Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq

They are the images the government doesn’t want you to see -- of soldiers returning from “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” wounded for life, physically and emotionally. Many are in their late teens and early twenties. They are double-amputees, paraplegics, burn victims, depressives.

Every day we hear of soldiers killed, and more injured, in Iraq. Yet we see very little of them. Last spring, Nina Berman, a New York-based photographer, decided to take action. She scoured the country, from Prichard, Alabama to Santa Ana, California, interviewing and photographing soldiers, and documented the human costs of war. In her recently published book, Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq, Berman collects her portraits and interviews with soldiers to capture the ongoing war in Iraq in a simple, blunt -- and shocking -- language.

"I’ve been a photographer for many years and I did this book because
I want people to see these pictures," Berman explains. "As a journalist
and as an American living here I feel like there’s something that I
must be able to contribute that isn’t being done. I was too young to do
anything during the Vietnam War but if I don’t do something during this
war then I’ll just feel like I’m as bad as everybody else."

Some of Berman’s photos appeared in the March/April issue of
Mother Jones. Her photo essay, "The Damage Done", drew an enormous response
from readers. Headed to
New Mexico for a book tour with wounded soldiers and their families, she talked with MotherJones.com about the war, yellow ribbons, America’s
violent youth culture, and the “dirty little secrets” of the Iraq
war.

MotherJones.com: Why did you decide to photograph wounded
soldiers?

Nina Berman: In the summer of 2003, I kept hearing all these
news reports about soldiers being wounded, but I never saw any images
on television, or in newspapers, or in magazines. So I felt a
responsibility to show a more realistic picture of the war. There are
actual casualties, soldiers are being injured, and some of these
injuries are really serious. The American public needs to see this.

MJ.com: How did you find returning soldiers?

NB: There are no lists of wounded soldiers that I know of, so
I went on Google and just plugged in words -- like “amputee,” “leg,”
“arm,” “wounded,” “brain damage,” and “local hero comes home” -- and I
found local newspaper reports about wounded soldiers returning home.
From there, I looked to see if they listed a name of either a
politician or someone I could call to get the soldiers phone
number.

I really wanted to get a number of soldiers from around the country.
I didn’t concentrate on one geographic region. Some I photographed at
Walter Reed hospital while on assignment for Time magazine and
two from a military base in Fort Riley, Kansas. The rest, expect for
one or two others, are photographed in their homes.

MJ.com: How have critics responded to Purple
Hearts?

NB: Well, I get feedback on the website -- www.purpleheartsbook.com -- which gets a couple thousand hits a day. Of those, I have received only two negative
responses. Most people, from a wide-range of the political spectrum,
are glad to see these soldiers recognized. That was my intention and I
wanted soldiers to tell their own stories so that someone could not
dismiss Purple Hearts as an anti-war book or a pro-war book. It’s
important to just let the soldiers speak for themselves.

MJ.com: Were you surprised by some of the soldier’s positive
reactions, given the considerable physical and emotional damage they
suffered, to the war and their experiences in Iraq?

NB: I expected bitter soldiers, but as I talked to more
people and family members, I realized that wasn't really the experience
of a wounded soldier returning home. Most of the soldiers I
photographed had literally just been released from the hospital.
They’re still in shock. For them to turn around and say, “I’m blind” or
“I don’t have any legs” and then think that it wasn’t worth it --
that's a very hard leap to make. So I expected more bitterness and the
pictures reveal soldiers who look quite lonely and almost in a state of
shock.

MJ.com: How did you conceive of the layout of the book? Why
did you use the black and white statements alongside small and large
pictures of each soldier?

NB: Well, I wanted the reading of the book to be a sobering
process. The first soldier shown, Jose Martinez, says that he’s the
“perfect picture of the Army” and then the picture shows him so
horribly burned in the face and you cannot believe this is possible.
The pull quotes kind of pit you down one road and, after flipping the
page, you go down another road. The book is meant to be complicated and
complex, and not just a simple quick look at war and its result.

MJ.com: When Jose Martinez says, “I’m this great picture of
the Army,” what struck you about that statement?

NB: When he said it, near the end of the interview, I felt a
great deal of denial in his voice. Earlier he had said that he was glad
this happened to him, because he had previously relied on his physical
appearance and other superficial things -- whereas now he’s realized
that what's inside of him is what's important. But, you know, Martinez
is 20 years old, and I can’t believe that this lesson makes it all okay
for him. I feel it’s his way of finding something good out of something
horrible.

The perfect picture of the Army is something different. Martinez,
like many soldiers I spoke with, really wants to stay in the Army. This
is all they know and their short time in the Army is their first adult
experience in the world. They had jobs, they had routines, and they
were usually pretty good at their jobs. For a wounded soldier it’s all
taken away from you. Not only are you wounded, and your life completely
changed, but you also don’t have the Army structure and the so-called
Army family that many soldiers become attached to.

MJ.com: Most of these soldiers are in their late-teens and
early twenties. What expectations did they have joining the U.S.
Military and what are their future expectations as wounded
soldiers?

NB: Well that’s interesting because when you spend a long
time with them, some bitterness comes out now and again. Almost all of
them have had difficult experiences completing their discharges. This
is a massive bureaucratic problem for soldiers, and it's critical to
make certain they’re compensated fairly. What happens is they get
wounded and sent to a hospital, usually to either Walter Reed or Brook
Army, and begin the process of trying to get discharged. If you’re
really wounded -- a quadriplegic, a double-amputee or totally blind --
you’re not a deployable soldier and you should be discharged. But I
just spoke with a soldier yesterday who’s waited a year to get
medically discharged. This is a major difference for wounded soldiers.
If you’re not medically discharged you still get paid a crappy
substandard soldier pay, whereas once you’re medically discharged you
become a disabled veteran and begin collecting some actual benefits.
These guys are stuck in the system for months and months and months,
and all of them are quite frustrated by this. If the military were
smart they’d get their act together because it leaves a sour taste in
soldier’s mouths.

I asked them all what expectations they had had about the war, and a
lot of their answers were really shocking. One soldier said he thought
it would be fun, that he would be jumping out of planes. A couple of
soldiers said they watched Desert Storm on TV as kids and thought it
looked really cool. One soldier watched war movies as a kid and said
American soldiers were always treated “awesome” in the world. He’s
saying this and he doesn’t have a leg. That’s how “awesome” he was
treated.

I also started asking them how they defined freedom and democracy,
and some couldn’t even answer the question. For Jose, freedom was about
being able to play video games or go to the movies. It was striking how
simple these responses were, for soldiers being told that they were
going to Iraq to liberate the people and bring them freedom and
democracy.

MJ.com: What do the soldiers think when Americans say that
“I’m against the war but I support the troops”?

NB: Well, I would really side-step political questions about
whether they were in favor of the war or not because when I asked that
question most soldiers tended to give robotic responses, saying: “I’m a
soldier and I have no political feelings.” One soldier, though, whom I
met at Walter Reed, said to me, “Look, whatever the book does or
whatever you do, just make sure you say that people support the
troops.” So I’m not sure what they think it means. I think, for me,
the banner “support the troops” is an almost meaningless expression. I
saw that banner all over the Republican convention, but then you see
Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits getting cut, or you talk to soldiers who
don’t even have appropriate equipment. So I don’t really know what
“support our troops” means. If you really want to learn about the war
and support the troops, head to the local VA and learn about the war
and support members of Congress who are going to fund the Veteran’s
Administration -- instead of just putting a banner in your window or
wearing a yellow ribbon.

MJ.com: That reminds me of what Spc. Robert Acosta, a twenty
year-old soldier from Santa Ana, California, said about how Americans
“watch action movies and glorify all of this stuff.”

NB: Right, Robert Acosta was probably the most articulate in
the book. He’s become quite an activist. He recently appeared in an ad
working with this group called Operation Truth and this morning, we were on the radio
together. Since I met him, he’s made quite a substantial leap in his
thinking about the entire war.

MJ.com: What influenced that transformation?

NB: I asked Robert about it the other day, because he was a
very rare unguarded soldier and he gave me a lot of hope when I met
him. When I first spoke with him, and started talking about politics,
he remembered being one of those military kids who was worshipped as a
hero, one of those kids who just used to say, “I’m a soldier and I have
no political feelings.” But I asked him what changed and basically,
when he was injured, the military tried to screw with him. First they
wanted to make him a hero, giving him a bronze star for his injury [a
grenade was thrown into his Humvee near Baghdad International Airport
and he lost his right hand and use of his left leg]. But then they
turned around and decided that his injury was his fault. He felt
incredibly betrayed. They tried to say he shouldn’t have been in the
Humvee in the first place and he saw, first hand, the military
hypocrisy at work and that started changing his thinking.

MJ.com: Do these soldiers feel their voices and situations
are acknowledged in the mainstream press?

NB: All the soldiers wanted to participate in my book because
they felt like their voices weren’t being heard. Some soldiers have
been on TV. For example, Martinez is still living pretty much at Brook
Army hospital so when they get a public relations request, they put
Martinez out there. Jeremy Feldbusch, who is now brain-damaged and
blind, works with the Wounded Warriors project and speaks on television
shows. But, in comments on the website, people seem surprised by these
images and that’s something I have a hard time understanding because,
man, here we are 18 months into this war and these images should be
commonplace by now. When you have almost 8,000 injured in combat and
another 15,000 or so injured in combat support, you should be seeing
these images all the time. You look at Time magazine, which
funded part of this project, and they have really only produced one
story on wounded soldiers.

MJ.com: How did the soldiers react when it become known there
were never any weapons of mass destruction?

NB: It was interesting. Two soldiers that I talked to seemed
to buy into the whole reason for war. Then I asked them about WMDs, and
their entire thinking changed and you could see their brain flip. Lt.
Jordan Johnson, the one woman in the book, said it was a major
disappointment because she supposedly had a mission and that mission
was based on something that did not exist. And one soldier, Corey
McGee, who had a rough trip stationed in Fallujah, said he bought into
the whole 9/11 and Iraq equation. But when I asked him about WMDs, he
said it makes you wonder if everything else they say is even true or
not. I felt that, in many ways, I was the first person who talked with
these soldiers about the broader issues of the war. Their whole
understanding of the war, and how they process their injuries, depends
on how much information they have access to and whom they talk to.

MJ.com: Did any of the soldiers talk about the Vietnam
War?

NB: One soldier, Sgt, Josh Olson, who’s an amputee up to the
hip, had relatives in Vietnam. He had the view that U.S. hands were
tied in Vietnam and that we should have finished the job. He was also
very hard-core about the war in Iraq, saying we’re going to have to
kill a lot of people and “if they want to go to Allah, I’m going to
send them to Allah.”

What I found, though, is that Vietnam Veterans are very interested
in these sorts of soldiers. Purple Hearts' afterword is written
by Tim Origer, a Vietnam veteran who returned from Vietnam at 19 as an
amputee, works with Veterans for Peace and is making contacts with
these soldiers. Many Vietnam vets are super, super upset about this
war. They identify with these wounded soldiers and basically see the
whole nightmare unfolding for a second time.

MJ.com: I want to ask you about the book's afterword. Tim
Origer writes that books like Purple Hearts “can awaken [our
contemporaries] from their comfortable and complacent dreams.” Do you
think Purple Hearts can have this type of impact? What else
needs to emerge to change the culture of war?

NB: Well, for me, it comes down to basically two things with
this book. One is let’s start getting a real look at war. If you want
to start sending your sons and daughters to war then don’t have this
cartoon version of what is going to happen to them. You know, they are
not going to be action heroes coming home in a blaze of glory. So let’s
face up to that. That was a really important reason for me to do this
book because to me we’re all kind of complicit in this experience
here.

And the second thing is that I hope the text gives people a little
bit of an understanding of the kind of youth culture that exists in
America, and what these youths know, what they don’t know, and what
they imagine about the rest of the world. A lot of these soldiers come
from very poor communities and the Army was the only thing out there.
The Army recruiters are in their school every week, while corporate
recruiters never enter these schools. The only people that are showing
up in these high schools are Army recruiters in snappy uniforms with
smiling faces.

I just got an e-mail off my site from this couple in Hawaii saying
what can I do, the recruiters are coming to the school all the time and
taking away all these children. I also made a ten-minute movie -- which
records these soldiers in their own voices -- and I hope to get this
movie shown in public schools. That’s what I’m hoping to do, that’s the
next round.

Basically, I’ve been a photographer for many years and I did this
book because I want people to see these pictures. As a journalist and
as an American living here I feel like there’s something that I must be
able to contribute that isn’t being done. I was too young to do
anything during the Vietnam War but if I don’t do something during this
war then I’ll just feel like I’m as bad as everybody else.

MJ.com: Who’s the most compelling figure for you in the
book?

NB: Well Acosta is amazing and so thoughtful because he is
the only one who talked about the confusing emotions when the enemy
gets hurt and what that does to you. Tyson Johnson is important because
his situation is just so bad. I keep in touch with him and his mom. His
house was destroyed in the hurricanes last month and he’s just been
screwed over so badly. And Sam Ross, who is blind amputee living alone
in a trailer.

MJ.com: What happened with Tyson Johnson and his National
Guard $2999 bonus pay?

NB: Basically, he was in the National Guard and received a
bonus for joining the regular Army. He then suffered massive internal
injuries and became 100 percent disabled and, therefore, could not
fulfill his three-year contact. His credit report shows he owes the
government back all this money, so he was deemed a credit risk when he
tried to rent an apartment. Supposedly this is being sorted out for
him. ABC did something on Tyson last week and they interviewed some
three-star General, who said they would fix it, but I talked with Tyson
a couple of days ago and it still hasn’t been fixed. But you know the
bottom line is that he lives in this crappy town, away from anyone to
advocate for him. And these soldiers don’t know how to advocate for
themselves. They’re taught to take orders and not challenge and
question authority, and this makes it really hard for them, especially
if they are in pain twenty-four hours a day, which many of them
are.

MJ.com: What about the rhetoric around troops that
politicians use in campaign rallies and commercials?

NB: They say, “support our troops” or they show up at a
veteran's parade and that’s it. Or, like Acosta says, they show the war
and America changes the channel. For me, the best possible solution is
to humiliate politicians publicly, because that’s the only way I can
figure out how to make them move.

MJ.com: Are there any similar projects underway that attempt
to document the considerable number of Iraqi casualties and
injuries?

NB: The only one I know about, and maybe a little off
subject, is a short movie about what happens to soldiers who’ve killed
someone in combat. Because that’s the thing nobody wants to talk about.
And if you want to find a soldier who has post-traumatic stress, it’s
not so much the one who saw his buddy killed; it’s the one who did the
killing himself. I don’t get into that too much in the book but it’s
something as a country that we should start talking about. Because when
you send 19 year-olds to Iraq and they kill a bunch of people, what are
they supposed to do when you send them home?

That’s why I think matching up Vietnam vets with these Iraqi vets
would be a really great thing. When soldiers say only other soldiers
can understand, that’s what they’re talking about: what it means to
kill. It’s not just the guys with the guns that are killing in Iraq,
it’s the truck drivers who are coming back really messed up because
their orders are to run over anything that doesn’t get out of the way.
In a country with a big urban population, with lots of children, they
are running over children. That’s the dark dirty little secret that
people don’t want to talk about. Here are our wonderful innocent
liberators over in Iraq killing people. Not just bad people, but all
people.