Thank You For Your Service

Aieti is arrested for domestic violence. What exactly happened depends on the recounting of events. Aieti claims he found Theresa smoking then breastfeeding, became upset and swore at her. She then panicked and called the police. Aieti’s wife, Teresa, claims Aieti hit her repeatedly, and the arresting officer says there were marks on Theresa’s neck and face. 

After the incident, Aieti is mandated to talk to his case manager at WTB about his arrest. The case manager gives Aieti money to buy Theresa roses. Aieti is so confused and overwhelmed by trying to do simple tasks that he goes home and asks his wife where he can buy roses, and then, in surrender, simply hands her the cash. 

Aieti continues to work hard in the program, even getting memory training with a worker. He sees some progress and takes a college math class. The teacher is Kent Russell, the man whom Kristy Robinson had once been engaged to. Aieti enjoys both Russell and the class.

Another soldier in the program kills himself. Aieti skips the memorial service. He’s been to too many and feels it won’t help him.

Fred Gusman, who started the treatment center Schumann goes to, had an abusive father who was also a veteran. When Gusman was 8, his mother took Fred and they moved in with his grandmother, a religious woman who told him again and again that there is good in everyone if you look hard enough.

Gusman graduated with a degree in child development and a grad degree in social work. He worked at the VA hospital and coaxed Vietnam Vets into therapy, starting the first residential treatment program for those veterans. He became successful by not just starting at the point of their PTSD, but reaching back into their earlier life. It was a program without time limits. But the VA changed the program, making it shorter and shorter over the years, until Fred was about to retire.

Instead, he was given the opportunity to start a veteran’s residential program on the grounds of a veteran’s hospital in California. He would be privately funded, and he could run it the way he saw fit. Over the years, he treated thousands of veterans. 

We see some of the soldiers who live in the Veteran’s Home, those from earlier wars who sit all day, drinking and talking. The new veterans from Iraq and these older vets never speak or interact. But the new soldiers, Schumann included, know that if they don’t get better while in the program, they will be those guys one day.

Schumann is doing well at the center, participating in it all, even the recreation. He is about to start Trauma Group, the toughest but most important stage of his treatment. Meanwhile, Saskia seems to be coming unhinged herself, sending up to 50 texts a day, in addition to calling and mailing. She wants Schumann to come home because Jaxon, still not talking at 18 months, is getting tubes in his ears. Schumann is torn: does he go home, or start on Trauma Group? 

Ultimately, Schumann goes home for a few days for the surgery. While there, he and Saskia fight horribly, and then apologize. He returns to California, but Saskia keeps on texting and fluctuating between anger, fear, and guilt. The counselors from the center call to help her understand what Schumann is facing. She is still angry that she isn’t getting any help—only her husband is. Schumann calls and says he’ll come home. Saskia insists she doesn’t want him to, because then she’ll be guilty when he kills himself. Finkel writes:

He swings the car around and heads west, away from Saskia and back to Fred. He will tell him everything. His guilt over Doster. His guilt over Emory. His guilt over Jaxson. His guilt over Zoe. His guilt over Saski. His guilt over the way he grew up. His guilt over all of it, all the way back to the beginning. That’s his decision, to finally stop dying and instead turn himself over completely to someone who has been dealing with fuck-ups like him forever (222).

We learn more about the depths that the soldiers and their loved ones endure as they come home to another kind of war. Finkel writes:

And so their lives now: trying to recover from the trying they did during the war. Emory may have bitten a wrist. DeNinno may have overdosed. Aieti may forever hear Harrelson. Schumann may have come the closest of all. But the fact is that three years after their war ended, all of them are still here and still at it, as are all of the soldiers from the unit, as is every other affected person in this cluster of war wounds. They are, if nothing else, all still alive, and it is something they hang on to like some kind of battle victory, right up until they hear about Danny Holmes and realize that as hard as they try, the war keeps trying, too (225).

Danny Holmes met his fiancée, Shawnee, at a party, a year after he returned from Iraq. She was 19 and he was 30. He was sad; she was attracted to him regardless. Soon, his war demons were overtaking the relationship, as they had so many others. He would look at graphic images from the war, would show her and ask if she still thought the same way of him.

Holmes had an older brother who was bipolar and hanged himself. It nearly killed their mother, and Holmes took great care of her. Now, Holmes himself was spiraling out of control, and Shawnee begged him to get help. He started behaving erratically and, one day, was clinging too much so Shawnee put him off all day, then went out, had too many drinks, and ended up spending the night in jail. She couldn’t call home because she had the only phone, the cell they shared between them. Holmes hanged himself while he was home alone with their baby. Shawnee came home to find him suspended above their stairway. She goes over the details of the night over and over, and Holmes’s mother keeps muttering questions to her dead son while looking at his box of ashes.

Amanda reaches out to Saskia once more, while Schumann is still in treatment in California. Ostensibly, Amanda messages Saskia about the money the Schumanns had borrowed. As they message back and forth, they empathize with each other about the pain the other is going through. Then they go back to their day. Saskia is upset her air conditioning is on the fritz. The neighbors from across the street head down to the basement with her to check things out and see if it can be fixed. Little Jaxson has fallen into the pool and has to be rushed to the ER. He survives, and Saskia texts Schumann to tell him about it. He tells her they are even now. Later, he tells her he can’t sleep thinking of all the death he’s seen and caused. She tells him he didn’t cause it, but he doesn’t agree. They both are hungering for forgiveness.