You break it, you buy it: a war story
BY MARLI GUZZETTA INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
Think of an American soldier story. Where does it take place? Who's in it? What are they doing?

Okay, at ease.

Far more people probably imagined soldiers in battle just now than a soldier getting accustomed to his life back home - and yet that is often where the longest battles are fought, according to Patricia Foulkrod's documentary "Ground Truth," a Nantucket Film Festival feature.

The film explains that men and women who return home from war bring that war with them in their heads, where it never goes away.

For two years, Foulkrod followed soldiers as they enlisted and returned home - paying extra attention to the differences between the soldiers' personalities before going in the war, and then after.

"We don't have a clue of how to take care of an experience we've never been in, and therefore I think we really don't know what we're doing when we put them on the plane in the first place," said Foulkrod, whose father served in WWII, but didn't talk about it.

Even though the filming has stopped, Foulkrod said her lesson on the lives of soldiers is ongoing.

"I've gotten closer to quite a few of the soldiers, and what I also feel is not in the movie is how many of the people in my movie have had breakups and have been really struggling financially - even though they have had honorable discharges," Foulkrod said. "I've known these guys in some cases for two years now and I've witnessed the ups and downs of their lives ....It's day in and day out for these people. They get a good day, then they get a bad week. They have a good month, then they can't pay a bill.... This is what we put people through with war and we are responsible for that."

Foulkrod said she doesn't point fingers at the V.A. "Because the V.A. is trying," Foulkrod added. "You can't say it's the military, because it's the military's job to train you for battle. But day in and day out, when you see what these guys are living through - I think they deserve better."

Foulkrod said she hopes this film will help make soldiers feel less alone. "That's the biggest contribution I could make. Our biggest sin as a nation is that we leave these men and women alone."

NI: How has the way the press covers the war now, with the embedding of journalists and increased media presence overseas, changed the way we understand war?

Foulkrod: We have no concept of war, except for distant clips or sound bytes. We don't show carnage - Why don't you ever see the body of a dead American soldier on the cover of the New York Times or anywhere? You see maybe a burned humvee with the body in the background. One thing I've heard consistently from soldiers back home is how different things look here versus what they look like there. ...We don't know what war is. We live in a country that has experienced war for two days, Pearl Harbor and 9/11, and these guys are experiencing trauma on a daily basis. And because we don't know what it is, we feel we have the luxury to debate it and talk about it. ... Should they come home in a year? Six months? Most of us wouldn't last two days.

NI: How are we supposed to know how to react if we don't see what's really happening?

Foulkrod: If you send people to be bombed, you better get a hold of the idea that you're taking care of these people for the rest of their lives. There is a history in this country of sending people to war every couple of generations and forgetting what we're putting them through. People don't want to get into Vietnam comparisons, but it's very helpful in remembering the toll it takes. The training in the military enables men and women to endure a lot of things a lot of us couldn't, but that's not an excuse for putting them through it. They come home and look okay and smile and try to be a good soldier and blend back into their lives, and it's a huge, huge burden we leave them with. It enrages me that we would let any person walk around with war in their head and not commit to taking care of them for as long as they need to take care of that war in their head.

NI: It seems that this is the most removed our country has ever been from a war we're fighting.

Foulkrod: We wanna wave flags and stick our bumper stickers. ...But what if he needs to call you at 3 in the morning, because his nightmares are making him punch his kid in his sleep by mistake, or throw his wife out of bed, how do you feel then? This country doesn't have a lot of tolerance for an inconvenience, for things we can't fix. ... Many, many people don't know anyone over there, anyone who's served. In part because when soldiers come back, through no fault of anyone, they may blend back in. But there is no sense of troops coming in and out - unless you go to the cities where the bases are and then I'm dumbfounded. ...I think the military feels an enormous weight here. My film is critical not of the military but of how we train these men and women to do what we need them to do, and I believe we take a marginal interest in the rest of their lives. ...I wish that they signed a contract with the US government that says, 'Yes, I will serve you, and then you will serve me for the rest of my life and this is how you will do it.'

NI: What would that contract say?

Foulkrod: I think we need a very honest delineation between National Guard and active duty forever. I think that this generation is getting the brunt of that evolution, because the National Guard was not trained to go to Iraq. They were deployed for the first time in 40 years: How

do you think they're going to do in an insurgency? These are weekend guys; they're Katrina, not Fallujah. There has to be an honest delineation of what it means to serve.

They also need to somehow understand that the dehumanization they are asked to do is their job, not part of who they are as a person. It's part of a job, and are they up for that? It's a hard thing for the military to do, make you aware of what's being done to you - because they're making you what you need to be to take someone's life to defend yourself or your buddy. But I would hope that they would be trained in a way that would help them understand what would happen to them in their psyche. ...And when they come in, we should meet them on the tarmac with counseling and physical therapy people, because they need to get the trauma of war out of their body, have marital and family counseling and help in being able to expect the help. It's still an attitude in the active duty that if you're having problems, you keep them to yourself.

NI: What was the biggest surprise to you in making this movie?

Foulkrod: One of the things I really like about the soldiers I met is that they are smart, with a lot of common sense, and if something doesn't feel like the right thing to do, they may continue to do it, but they do it in a thoughtful way; they're figuring out how to do their job while also doing the right thing. Most people in the military aren't interested in doing the wrong thing.

But I think really the biggest surprise is it's a no win. If you don't pull the trigger, you may endanger someone's life that you care deeply about, and if you do pull the trigger, you're ending someone's life. Millions and millions of dollars in training and machines and you still can't win.

NI: Do you see any good in it at all?

Foulkrod: What I really love about making this film now with Focus is that James Schamus has helped me with looking at the positive things that come out of trauma. The positive things I see coming from this war are really young, smart, great soldiers who are saying, 'Okay, this is not where I wanted to be. This is not what I wanted to do, but this has changed me in a way that makes me want to speak about things - We can inspire them to take that trauma and use it in a way that makes them the kind of people we want in Congress, and the soldiers we want to defend us. And that's interesting and exciting because they weren't drafted, they chose to do this. In some cases, they're rising up, and the rising up is what I find really exciting. There are 30 people running in 2008 that are veterans.

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