Our stories will be ones with emotional resonance that give insight and information which will inspire the general public to have a deeper understanding of the issues and become engaged. More importantly, these will be stories that veterans, who may be suffering from some form of PTSD or TBI, and their families, will identify with. “Oh my God,  that’s what’s going on with us!” By sharing in the similar experiences of others as seen in Beyond the Wall, veterans and their families may be able to talk about their own situation, better identify their needs, and seek treatment. 

THE STORIES

Beyond the Wall will be made up of compelling portraits of the lives of five veterans, which will include their families and the communities they live in. As each story unfolds, there may also be medical professionals and those experienced in treating PTSD/TBI or other combat related disorders who will be part of the story, and who can lend depth and information. The profiles in Beyond the Wall will not be told one at a time. Rather, the profiles will be woven together into an unfolding drama that builds on itself to reach a deeper experience and understanding of living with PTSD/TBI and all of its ramifications.

 

The following stories are suggestions of the types of stories we will seek out for Beyond the Wall. They are illustrations of the real life stories we will bring together in the film to portray a broad range of experience and outcomes with regard to PTSD and TBI.

 

ROBERT

Robert was born in Phoenix Arizona and raised in a small community outside of town. After graduating from high school in 1999, he enlisted in the Marine Reserves, where he was assigned to the 6th Motor Transport Battalion. Moving northward in 2003 during the invasion of Iraq, his unit ran into heavy resistance in Nasiriyah, where a thousand Iraqis, including many civilians, died in the fighting. In April, Robert wrote his girlfriend that he had seen and done horrible things. "Life is never going to seem the same, and all I want is to erase the past month, pretend it didn't happen."

In July, the 6th Motors returned home. When Robert first filled out discharge papers, he wrote that he had memories of dead people. But fearful that he might be looked down upon by his fellow squad mates, on the final debriefing questionnaire he checked "no" to the question asking whether he needed psychiatric help.

Robert returned to his home in Arizona, where he enrolled at a nearby Community College. Shortly thereafter, he began to display symptoms of mental illness. He threw the dog tags that he wore around his neck and that he claimed were from Iraqi soldiers at his sister and told her that he was a murderer. From that point, he went downhill. His symptoms now included vomiting and severe nightmares. By the spring, he was also drinking heavily and missing his classes. He couldn't sleep, he kept a flashlight by his bed to check for camel spiders, the kind he used to see in Iraq, and he suffered from hallucinations.

But Robert effectively internalized his demons and was able to mask what was going on from those around him. At one point, he did reluctantly agree to go for a psychiatric evaluation at the VA, after he had totaled the family car, and his drinking had become overly excessive. But he downplayed the true nature of his internal well being, fearing that the members of his unit would find out and feel that he was mentally “weak.”

His parents were obviously concerned, but had no idea of the depth of his trauma. Holding out hope, they thought he would get through it; that he would settle down and finally put the past behind him. They were tragically wrong. Seventeen days after returning from the hospital, Robert succumbed to his demons and hung himself from a beam his parent’s basement.

TYLER and SUSIE

As young parents, Tyler and Susie felt compelled to serve their country. After enlisting, they left their hometown of Boise, Idaho to serve in Iraq where they each experienced the unnerving, often brutal realities of war. Returning home to parent their two young boys who had been with their grandparents during their tour of duty, they tried to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives. Susie is very quiet and won’t talk much about her experience in Iraq. Her primary goal is to protect her two young boys.

Tyler, by Susie’s account, has untreated PTSD. His inability to successfully deal with his PTSD has left him unable to work, depressed, guilty, and angry. Yet he continues to seek solutions. He recently joined a local Veterans group in Boise as a speaker in classrooms and seminars. He finds that the more he speaks out, the more he seems to cope and heal.

Susie is dealing with her own PTSD issues but finds it hard to find time to devote to herself. Her primary focus is on being a caretaker for her two boys and Tyler. The stress for each of them, in their mutual role as spouse and parent is compounded because of the ‘double-dose’ of war’s impact.

Beyond the Wall follows them as they each take a different path to recovery. Tyler finds it therapeutic to speak out as a member of the Veterans group. Susie is making progress through connecting to a small support group of military family members. The film will look at how war’s footprint has affected their ability to put aside their internal armor and be emotionally available to each other and their boys. And it will document how each of them are slowly, but successfully moving forward.

Jonathan Schnauber, Veteran

The day after 9/11, Jonathan Schnauber was deployed for what would be the first of eight assignments over a two-year period with the Massachusetts Army National Guard. His missions included a tour of duty in Afghanistan where he experienced first hand the intensity and trauma of war.

After his last tour of duty Jonathan was finally home with his fiancé and their two daughters. But his journey was far from over. Within weeks of his return his fiancé told him that their relationship was over. They agreed she would keep their children.

Over the next year, Jonathan drank heavily and isolated himself from the world around him. His mood swings became extreme and his ex-fiancé, who had agreed to let him stay at the house until he could finish school, would say again and again that she was sick of walking on eggshells around him.

As he worked to finish his degree, Jonathan's drinking and isolation increased, and his mood swings intensified. The pain of losing everything and his inability to adjust to life at home after serving his country in Afghanistan was overwhelming. One morning he found himself contemplating how far he had fallen, he felt hopeless, lost, and alone. He went to his room and took down pictures of his two daughters. He sat on his bed apologizing to them for not being the father that they deserved, and asked God why this had to be the way his life had turned out.

This was the low point of his life, but it was also the turning point for Jonathan's process of recovery. Eventually recognizing that he suffered from PTSD, Jonathan was determined that he did not have to live this way. He finished his degree, graduating cum laude, and dedicated himself to working through his illness and helping other veterans who might also be afflicted. With the help of a fellow veteran, Jonathan created the Veterans and Service Members Association (UMass Amherst), which focuses on providing re-integration help to service members and veterans, providing them with the guidance and support needed to find academic and future success in life. The group also supports the family members of service men and women when their loved ones have been deployed.

A frequent public speaker to veterans groups and families, Jonathan is pursuing a Masters degree in Social Work, with a focus on veteran's issues. In addition to serving as an advisor on Beyond the Wall, he may also work on the project as an Associate Producer, helping to locate veterans and their families for possible inclusion in the film.

ALAN

Alan graduated from high school in Manchester New Hampshire in 1968, and was drafted into the Army. His tour of duty in Vietnam as a decorated infantry platoon leader was cut short when he was badly wounded during a firefight. His platoon regularly encountered close quarters combat, and he regularly looked into the faces of the North Vietnamese soldiers he was killing.

In one typical raid into a remote village, Alan saw an elaborate irrigation system made out of bamboo. He thought, “this beautiful creation couldn’t possibly be created by the enemy”, and he was relieved to find that no one was in the hooch when he entered. Then he saw the hammock swing and he raised his rifle to fire. The “soldier” in the hammock and Alan screamed in their own languages back and forth at each other in fright, and somehow managed to agree not to shoot. Then the man suddenly reached back into his hammock. Thinking he was going for a gun, Alan shot him in the face, point blank. An instant later, he realized that the man was reaching for a family photo to share with him.

This incident, and many others, haunted Alan for years after his discharge from the military. His duty was to kill or be killed, and he did it, with lasting consequences. Alan still has the photo of the man he killed in the hooch that day, smiling there along with his wife and children.

Alan’s experiences in Vietnam have influenced every dimension of his life. Beyond the Wall examines his search to put the past aside. It follows his struggle returning from Vietnam, a marriage, a divorce, several broken and failed relationships, and finally his search for meaning, community and stability. Alan’s story has taken a positive new life and shape, because of years of therapy and finally his ability to reach out to others. The film will look closely at how Alan’s experience of war left its footprint on his former and current wives. We will see and hear how they faced their challenges on their journey with Alan, and finally, how they all have learned to live positively again in war’s aftermath.

ANNA

Anna recently separated and divorced from her husband of five years. She had worked tirelessly to get him the help he needed to begin the healing process of his war experience. His tour in Iraq left him with severe PTSD/TBI from a blast, which also killed four of his platoon mates. Unable to care for himself, and with her inability to find appropriate medical/mental care for him, Anna left her teaching job in Tallahassee and the couple journeyed to Baltimore to seek refuge with her parents.

After exhaustive efforts to forge their way through the ‘system’ of veteran support services, the family could no longer handle his extreme behavior. They were forced to ask him to leave the family. Beyond the Wall follows Anna, her parents and her ex-husband on their individual, often painful, roads to recovery. 

BOB and BARBARA

Bob, who suffered through his own recovery after serving in Vietnam, is now struggling to survive the resurgence of alcoholism and depression, as he grapples with the deployment of all three of his sons who are serving as pilots in Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Bob has maintained a full time, successful career as a bank President, and has been able to establish close emotional bonds with his sons. Now, as they enter a world far too familiar to him, it not only rips open the scars of his own experiences as a pilot in Vietnam, but it also draws tightly on a father’s fears for the basic survival of his children.

Bob’s wife Barbara struggles to be a pillar of strength for them all, in spite of the increasing medical toll the stress has taken on her health. They have joined an AA support group and Bob attends a veterans family support group regularly. Both acknowledge that they each have to find their own way to heal.

Beyond the Wall will look at Bob and Barbara’s journey, and assess their sons’ needs to uphold strong military values instilled as part of the family foundation, and the sometimes-confusing messages from their parents.

MARK

When Mark, a gunnery sergeant in the Marines, returned to Sacramento California from a job handling dead bodies in Iraq, he became increasingly paranoid, jumpy and fearful. He moved into his garage, began eating M.R.E.’s, wore his camouflage uniform, drank heavily and carried a gun at all times, even to answer the doorbell.

According to his mother, “it was like I put one person on a ship and sent him over there, and they sent me a totally different person back.” In high school Mark had excelled academically and was a three-letter athlete. He exhibited no symptoms of mental instability or depression. Full of promise, and feeling the call of duty, he enlisted in the Marines shortly after 9/11.

A well-respected and decorated noncommissioned officer who did not want to endanger his chance for advancement, Sergeant Mark did not seek help for the PTSD that would later be diagnosed by government psychologists. “The Marine way,” Mark would say, “was to suck it up.” Although PTSD is often very treatable, many do not seek or get such help. Mark was no exception.

Paranoid, alienated and alone, Mark’s problems mounted. Unable to hold down a job, he began a series of burglaries in and around Sacramento. Then when his girlfriend finally left him, and after a night of heavy drinking, Mark was arrested for armed robbery at a local convenience store. During his trial he said he did not remember the night.

Beyond the Wall will tell the story of the impact of Mark’s behavior and consequential arrest on the entire family, particularly his mother, as she learns to grieve the loss of her son and find a way to reclaim her own sense of life.   

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