Lawrence.com

Midway into his tour of duty in post-war Bosnia, Rick Sullivan began sensing that he was turning into a monster.

Frustrated by a series of incidents with his superiors and detachment from family happenings back on the home front, Sullivan was feeling particularly sorry for himself on one frigid night in Sarajevo when he was asked to clear his immediate area of children who were begging for food.

"This 6- or 7-year-old kid came up and started asking me for 'bon bon, bon bon' - candy - and so I pulled out a bag of M&Ms and I dangled it in front of his face," he said. "I said, 'Do you want this? Do you want this?' He shakes his head 'yes' and I zinged it over this wall where he couldn't get to it and basically told him to get the f*ck out of there."

For Sullivan, a weapons specialist in the Army, that incident came to symbolize the unseemly person he felt he was turning into as a result of the pressures exerted on him by the military. Four years into active duty, Sullivan was beginning to have more frustrations with his own chain of command than with the Serbian insurgents that his unit was assigned to keep in check. He painfully recalls a series of offending incidents: being ordered to drive into a potential minefield; getting sent out into an open street essentially as sniper bait; witnessing superiors refuse to report incidents because they were afraid of the consequences.

"The military system I think - and I don't think this is necessarily an individual decision; that's why I say 'the system' - has a tendency to treat people as though they were spare parts," said Sullivan, now 31. "There were some damn good commanders that I still respect and admire to this day, but you always seem to remember the worst ones."

When his contract expired, the disillusioned soldier said he "gave the finger" to the Army and set out to be a normal civilian again. What he never anticipated, however, was how hard it would be.

"People love the story of the guy who throws down his gun and says, 'I will fight no more forever,'" he said. "But the story always ends there, and what they never hear about is what the rest of that person's life is like ... and that is a life of passive aggression, because they're so afraid of conflict."

"As much as I tried to convince myself that I'm just going to leave all that behind and just be a regular civilian again - grow my hair long, get some stylish clothes, all that shit - it never felt right. I never meshed with people again the way I did before or during the military. I tried to build bridges to people and they tried to build them to me - they just never met in the middle."

Starting over

This year, thousands of soldiers will make the transition from fighting in a foreign war to returning home to their jobs, wives, husbands and families. Many will find it to be a relatively smooth one - a long awaited return to civilization and to the people and places they hold dear. Others, however, may find that a long and difficult journey awaits them before they can feel comfortable as 'civilians' again.

For Jason Pack, who left the Army in 1998 after a stint in Bosnia with Sullivan, the transition was harder than he ever expected.

"It's almost like you've lost a nut," said Pack, who served with Sullivan in the First Infantry Division (famously known as "The Big Red One"). "When you get out it's like, 'I'm not a man anymore because I'm not defending my country or my brother beside me.'"

Pack, now 29 and living in Phoenix, still struggles to reconcile his military past with his "normal" life as a husband and air-compressor repairman. At work, he has a hard time relating to his co-workers; at home, he said he struggles with the "impure thoughts" that he brings to the bedroom.

"Guys in the military, they're pretty much junkies of intense things," he explained. "The military breeds you to want to have that high all the time, so when it comes to sexual things, it brings it to the table ... (For me), it started morphing into very aggressive sexual behavior, as in bondage ... Even today I struggle with my wife with that issue."

In many ways, Pack's problems persist. He talks frequently with his best friend and former comrade Rick Sullivan about them, searching for common threads.

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One explanation, Pack theorizes, is the need to feel dominant after losing the sense of purpose and direction that the military provides.

"You have to try three times harder than the average guy on the outside world - or at least you feel like you have to try that much harder - in order to prove yourself," Pack said. "When you're in basic training, (the military) tears you down and rebuilds you as a machine, and that machine is told, 'I am better than those civilian people' ... After I got out of the service I had no confidence in myself.'"

For Pack, that lack of confidence led him to heavy drinking and drug usage when he returned to civilian life. He frequently got into fights and recalls a number of occasions he went to church feeling unfit to stand in the pews.

After a difficult first year home, Pack began to make the changes that enabled him to straighten out his life. The former soldier became a born-again Christian and quit drinking; a year later, he met his wife Lindsey.

Despite the lingering challenges, Pack expresses no regrets about joining the Army. In fact, he fought tooth-and-nail with his wife to rejoin after Sept. 11 (though she eventually convinced him not to).

"My pride in the time I served is untouchable," he said. "There's not many people in this world that can actually say, 'I went to a different country; I helped them rebuild it; I helped children eat the next day.'"

Caring voices

Pack's story, of course, is only one of thousands of unique cases, each with their own ups and downs. These are the stories that Lt. Col. Daniel McClure, a chaplain and pastor at Ft. Riley, has been hearing for over 20 years since he retired from active duty and began counseling soldiers and families about the reintegration process.

"In the majority of cases there's no problems at all," said McClure, 59. "For example, the Vietnam veteran has been painted as a wild-eyed Rambo type of individual with a multitude of flashbacks and drug and alcohol problems ... and homeless ... and divorced. Yeah, sure, those people existed, but a high majority of the Vietnam veterans are just like me. Ninety-five percent of us never had a lick of trouble."

McClure said he expects the same from veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom: some will have problems, but the vast majority will go on to be productive members of society with little emotional baggage.

That's not to say, however, that the initial reintegration process will be a piece of cake. Soldiers returning from Iraq face a number of challenges: anger issues, sleep deprivation, separation anxiety, and shaken faith to name a few.

Marine Corporal Peter Cross found himself dealing with a number of these challenges when he returned last June from Iraq, where he helped destroy Iraqi weapons. The first six months he was back in Overland Park, he couldn't sleep more than four hours a night. The slightest sound, such as his girlfriend rustling the blankets or getting up to go to the bathroom, would wake him.

Cross attributed his knee-jerk reactions to long nights in Iraq anticipating attacks - frequent missile warnings required him to wake in the middle of the night, throw on a gas mask and hop into ready-made bunkers.

He also found that his military habits carried over to normal life. If he heard a loud noise, he would instinctively reach for his gas mask. Sounds resembling nearby gunfire - like a fly buzzing near his ear - would make him hit the ground.

"I still catch myself scanning the rooftops of buildings when I walk down the street," said Cross, who was shot at just once while in Iraq. "When I walk into a restaurant, I have to be able to see the front door."

Peter and his brother Paul, also a Marine corporal who served in Iraq, both decided to leave the Marines when they returned home. Both signed up for the less time-intensive Air National Guard and set their sights on college degrees.

"My advice would be to sit back, bite your tongue and re-acclimate yourself to society, because no one else is going to do it for you," Paul said.

Whole new world

One thing that should make returning home easier for Operation Iraqi Freedom soldiers is that they are returning to a largely supportive and grateful public.

Army specialist Will Babbit, who returned April 24 from a three-month tour of duty as a combat engineer in Baghdad, said he received an abundance of support from people with mixed feelings about the war.

"I think a lot of people don't realize that the (peace activists and anti-war marchers) are not anti-soldier; that all those people really do support the soldiers," said Babbit, 25, who grew up in Baldwin. "I think it's great that people are able to keep those issues separate."

But the experience of returning Operation Iraqi Freedom soldiers owes a large debt to the harsh lessons learned by a society that shunned its returning Vietnam soldiers, said John Hughes, a Purple Heart Vietnam veteran who serves as quartermaster of Lawrence's Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 852.

"I went from one war zone to another," said Hughes, who returned to Lawrence in 1967 amidst heavy student protest. "It was rough for me. We weren't accepted back. We were spit on at airports, we were called names ... My experience was a bad one - really, really bad."

Initially, Hughes' response was to withdraw from social interactions for fear of how people would react to finding out he fought in the war. He tried to run around with the same crowd he hung out with before the war, but found that he no longer had anything in common with them.

"Over there you put all of your trust in your fellow soldier - the ones that you're with constantly day and night," Hughes said. "To come back and put your trust and your feelings into somebody that wasn't with you through the bad times - it's going to take awhile."

Gradually, Hughes began to feel more comfortable. A stint working for the post office introduced him to a number of other returning veterans and helped him feel like a productive member of society again. The final piece of the healing puzzle came when he met his wife.

"I was very, very lucky," Hughes said. "If you don't have the tolerance to listen, it's hard to put up with a veteran."

Where the heart is

Perhaps the most difficult decision that soldiers returning from Iraq will face will be whether to leave the military when their contracts expire.

For Babbit, the decision will be a no-brainer. With his college tuition debt paid off and a wife he's barely seen in a year of marriage, Babbit will likely pocket his experiences and leave when his contract expires in 10 months (that is, unless he's called back to Iraq, in which case he could obligated to serve another year or more).

"Being married, it's very difficult being in the Army," he said. "But I'm also looking forward to rejoining the civilian world - going back to school and not having to worry about being sent elsewhere on a day's notice."

But even those that leave the Army with no intention to return may one day find themselves drawn back to it. That's the situation that Sullivan finds himself in, six years after walking away. A chance encounter with an old colonel led to an offer to rejoin and become an officer. For Sullivan, the time seemed right to get back in.

"I don't want to go to Iraq; I know it's going to be miserable and frustrating," he said. "But I miss that bond that I felt from dedicating myself, not to a cause, but to a person or a handful of people ... and I feel a sense of responsibility to go and do what I can to get my unit through this, because I do think that a lot of them, especially the younger ones, are very naive. I think they're like I was back when I first joined - bulletproof."

If he does go to Iraq, Sullivan has no doubt that he will be better prepared for the emotional demands of war. His time away from the military has given him time to reflect on some of the guilt he felt as a result of incidents in Bosnia. This time around, he hopes he can be a voice of conscience for his fellow soldiers.

"I don't think soldiers will listen to anyone that hasn't been there," he said. "I'll have the opportunity out in the middle of the night on guard duty to talk to people, and if I find myself in a leadership position, I'll have even more power to maybe stop somebody before they reach (a breaking point)."

Gradually, Sullivan seems to be finding his true calling in the military: counseling. To that end, he is pursuing a masters degree and would like to create his own job organizing groups of veterans to talk to returning soldiers.

"Don't be afraid to get into a relationship with them," he said. "They've already proven that they will die for their friends, and it may take them awhile to open up to you, but once they do you'll have probably the most loyal friend you've ever had."