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Before we start today's show, we want to share a warning that this episode has explicit language, descriptions of violence, and includes mentions of suicide. Okay, here's the show. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday Story. Veterans Day is coming up this week, so I wanted to invite NPR's Quill Lawrence onto the show to share a story he's been working on for 10 years.
Quill has covered vets in the Department of Veterans Affairs for NPR since 2012, and for almost that whole time, he's been following the story of one combat veteran's journey home. So, Quill, welcome. Oh, thank you, Aisha. Now, just to brag a little bit, NPR is the only mainstream national network that has consistently had a dedicated veterans reporter.
And, Quill, that started with you. How did you get the job? Yeah, I was a war correspondent for about 15 years, and then that was working at NPR bureaus in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the beginning of those wars, I could just cruise around either of those countries in a beat-up taxi and just sort of keep a low profile.
As the wars got more intense, the only way I could get around was to embed with U.S. troops, so that's when I started getting to know troops. And so you're embedded with these troops, you're spending all this time with them. What did you learn from that?
Well, besides just seeing the war from their perspective, as the years passed on and they were doing deployment after deployment, I just started thinking, what the hell are these troops going to do when they get home? Really, just how are they going to relate to people who haven't been to war? And how are they not going to resent the country that sent them to fight and possibly die at war and then kind of just stop paying attention to the wars? And honestly, I had the same questions for me.
I could see that being a work correspondent was stressing out my relationships back at home. And sometimes being at home, I didn't feel like I had any real purpose until I could get back to the wars. But I really wanted to come home. And so the beat for me, for NPR covering veterans, started out as a way to get home.
But, you know, I thought it was important to chronicle the experiences of these veterans and what happens to them on the home front. And we've heard your reporting over the years covering a wide range of stories about vets. In Paris, well, Lawrence visits a family where a husband is the one who stays home and a mother goes off to war. A party at Jane Grimes' house outside Fort Worth means all the enchiladas you can eat, Coors Light, and Real Texas Hospitality.
Johnson has a new plankton in a lawsuit filed by the group Paralyzed Veterans of America. Estimates vary about how many veterans have PTSD, but it's almost certainly a minority. More importantly to me right now is that we're all hanging off about 800 feet up and we're looking out at the gorgeous view of Yosemite. But for all my coverage over the years, there is one story I've been following the longest and that isn't really over yet, and that's Dave Carlson.
I came across this story because a lot of my recordings you can hear is about vets making the transition to civilian life. And the VA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, can be very helpful with this, with disability benefits, with health care, therapy, home loans, career counseling. But there's one group that doesn't really get those benefits, vets in prison. There are tens of thousands of veterans currently incarcerated in the United States.
And when you go to prison, most of your VA benefits stop. And getting over PTSD in prison seems practically impossible. And I wanted to find out what that would be like for a combat vet. And I went looking for a vet to profile, and eventually I found Dave Carlson.
You have a call from Dave Carlson. You can give me that. This week on The Sunday Story, Quill tells us about Dave Carlson and the challenges he faced over 10 years as he moved from war to desperation to incarceration. Jail is the least therapeutic atmosphere you've probably ever imagined.
Jail is you come in one way, you leave three times worse. This is The Sunday Story, and today I'm handing the mic over to NPR's Quill Lawrence. He's been interviewing Iraq War veteran Dave Carlson over the past 10 years. So I first reached out to Dave Carlson in summer of 2015.
I was interested in his individual story, but I was also trying to answer a question. And that is, can you ever really get past war? And maybe that was a question for me, too. So, Dave Carlson, he's 31.
He's a decorated Iraq War combat vet. But back then, he was locked up in jail in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He'd been moved to the jailhouse from a prison because he had a hearing coming up. He'd already served most of four years for a long string of crimes.
Theft, drunk driving, battery. He'd done most of that stuff after returning home from his second tour in Iraq. But he got into more trouble in prison. And now, the judge was going to have to decide whether to add even more time to his sentence.
And we talked on the phone a few times from jail, but the first time I actually laid eyes on Dave Carlson was September 3rd, 2015, at his sentencing hearing. I could see him from behind in a prison jumpsuit. He'd still a quick glance backwards toward all the family and friends who'd come, but then the bailiff held him to face front toward the judge. He was the only black man in the dozens of people in court that I recall.
Take a seat, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. And I'm trying to swear this thoughtful, decorated combat vet I'd been on the phone with, with this criminal defendant sitting in the dock. A lot of people had turned out to support him, though.
His grandma took the stand. I have loved David Carlson, my grandson, from the time he was born. And before the hearing, I talked to a bunch of his war buddies. Sergeant David Rock said he met Carlson in 2007 at the beginning of his second deployment.
When it came to how to lead and how to kind of represent yourself, David was definitely on the list of people that I kind of held in an iconic standpoint. His old friend Josh Fridgen, who was in Special Forces, he'd known Carlson since 2003 when they met in basic training. When I think of mental toughness, Dave's one of the people that come right to the forefront of my mind. Like, if he sets his mind on something and he believes he can do it, he's going to do it.
Or he's, you know, pretty much a guy trying. We're here today on the matter of State of Wisconsin v. David Carlson. And as the court proceedings begin, the judge almost immediately starts reading off a list of Dave Carlson's past run-ins with the justice system.
And there were a lot. ...felony operating on the individual arrested in Eau Claire, loss of driving privileges. And so there I'm in the back of the courtroom, and I'm just looking at his rock buddies, talking about how respected he was. And I'm just thinking, what the hell happened to Dave Carlson?
That he could wind up sitting here in a prison jumpsuit. I've met a lot of combat vets, and Dave Carlson's not the first one I've met in prison. As I got to know him, I would find out how the war had affected him. Carlson has diagnosed PTSD, and vets with PTSD are more likely than other vets to get in trouble with the law and wind up incarcerated.
It's also true that vets with PTSD often had pre-existing trauma and psychological issues before they even joined the military. They come with a lot of baggage, and that was exactly the case for Dave Carlson. He had a rough upbringing. His mom is white.
She says she was trafficked as a sex worker and struggled with addiction. His dad is black. He was drafted at 18 years old in South Combat in Vietnam. When I sat down with Carlson earlier this year, it was really our first big in-person interview after years of phone conversations.
He was blunt about his childhood. My dad was a crackhead and a pimp. Nothing but violence, guns, like all kinds of stuff like that, drug dealing, all of that stuff. And he blames his dad for a lot of it.
I was angry for a lot, for much of my life. I was very angry with my dad. But even his mom, who he loved, couldn't provide much parenting. By the time Carlson was a teenager, he was wanted for a string of crimes he'd committed with his older brother.
But then at 15, my mom tried to kill herself again. She was in the psych ward. I went to visit her in the psych ward. She told me that if I turned myself in, she'd go get long-term help.
Carlson says that's how he wound up in juvenile detention. Eventually, he was released to his mom's parents. They lived up in the town of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, not such an urban setting. He was one of the few black kids in town.
And this was a good time for him. He started high school, and he did okay. At least, that's why his grandma told the judge at his hearing years later. I can tell you that it was a pleasure always to go to every school conference for David.
And he was always on the honor roll. And all teachers spoke well of him. And his grandma said he got good grades, and he held out a part-time job and a football team. And he took a Golden Glove boxing.
And his coach, Johnny Stramblin, said he was polite, coachable, and considerate. In fact, Zannie's wife said, David is a kind of boy you'd love to have as a son. Carlson actually made it to college on scholarship. But then his past kind of started catching up with him.
So as I went on, it was hard. I was kind of just spinning my wheels. I started drinking. Drinking became an issue.
And so towards the end of my first semester in college, I was just really depressed. I felt really withdrawn from everybody else. I couldn't make friends. I had social anxiety horribly.
So he decided to outrun that past he would enlist. He wanted to go into the Army, but he had a felony record as a juvenile. So they would have had to file this extra paperwork to get a waiver. So it was the National Guard recruiter was the one that was willing to do the extra work to get me in.
So Carlson joined the National Guard, and he went to basic training. And he said it felt good. It felt right. I was like, I'm good at this.
I can do this. And I feel something like, I feel all type of like purpose. When we come back, Dave Carlson goes to war. We're back with the Sunday Story and NPR's Quill Lawrence.
Dave Carlson enlists in the National Guard. And by the time he's ready to deploy, it's becoming clear that National Guard units are going to be doing expanded combat tours. National Guard and Army Reserve troops in Iraq will be staying a bit longer. However, active duty troops are already being held longer than expected.
Now Guard and Reserve troops are having their tours of duty extended to as long as a year. This is just a couple of years after 9-11. And all of the recruiting zeal and people signing up in big numbers after that is running into the reality that Iraq is not going to be a quick or easy war. And now guardsmen basically have to leave their jobs and spend a year in combat.
And that was the case with Dave Carlson. He was told at the time he signed up that he was headed for war. He went on his first tour of duty to Iraq at the end of 2004. And it's just as the Iraq war is starting to get really nasty.
He was sent to a base near a town called Duluia. And the name of that town actually just sends chills down my spine because I was in Iraq at that same time. And I know just how much violence and how much killing was going on in that town around that time. So Carlson's National Guard unit was mostly standing watch back at the base rather than going out on patrols.
But Dave Carlson, he wants to do more. And he wants to be out there where the fighting is happening. And he'll go out on patrol with anyone who'll take him. I bounce around different squads, like sections going out depending on like my schedule.
Because I would pull like guard duty for like 8 hours or 10 hours. And then I would go on mission with them. Or I'd get dropped off after mission and then I'd go on guard duty. Eventually, he started going on missions with one particular platoon led by an army sergeant named Alwyn Cash.
Who will later be recognized as one of the heroes of the entire Iraq war. But at the time, he was just the sergeant that Carlson had to pester about going out on patrols. I was super nervous. I was a private.
I was like a PD2, right? Super nervous to approach this individual. And I'm like, can I come with you on tour? I must not know.
And he put up with it, right? And sometimes he'd wake up. Cash was asleep from having been out on patrol all night. And he'd be like, Carlson, yeah, okay, yeah, just whatever.
Yeah, you can come on patrol with us. Just let me sleep. But they would talk shit. Like the other privates and stuff would talk shit and be like, why the fuck do you want to come out with us?
But Carlson did well out there. But then a couple of the specialists and maybe like one of the E-5s came up to me and was like, why'd you join the Guard? That was meant as a backhanded compliment. They're asking Carlson basically, why'd you join the Guard?
Why aren't you in the Army? And it felt really good. I felt like my entire life to anybody that accepts me, right? I just feel like a fierce loyalty to them.
And so that was, yeah, it was like the best thing in the world. You know, he felt like he'd found his place. And maybe, you know, maybe he'd found his new family. And then it's toward the end of that year-long deployment.
And Cassius Platoon calls his National Guard commander asking if they can have Carlson for the next patrol. He was just like, I'm not letting you guys go on missions anymore. Basically, he hears his National Guard commander say, you know what? No, we've been here for a year.
I want to bring all my guys home. And we're just not going to send them out on any more of these patrols. Now, honestly, to you or me, great call, right? You want to bring all your guys home.
Who can argue with that? Well, Dave Carlson can. Even though we've been doing this all year, for you to fucking make it home and be able to say that you brought everybody home, like you're willing to deprive this other company of a resource that they may need. In other words, to him, it was like saying, let's not do that.
Let's let those other guys do that. Let's let Cassius Platoon do that. And all these other guys that he's starting to feel a loyalty to, guys he's been under fire with. Let's let them go out.
And this is another really crazy, cruel turn of fate. You know, I'm not sure if it was on that day that that call came through, but they said, no, I'm not sending more guard out. But it was definitely within those couple of weeks. It was October 17th, 2005.
Sergeant Alwyn Cash and his platoon get ambushed. Cash lived for like two weeks. Like 90% of his body had 30-degree burns on it. During this attack, you know, the explosion, somehow, you know, Cash's uniform gets covered with diesel fuel.
But he's going back into his burning vehicle to get his men out. And then Cash catches fire. He's on fire. And he goes back in several times.
He gets seven of his men out of this vehicle while they're getting shot at. And then he refuses to get on the medevac until all his men are out. He gets on last. And he doesn't die of his wounds until over three weeks later at an army hospital in Texas.
Years later, he'll be recognized with the Medal of Honor. One of only eight people to receive the Medal of Honor in the whole Iraq war. It's the military's highest medal you get for doing things that no one could ever reasonably ask of even a fellow soldier. Cash was the only black man to get this medal since Vietnam, by the way.
But that's all years down the road. Right at that moment, all it means to Dave Carlson is, I should have been there. Like, why wasn't I there? Why did those guys die?
Why did I survive? And those questions, they still haunt Dave Carlson even all these years later when he retells the story. Bachum was an interpreter for DCP, burned to death. In that, in that.
Take a minute, don't worry about it. I'm good. Yeah, take a couple deep breaths, whatever, have a sip or something. You never know when that stuff's going to hit.
We're having this conversation almost 20 years after these men die. But I can see, for a moment, he's back in that place, in Dulouia, Iraq. And at the time, Carlson says he's just supposed to move on. By November 2005, his tour is over, and he goes back to Wisconsin.
You know, the regular army, they come home, and they're still in the army, and they're supposed to have some dwell time. They're supposed to do a job back here in the States before they're deployed again, or before they leave. And they're with their same unit. When you're in the Guard, everyone scatters to their towns and cities and goes back to their day job.
And they're just back on the streets of the USA. When you came home, you're done, you're basically... One week in a month, two weeks a year. And you're going to school.
Yeah. So it's like you're civilian. Right back to being a civilian. It was bizarre.
So not at war, but not... really a civilian and so i was just in a really bad headspace so eventually i was like i think part of the nightmares were about the fact that like i couldn't like there's people still over there dying like every day i was kind of like tormented feeling like a coward um just not feeling like it was right and so he just got selected for ways to get back to war so we volunteers for a second tour and i didn't tell my girlfriend at the time so i didn't tell her until i was headed for the first drill so after being home for about 20 months dave carlson is back on the battlefield back to war and in his second tour he's doing well in combat but he's also clearly not right after his first deployment he told me later was like watching himself from the outside he recalled this one battle where it was just like he stopped caring i just sat there like i just don't give a fuck i didn't care like it was like complete calm i'm seeing tracers everywhere i'm fucking hearing gunshots and i'm just calling shit there was no sense of urgency there was nothing it was like i was just i'm watching this shit and that came back to my mind it was like it's like it's like a disco something is awful about his behavior he's more and more disengaged on the battlefield and when he's not on the battlefield he's just full of anger near the end of his tour he's heading for some r&r and he assaults an airport policeman and he got out of the guard with an honorable discharge barely when he's released his mom heidi carlson is there waiting i picked him up at the airport and i could not believe um it was at that time that i coined there were two phrases it was the dark place and the iraq laugh and he his eyes were just completely blank and he had this craziest laugh it was very forced and very shallow and he's like yeah mom didn't make it through this one so good they really got your son this time and he was just going on and on and on and i was horrified and right away he just starts spiraling out of control he's getting drunk he's fighting escalating escalating escalating thinking that like yeah like i'm like something like jason born or some shit situation but really it's just like i'm like deteriorating psychologically like i'm like i'm losing my shit basically he told me a story that at one point he was shooting out streetlights with a block and the police converge on him the cops are up on the on the bridge in front of me they're trying to spot like down on the sides and it was basically they're yelling drop the weapon drop the so i got down on my side and like i'm like consciously sitting there like i need to just like raise it up and just like fucking end this shit right and i was just scared to do it i think i just couldn't do it like point a pistol at them and just basically suicide by cop he's eventually taken to a va psych ward his mom was shocked by what she saw there when he was strapped to the bed just crying and screaming that he was a murderer and i'm just rocking him like a baby that stay in the psych ward stabilizes him but not for long carlson starts descending back into drugs and violence arrests bar fights jail time his special forces buddy josh friggin remembers seeing him after he got out of jail and i was like oh shit i think they've got worse so obviously carlson is making some pretty bad choices here but there's something bigger going on at this point in america we've never fought wars this long with no draft just the same volunteer army doing one two three combat tours and the va and the services it provides those are optional no one can make you go but what that means is combat vets like dave carlson many of them with untreated ptsd are often in free fall i think that sometimes across my mind like maybe i'm i mean i'm crazy like i might be crazy his friends his mom they're terrified our lives have been consumed but where's david what's he doing is he alive is he okay i'm calling the va it's their outreach workers my son is missing you gotta go find him here's what he looks like sending pictures sending faxes i have a son who served his country and now he's out in the woods somewhere homeless then one day heidi carlson says she hears this guy on the radio a vietnam vet named mike orbin and he's talking about a lot of the same things from his perspective as having returned from vietnam and not found the help he needed for a long time good morning thank you for joining us and welcome to another educational segment of sigma free beautiful and so she got in touch with him she called me and she said i'm desperate my son is in a lot of trouble she said can you go down to the greyhound bus depot in milwaukee wisconsin and give my son enough money to buy a ticket so he can get back home to minneapolis uh and i said sure i'd be happy to do that and he goes down to the bus station and down to milwaukee and david showed up uh i noticed immediately he had a big gash on the top of his forehead uh open gash no no bandage no stitches no nothing just an open gash david had been going out to the bars at night taking drugs getting drunk and all that sort of thing and had gotten in fights and that's how somebody had taken a fool to you and hit him over the head so mike orbin asked carlson if he was hungry and he said yeah so he took him for a burger and fries when he sat down and he's sitting across the table from me so we're looking right each other right in the eye and all of a sudden his forehead just fell down on top of his hands and he started crying and i don't mean crying i mean weeping and i just looked at him and my heart was just breaking for him because i knew not exactly what he was thinking but i certainly know how he felt and i said what's going on what's the problem he said i just don't even know who i am anymore and this is where we got to ask what do we owe these guys dave carlson with mike orbin's help he gets on a bus he gets home and soon enough he gets busted again for dwi and a string of other outstanding charges and this time he gets sent to where he's been headed probably for a very long time the dodge correctional institution north of milwaukee it's there and probably what's the worst place for a that dave carlson begins to find a way out that was probably the big turning point for dave where he just started kind of rebuilding be sure to listen to the second part of our series about iraq war veteran dave carlson can a combat veteran in prison with ptsd make it on the outside and rebuild his life you can listen to part two of carlson's war right now in the up first feed