--:-- Aisha Roscoe: 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.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: 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 Lawrence: Thanks for having me, Aisha.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So you're embedded with these troops. You're spending all this time with them. What did you learn from that?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And honestly, I had the same questions for me. I could see that being a war correspondent was stressing out my relationships back at home.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And sometimes being at home, I didn't feel like I had any real purpose until I could get back to the wars.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But I thought it was important to chronicle the experiences of these veterans and what happens to them on the home front.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And we've heard your reporting over the years covering a wide range of stories about vets.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In Paris, Quill Lawrence visits a family where a husband is the one who stays home and a mother goes off to war.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: A party at Jane Grimes' house outside Fort Worth means all the enchiladas you can eat, Coors Light, and real Texas hospitality.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Dodson is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the group Paralyzed Veterans of America.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Estimates vary about how many veterans have PTSD, but it's almost certainly a minority.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: More importantly to me right now is that we're all hanging off about 800 feet up, and we're looking out at a gorgeous view of Yosemite.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I came across his story because a lot of my reporting, as you can hear, is about vets making the transition to civilian life.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But there's one group that doesn't really get those benefits, vets in prison.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: There are tens of thousands of veterans currently incarcerated in the United States.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And when you go to prison, most of your VA benefits stop.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And getting over PTSD in prison seems practically impossible.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I wanted to find out what that would be like for a combat vet.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I went looking for a vet to profile, and eventually I found Dave Carlson.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: You have a call from an inmate at Waukesha County Jail.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Jail is the least therapeutic atmosphere you could probably ever imagine.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Jail is you come in one way and you leave three times worse.
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--:-- Announcer: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So I first reached out to Dave Carlson in summer of 2015.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I was interested in his individual story, but I was also trying to answer a question.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And that is, can you ever really get past war? And maybe that was a question for me, too.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So Dave Carlson, he's 31. He's a decorated Iraq war combat vet.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But back then, he was locked up in jail in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He'd been moved to the jailhouse from a prison because he had a hearing coming up.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He'd already served most of four years for a long string of crimes.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Theft, drunk driving, battery.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He'd done most of that stuff after returning home from his second tour in Iraq.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But he'd gotten into more trouble in prison.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And now the judge was going to have to decide whether to add even more time to his sentence.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And we talked on the phone a few times from jail.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But the first time I actually laid eyes on Dave Carlson was September 3, 2015, at his sentencing hearing.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: All rise, please.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I could see him from behind in a prison jumpsuit.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He stole a quick glance backwards toward all the family and friends who come.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But then the bailiff told him to face front toward the judge.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He was the only black man in the dozens of people in court that I recall.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Thank you.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: A lot of people had turned out to support him, though.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: His grandma took the stand.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I have loved David Carlson, my grandson, from the time he was born.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And before the hearing, I talked to a bunch of his war buddies.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Sergeant David Rock said he met Carlson in 2007 at the beginning of his second deployment.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: His old friend Josh Fridgen, who was in Special Forces, He'd known Carlson since 2003 when they met in basic training.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When I think of mental toughness, Dave's one of the people that come right to the forefront of my mind.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like, if he sets his mind on something and he believes he can do it, like, he's going to do it.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Or he's, you know, pretty much he'll die trying.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We're here today on the matter of state of Wisconsin versus David Carlson.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And there were a lot.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: A felony operating under the influence.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He was arrested in Eau Claire.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Loss of driving privileges.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Bennett was convicted of at least four felonies.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Felony.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Bail jumping.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Each of them carried with him up to six years in the state prison system.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So the max exposure here is 12 years today with six years of confinement.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so there I am in the back of the courtroom, and I'm just looking at his Iraq buddies, talking about how respected he was.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I'm just thinking, what the hell happened to Dave Carlson?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: That he could wind up sitting here in a prison jumpsuit.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I've met a lot of combat vets, and Dave Carlson's not the first one I've met in prison.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: As I got to know him, I would find out how the war had affected him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Carlson has diagnosed PTSD.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And vets with PTSD are more likely than other vets to get in trouble with the law and wind up incarcerated.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It's also true that vets with PTSD often had pre-existing trauma and psychological issues before they even joined the military.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: They come with a lot of baggage.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And that was exactly the case for Dave Carlson.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He had a rough upbringing.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: His mom is white.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: She says she was trafficked as a sex worker and struggled with addiction.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: His dad is black.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He was drafted at 18 years old and saw combat in Vietnam.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When I sat down with Carlson earlier this year, it was really our first big in-person interview after years of phone conversations.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He was blunt about his childhood.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: My dad was a crackhead and a pimp.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Nothing but violence, guns, like all kinds of stuff like that.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Drug dealing, all of that stuff.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he blames his dad for a lot of it.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I was angry for a lot, for much of my life.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I was very angry with my dad.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But even his mom, who he loved, couldn't provide much parenting.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: By the time Carlson was a teenager, he was wanted for a string of crimes he'd committed with his older brother.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But then 15, my mom tried to kill herself again.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: She was in the psych ward.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Carlson says that's how he wound up in juvenile detention.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Eventually, he's released to his mom's parents.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: They lived up in the town of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, not such an urban setting.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He was one of the few black kids in town.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And this was a good time for him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He started high school, and he did okay.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: At least that's what his grandma told the judge at his hearing years later.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I can tell you that it was a pleasure always to go to every school conference for David.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he was always on the honor roll.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And all teachers spoke well of him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And his grandma said he got good grades, and he held down a part-time job, and he was on the football team.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And then he took up Golden Glove Boxing.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And his coach, Johnny Strandlin, said he was polite, coachable, and considerate.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: In fact, Johnny's wife said, David is the kind of boy you'd love to have as a son.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Carlson actually made it to college on a scholarship.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But then his past kind of started catching up with him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So as I went on, like it was hard, I was kind of just spinning my wheels.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I started drinking.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Drinking became an issue.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so, like, towards the end of my first semester in college, like, I was just, like, really depressed.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I felt, like, really withdrawn from everybody else.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I couldn't make friends.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I had, like, social anxiety horribly.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So he decided to outrun that past he would enlist.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He wanted to go into the Army, but, you know, he had a felony record as a juvenile.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So they would have had to file this extra paperwork to get a waiver.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So it was the National Guard recruiter was the one that was willing to do the extra work to get me in.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So Carlson joined the National Guard, and he went to basic training.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he said it felt good.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It felt right.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I was like, I'm good at this.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I can do this, and I feel something like, I feel a type of purpose.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When we come back, Dave Carlson goes to war.
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--:-- Quill Lawrence: We're back with the Sunday story and NPR's Quill Lawrence. Dave Carlson enlists in the National Guard.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: National Guard and Army Reserve troops in Iraq will be staying a bit longer.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Active duty troops are already being held longer than expected.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Now Guard and Reserve troops are having their tours of duty extended to as long as a year.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: This is just a couple of years after 9-11.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And now guardsmen basically have to leave their jobs and spend a year in combat.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And that was the case with Dave Carlson.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He was told at the time he signed up that he was headed for war.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He went on his first tour of duty to Iraq at the end of 2004.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It just as the Iraq war was starting to get really nasty.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He was sent to a base near a town called Dulaouia.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So Carlson's National Guard unit was mostly standing watch back at the base rather than going out on patrols.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But Dave Carlson, he wants to do more, and he wants to be out there where the fighting is happening.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he'll go out on patrol with anyone who'll take him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I'd bounce around different squads, like sections going out, depending on, like, my schedule, because I would pull, like, guard duty for, like, eight hours or ten hours, and then I would go on mission with them.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Or I'd get dropped off after mission, and then I'd go on guard duty.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Eventually, he started going out on missions with one particular platoon led by an army sergeant named Alwyn Cash.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Who will later be recognized as one of the heroes of the entire Iraq War.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But at the time, he was just the sergeant that Carlson had to pester about going out on patrols.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I was super nervous.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I was a private.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I was like a PV2, right?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Super nervous to approach this individual.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I'm like, can I come with you on tour? Like my snot nose.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he put up with it, right?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And sometimes he'd wake up like Cash was asleep from having been out on patrol all night.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he'd be like, Carlson, yeah, okay, yeah, just, yeah, whatever.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Yeah, you can come on patrol with us.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Just let me sleep.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And they would talk shit.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like, the other privates and stuff would talk shit and be like, why the fuck do you want to come out with us?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But Carlson did well out there.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: That was meant as a backhanded compliment.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: They're asking Carlson basically, why'd you join the Guard?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Why aren't you in the Army?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And it felt really good.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I felt like my entire life to anybody that accepts me, right?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I just get like a fierce loyalty to them.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so that was, yeah, it was like the best thing in the world.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You know, he felt like he'd found his place.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And maybe, you know, maybe he'd found his new family.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And then it's toward the end of that year-long deployment.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And Cassius Platoon calls his National Guard commander asking if they can have Carlson for the next patrol.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He was just like, I'm not letting you guys go on missions anymore.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Basically, he hears his National Guard commander say, you know what? No.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We've been here for a year.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I want to bring all my guys home and we're just not going to send them out on any more of these patrols.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Now, honestly, to you or me, great call, right?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You want to bring all your guys home.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Who can argue with that?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Well, Dave Carlson can.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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, you're willing to deprive this other company of a resource that they may need.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: In other words, to him, it was like saying, let's not do that, let's let those other guys do that.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Let's let Cash go out and do that.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And this is another really crazy, cruel turn of fate.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It was October 17, 2005.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Sergeant Alwyn Cash and his platoon get ambushed.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Cash lived for like two weeks.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like 90% of his body had third-degree burns on it.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: During this attack, you know, the explosion, somehow, you know, Cash's uniform gets covered with diesel fuel.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But he's going back into his burning vehicle to get his men out.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And then Cash catches fire.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's on fire.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he goes back in several times.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He gets seven of his men out of this vehicle while they're getting shot at.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And then he refuses to get on the medevac until all his men are out.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He gets on last, and he doesn't die of his wounds till over three weeks later at an army hospital in Texas.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Years later, he'll be recognized with a Medal of Honor, one of only eight people to receive the Medal of Honor in the whole Iraq War.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It's the military's highest medal.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You get it for doing things that no one could ever reasonably ask of even a fellow soldier.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Cash was the only black man to get this medal since Vietnam, by the way.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But that's all years down the road.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Right at that moment, all it means to Dave Carlson is, I should have been there.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like, why wasn't I there?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Why did those guys die?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Why did I survive?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And those questions, they still haunt Dave Carlson, even all these years later, when he retells the story.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Uh, Bauckham was an interpreter, their interpreter for the ECP burned to death in that in that uh take a minute don't worry about it I'm good.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Yeah, take a couple deep breaths, whatever, have a sip of something.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You never know when that stuff's going to hit.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We're having this conversation almost 20 years after these men die.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But I can see for a moment he's back in that place, in Dulawea, Iraq.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And at the time Carlson says he's just supposed to move on by November 2005.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: His tour is over and he goes back to Wisconsin.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You know the regular army they come home and they're still in the army and they they're supposed to have some dwell time they're supposed to do a you know a job back here in the states before they're deployed again or before they leave and they're with their same unit.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When you're in the guard, everyone scatters to their towns and cities and goes back to their day job.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And they're just back on the streets of the USA.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When you came home, are you just... You're just home.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You're done.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You're basically... One week in a month, two weeks a year.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And you're going to school.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Yeah.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So it's like you're a civilian suddenly.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Right back to being a civilian.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It was bizarre.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So not at war, but not really a civilian.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so I was just in a really bad headspace.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So eventually I was like, I think part of the nightmares were about the fact that I couldn't, like there was people still over there dying.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like every day I was kind of like tormented, feeling like a coward, just not feeling like it was right.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so he just starts looking for ways to get back to war.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So he volunteers for a second tour.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I didn't even tell my girlfriend at the time.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So I didn't tell her until I was headed to the first drill.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So, after being home for about 20 months, Dave Carlson is back on the battlefield, back at war.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And in his second tour, he's doing well in combat.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But he also clearly not right after his first deployment.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He told me later it was like watching himself from the outside.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He recalled this one battle where it was just like he stopped caring.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I just sat there like I just don't give a fuck.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like I just didn't care.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like it was like complete calm.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I'm seeing tracers everywhere.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I'm fucking hearing gunshots.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I'm just calm as shit.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: There was no sense of urgency.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: There was nothing.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It was like I was just, I'm watching this shit.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And that came back to my mind.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It was like, it's like a disco.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Something is off about his behavior.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's more and more disengaged on the battlefield.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And then when he's not on the battlefield, he's just full of anger.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Near the end of his tour, he's heading for some R&R, and he assaults an airport policeman.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he got out of the guard with an honorable discharge, barely.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When he's released, his mom, Heidi Carlson, is there waiting.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I 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 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I was horrified.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And right away, he just starts spiraling out of control.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's getting drunk.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's fighting.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Escalating, escalating, escalating, thinking that like, yeah, like I'm like some kind of like Jason Bourne or some shit situation.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But really, it's just like I'm like deteriorating psychologically.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like I'm like I'm losing my shit, basically.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He told me a story that at one point he was shooting out streetlights with a Glock and the police converge on him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: The cops were up on the bridge in front of me.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: They're shining the spotlight down.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: They're on the sides.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And they're just basically, they're yelling, drop the weapon, drop the weapon.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So I got it down on my side.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I was just scared to do it, I think.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I just couldn't do it.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like point the pistol at them and just basically suicide by cop.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's eventually taken to a VA psych ward.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: His mom was shocked by what she saw there.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When he was strapped to the bed, just crying and screaming that he was a murderer.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I'm just rocking him like a baby.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: That stay in the psych ward stabilizes him, but not for long.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Carlson starts descending back into drugs and violence, arrests, bar fights, jail time.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: His special forces buddy Josh Fridgen remembers seeing him after he got out of jail.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I was like, holy shit, I think Dave got worse.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So obviously Carlson is making some pretty bad choices here, but there's something bigger going on at this point in America.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We've never fought wars this long with no draft, just the same volunteer army doing one, two, three combat tours.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And the VA and the services it provides, those are optional.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: No one can make you go.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But what that means is combat vets like Dave Carlson, many of them with untreated PTSD, are often in freefall.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I think that sometimes it crosses my mind that maybe I'm crazy.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like, I might be crazy.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: His friends, his mom, they're terrified.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Our lives have been consumed with where's David, what's he doing, is he alive, is he okay?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I'm calling the VA, they're outreach workers, my son is missing, you gotta go find him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Here's what he looks like, sending pictures, sending faxes.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I have a son who served his country, and now he's out in the woods somewhere homeless.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Then one day Heidi Carlson says she hears this guy on the radio, a Vietnam vet named Mike Orban.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Good morning.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Thanks for joining us.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And welcome to another educational segment of Stigma Free Vet Zone.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It's a beautiful...
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so she gets in touch with him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: She called me and she said, I'm desperate.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: My son is in a lot of trouble.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I said, sure, I'd be happy to do that.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he goes down to the bus station.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: In downtown Milwaukee.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And David showed up and noticed immediately he had a big gash on the top of his forehead.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Open gash.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: No bandages, no stitches, no nothing.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Just an open gash.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: David had been going out to the bars at night, taking drugs, getting drunk and all of that sort of thing, and had gotten in fights.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And that's how somebody had taken a pool cue and hit him over the head.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So Mike Orban asked Carlson if he was hungry, and he said, yeah.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So he took him for a burger and fries.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When he sat down, and he's sitting across the table from me, so we're looking right at each other right in the eye.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And all of a sudden, his forehead just fell down on top of his hands.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he started crying.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I don't mean crying.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I mean weeping.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: 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 knew how he felt.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I say, what's going on, man? What's the problem?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He said, I just don't even know who I am anymore.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And this is where we got to ask, what do we owe these guys?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Dave Carlson, with Mike Orban's help, he gets on a bus.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He gets home, and soon enough he gets busted again for DWI and a string of other outstanding charges.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: This time he gets sent to where he's been headed probably for a very long time, the Dodge Correctional Institution north of Milwaukee.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It's there, in probably what's the worst place for a veteran with PTSD, that Dave Carlson begins to find a way out.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: That was probably the big turning point for Dave where he just started kind of rebuilding.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Be sure to listen to the second part of our series about Iraq war veteran Dave Carlson.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Can a combat veteran in prison with PTSD make it on the outside and rebuild his life?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You can listen to part two of Carlson's War right now in the Up First feed.
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