Carlson’s War: Part 1

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Okay, here's the show.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So Quill, welcome.

Speaker 2 Oh, thank you, Aisha.

Speaker 1 Now, 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 And so you're embedded with these troops. You're spending all this time with them.
What did you learn from that?

Speaker 2 Well, besides just seeing the war from their perspective,

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 And then kind of just stop paying attention to the the wars. 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And so the beat for me for NPR covering veterans started out as a way to get home.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I thought it was important to chronicle the experiences of these veterans and what happens to them on the home front.

Speaker 1 And we've heard your reporting over the years covering a wide range of stories about vets.

Speaker 4 In Paris Quill, Lawrence visits a family where a husband is the one who stays home and a mother goes off to war.

Speaker 2 A party at Jane Grimes' house outside Fort Worth means all the enchiladas you can eat, Coors Light, and real Texas hospitality.

Speaker 2 Dodson is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the group Paralyzed Veterans of America. Estimates vary about about how many veterans have PTSD, but it's almost certainly a minority.

Speaker 2 More importantly to me right now is that we're all hanging off a about 800 feet up and we're looking out at the gorgeous view of Yosemite.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I came across his story because a lot of my reporting, as you can hear, is about vets making the transition to civilian life.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But there's one group that doesn't really get those benefits, vets in prison.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And eventually I found Dave Carlson. You have a call from Dave

Speaker 2 Carlson, an inmate at Waukesha County Jail.

Speaker 1 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. Jail is

Speaker 1 the least therapeutic atmosphere you can probably ever imagine.

Speaker 2 Jail is, you come in one way and you leave three times worse.

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Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 So I first reached out to Dave Carlson in summer of 2015. I 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?

Speaker 2 and maybe that was a question for me too

Speaker 2 so dave carlson he's 31 he's a decorated iraq war combat vet but back then he was locked up in jail in waukeshaw 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.

Speaker 2 He'd done most of that stuff after returning home from his second tour in Iraq.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 6 All right, please.

Speaker 2 I could see him from behind in a prison jumpsuit.

Speaker 2 You know, 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.

Speaker 2 He was the only black man in the dozens of people in court that I recall.

Speaker 7 Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 His grandma took the stand.

Speaker 6 I have loved David Carlson, my grandson, from the time he was born.

Speaker 2 And 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 His old friend Josh Friggen, who was in Special Forces, he'd known Carlson since 2003 when they met in basic training.

Speaker 8 When I think of mental toughness, Dave's one of the people that come right to the forefront of my mind. Like

Speaker 8 if he sets his mind on something and he believes he can do it, like he's going to do it.

Speaker 8 Or he's, you know, pretty much he'll die trying.

Speaker 7 We're here today on the matter of state of Wisconsin versus David Carlson.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 7 is a felony operating under the influence of arrested in Eau Claire with driving privileges. Bennett was convicted of at least four felonies in the date.

Speaker 7 Bail jumping, each of them carrying with them up to six years in the state prison system. So the maximum exposure here is 12 years today with six years of

Speaker 7 confinement.

Speaker 2 And 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.

Speaker 2 And I'm just thinking, what the hell happened to Dave Carlson that he could wind up sitting here in a prison jumpsuit?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's also true that vets with PTSD often had pre-existing trauma and psychological issues before they even joined the military.

Speaker 2 They come with a lot of baggage and that was exactly the case for Dave Carlson.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 5 My dad was a crackhead and a pimp.

Speaker 5 Nothing but violence, guns, like all kinds of stuff like that, drug dealing, all of that stuff.

Speaker 2 And he blames his dad for a lot of it. I was angry for a lot,

Speaker 5 for much of my life.

Speaker 5 I was very angry with my dad.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 He 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 2 And his grandma said he got good grades and he held on a part-time job and he was on the football team.

Speaker 6 And then he took up golden glove boxing and his coach Zonnie Strandlin said he was polite, coachable and considerate. In fact Zonnie's wife said David is the kind of boy you'd love to have as a son.

Speaker 2 Carlson actually made it to college on a scholarship, but then his past kind of started catching up with him.

Speaker 5 So as I went on, like it was hard. I was kind of just spinning my wheels.
I started drinking. Drinking became an issue.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 I would have like social anxiety horribly.

Speaker 2 So he decided to outrun that. past he would enlist he wanted to go into the army but you know he had a felony record as a juvenile so they would have had to file this extra paperwork to get a waiver.

Speaker 5 So it was the National Guard

Speaker 5 recruiter, it was the one that was willing to do the extra work to get me in.

Speaker 2 So Carlson joined the National Guard and he went to basic training. He said it felt good.
It felt right.

Speaker 5 I was like, I'm good at this. Like, I can do this.
And I feel something like, I feel a type of like purpose.

Speaker 1 When we come back, Dave Carlson goes to war.

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Speaker 1 We're back with the Sunday story and NPR's Quill Lawrence.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 11 National Guard and Army Reserve troops in Iraq will be staying a bit longer. Active duty troops are already being held longer than expected.

Speaker 11 Now Guard and Reserve troops are having their tours of duty extended to as long as a year.

Speaker 2 The new order comes from the United States. This is just a couple years after 9-11.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 He went on his first tour of duty to Iraq at the end of 2004, and it's just as the Iraq war is starting to get really nasty. He was sent to a base near a town called Dulawiyah,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So Carlson's National Guard unit was mostly standing watch back at the base rather than going out on patrols.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 5 I 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, or I'd get dropped off after mission, and then I'd go on guard duty.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But at the time, he was just the sergeant that Carlson had to pester about going out on patrols.

Speaker 5 I was super nervous. I was a private.
I was like a PV-2, right?

Speaker 5 Super nervous to approach this individual. And I'm like, can I come with you on tour? Like my snot nose.
Like, and he, and he put up with it, right?

Speaker 2 And sometimes he'd wake up. like Cash was asleep from having been out on patrol all night.
And he'd be like, Carlson, yeah, okay, yeah, just, yeah, whatever. Yeah, you can come on patrol with us.

Speaker 2 Just let me sleep.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 2 But Carlson did well out there.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 And it felt really good.

Speaker 5 I've felt like my entire life to anybody that accepts me, right? I just get like a fierce loyalty to them. And so that was, yeah, it was like, it was like the best thing in the world.

Speaker 2 You know, he felt like he'd found his place and maybe, you know, maybe he'd found his new family.

Speaker 2 And then it's toward the end of that year-long deployment. And Cash's platoon calls his National Guard commander asking if they can have Carlson for the next patrol.

Speaker 5 He was just like, I'm not letting you guys go on missions anymore.

Speaker 2 Basically, he hears his National Guard commander say,

Speaker 2 you know what? No, we've been here for a year.

Speaker 2 I want to bring all my guys home, and we're just not going to send them out on any more of these patrols. Now, honestly, to you or me, great call, right? You want to bring all your guys home.

Speaker 2 Who can argue with that? Well, Dave Carlson can.

Speaker 5 Even though we've been doing this all year, for you to fucking make it home and be able to say that you

Speaker 5 brought everybody home, like you're willing to

Speaker 5 deprive this other company of a resource that they may need.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 this is another

Speaker 2 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 any more guard out.

Speaker 2 But it was definitely within those couple of weeks. it was October 17th 2005 Sergeant Alwin Cash and his platoon get ambushed cash lived for like two weeks

Speaker 5 like 90% of his body had third-degree burns on it

Speaker 2 during this attack you know that the explosion somehow you know cash's uniform gets covered with with diesel fuel

Speaker 2 but he's going back into his burning vehicle to get his men out and then cash catches fire He's on fire. And he goes back in several times.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 He gets on last, and he doesn't die of his wounds till over three weeks later at an Army hospital in Texas.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.
But that's all years down the road.

Speaker 2 Right at that moment, all it means to Dave Carlson is:

Speaker 2 I should have been there. Like, why wasn't I there? Why did those guys die?

Speaker 2 Why did I survive?

Speaker 2 And those questions they still haunt Dave Carlson, even all these years later when he retells the story.

Speaker 5 Bacham was an interpreter, their interpreter for the ECP, burned to death, in that

Speaker 2 take a minute, don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 I'm good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, take a couple deep breaths, whatever, have a sip of something.

Speaker 2 You never know when that stuff is going to hit.

Speaker 2 I think there's water. Yeah, we're having this conversation almost 20 years after these men die,

Speaker 2 but I can see for a moment he's back in that place in Dulawiyah, Iraq.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 a job back here in the States before they're deployed again or before they leave. And they're with their same unit.

Speaker 2 When you're in the Guard, everyone scatters to their towns and cities and goes back to their day job. And they're just back on the streets of the USA.
When you came home, are you just

Speaker 2 home? You're done.

Speaker 5 You're basically one week in a month, two weeks a year.

Speaker 2 And you're going to school. Yeah.
So it's like you're a civilian suddenly.

Speaker 5 Right back to being a civilian. It was bizarre.

Speaker 2 So not at war, but not really a civilian.

Speaker 5 And so I was just in a really bad headspace.

Speaker 5 So eventually I was like, I think part of the nightmares were about the fact that like I couldn't, like there was people still over there dying like every day I was kind of like tormented feeling like a coward

Speaker 5 just

Speaker 2 not feeling like it was right and 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 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 like 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.

Speaker 5 And that, that came back to my mind. It was like, it's like, it's like a disco.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Near the end of his tour, he's heading for some RNR, and he assaults an airport policeman.

Speaker 2 And he got out of the guard with an honorable discharge, barely. When he's released, his mom, Heidi Carlson, is there waiting.

Speaker 12 I picked him up at the airport, and

Speaker 12 I could not believe.

Speaker 12 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 this craziest laugh.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 2 And I was horrified. And right away, he just starts spiraling out of control.
He's getting drunk. He's fighting.

Speaker 5 Escalating, escalating, escalating, thinking that like,

Speaker 5 like, I'm like some kind of like Jason Bourne or some shit situation but really it's just like i'm like deteriorating psychologically like i'm like i'm losing my shit basically he told me a story that at one point he was shooting out streetlights with a glock and the police converge on him the cops were up on the on the bridge in front of me they're shining the spotlight down they're on the sides and they're just basically they're yelling drop the weapon drop the weapon so i got it down on my side and like i i'm like consciously sitting there like i i need to just like raise it up and just like fucking end this shit right And I was just scared to do it, I think.

Speaker 5 I just couldn't do it, like

Speaker 5 point the pistol at them and just basically suicide by cop.

Speaker 2 He is eventually taken to a VA psych ward. His mom was shocked by what she saw there.

Speaker 12 When he was strapped to the bed, just crying and screaming that he was a murderer. And I'm just rocking him like a baby.

Speaker 2 That stay in the psych ward stabilizes him, but not for long. Carlson starts descending back into drugs and violence, arrests, bar fights, jail time.

Speaker 2 His special forces buddy Josh Frigen remembers seeing him after he got out of jail. And I was like, holy shit, I think Dave got worse.

Speaker 2 So obviously Carlson is making some pretty bad choices here, but there's something bigger going on at this point in America.

Speaker 2 We've never fought wars this long with no draft, just the same volunteer army doing one, two, three combat tours. And the VA and the services it provides, those are optional.
No one can make you go.

Speaker 2 But what that means is combat vets like Dave Carlson, many of them with untreated PTSD,

Speaker 2 are often in free fall.

Speaker 5 I think that sometimes it crossed my mind that like maybe

Speaker 5 I'm crazy. Like I might be crazy.

Speaker 2 His friends, his mom, they're terrified.

Speaker 12 Our lives have been consumed with where's David? What's he doing? Is he alive? Is he okay? I'm calling the VA. It's their outreach workers.
My son is missing. You got to go find him.

Speaker 12 Here's what he looks like, sending pictures, sending faxes. I have a son who served his country, and now he's out in the woods somewhere homeless.

Speaker 2 Then one day, Heidi Carlson says she hears this guy on the radio, a Vietnam vet named Mike Orbin.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 13 Good morning. Thank you for joining us and welcome to another educational segment of Stigma-Free Vet Zone.

Speaker 2 It's a beautiful beautiful. And so she gets in touch with him.

Speaker 13 She called me and she said, I'm desperate. My son is in a lot of trouble.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 And I said, sure, I'd be happy to do that. And he goes down to the bus station in downtown Milwaukee and David showed up.

Speaker 13 I noticed immediately he had a big gash on the top of his forehead.

Speaker 13 Open gash. no bandage, no stitches, no nothing, just an open gash.
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.

Speaker 13 And that's how somebody had taken a pool cue and hit him over the head.

Speaker 2 So Mike Orbin asked Carlson if he was hungry and he said, yeah. So he took him for a burger and fries.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And all of a sudden, his forehead just fell down on top of his hands and he started crying. And I don't mean crying.
I mean weeping.

Speaker 13 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. And I say, well, what's going on? What's the problem?

Speaker 13 He said, I just don't even know who I am anymore.

Speaker 2 And this is where we got to ask, what do we owe these guys?

Speaker 2 Dave Carlson, with Mike Orbin's help, he gets on a bus. He gets home.
And soon enough, he gets busted again for DWI and a string of other outstanding charges.

Speaker 2 And this time, he gets sent to where he's been headed probably for a very long time, the Dodge Correctional Institution north of Milwaukee.

Speaker 2 It's there, in probably what's the worst place for a veteran with PTSD,

Speaker 2 that Dave Carlson begins to find a way out.

Speaker 2 That was probably the

Speaker 2 big turning point for Dave where he just started kind of rebuilding.

Speaker 1 Be sure to listen to the second part of our series about Iraq War veteran Dave Carlson. Can a combat veteran in prison with PTSD make it on the outside and rebuild his life?

Speaker 1 You can listen to part two of Carlson's War right now in the Up First feed.

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