Name: Garrett Phillip Anderson
Returned from: Iraq and Afghanistan
Hometown: Portland, OR
Email: [email protected]
Milblog: Iraq/Afghanistan and More
In my documentary And Then They Came Home I ask Marines that I served with the same thirty questions, so that I can gauge patterns in
their responses eight years after our shared point of trauma. One of my
questions is, “Do you think a warrior ever comes home?” I am now preparing
to film my own interview, which will leave only one Marine in Mexico to be filmed when
I return from my wedding.
I meditate on my own response. My life-long
hometown friend Antonio has been sleeping on my couch for the past few
weeks, stringing filmed pieces together so that editing will not be a
hassle and we will be able to make our December deadline for the film.
Location shoot for And Then They Came Home. Indiana, 2012.
Photo by C.J. Maddox.
Does a warrior ever really come home? I couldn’t tell you, because deep
in the beat-up wallet I bought after my 2006 deployment to Afghanistan is a National Guard ID tucked behind my plastic cards and license. In
April of 2010 I wrote my Guard unit a letter of resignation and have not
had to put my uniform on since. I am contracted until December 2013.
I don’t know what it is like to come home, I haven’t been there since I
watched my southern California suburbia youth haven disappear in the
rearview mirror of my recruiter’s SUV, bound for Los Angeles to catch a
bus for San Diego three weeks after I turned eighteen in August
2003. You are now leaving childhood, Palmdale California 1986-2003.
I survived two combat deployments, serving in the Marine Corps from
August 2003 to August 2007 as an infantryman. A historian might note
that those were the most violent years of the war.
Breaking locks and burning blocks; Fallujah. Iraq. November 2004.
Photo by Garrett Anderson.
One day I found
myself honorably discharged from the Marine Corps. I left my home base
of Hawaii changed and bound for southern California. I spent a month at
home, went to work for my Uncle for a month, and caught a train to
Portland Oregon to visit my best friend.
Signs of trouble were seemingly
slow to come, I was still drinking like a Marine, which can be compared
to twice that of a frat boy, one less than a vagrant, and the nights had
been bothering me for some time. There is still a hole in my best
friend’s apartment where I threw a hunting knife into his wall.
In
November I returned to California to start a business with my friend
Antonio after coming into a family inheritance. We purchased film
equipment and started to film television commercials and court
depositions in California’s Antelope Valley. We were the youngest
members of our Chamber of Commerce and I found that clients were
receptive to a former Marine; my service would be brought up on the
first interview and was absolutely an asset. I had no formal training in
running a business, but Antonio and I seemed to be doing alright during
the days, and at night I would return to my father’s house, drink like a
Marine and watch endless videos of Fallujah on Youtube.
A-Co. clears Fallujah, Iraq. November, 2004.
Photo by Garrett Anderson.
I was in the second battle of Fallujah in 2004, and if you knew me in
late 2007 you knew I fought there; it was all I ever wanted to talk
about. I had felt zero emotional connection to friends and family since I returned home and I wondered if I had ever felt anything in the
first place. I was sure however that I had been doing a good job at
faking it, and I would think to myself that the connection would probably
come naturally soon.
Sleep was so infrequent that all I could remember
about it was that I didn’t hold it as a priority at the time and could
go for a couple of days on a few hours. I was standing on my porch
smoking a cigarette drunk one night when I announced to my father that I
was thinking about joining the National Guard unit that I had read in
the local paper was getting ready to deploy to Iraq in 2008. My father
had this way he would look at me every now and again back then, a sort
of deep baffle with a nod of understanding.
In December 2007 I joined the National Guard, I signed a contract to
become a tanker -- a soldier who rides in a tank. My father had been the
same thing when he was in the Army, and after working with tanks in 2004 I
was convinced that this would be the most enjoyable way to return to
Iraq.
I signed the contract and swore in over the phone on the same day.
After I had sworn in it occurred to me, through the haze of the previous
night’s hangover, that I was not clear on an important part of the
contract. I asked the recruiter how long the contract I had
just signed was for. He looked embarrassed and quickly said, “You wanted the
bonus right?” I replied that I did, and he told me, “It’s six years.”
I was
stunned, but thought to myself I guess I’ll just keep doing this for the
next six years; I had knocked out four in the Marines and I knew once I
had sworn in there was not much that could be done to reverse it. When I
got to my new unit I was informed that their status had changed from
tankers into infantry, because more National Guard
tanks weren't needed in Iraq. I had joined to return to Iraq in an armored death
chariot. I found myself back out in the open and on my feet. This made
me uncomfortable.
I liked the people in my National Guard unit, and was
able to make friends with my new platoon as I figured out how the
National Guard was different from the Marines. I was surprised and
excited by the professionalism of the unit; most of the soldiers had
done prior active duty service like myself and joined the Guard after. There were even a handful of Marines in the unit. We would show up to
train one weekend a month and the rest of the time we would work at our
civilian day jobs.
I prepared for Iraq and went back to cutting commercials and drinking
at night, not sleeping and with a new weight on my shoulders: the next
deployment. Some nights I would open my father’s bedroom door and babble
drunkenly until he was awake and shut his door. One night my
father came over to the computer to tell me good night. I suddenly began
to cry and I told him that I had been thinking of shooting myself with
the shotgun upstairs. He was baffled again, and I was sure I would have
to answer for that slip after we got home from work the next day.
The
next day came and I did not go to work. I drank and told my friend
Antonio that I wanted to go to the open microphone stand-up comedy night at
a club in Hollywood. By the time we got there I was tanked and quickly
sank into an incoherent mess. I don’t remember my routine, but I am sure
it was nonsensical. After it was over we left the club and Antonio and a
friend wanted to get something to eat. I told them to leave me in the
SUV and they left. I remember some of what happened next, and the other parts
Antonio filled in for me later. When they found me I was trying to kick out the back window
of my vehicle. Antonio let me out,
terribly confused, and then I disappeared.
I left my friends and found myself drunk and walking through alleys and
Hollywood streets. The writer’s strike was going on and screenwriters
waved signs in front of one of the production studios. I checked myself
into a hotel room and visited a liquor store to pick up a forty of fine
malt liquor. I pounded the forty and sat in the hotel room. I didn’t
want to go home because I didn’t want to face my father, and I didn’t
want to return home to an empty house where I might shoot myself. I remember that in the
drunkenness I tried to hang myself, but the knot I had
tied with the towel came undone on the shower rod and I found myself
on my ass wondering why that thing didn’t hold. And then something hit
me. I was trying to kill myself. I had been acting strangely and
something I had been in denial about was very real. The things I had
heard on the news and radio ads were true, and something had happened to
me in combat that was killing me back home.
With a member of the former Iraqi National Guard, Camp Fallujah, 2004.
Photo by Garrett Anderson.
I called my mother, who came to pick me up from the hotel, and the next
day I found myself a twenty-two-year-old combat veteran in a mental
hospital. Antonio had spent the night searching for me, along with my step-brother, and I was able to explain things when he came to visit me in the
hospital. The initial intake and my first twenty-four hours was spent
being evaluated alongside people with severe mental issues, some
criminals, and this setting I found to be completely insane and
counter-productive to my care.
I spent the rest of March 2008 in the
hospital. When I returned, my unit had deployed to Iraq without me and I
began going to Guard weekends as a member of the “rear detachment,”
comprised of soldiers who had medical conditions that did not allow them
to deploy. I had left Antonio and our business behind and went to work
for my mother while I attended aftercare in the hospital. The economy
was tanking and I wanted to get on my feet a regular way, so I moved into
my sister’s apartment and found a job at an aerospace factory. I worked
on the factory floor with Vietnamese immigrants, some of whom were
Vietnam combat veterans. We would tell war stories, and they would slap
me on the back on the Fridays that I had to dress in my Army uniform to
go to a Guard weekend.
After the first hospitalization I began to notice that I would become
nauseous before reporting to my unit, a nervousness that would cause me
to vomit. As the factory became a victim of the economy I decided at
the end of 2008 that I wanted to move to Portland Oregon, so I put in
my two-week notice with my job and showed up to my last Guard weekend in
California. The acting unit commander wished me well and told me that
that weekend he wanted me to watch over a soldier who had been
experiencing similar issues. I agreed to watch the soldier. I knew him
well and he had told me a bit about his issues. I had started to worry about
him during the previous Guard weekend; he had been prior
active duty Army and had returned from a deployment to Iraq.
I stepped outside with him and we stacked our gear next to each other. I
informed the soldier I would be watching him during the weekend and he
was alright with that. We lit up cigarettes and I asked him if he
thought he would be alright to train over the Guard weekend? He said yes
and I believed him. A moment later he was crying and told me, “I don’t
know why I am crying. Anderson.” I understood why he was crying and told
him that I thought he needed help. I told him it would be a better idea
for him to return home. He told me he started a post-traumatic stress
disorder program later in the week and when I told the acting commander
that the soldier was having problems, he agreed and sent the soldier
home. My friend called me to let me know he made it home and I have not
seen or talked to him since.
Garrett Anderson and Andrew Rothlein pose in front of Alpha Company's first objective during the battle. Fallujah, Iraq, 2004.
Photo by Jose Moracruz.
I drove up to Portland, Oregon and got a job writing parking tickets for a
private company. It took me a few months to check into my new Guard
unit because there were no tank units near Portland, so in the end I
was sent to an infantry unit. I had told the guy placing me that I had
been rated non-deployable and asked him not to send me to a deploying
unit. My infantry unit had deployed to Afghanistan when I got to it, so I
once again found myself in the rear detachment.
I had saved up a little
bit and moved from my friend’s loft into an apartment, and found myself
truly alone for the first time in my life. At first I thought that being
alone is what I had always wanted, but the nights got longer again and
the same weight had been with me. I felt less than cured and was not
sure if there was a cure for how life felt. In January 2010 I once again
found myself in a hospital after strong suicidal ideation.
I got out and this time it did not take long for me to realize that
things were still not fixed. I could feel myself running out of patience
with myself and one day in April 2010 I was walking in Portland,
fearing the next Guard weekend, when I realized that the source for most
of the anxiety in my life was being a member of the National Guard. I
was not a bad soldier and that was part of the problem; it looked like I
was fine, so why would anyone think I wasn’t? Even with two
hospitalizations I was seen as fit for duty though I felt completely
unfit for duty and the pressure was building. It agitated my symptoms
and I felt like someone was going to deploy me even if they were not, and
the fear of deployment agitated these things that literally drove me
insane. I decided that if I valued my life I would write the National
Guard unit a letter of resignation and face the consequences or carry on,
because I knew I would not survive much longer under the status quo,
certainly not until December 2013.
In April of 2010 I wrote something that
changed my life, a letter of resignation…
With proper military respect and to whom it may concern,
I joined the United States Marine Corps in August of 2003, shortly
after graduating high school. After completing the Marine Corps School of
Infantry in February of 2004 I was stationed in Kaneohe Bay Hawaii where I
trained for a deployment to the Philippines specializing in jungle warfare.
When training was completed we set sail from Okinawa and continued on to
Kuwait. In a few months my infantry battalion suffered the loss of fifty-one
brothers, many of whom I had crossed paths with during my then short stint.
Afterward I participated in a combat deployment to northeastern Afghanistan
where my battalion suffered four KIA. Since the loss of so many close friends
I have never been able to reconcile my belief in service with my belief in
life.
I no longer cherish the ability to be combat effective, lost in the
most evil haze of hell that a war can produce. I miss my friends and am often
confused as to why I am alive and they are not, I cannot imagine what it is
like to draw the short straw. This thought consumes me, I find myself unable
to comprehend any sort of meaning in this life, and I miss my friends.
Since my discharge from the Marine Corps I have spent time in two
different mental hospitals, one for an attempted suicide and the other two
years later after the symptoms of a beast of an affliction returned to kill
me again. Being a dumb grunt I do not know much other than that I am still
alive and that I do not have the ability to hurt another human being.
I will not lace up my boots again, and I am aware that there are
consequences for this action. I write this letter as a resignation and not a
declaration of insubordination, I beg for mercy and for benefits that I
earned walking between steel raindrops twice. I hope that I can someday make
peace with the violence that has consumed my twenties, I pray that this
affliction does not consume my thirties on into the rest of my life. I hope
the reader of this letter a successful and safe career, I hope the reader of
this letter finds what they are looking for in life, I thank God for the
United States Military, full of brave souls and too full of sacrifice for me,
if this is delayed cowardice than a coward is what I now am. I will not be
returning phone calls or allowing visitors into my home without a warrant,
this is not personal, it is simply my own paranoia of a large world that I
have seen destroy good men.
Lastly I would like to thank ***** for doing everything
in their power to help a Soldier when he was down.
Fair winds and good luck,
Garrett Phillip Anderson
I expected my cell phone to be assaulted by incoming phone calls that
morning, but nothing came. I felt a wave of fear sweep over me; I knew
military police would probably be at my apartment, maybe after work. I
went home from lunch. I was astonished to find an email from our
training sergeant that explained I would not have to put on my uniform
again and that the unit wanted to help me through this process of
discharge but I had to contact them. I did and the process began.
Since
then I have not had to attend a Guard weekend. I have written for
therapy, and that has led to this film I am working on. I am getting
married soon and live with my fiancé, and have created a more stable support
network. Nothing is fixed, but the pressure being taken off of me
has allowed me to live a more real and fulfilling life.
Location shoot for documentary And Then They Came Home, Colorado, 2012.
Photo by C.J. Maddox.
I was told that
I would go to two review boards for discharge; the first would be a
mental health screening and the next, if I was found not fit for duty at
the mental health screening, would be my actual discharge board. I went
to the first board in Madigan connected to Fort Lewis in Washington
State in January of 2011. Madigan would later be found to have been
lowering PTSD ratings for soldiers to save money at the time I was
seen there. All I can conclude from that is that my story was so fucked
up even those dirty shrinks said I was not fit for duty.
I waited for my discharge board and it never came. In July 2011 I was
called by my unit and told to report for two weeks of annual training. I
explained that I was still waiting for my discharge board and he
explained that my not fit for duty status expired after one hundred
eighty days. I called my father and we got in contact with a
congressional representative who was able to delay my annual training
and start the process again.
In November of 2011 I flew to Georgia for
another fit for duty board and was again found not. I had a second phone
interview after the Madigan story broke and I think that one went well.
I am not clear if I will ever be discharged from the National Guard. I
wish I knew what it felt like to be truly free again. I also wonder: How
many more soldiers like me are out there in this limbo? The unit when
informed went out of its way to help while following the rules of the
system, so if there is blame to be put on delay it is on whatever is
happening above. I recently received a letter from the VA apologizing
for the delay in my case review, and assuring me that they will get back
to me when the process is finished.
Combat operations in Afghanistan are slated to end in 2014; luckily my
contract ends December 2013. In a decade of service my time will not
have known peace. The unit knows I am not fit to serve, the shrinks have
found me unfit to serve, I know I am not fit to serve, and for two and a
half years I have been waiting for the paperwork to be filed.
The only
reason I am better today than I used to be is because I found another
way. I have pages of paperwork from mental hospitals and a film I am
editing to verify how it could have been that combat affected a young
life so deeply. I urge those in similar situations to seek help, because
they will wait for you to die before offering help if you don’t do
anything for yourself. I proudly served my country and fought through
two combat deployments. I am not ashamed of having been so affected, but I
am ashamed of how the system treats warriors who have put their lives
on the line to protect it. This makes me nauseous and I don’t know what
to do with any of this information.
Next to the grave of a relative killed on the last day of World War One.
Photo by C. J. Maddox.
