where I’m comfortable.

34

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

It’s like a… [exhales] Weird. Yeah. This is where I need to be. Because it
was too overwhelming. The sensory overload was beyond…

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Beyond description. But to go in there and for it to be quiet. Just deathly
quiet. Everyone talking in a whisper. But that’s when we knew that we all
got it. [laughs]

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

In the moment, I file away a thought. The thought goes something like: is there not
trauma in coming home and seeing threats on the faces of every civilian? Why don’t we talk
about that? What does it mean to talk about that? In the moment, I murmur another “mhm” and
the story moves on.
Wait, I need to tell you another story. This story is my mom’s. It takes place on the same
day at nearly the same time. (Give or take a half hour.) But she’s in Alaska. She knows he’s
coming home soon, a 48-hour window, and she’s mowing the lawn in preparation. The cell rings.
It’s my dad. He’s in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport. There’s a good layover, he’ll be home soon,
things were hard at the airport. There, on the front lawn, she starts to cry. Because it’s real.
Finally, finally after so many months, he’s stateside and that means something. It means safety.
It means the hurry up and wait is over. It means she has only a few hours to finish mowing the
lawn and get everything ready.
Wait, I need to tell you still another story. This story is my own. It takes place on the
same day at nearly the same time and in the same place. I’m reading something so generic that I
can no longer remember it while the dogs bark at the sound of the lawn mower. In the back of
my mind I wonder why she’s bothering with the grass. Dad won’t care. I fidget with my
35

bedspread, yell at the dogs to please be quiet, and then realize the lawn mower has been shut off.
I assume she’s talking with a neighbor. Nothing feels entirely real, least of all that my dad’s
coming home, and I’m that same dizzying excitement of a kid about to go to Disney World for
the very first time.
Wait, I need to tell you just one more story. This one belongs to all of us. Same day,
different time. We’re in the Anchorage airport. My dad’s the last off the plane. Somehow he’s at
the gate and then he’s right there. We hug, tangled up, and it’s an echo of the night he left. No
one knows who started crying first, or if they do they’ve never said, and sometimes I still ache
for that moment before any of it felt real.
I began this project on the assumption that each story was a singular point that connected
to other singular points. But now I think of this story told four times and how each is true and
how each builds toward…something. Something I cannot quite articulate yet because I still
haven’t quite found the language for it.
Here are things I can say. Every woman I interviewed cried at least once. But it wasn’t
about the hardships, or the long nights spent praying, or the breaths held when the chaplain’s car
drove past. It was the homecomings. Every man I interviewed complained about the paperwork.
They also talked about the people they’d met, the good they’d done, the demons they’d
conquered. Every person I talked to gave me a narrative that would never play well on the big
Hollywood screen because it was too mundane, too complex, too something. I began to think of
what it means to come together, at the end of it all, and tell a new story.
Conclusions
The oral histories collected, including the above, provide ideas antithetical to “war
stories.” While trauma and triumph are included, other themes are both more common and more

36

focused upon. I heard very little of firefights, but I heard much of: connection, family,
bureaucracy, humor, purpose, honor, waiting, endurance. These are things that don’t quite fit
within the mold currently presented by both mainstream culture and by research.
It remains a distinct problem if so much of what makes up military life—and thus
experience of war—remains unspoken. Failure to access or appreciate these stories will lead to
incomplete research that fails to have the desired impact on the relevant populations. That my
research led me so far off the beaten path is both exhilarating and terrifying. I’m reminded of
Chapter Two, in discovering that nuanced portrayals were perhaps the closest to ‘real life’ and
yet received the least amount of attention.
I find myself thinking of the warnings. Of King, who says “you have to be careful with
the stories you tell” (10). Of Powell et al., who reminds, “those stories belong to people” and
“research is about people…it can save and destroy lives”. Of all the ways in which I find myself
responsible for the story I tell.

37

Chapter Four
At the End of a War Story
When people ask what it’s like, being a military brat, I think of being in the paint section
of a WalMart when I learn my dad’s going to war. I think of how at Purple Heart ceremonies you
go down a receiving line like a funeral for all the people who didn’t make it. I think of Jane
Austen, and battle buddies, and trying to fit one more bag of cookies into a Flat Rate box. I think
of my mom swearing at a microwave that broke down the day after my dad shipped out for a
warzone. I think fireworks going off and hands reaching to shield me from a blast that’s not
coming. I think of how strange it is that I ask for war stories when I already know too many.
And mostly, I think of how impossible it is to tell the story people want to hear.
Reaching a Beginning
I began this thesis with definition of a “war story”. The term is malleable and everevolving. It haunts the entire enterprise of veterans’ studies. Despite writing a thesis on it, I still
have yet to discover a truly succinct way to sum of a war story. Perhaps the best definition
remains that a war story is the intersection between triumph and trauma.
But rather than work through again what a war story is, I would like to discuss what it
might mean to be “at the end of a war story.” That term originates from Tim O’Brien’s The
Things They Carried, and there he uses it to chastise the idea that any good may ever come out of
war. It’s implied, and then stated, that there can be no salvaging one’s soul from the wreckage of
a war. Here, I seek to redefine it.
It doesn’t mean being at the end of a war. Redeployment is common and there’s no
definitive end in sight for the overall War on Terror. It also doesn’t mean being at the end of war

38

stories. There’s a reason that the Epic has remained a staple of Western literature since time
immemorial. Rather, it means to come into a space that deals in homecoming and community.
At the end of a war story embraces the complexities and paradoxes that make up the
modern American military. It examines what it means to come home. It acknowledges that these
things are all too often unknowns. It is, in essence, what comes after.
Making the move from “war story” to “at the end of a war story” requires much. Over the
course of this thesis, I’ve sought to clarify why current war stories fail and to suggest how we
might approach being at the end of a war story. Doing so has required far too many attempts to
define the ineffable. To this end, I must admit that this work on its own offers more in the way of
questions than answers.
Further research, of all kinds, remains a necessity. Reaching out to not only veteran
populations, but to current service members, to families, and to the community as a whole is vital
in reconfiguring the framework. Most importantly, I would urge further research focused upon
those who’ve come back from war and done well. Discovering what went right is vital and has
the potential for far-reaching consequences.
To this end I would outline my own future work on this project. I plan to continue
collecting oral histories and to place these histories into a digital archive. The archive’s purpose
would not be simply to contain, but to serve as a site for community building and outreach.
Similar archives, such as the It Gets Better project, have successfully modeled the ways in which
this can be accomplished.
Ideally, these kinds of community spaces would allow not only for further connection
within the military, but for connection between military and civilian spheres. In making legible
the lives of military and military adjacent populations, we may begin to emphasize the need for

39

civilians to reach out in ways more meaningful than “thankyouforyourservice” and give them the
tools to do so. Phil Klay, award winning short storyist and essayist, writes in The Citizen-Soldier
that, “No civilian can assume the moral burdens felt at a gut level by participants in war, but all
can show an equal commitment.” Here might be a place to accomplish just that.
And Reaching an End
I have offered these stories up a hundred times. I scrawl them across the back of scrap
paper and painstakingly copy them into digital documents. I give them to a half dozen creative
writing classes. Each time I hand over printer-warm copies of these stories, I meet the eyes of my
classmates, so I can silently beg: Please understand.
The first time I wrote the Exigency at the beginning of this work, it was for a mid-level
class simply titled ‘Fiction Writing.’ The piece had four drafts. The last I sent to my family, for
some confirmation that I’d written it true, that I’d made something they understood. My mother
and my aunt both cried. It was true. It was true to aching. So I handed over twenty-three printerwarm copies and hoped.
But they didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. Why would I pray for someone else’s
father to have died? Why would I be afraid of knocks on the door? Why would anyone cry in
public over fruit? Why was I breaking so far from the war story they had in their head?
Now I give you these pages, which I’ve written as true as I can, and I silently beg: Please
understand. This story is yours now, too.

40

APPENDIX

41

BETH MARTIN:

This is Beth Martin, conducting an oral history with Edward “Scott”
Martin on Friday, March 10th, 2017.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Okay. Scott Martin. I was born 12/24/1964. Uh…I served in the military
from 1983 until 2010, both in the National Guard and in the Army… Also
some time in ROTC1. Twenty-eight years consecutive, and twenty-three
active years of service. And, uh, that’s good.

BETH MARTIN:

Alright. So, first question, um… What experiences or knowledge did you
have of the military prior to joining?

SCOTT MARTIN:

When I was in high school, I saw that the, that Ronald Regan—the
president at the time—was putting a lot of money into the military at the
time. He wanted to build it up and to make it a stronger force in the world.
It appealed to me, uh…
I always wanted to be a Ranger. For some reason. I don’t know,
maybe I saw a recruiting video, maybe I saw…something, but I thought if
I could ever become a Ranger that would just – be awesome. Even as a
high schooler, I thought that was the epitome of manhood. I don’t know,
maybe I was compensating for my short size, I don’t know. But, uh, that’s
what I always wanted to do.

BETH MARTIN:

Alright, and what expectations did you have going into the National
Guard? I suppose we’ll start there.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Well, interesting, um… I went active duty, and uh, spent two years active,
four years reserve2. But primarily it was about the education. They gave
me, I believe at the time it was up to a sixty thousand dollar enlistment
bonus for education, spread out over eight years, I think it was… It was
something like that.
But I was gonna pay for my education. Which – which I actually
did. Completely paid for the first two years of my college education, and
then I went into the Simultaneous Membership Program3. I went into a

1

Reserve Officers’ Training Corps
Service members are considered on active duty if they work for the military full time. They
may live on a military post/base. Reserve members (similar to the National Guard) do not work
work for the military full-time, but they can be pulled for active service and/or deployed as the
need arises.
3 A two-year program for members of the National Guard who have joined a university’s Army
ROTC unit. Provides tuition, a monthly stipend, and other benefits.
2

42

program where you’re in the National Guard and you’re in ROTC. And
that actually paid for the rest of my education.
So I was able to save money every month, and then pay for all my
education, so… Ultimately, uh, the Army—through my work—paid for all
of my education.
BETH MARTIN:

So while you were simultaneously enrolled, what were some differences
you noticed between ROTC and the National Guard?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Oh my goodness. Well…uh… ROTC was a bunch of college students.
Some of them were very serious. Some of them were prior service like me.
In other words, they were in the military and then they got out and…they
found that they missed the military life.
And that’s…once you’ve been in the military, you find that it’s a—
a brotherhood, a sisterhood—of friends, associates, people with common
goals. Even though they’re diverse, they have many different goals and
purposes in life, but they all seek self-improvement and… I mean
generally. And they also have a common goal, which is to support and
defend the Constitution of the United States.
So, um, differences between National Guard and ROTC? People in
ROTC…truly wanted to get an active duty commission. Not everybody
gets active duty. Three of my roommates in college, all in ROTC, three of
them didn’t get active duty. I’m the one who got an active duty calling.
It is conceivable that I would’ve finished my college career and
they’d have said, “You’re going into the National Guard. We have no
active duty slots for you.” [gasps dramatically] I’d have had to get a job in
a – in a business somewhere, and I feel I could’ve, but – but there is a core
group of people in the ROTC that truly want to get active duty, they want
to go out and serve, they want to travel the world and serve the Army…
Uh, but not all get that chance. The people who – who didn’t care
and weren’t in National Guard like me, and just wanted a National Guard
commission. They didn’t wanna leave their state, they didn’t wanna leave
home…

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

David [Redacted] being one, that… He just wanted to get a commission,
and then go back to his National Guard unit. And train, you know, one
weekend a month. And so that was good enough for him.

43

BETH MARTIN:

So did you feel lucky that you got a commission?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Felt like I earned it. Um…because I, uh, I worked really hard for it. I don’t
feel lucky. I feel like I was one of the top two – or three – cadets there in
the program. So…

BETH MARTIN:

So how did they rank the cadets?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Uh, um… Your grade point average…

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Big part. Some people had active scholarships. So if you have a full time
Army scholarship, you are obligated, you’re stuck. You – you – the Army
is paying for your scholarship, expecting that when you graduate you will
fill an obligation. So they didn’t have to worry. They were gonna go full
time active duty because the Army was actually paying them a scholarship
to get a degree.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Um…I was not one of those people. I certainly could’ve…because I had
other means of paying for my education. Through previous Army bonuses
and the work that I did. Cos you know, I also worked at a bar…

BETH MARTIN:

Yes…

SCOTT MARTIN:

Uh, earning money, saved up to pay for the next semester. You know,
tuition, books, and all that. So that’s the way I did it. Um… I forget what
the question was. [laughs]

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs] How they rank the cadets.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Ah! So GPA is one. Some cadets had automatic active duty because of
their scholarships. Then they also had things like leadership skills. I was
the executive officer for, quote, the Ranger Club. Which was, uh, you
know, we went to the field on weekends. To Fort Jackson. And we did
things above and beyond what other cadets would do. And that
participation level allowed us to show our leadership skills and abilities.

44

So they actually ranked people not only by – by their GPA but also by
things like their extracurricular activities and leadership skills.
And then they had – they had something called the Distinguished
Military Graduate, DMG4. I didn’t know it was important. I had no idea.
But later on, as people looked at my official Army transcript—it’s called
the Officer Record Brief—it actually said ROTC… Well, it says source of
commission ROTC dash DMG. Distinguished Military Graduate. And I
think they can only give that to like the top five percent of a graduating
class of cadets. It was like, “Oh, I see how that works.” Designating me as
one of the top five percent, that kinda – got me the active duty, I think.
BETH MARTIN:

Okay, so it was kind of like…

SCOTT MARTIN:

Didn’t know it at the time.

BETH MARTIN:

Like the summa cum laude or the magna cum laude?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Yeah! Yeah. Wasn’t based on grades! [laughs]

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs]

SCOTT MARTIN:

I think I graduated with a 2.98 or something. You know, literally. I had, uh
– a couple of rough semesters. So. Eh. I got better. [laughs]

BETH MARTIN:

Yes, yes. [laughs] So… What were your expectations of the Rangers?
Because I know you did go to Ranger School5…

SCOTT MARTIN:

What were my – what were my expectations?

BETH MARTIN:

Yes. Going in, what were you thinking it was going to be like?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Uh…I thought it was going to be hard, but then again, thought that as long
as I didn’t get hurt that I could do it, that I could graduate. Obviously, I
did. Uh… [five second pause] What I didn’t realize, more than anything
else, was that going to Ranger School was not really about survival…

4

Tradition begun in 1948 and originally given only to those who would receive an active duty
commission with the US Army. The status of Distinguished Military Graduate is given to the top
20% of graduating ROTC seniors nationwide.
5 A three phase, two-month school described as the “the most physically and mentally
demanding leadership course the Army has to offer.”
45

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

I mean, you have to survive. You have to survive the ordeal. You have to
accomplish all the things that they set out for you to accomplish. But what
I didn’t know was what it would teach me about myself.
Because, I thought it was going to be about leadership dynamics
and how you lead people under stressful situations. And yeah, I guess you
do that. But what you learn is all about you. How you deal with adversity.
How you deal with the challenges, the sacrifices, the pain.
So it was really – I thought it was about how to lead people, and
how people react. But no, really, it – Ranger School, and any difficult
school I’m sure. I mean, I’m sure you could lump some of the generalities
in with SEAL School, uh…

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Some of the other, tougher schools. Ultimately, you find out, once you
graduate, you find out that you know much more about yourself than you
do about other people. You learn that everybody’s different. But you learn
what motivates yourself first. And then what motivates other people.
So that was the big takeaway. I didn’t see that one coming. I really
thought it was going to be about “how you face the fire” and get through
adversity. You do that, but you do that by learning about yourself. What
you’re capable of doing, and not doing.
Some people break down. And they find that they just mentally, or
physically, cannot do it. That’s all about them. It’s not about everybody
else. It’s about them.
As a Ranger instructor, I saw many people who I thought were
burly and large and they would succeed and they didn’t have the, what we
call “intestinal fortitude”, they didn’t have the guts inside. They may have
been great leaders but they didn’t believe in themselves, or didn’t have the
self-confidence, or didn’t understand how to overcome the challenges they
faced internally.
[four second pause] So, it’s not always about… Uh… How big and
bad and strong or anything you are. It’s about how do you handle very
difficult circumstances. It’s all about – it’s all about you.

BETH MARTIN:

So do you feel that your Ranger training served you above and beyond
what your other military training did?

46

SCOTT MARTIN:

I do. I do. Because what happens is once you complete that training, then
you wear a tiny little piece of cloth on your arm. That tiny little piece of
cloth6 tells everyone around you that you will never be cold, you will
never be hot, you will never be hungry, you will never be sleepy. You are,
in fact, a superhero.
…on a smaller human scale, of course.

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs]

SCOTT MARTIN:

What I’m saying is that it sets a framework in everyone else’s mind that
you can persevere through any threat, through any challenge. That you are
the one, that when the bullets start flying, you are the one who will step
up. Not them. You have been tested under the crucible and therefore, you
have demonstrated that you will rise above everyone else when the poop
hits the rotary oscillator.
And that’s an expectation. It’s very unrealistic. It is. It’s very
unrealistic. But, as you know, we have something called the “infantry butt
sniff.” Where you walk into a room, or it used to be that you’d walk into a
room, with a whole bunch of guys. And if you did not have that tiny little
piece of cloth on your arm…
Oh. We don’t know if he’s worthy. We don’t know if that person
can really face peril and – and do well. But if you have that little piece of
cloth, it’s automatically carte blanche given, that you will perform above
expectations of all others. Even about others with the cloth. Because, well,
any one of you with that cloth can rise to be that hero.
So it’s a huge expectation. And it’s about the expectation of
failure. You don’t want to be perceived as a failure in front of all those
other people. Because now you know, and they know, that you’ve faced
hardship and endured. So it’s a huge disincentive to be seen as a failure.
It’s – it’s like that A on your forehead. People have expectations because
they see it.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

They think, they think “oh this, specifically because you have that.” Well,
with a Ranger tab, everyone expects that you are the next superhero, just
waiting for the chance. And those are some high expectations.

6

The Ranger tab, a small black and gold decoration placed on the left shoulder. It signifies
completion of Ranger School and is worn for the rest of that service member’s military career.
47

BETH MARTIN:

And how many Rangers are there as compared to the rest of the infantry?

SCOTT MARTIN:

In… Well, for infantry officers, it’s… Extremely high percentage. Um.
Not all. We have a person on our current staff who is an infantryman who
is, uh, a major. He is actually getting up there, but we don’t know if he’ll
make promotion to the next higher rank because he got hurt in Ranger
School and never completed it. And somehow he managed to get
promoted.
There have been unwritten guidelines way in the past that if you
didn’t complete Ranger School, as an infantry officer, that you weren’t
gonna get past captain. At the company level. But of course wartime
changes all that. You need as many officers as possible, regardless of
whether they’ve completed Ranger School or not.
But I have never, in my lifetime, ever seen or heard of an infantry
officer having a battalion command who wasn’t Ranger qualified. It’s –
it’s unheard of. I don’t think it’s ever happened. So, again, high
expectations. Yeah.

BETH MARTIN:

So what surprised you about being in the military? Or what surprises were
there?

SCOTT MARTIN:

[four second pause] Um… Going into the military, I always thought that it
was egalitarian. That everyone started off on a very equal footing. That
through your hard work, dedication, perseverance… That you would – that
you would rise to the top… [five second pause]

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

I honestly believed that. And even as a military officer, I thought, man we
are all going to be judged exactly the same. Cos we’re all doing the same
job, we’re all getting paid exactly the same, and that this equality thing’s
just working out great. Um… Then I found out that it doesn’t work that
way. And not in ways that you would’ve ever imagined.
For example. I showed up at my first duty assignment, and I’d
worn a mustache—a military regulation, absolutely regulation, absolutely
military, within regulation mustache. Well after I’d been to the unit a
couple of weeks, somebody came aside and said, “Hey. You know, the
battalion commander doesn’t like mustaches.” I said, “What?” Said,
“Yeah, yeah, you need to lose the mustache.” Like, “It’s in regulation, it’s

48

good, it’s clean, it’s good, looks great.” He said, “Yeah, you might wanna
get rid of it.”
Okay. Well, I thought about it for another week or two. And then
my company commander came to me and said, “Hey, battalion
commander doesn’t like mustaches. Get rid of it.” [gasps] Okay. So I got
rid of it.
Well, come to find out, my first report—I didn’t know this at the
time—but my first report that I got, my evaluation, it was actually lower
than I thought it should’ve been. I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought oh
that sounds pretty good, okay, whoop whoop whoop.
Only as I got older and I looked back on that evaluation did I see
that I think my mustache might’ve set me up for failure. That because,
quote, the battalion commander didn’t like mustaches… Literally. I mean,
that sounds ridiculous now doesn’t it?
BETH MARTIN:

Little bit.

SCOTT MARTIN:

But literally, I set a first impression with my rating officer. I set a first
impression that he really didn’t like mustaches. And the fact that it wasn’t
gone immediately told him that I was not a team player, or I was a rebel,
or that I was trying to work outside of what he thought I should look like.
Sounds crazy and stupid, in a way. The regulation is there for a
purpose. The regulation says, “You can have a mustache, go ahead!” But
if that guy doesn’t like mustaches…
Now what else didn’t he like? Did he “not like” Black officers?
Did he “not like” Hispanics? And that’s when I suddenly realized—not
then, but a few years after that when I’m looking at my different reports.
And I didn’t have a mustache at all, period, throughout the rest of
my career. Because, for some people, mustache was a mark against you.
Doesn’t make sense. But that just goes to show you, your appearance –
whether you have a mustache, or you’re Black, or you’re Asian… It all
counts. And it all depends on the view of that officer whether you succeed
and get promoted or not.
So the one thing that was really shocking was that.

BETH MARTIN:

Well since you were able to take a long view of the military since you
were in so long, do you feel that – that that has evened out, or remained
the same?

49

SCOTT MARTIN:

Um… I don’t know. I think that – that it comes and goes with
personalities and that – that’s one of the ugly things about… About the
service. One thing that I have discovered over time is that there was a
large period—before 9/117—when officers who had tattoos…
Oh, if you had a tattoo and it could be seen. Oh that was, whoa.
That would, that would be negative against you.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Cos officers, well yeah, you just don’t have tattoos. And so some people
would get out against those officers for “poor judgement” in getting a
tattoo. [three second pause] Seriously. Even though it’s fully within the
regulations that officers—and enlisted! Male and female! Anyone!—can
have a tattoo.
Now, there were restrictions. Like you couldn’t have them on your
face, couldn’t have them on your neck. There were times when you
couldn’t have them below the elbow. And then 9/11 hit and they said,
“Okay, you can have them below the elbow, but you have to wear a long
sleeve shirt when you have ‘em.”

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Okay. Again, that’s all part of that wartime, okay, a great soldier—or a
great recruit—just because he has a tattoo right here in the middle of his
forearm…we’re not gonna…prevent him from serving. In a wartime.
Um, so it comes and goes. It ebbs and flows. And some people
have to carry around a piece of paper in their wallet that says, “I joined in
1990…” or “I joined in 2008 when the tattoo policy said that you could
have a tattoo on your wrist.” [four second pause]

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

But like from 2013 until 2016, it’s – it couldn’t be below mid-forearm.
But – but that person, since they joined during that time when it was
allowed, they actually have to have a piece of paper in their wallet, or on
them, that says, “Hey, I joined when this was legal so you can’t take

7

A three-pronged terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001. Hijacked commercial planes were
flown into the Word Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed in
Pennsylvania after the passengers attempted to take back the plane, but it has been theorized that
it was originally meant for the White House or Congress.
50

action against me.” Like, come on, how ridiculous is that? [three second
pause]
BETH MARTIN:

Failures of bureaucracy.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Yes. And so that – that actually gets…kind of frustrating. [laughs]

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs] I can imagine.

SCOTT MARTIN:

You know? Because there might be some officer out there today who says,
“Oh! That non-commissioned officer8—that NCO—has a tattoo right
there! I don’t like tattoos. Now I remember that that’s illegal.” And so
they say, “Well, since that NCO is doing something illegal, in my eyes…”

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

“I’m gonna give them a two instead of a number one9.” Well, he may not
be up to date with the regulation that changed…twice.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

But still, in his mind, he’s right. And so he is gonna punish that guy,
because he thinks he’s doing something wrong. Not that he doesn’t check,
not that he doesn’t verify, he just thinks that guy is doing something wrong
so he needs to punish him.
And that happens. That happens a lot. And I didn’t expect that.

BETH MARTIN:

Moving on to slightly happier things… What was the best part of your
military experience?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Oh my gosh… Working with people who have the same goals and
objectives. And I think you could probably say that about any
organization. [three second pause] Generally speaking, everybody’s on the
same page, if everybody wants to accomplish something good, then it’s
really good.

8

An enlisted service member who’s attained (in the Army) the rank of corporal or any of the
sergeant ranks.
9 Refers to the Army rating system, wherein an assessment of “1” is the most desirable and
shows the highest achievement.
51

Um, having the opportunity to command people in combat.
Because that’s where it is. If you… We in the Army, at least when I was
in, would say things like, “Well, you know, you practice for war.” Every
day that you serve, you practice for war. And you hope you don’t have to
go. But if you do go, it’s going from the practice squad to the NFL. You
always get to practice, but you never actually put in to practice what
you’ve learned and trained. So to go to combat… Uh, huge responsibility.
But at the same time, I feel really good about what I was able to
do. The positive influence I was able to have. The lives I was able to save.
The people I was able to bring home. While still accomplishing everything
I was tasked to do…and more.
We accomplished a lot more than we were actually tasked to do.
But – but it was about me having the vision of knowing what we needed to
do, and then assigning those tasks to the people I knew could get ‘em
done, and then allowing them to do their jobs and do ‘em well. So that’s
always nice.
And that could translate to any organization. As you give orders to
people about your vision and where you want the organization to go…
Seeing that actually happen. Seeing that take place. Seeing them take what
you said and actually put it into practice. And whether it’s increased
sales… [laughs] Or, you know, whether it’s capture more bad guys, or
whether it’s – it’s rendering safe more improvised explosive devices10…
All of that, you look at the statistics, and you say, “Wow, because
we implemented this new strategy – last month we cleared ten IEDs
safely, and then this month we’ve done eighteen.” Now, that has to
correspond with, you know, fewer mishaps.
BETH MARTIN:

Yes…

SCOTT MARTIN:

It might just be that they’re putting more out.

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs]

SCOTT MARTIN:

But if you safely had ten of them, but you unsafely—because people got
hit, you know—had ten… Okay, we’re at 50%. Now the next month, if
you rendered safe eighteen and only two of them were hits… They’re

10

Bombs constructed or used outside of standard military operation. Commonly used as roadside
bombs and in terroristic actions. May be made of conventional bomb materials, or with
improvised household and/or scrap materials.
52

planting the same number, but at least you’re catching more safely, and so
fewer people are being injured and killed.
That’s a measure of effectiveness that you can look at and say,
“We’re doing something right.” See?
BETH MARTIN:

Yeah.

SCOTT MARTIN:

There is joy in that, believe it or not. There’s joy in being able to say,
“You know what, not only did we make the roads safe for us, but those
civilians were hitting ‘em too.”

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

So the civilian population is not suffering the pain and the deaths as well.
It’s like, okay, we’re actually doing something right here.
And then what happens is, as you hit that, then you start suddenly
saying, “Okay, the next month there were only fifteen total events.” And
then the next month, there were only ten total events. That means that
we’re stopping the people from planting the IEDs. And in addition,
hopefully you’re finding more of those fifteen that didn’t blow up. So I
mean, you measure it every month, and you can actually see if your – if
your plan is working, or if you need to change it.
And so, uh, that was actually very rewarding. Being able to see
that we were making a positive difference. And – and of course, as I think
you know personally, that by the time I came home after sixteen months,
we had significantly reduced deaths and injuries of not only our folks but
also all the civilians who lived and worked in the area.
So, I mean, huge. That – that’s – I can’t understate how important
that was. That we came home feeling a sense of purpose and that we had
accomplished something good.

BETH MARTIN:

Very nice. And…is there a particular memory that stands out as maybe the
best exemplar for all of that?

SCOTT MARTIN:

[three second pause] Um… [three second pause] My goodness, there
are… Oh… Well it’s… [five second pause] Um, well, there’s – overall,
just…the feeling. The feeling of not having the hits, the deaths, the
injuries.

53

When we first got there it was a very dark period. There was an
uprising amongst the Sunnis and they were planting bombs left and right.
It was crazy.
The unit that we had replaced stopped clearing IEDs. They stopped
going outside the wire11 because they felt like everytime they went out,
somebody died. So they physically stopped doing it. And they thought,
“Well, as long as we don’t go outside the wire, nobody’ll get hurt.”
In fact, while they were transitioning over between us— We call it
the “left seat/right seat ride.” Where, if you’re in the left seat, you’re in the
driver’s seat, you’re in charge.
BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

If you’re in the right seat, you’re just kind of riding along. So what we did
was we – we rode along in the right seat. They drove us around and
showed us how they do stuff. They’d showed us the lay of the land and
everything. So that was their left seat.
Then they did a right seat. Where now we’re in charge, but they
also have a guy in the vehicle who says, “Oh, now remember, don’t do
this because we learned not to do that.” See, so it’s a swap, in and out.
Where – they said that in the left seat/right seat ride, they actually did
more getting outside the wire than they had in months and months and
months. Because we wanted to get out and learn as much as we could
before they left.
You know that is – that is one thing that the Army was really,
really good at. You don’t just quit cold turkey and one unit picks up and
flies away and the next unit’s going, “Uh…what’re we doing here?” No.
The left seat/right seat allows you to integrate and blend and – and they
teach you what works and what doesn’t. And then when they go out with
you, they make sure that you don’t make the same mistake they did.
Cos, you know, the enemy has a memory too. He says, “Hey, this
thing works, and I’m gonna keep doing it.” Well, if we know – if they can
pass on to us what the enemy does, then we don’t have to learn from
mistakes. We can learn from their experience.
So, going out there, to see… [four second pause] Not the fear but
the concern in their eyes… [three second pause]

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

11

Military slang for going outside a support installation/forward operating base. Comes with
implications of leaving relative safety for a combat zone.
54

SCOTT MARTIN:

And know that they were uncomfortable going out and doing the things
that we did… Looking back on it, like I said, I won’t call it fear, I’ll call it
concern. They were genuinely concerned that we wanted to go outside the
wire. That we wanted to go out into the countryside. We wanted to go out
there and talk to the people. They were concerned. They did not want to
do that with us.
Because they had suffered enough casualties and death that they
didn’t want to go through that again. And actually, uh… [three second
pause] On a patrol that my guys were on, that none of my guys were
injured on, but the outgoing unit lost a soldier the day before he was
supposed to fly home.
It can happen any day of the time you’re there. But that was
especially terrible for them. Because remember, they had holed up, they
had not gone out. So they had kept their casualties low. They hadn’t
accomplished anything. That’s the problem. They hadn’t accomplished
anything. But because we needed to go out and learn the lay of the land…
[three second pause] They lost a soldier.

BETH MARTIN:

Mm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Who was one of their best. He was a good soldier. Like a – he was a
sergeant. He was – but it can happen to anybody at any time.
But I would say the best memory, or feeling, was always
remembering that unit and what they were as an organization. [three
second pause] And then comparing and contrasting that with us when we
left. Cos we were proud; we were downright boastful when we left.
Because we knew – we knew that we took horrible casualties, I mean it
was horrible in the beginning. But we knew that we made it a better place.
And that feeling is irreplaceable.
Because like I said, we made it better not only for us, but for the
civilian people. They had peace. For the most part. In our area, when we
left, huge difference.
So to see this unit that was cowering when we – when they left,
when they left… To see that unit and how they were kind of leaving with
their tail between their legs, knowing that they had not succeeded, and…

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

55

SCOTT MARTIN:

Knowing that the enemy had won against them. And then seeing and
feeling the difference when we left. [four second pause] If they had told
me that I had to be extended—with my unit—for another few months, I
would’ve said, “Okay. We’re winning. We’re winning, we’ll stay.”

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

If that unit we were replacing had been told that they had to stay two
months, they would’ve broke down. Because they – they had mentally
quit. So to see the difference between that unit and when they left, and
then knowing the unit that we came home with…

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Huge. That’s the best memory I can have. Is we truly came back knowing
that we made a difference. [three second pause] I think that’s… I think
that’s part of the military structure.
And I look at—of course, I’m a student of military history—I look
at World War II, everyone came back victorious. It was victory. We made
the world a better place. We felt in our hearts, as a nation, we had done the
right thing.
Korea? We didn’t really win. There was no victorious parade.
There was nothing that came back and said – and those soldiers, as a
whole, as an army—certain units did great, others not so much—but
generally speaking the DOD12, the military, didn’t come back from Korea
and say, “Boy, we’re heroes. We made a difference.”
Vietnam? Of course, the exact opposite. They weren’t, you know,
hailed as heroes. So they didn’t feel like they accomplished anything. And
so for us to go, and come back feeling like we accomplished something?

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Huge. Huge. Cannot be understated. Cos that’s ultimately what you wanna
do, you wanna accomplish your mission and then…bring as many people
home as possible. So that’s the best feeling. The best feeling is – not that
we won… [three second pause]

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

12

The Department of Defense, under which all military branches fall.
56

SCOTT MARTIN:

But that we did something for the greater good. [four second pause] Okay.

BETH MARTIN:

Okay, so… [three second pause] Worst part of military life.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Hm… Um… Well I can say this afterwards. Breaking down of the body.
You know, getting back to that whole Ranger thing, when you – when you
get injured, uh, Rangers are supposed to fight through pain. And they’re
supposed to keep going.
So, I kept running on an Achilles tendon that was torn. For years.
And it would every once in a while retear, and I would take a break, and
I’d keep going. [sighs] In the end, not the best thing for the body. But
again, you have this mindset, you have this mentality, you have this little
piece of cloth on your shoulder that says, “I will keep going. I will keep
going. Though I be the lone survivor, I will keep going.”
There’s a Ranger creed. And it – it speaks to going above and
beyond at times, because that’s the expectation of you. And when you take
that to heart, yeah, you – you get hurt on a jump but you keep going. You
get knocked out on a jump but, once you wake up, you keep going. You
know the concussion protocol? No. It’s like can you walk? Can you
breathe? Okay, let’s get your rucksack on, and keep going. It’s what
happens. That catches up to you in the end.
Um… I think the Army, after so many battle injuries, is trying to
overcome that. We did physical fitness training that, at times, was
borderline abuse. I mean, abuse is in the eye of the beholder. Doing one
hundred jumping jacks in a row…

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Well. Jumping jacks are what you do. But, you know, there’s a point
where you’re no longer building up the body, you’re tearing it down? We
did stuff like that. Doing, you know, two hundred sit ups. In a row. Nonstop. Eventually that breaks the body down.
Well the Army has since gone back and looked at all that and said,
“You know what, you can only do a certain number and then you have to
have a recovery period. And then you have to switch to a different
exercise. And then you have to…” So, in other words, they’re not tearing
you apart.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

57

SCOTT MARTIN:

Not every single day. So they – they’ve gotten better, they’ve gotten much
better. But of course, when you’re in infantry, and you’re in a Ranger unit,
well! Who’s gonna fall first? [three second pause]

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs] Yeah.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Well, you can’t fall! Uh… So you end up tearing your body up. I hope that
the Army’s gotten better over time. Combat injuries coming back had a lot
to do with that, believe it or not. Because the Army did something that it’s
never done before.
They kept severely injured soldiers in the service. World War II?
You got injured, you weren’t still in service. Korea? Same. Vietnam?
Same. There are US servicemen and women serving in Afghanistan today
that have prosthesis legs.
Now, I’m going to guess that they’re not actually running out on
patrols. But they’re serving on staff and they’re doing things. The Army
never did that before. They didn’t have the technology with all the
prosthesis and what they’re capable of doing. But they’re still in harm’s
way, they’re still in a combat zone. We’ve never done that before.
The Army, and all DOD services, before 9/11… When you got
injured – when you lost a leg, they kicked you out of the Army and said,
“You go to the Veteran’s Administration13 and thank you for your
service.”

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Now days, there is a colonel, who was a lieutenant colonel, so he – he has
been promoted. He’s wheelchair bound. He can stand up on his legs for a
couple of minutes and then he has to sit back down. But he was so
catastrophically hit in an IED attack that, you know, he lost some brain
matter. He still – he still got promoted. He’s missing part of his brain, and
he still got promoted afterwards. But he’s still serving. He’s serving on
staff. He does well. He does have some memory issues. But – but he’s still
serving.
And that’s part of the new mentality that has taken over at least the
Army. Is that, you know what, just because you’re missing an arm…you
can still do something to serve the Army. We’ve never done that before.

13

Governmental department founded in 1930 to provide support (medical, skills training, etc.)
for veterans of all US service branches.
58

Well, I think that has translated down to other people. People who
are injured, with a blown out knee, well they may never be able to run a
two mile to the best standard, but maybe they can still serve. Maybe we
can rehab them. And then, they can continue to serve on.
Somebody – like my back injuries. Somebody in the Army today,
it’d be, “Huh, if you need to use a wheelchair every once in a while, that’s
okay.” What? What? You can do that now days? Um, yeah. Because
we’ve suffered so many casualties from 9/11 to now in all our combat
zones, if we kicked every single person out… [laughs] We wouldn’t have
enough people.
So they’re using people wisely within the limits of their physical
disabilities. And that’s something positive. Cos it shows people – it shows
them that they’re still worth something. They have a sense of self-worth.
BETH MARTIN:

So do you think that it’s helpful that people can lose limbs and still stay in
the Army? That they can stay in that familiar community?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Mhm! I’ve talked to them, and absolutely. You know one.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

I’ll just use his first name. Mark. You know. He still has a sense of
accomplishment, of self-worth. He is still progressing through the military
chain even though he has limited use of his left arm. And some other
health issues, I’m sure.
Cos, I mean, all the injuries that I’ve suffered over time… All
coming back to haunt me. Whether it’s the neck or the back or the arm or
the leg. They all come back to haunt you. It’s just a question of when. And
something as catastrophic as what he suffered, I’m sure he is in constant
pain. But.
He has a sense of self-worth. He has a sense of continuing to
contribute to the nation’s defense. Absolutely. If he had been shuffled out
of the military… I mean, he’d – he’d still be the same person. He’d still
wanna climb mountains, he’d still wanna bicycle and stuff, but I really
don’t think he’d still have the same sense of self-worth that he continues
to have.
So yeah, I think it’s been very helpful. It’s also I think – I hope has
also lead to a different view in the civilian world of how we view people
with disabilities. I hope that it has led to a different view in the civilian
world. That – all the advances we’ve made in prosthetics has been because

59

of the military. It’s not because some guy got in a car wreck and lost a leg.
No. It’s because the military spent the money, and the research, and the
robotic effort…
BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

To actually get people functioning again after catastrophic injuries. So just
like Tang with the – with NASA, and wanting to have food in space. Well,
that contributed to civilian world. The combat injuries, as bad as they are,
has led to a great leap forward in disabled people’s abilities to contribute.

BETH MARTIN:

So, talking about purpose, and people coming back and having that sense
of purpose… What was homecoming like?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Um, awkward. Awkward. Um, very interesting dichotomy here. [five
second pause] I left for war the first time, and we went through a town in
Maine. [four second pause] I can’t even – I can’t even remember the town.
But it was a – it was a waystation, it was a stop, it was – it was a refueling
stop. You had to stop in Maine, of all places. You know.
I can’t even remember where it is, now. It escapes me. It was
known. It was focused on on television, like, “Oh, this is where soldiers
coming to and from, to and from, the combat zone would stop for refuel.”
So they had a whole concourse set up for soldiers. You know.
And as I recall, a lot of the stuff there was free. It was free. You
walk in and it was like, “Oh, oh, you want some soda? You want some
snacks?” The Army didn’t pay for it. Soldiers weren’t paying for it. This
was USO14. And people were contributing money. You know, different
projects. Wounded Warrior Project15, as an example. They were paying
money to—
So we walk in, and we walk down the gangway. Remember, I am
now like…seven hours away from Alaska. I haven’t gone anywhere. I
haven’t done anything. And we’re walking down the gangway. And there
are a lot of old people. Retirees, veterans. But they’re cheering and
clapping and everything. [three second pause] And we’re just like,
“What…this is awkward… I don’t know how to feel. Why are these
people cheering me? I haven’t gone anywhere. I haven’t done anything. I

14

United Service Organization, a nonprofit organization that provides services and programs for
service members, established in 1941.
15 A nonprofit organization established in 2003 that provides services and programs for wounded
veterans, particularly those resulting from military engagements post-9/11.
60

don’t deserve this. Nobody here is a hero. We just sat on our ass for seven
hours and got here from Alaska. Why are you treating me like a hero?”
Very awkward. Hard to – hard to describe, actually. Because you
know in your heart you’re not deserving of the adoration they’re giving
you. Okay, so that was really weird.
And oh, by the way, they had free cellphones. So you could grab a
cellphone and call home. Which in 2005 is kind of a big deal, cos, you
know.
BETH MARTIN:

Yeah.

SCOTT MARTIN:

[laughs] They didn’t have payphones. But you could go into the USO, and
they had literally… Like fifty phones charging. And all of these phones
had been donated by people. And they had prepaid phone cards on ‘em.
You could grab a phone, any phone, didn’t matter, and you could call
home. So I called home to your mom. I was like, “Hi, I’m in Maine.” And
she’s, “What? What? You just left!” Like, “Yup. I’m just – just letting you
know I’m in Maine. We stopped for a refuel and a crew change before
flying over to Ireland.” Yeah, I’ve been to Ireland, once. The Dublin
airport. So it was just, “Uh, hi, yeah, hi!”
So that was an awkward thing. We didn’t feel we were deserving.
We all – I could tell, looking my soldiers in the eye, we all felt kind of
awkward. “No, people, don’t clap. We don’t deserve this.”
And to this day, I still don’t think – it’s just awkward. Cos we were
not worthy. We were not worthy of what those people wanted. To clap,
and stuff. We weren’t worthy.
Um…coming back. You go through one of two places. When you
come back on leave, your mid-tour as they call it, you go through one of
two places. You go through the Atlanta airport for all of the East coast
stuff, or you go through Dallas Fort Worth16. [five second pause] That was
weird and overwhelming.
Because I was jittery. I had the shakes. From being in combat. I
didn’t even know it. But I was so…overwhelmed by the homecoming.
Because I thought they were just gonna get us off the plane, and we were
gonna sneak through a side door, and we’d go somewhere, and we’d get
out of the way, and…we’d just wait for the next plane. You know.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

16

An airport outside of Dallas, Texas.
61

SCOTT MARTIN:

Like – like a private concourse. No. Oh no. We had to go through a
gauntlet. An absolute gauntlet of people. And it was scary. It was
frightening. Remember, crowds in combat equals target equals death.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

No crowd.

BETH MARITN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

No people.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Any time you see a crowd of Iraqis, one of them has an AK-4717. And he
wants to kill you. You hate crowds. You don’t go into crowds. Crowds are
where suicide bombers click their button and blow everybody up. Stay
away from crowds.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

So they have a roped off gauntlet that – that’s seventy-five, hundred yards
long. Like a football field. And we have to walk this gauntlet. And there
are people with signs. You know. “Welcome home, brave Americans!”
Yellow ribbons. Someone handed me a king size Snickers bar. [three
second pause] And I took it. First king size Snickers bar I’d seen in almost
a year. I took it.

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs] Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

I have no idea who gave it to me. But it was so overwhelming.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Because I’m still in combat mode. I’m in combat mode. I’m not supposed
to be surrounded by people. And this is loud. I can’t hear anything. I can’t

17

Semi-automatic assault rifle.
62

hear if someone steps on a pressure plate IED. I can’t hear it. And that…
That was scary. [five second pause] And you know what?
They told us, because we – they said – they stopped us in a big
holding room. When we first got off the plane and walked down the
tunnel. So there was nobody. We were alone. It was just all of us stinky
people. Because we stink. We were stinky. We just flew in from Kuwait.
And even though we had clean uniforms on, we still stunk, like desert. But
they said, “Okay, for those going to Alaska, go to booth one… Oh, sir,
you’re a colonel, you go right over there.” Oh, okay, I’m a colonel, go
over there, got it. [laughs]
BETH MARTIN:

[laughs]

SCOTT MARTIN:

You know. [laughs] You know. “If you’re going to Seattle, go there.” You
know, for connecting flights. Go there, go there, go there. You see, we had
people from all over. It wasn’t just our unit coming back for leave. It was
like me and ten other people from the unit coming back on leave.
Everybody else was from – now they might’ve been stationed with the
101st Airborne in Kentucky, but because they were single, their family is
in Alaska. So they’re literally flying home to their family in Alaska. So
literally, we had – we had people from all different patches.
And they told us, “Okay, sir, you’re going to get this. Here’s your
ticket for your next flight, into Anchorage, Alaska.” I went – no, we went
into Seattle. From Dallas Forth Worth to Seattle into Anchorage. But, they
said, “Here’s your ticket. It books you all the way through to Anchorage.”
They said, “Sir, we’re going to sit you down over there. And then we’re
gonna do a call, and you’ll come forward, and we’ll move you as a group
through the terminal, and then just to let you know, there is a USO…”

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

A United Services Organization. “There’s a USO right around the corner
from your…” From your, from your uh, from your…

BETH MARTIN:

From your gate?

SCOTT MARTIN:

From your gate. I said, “Okay.” Okay, whatever. USO. Okay, I don’t need
USO. [three second pause] So, I do the gauntlet, with a bunch of people.
Our group that went through.

63

Like I said, totally overwhelming. I mean, kids screaming. Teenage
girls jumping up and down. I’m assuming, now that I’m thinking about it,
that there were some families there who were actually gonna grab their –
their returning – but the overwhelming support was overwhelming. So that
was… Again, awkward.
So then, finally, I get to my gate. [four second pause] And there’s
just people everywhere. [three second pause] There’s just people. And
they’re dressed in shorts. They’re dressed in dresses. They’re dressed in
pants. [four second pause] I don’t know who has the bomb. I don’t know
who has the IED. And for God’s sake I can’t spot any weapons. But I
know they’re out there. [five second pause] I’m going to the USO.
So I go into the USO and it’s filled with soldiers. And you know
what? It’s quiet. It’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop. People are talking
in whispers. [five second pause] This is where I’m comfortable.
BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

It’s like a… [exhales] Weird. Yeah. This is where I need to be. Because it
was too overwhelming. The sensory overload was beyond…

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Beyond description. But to go in there and for it to be quiet. Just deathly
quiet. Everyone talking in a whisper. But that’s when we knew that we all
got it. [laughs]

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

We were all like, “Man, that was way too much. There’s way too much.
This ain’t happening. This ain’t real.” Too much. Come in here.
Everyone’s dressed the same. I know that these are uniforms.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Air Force, Marines, Army. Everybody. Like, “I can trust him. Yep. I can
trust him. Yep. Yep, I can trust her. Yep. I’m good.” [exhales] And that
was it.
And five minutes before boarding time—cos they told us we would
be first, they told us we would be first boarded on every plane—which

64

was helpful. It was helpful. Cos you have stand in the cattle call18. No. Oh
God. [laughs] They had figured out. They had figured out. They were like,
“You will be boarded on your plane first. Just take that for granted.”
BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Okay. So, you go right before cattle call. And everybody gets on their
plane. And you’re like, “Okay, I’m on the plane.” [four second pause] And
then every person that walks by you… [laughs] “Hey thank you for your
service.” Uh, okay. “Heythankyouforyourservice.” Finally you just close
your eyes. You just close your eyes.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Cos it’s too much. It’s too much. Just close my eyes. Pretend like I’m
sleeping. And they will leave me alone. It’s hard to explain. Unless you’ve
been there and lived that, it’s hard to explain.
So that’s part of the…getting back thing. You don’t realize – it’s
like driving a car. I did not drive a car for over eighteen months. Not a
Humvee. I had a driver. I did not drive while I was home on leave. Nope.
Didn’t want to. I was too nervous.
If you think about yourself, like “Oh, I’m just not going to drive
the next eighteen months.” Well, if you live in New York City that might
works. [laughs]

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs]

SCOTT MARTIN:

Or with public transportation. But you – you can’t imagine not driving for
eighteen months. But I did. I wasn’t driving. No way. I can’t drive. I have
people who do that. [laughs] So, yeah, the homecoming – the getting
home, the reactions and stuff, is really weird. It’s funny that, when I got
adoration leaving…

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

SCOTT MARTIN:

I felt I didn’t deserve it. I got adoration coming back. I didn’t want it. [five
second pause] In a way I was happy it was there. But it was too
overwhelming. It was kinda weird. Kind of weird coming and going. Your

18

Army slang for gathering/lining up a large group of people, particularly in situations such as
boarding an aircraft, so named for its similarity to rounding up cattle into a chute.
65

perceptions. Never would’ve guessed that. [four second pause] I bet I
answered a question in there somewhere.
BETH MARTIN:

You did. You did. And that leads to a secondary question. So you talked
about your civilian reception, what about your reception within the
military community? Within the battalion as you all got back?

SCOTT MARTIN:

Oh, when we all got back?

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Oh that was painless. That was easy. There’s – there’s absolutely –
because I was surrounded by all the people I had been with for, you know,
up to sixteen months. The fact is that we had a process for getting back.
And by the way, I’ve heard of it getting screwed up before. When we got
back it was not messed up.
And maybe – I wasn’t on the first flight. But when we flew into
Elmendorf19, the military base… They got us off the plane. No whooping,
hollering, clapping. Nothing. Just like, “Follow the guy with the chem
light20.” And, “Follow that guy with the chem light.” And, “For returns
follow that guy with a chem light.” Okay! Got my rucksack, got my bag,
I’m – I’m walking, just like everybody else.
No pomp. No circumstance. Matter of fact. It was dark, it was
night, and it was like, “Just go. Gotta go.” Go that way, check in at that,
give me your ID card, walk over there, give them your rifle, give them
your night vision goggles, give them any other sensitive item stuff that
you have. Like, “Boom, got it.”
Saw Amy [Redacted] there. And you know, she said, “Welcome
back, sir.” And welcome back and welcome back and welcome back. I
mean she was saying it to everybody.
But it was do this, do that, you got this little tag? Give it to them.
Cos they made us write four tags with our name, social security number,
weapon number, and whatever else. You know. All that stuff. And we’re
just, “Okay, give them this tag? You got it. There’s my tag. Oh, you need
a tag? Here’s a tag.” And literally it was like, “Okay, now get on the bus!”
[laughs] You know, but it was literally like stop here, do this, do
this, do this, get on the bus.

19

An Air Force based near Anchorage, Alaska. Recently reconfigured into a joint base with Fort
Richardson. Now known as JBER (Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson).
20 Known colloquially as glowsticks.
66

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

I mean it was – that reception was perfect. There wasn’t a lot of lights.
There was no cheering. There was no crowds… That was good. Because it
– and I know they did this on purpose. I was part of the plan – I was part
of the planning. So I knew what was gonna happen.
But you didn’t want families there because they would just screw
everything up. Suddenly people would forget that they had sensitive items
and had to turn them in. And it’s hugging and kissing and crying. And it’s
like, “No, we ain’t doing that. Military operation. Boom, boom, boom, get
on the bus.”

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

So that was good. Um… Going into the gym, we thought, “Ehh, why do
we have to go into the gym?” Okay, so we had to go into the gym so that
we could get into a giant formation and somebody could speak—I don’t
even remember who it was, I don’t care, I don’t care, whatever. But
somebody said, “Oh, great job, welcome home…” Blah blah blah. You
know what we heard? “Wah wah, wah wah, wah wah wah.”

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs]

SCOTT MARTIN:

[laughs] You know, “Oh we’re so proud of you…” Wah wah, wah wah,
wah wah wah. You know, there’s my wife and my daughter right over
there, I can see ‘em. Oh, wait, what’d he say? Wah wah, wah wah…

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs]

SCOTT MARTIN:

Eeee! Wah wah, wah wah, wah wah wah. Shut the hell up and let me go
home. You know, really, that’s uh… But again, not being completely
overwhelmed by people, at that point, was still good. And the fact that
they limited the crowds to family.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

So you didn’t – they didn’t park us in a stadium or something. Or they –
they restricted the gymnasium there. The Buckner Center. They restricted
it to family only. Cos, you know, what if they’d had, you know, a whole

67

bunch of other crap. We wouldn’t have been interested. We wouldn’t have
cared. We don’t want that. We just want to go home, at that point. Just
wanna go home. Want to see my family. Want to go home. That’s it.
So… They did it the right way, in that regard. I know that some
people returning from Desert Storm, which I didn’t go to, obviously. But
people returning from Desert Storm, you know, they like formed them up
and they paraded them across, you know, and then had them stand out
there while people went “Wah wah, wah wah, wah wah wah.” Oh, and
here’s Senator so and so! “Wah wah, wah wah, wah wah wah.” Oh, and
here’s Congressman so and so! “Wah wah, wah wah.” Oh no, here’s
Mayor so and so! “Wah wah wah.” Oh and here’s…Assemblyman so and
so!
BETH MARTIN:

[laughs]

SCOTT MARTIN:

You’re just like, “For the love of God, just shoot me.” You know?

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

You don’t want to hear that crap. All that is, is people trying to steal
limelight and have their five minutes of fame that hopefully makes it onto
TV so they can attract more voters. [snorts] Hell, I’d have shot him if I
had my – if I’d had a rifle.

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs]

SCOTT MARTIN:

Just end the madness. Let me go home. So that’s something that we
definitely got right. Um… [four second pause] If there’s one common
theme about these homecoming things that I’m talking about, it’s that you
don’t really want the admiration. You don’t want all that. You do a little
bit later. You want to be recognized later.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

But you’ve just spent sixteen, eighteen months away from your family.
The last thing you want is some blowhard talking to you ad nauseum.
[three second pause]

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm?

68

SCOTT MARTIN:

Just…let me start returning to normal. [three second pause] Yeah. So,
there you go.

BETH MARTIN:

Alright. So last question. What is one memory from your military life that
has had the biggest impact or stuck with you the most?

SCOTT MARTIN:

[four second pause] Um… [five second pause] I was able to be there when
you were born. And that’s weird. Cos as a man I’m not like, you know.
[four second pause] So many people in the military have children—or life
events—that happen that they’re not there for. It happens. I mean, literally,
it happens.
It’s quite possible that if your mother was pregnant while I was
gone I probably wouldn’t have gotten home for the birth. Even though
we’d planned it out… These things rarely ever, you know…

BETH MARTIN:

Pan out.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Well, yeah. I mean, look at Tom [Redacted]! He was in Fairbanks, and he
tried to get back, but he couldn’t get back in time for the birth of his – his
daughter. Jim [Redacted]. Couldn’t get back in time for the birth of the
daughter. You – it happens. I mean, Tom [Redacted] was only three
hundred miles away and he couldn’t get back in time.
The odds of me being there for it, and all the, um – “my daughter
looked like a lizard”… It was still something that I was glad that I could
be there for. And the funny thing about it is, I wouldn’t have been there
for it. And that’s why I say.
Because I had a company commander who said, “We are not going
to go to the field and leave you back here just because your wife’s
pregnant. And just because she’s like eight and a half months or she’s
gonna deliver any day now.”
And the battalion XO21 said, “No, company commander, you don’t
understand. This guy’s leaving Fort Lewis22 in three weeks. And his wife
is gonna do – is gonna deliver any minute. You don’t need him for the
next three weeks. So you know what? You’re just gonna need to learn to
adjust without him. And he’s gonna stay here. And he’s gonna be your

21

The second-in-command at either a company or battalion level. Assists the commanding
officer in daily tasks and often takes on administrative functions.
22 Army installation near Tacoma, Washington. Recently merged with McChord Air Force Base,
creating Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
69

rear detachment guy. But he’s also gonna be able to…” [four second
pause] “To be with his wife and see his – his baby born.”
And that stuck with me. Here’s why. As I grew to be a leader, and
grew to be in charge of people, whether it was as a company commander
or later as I was going through my 5th RTB or anything else. That was
something that I learned the value of.
BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

It’s one of those things. You learned a lesson and you didn’t really realize
that you learned it. But the value of that in someone’s moral, and their
well-being is – is immeasurable.
So when I would have a soldier who – who would come up with
certain circumstances—“sir, it’s my first baby, and – and my wife’s doing
this and that and the other”—I’d say, “You know what?” [three second
pause. “We’re gonna let you go. We’re gonna – we’re gonna do this.” I
said, “Because I understand the value of it. And I don’t want you to have
to look at a picture ten years from now and say ‘I wish I could’ve been
there.’”
I said, “Because you will be retired—” I tell everyone – I used to
tell this to everybody, “You will be retired one day. You will be – you will
be gone from the military. You’re gonna – you’re gonna retire, or you’re
gonna ETS23, you’re gonna terminate service, you know. But your family
will always be there. They’ll – you can’t get away from them. They will
always be your family.”
I said, “So this hiccup in the Army timeline is just that. It’s – it will
be a blip on the radar ten years from now. Twenty years from now. But
that moment in time? Once it’s lost you can’t get it back. And that family,
and that bond that you – that you start right then and there is – is more
important than whether the Army has you for the next five days.”
And so that’s the thing that I learned from. And I don’t think I
would’ve learned it except that my company commander had ordered me
to go to the field and then he was told that he was wrong. And that I could
go. And – and that I – and see you born.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Mkay?

23

Experation of Term of Service, essentially phasing out of the military upon reaching the end of
their contract. Often requires continued reserve service.
70

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

So that’s – that’s important. It’s not just you. But it’s about – that event
shaped me for the rest of my career. So that’s why – it’s not just selfserving.

BETH MARTIN:

[laughs] Yeah.

SCOTT MARTIN:

It’s not just self-serving. But it shaped my perception of what was right.

BETH MARTIN:

Mhm.

SCOTT MARTIN:

And what was…fair. And I carried that with me and I applied that every
single time. And it’s unfortunate that if I had in fact gone to the field and
missed it? That would’ve shaped me too. And I would’ve been that
commander from then on that said, “Hey! I wasn’t there for mine, and you
don’t have to be there for yours!”
But you see how that one little event shaped countless people that I
influenced directly throughout my entire career. And that’s kinda – that’s
kind of cool for me. [three second pause] Cos it could’ve gone either way.

BETH MARTIN:

Yeah.

SCOTT MARTIN:

It could’ve gone either way. I could’ve been the guy who says, “No way in
hell!” But because that one major stood up and said, “No, that’s not right.
You’re gonna be here for that birth.” That shaped my response to that for
the rest of my career. So that’s kind of cool.

BETH MARTIN:

Well thank you for your time.

SCOTT MARTIN:

Okay. I hope you got something out of that.

BETH MARTIN:

Yes.

71

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