In 'The War at Home,' documentary reveals Vt. veterans forever changed

Norwich students Amanda Plachek, center, and Steve Weber, left, talk about their experiences creating the new film.

Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

In 'The War at Home,' documentary reveals Vt. veterans forever changed
By Peter Hirschfeld Vermont Press Bureau - Published: March 16, 2009


NORTHFIELD – Travis Jones deployed to Iraq in February of 2004 and returned a year later looking much the same man.

Appearances can be deceiving.

"I was 28 when I went over to Iraq, and I was still somewhat immature," Jones says. "When I came back, I was a different 29-year-old Lt. Jones."

Jones' story, filmed by student documentarians at Norwich University, lies at the heart of the school's latest cinematic effort. In videotaped interviews with more than a dozen Vermont veterans, students plumb the psychological depths of post-deployment readjustment to catch a rare glimpse of "The War at Home."

"For last three or four years, we've had veterans in class, and they'd all deal with (readjustment) seemingly same way – they ignore it," says William Estill, a professor at Norwich's communications department. "They don't want to talk about it. They don't want it to come up."

Estill and his students saw fodder for a documentary – a chance to spotlight the struggles of a military population suffering in silence.

The interviews, filmed on campus, play like videotaped confessionals.

"It is impossible to explain to somebody all of the thoughts and feelings that go through you, for real, the first time you get in a firefight," a female veteran confides. "… The very first time you have to point your weapon at another person, or even a thing, and pull the trigger, you have got to go inside yourself and you have to re-examine your priorities."

The footage can be difficult to watch. A Vermont Guardsman recounts the last seconds of his friend's life – the pop of the mortar before "the rocks and the dirt and the sound and the fire."

"People think (a soldier) is going to come home a hero, and they're always going to be a hero, be unchanged, be some idyllic warrior youth," the female soldier says. "No, no, no."

"The War at Home" comes two years after the same Norwich class produced "Vermont Fallen," a 60-minute compilation of interviews with family members of Vermont soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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