Carlson’s War: Part 1

0:00Before we start today's show, we want to share a warning that this episode has explicit language, descriptions of violence, and includes mentions mentions mentions of suicide. Okay, here's the show. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a 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.

0:46Now, 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 the end of that, I 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.

1:26And 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.

2:04I 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 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 Quill, Lawrence visits a family where a husband is the one who stays home and a mother goes off to war.

2:46A party at Jane Grimes' house outside Fort Worth means all the enchiladas you can eat, Coors Light, and real Texas hospitality. Dodson is the lead plaintiff 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 his story because a lot of my reporting, as you can hear, is about vets making the transition to civilian life.

3:31And 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 an inmate at Waukesha County Jail.

4:21This 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 could probably ever imagine. Jail is you come in one way and you leave three times worse.

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5:29This message comes from Comcast. Comcast operates the nation's largest converged network, reaching 64 million homes and businesses. With$80 billion invested to expand broadband infrastructure in the U.S., Comcast is actively supporting the goal of bringing broadband to everyone. Learn more about how Comcast is bringing high-speed internet to communities across the country at ComcastCorporation.com. This is a 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.

6:12I 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.

6:28So 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'd gotten 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.

7:11All rise, please.

7:15I could see him from behind in a prison jumpsuit. He stole a quick glance backwards toward all the family and friends who'd come, but then the bailiff told him to face front toward the judge. He was the only black man in the dozens of people in court that I recall. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. And I'm trying to square this thoughtful, decorated combat vet I've 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.

7:53And 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, like, he's going to do it.

8:34Or he's, you know, pretty much he'll die trying. We're here today on the matter of state of Wisconsin versus 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. A felony is a felony operating under the influence. He was arrested in Eau Claire. Loss of driving privileges. Bennett was convicted of at least four felonies. Bail jumping, each of them carried with him up to six years in the state prison system. So the maximum exposure here is 12 years today with six years of confinement.

9:07And so there I am 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.

9:48They 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 and saw 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.

10:28I 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 15, my mom tried to kill herself again. She was in the psych ward. I went to visit her in the psych ward, and 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's released to his mom's parents. They lived up in the town of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, not such an urban setting.

11:05He 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 what 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 down a part-time job and he was on the football team. And then he took up Golden Glove Boxing. And his coach, Johnny Strandlin, said he was polite, coachable, and considerate. But in fact, Zani's wife said, David is the kind of boy you'd love to have as a son.

11:45Carlson actually made it to college on a scholarship. But then his past kind of started catching up with him. So as I went on, like it was hard. I was kind of just spinning my wheels. I started drinking. Drinking became an issue. And so like towards the end of my first semester in college, like I was just like really depressed. I felt like 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.

12:24So 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 a type of purpose.

12:46When we come back, Dave Carlson goes to war.

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13:33It's designed to maximize study time with immersive 10-minute lessons and audio practice for your commute. Plus, tailor your learning plan for specific objectives like travel. Get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50 % off and unlimited access to 25 language courses. Learn more at rosettastone.com slash NPR. 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 extended combat tours. National Guard and Army Reserve troops in Iraq will be staying a bit longer.

14:12Active 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.

14:52And it's just as the Iraq War was starting to get really nasty. He was sent to a base near a town called Duluwea. 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'd 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.

15:40Or I'd get dropped off after mission, and then I'd go on guard duty. Eventually, he started going out 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 PV2, right? Super nervous to approach this individual. And I'm like, can I come with you on tour? Like my snot nose. And he put up with it, right? And sometimes he'd wake up like Cash was asleep from having been out on patrol all night.

16:18And he'd be like, Carlson, yeah, okay, yeah, just, yeah, whatever. Yeah, you can come on patrol with us. Just let me sleep. And 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 then maybe, like, one of the E5s came up to me and was like, why did 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 get like a fierce loyalty to them.

16:54And 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. And 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.

17:31Now, 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, like, say that you brought everybody home, like you're willing to like 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 cash go out and 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.

18:07And 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, that they said, no, I'm not sending a 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 third 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.

18:51And 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 it 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.

19:28But 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. Bauckham was an interpreter. Their interpreter for the ECP burned to death. And that...

20:08take a minute don't worry about it

20:23I'm good yeah take a couple deep breaths whatever have a sip something you never know when that stuff's going to hit

20:37I think there's water. 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 Dulawea, 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.

21:21And they're just back on the streets of the USA. When you came home, are you just... It is home. You're done. And 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 a civilian suddenly. 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 I couldn't... There was people still over there dying. Every day I was kind of tormented, feeling like a coward. just not feeling like it was right.

21:58And so he just starts looking for ways to get back to war. So he volunteers for a second tour. And I didn't even tell my girlfriend at the time, so I didn't tell her until I was headed to the first drill. So after being home for about 20 months, Dave Carlson is back on the battlefield back at 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 it 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. Like I just didn't care.

22:32Like it was like complete calm. I'm seeing tracers everywhere. I'm fucking hearing gunshots. And I'm just calm as 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 a disco. Something is off about his behavior. He's more and more disengaged on the battlefield. And then 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.

23:08I picked him up at the airport, and I could not believe. It was at that time that I coined, there were two phrases. It was the dark place and the Iraq laugh. and his eyes were just completely blank. And he had the 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, Like, I'm like some kind of like Jason Bourne or some shit situation.