Original air date: November 16, 2023
KATIE WHITE: This is Bringing War Home, the show that connects listeners with the history of war through sharing wartime objects and the personal stories that surround them.
This collaborative project is led by Utah State University professors Susan Grayzel and Molly Cannon from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. I’m Katie White, the producer of the series.
Americans reacted differently to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than those in the past. Research shows public disinterest and a lack of knowledge about the wars, which lasted 20 years in Afghanistan, eight years in Iraq, and cost more than 900,000 lives due to direct war violence.
Major combat operations ended in Iraq in 2011 and a pull-out of American troops in Afghanistan didn’t happen until 2021, yet a poll in 2018 found that about 40 percent of American voters were either unsure about whether the country was still at war or believed the War on Terror had ended.
The casualties did not just come on the battlefields. The Costs of War Project published a report in 2021 that estimated more than 30,000 suicide deaths of active duty personnel and veterans of the post 9/11 wars. The report identifies public disinterest and ignorance of the wars as a contributing factor to suicidal ideation.
The U.S. withdrew the last of its troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 and the Taliban quickly regained power. Left behind were tens of thousands of Afghan allies, people who had worked alongside U.S. service members like Ben Dawson.
Dawson served 23 years in the Marine Corps, doing two tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. He worked with Afghan and Iraqi contractors, translators, police, and civilians — and the objects he collected during his time at war tell a story about the connections he formed with those people — and the grief he carries with him today.
BEN DAWSON: The whole time I was in the Marine Corps I was in infantry. So on the news, when you saw people kicking in doors and doing that stuff, that's the job I did. I was an anti-tank missile man. So I didn't actually kick in doors. I drove around on a Humvee and had a three-foot missile that if they wanted me to shoot at whatever, that's what I did. So I was always on the frontlines, I guess. I was blown up three times, was shot at a few times and had to do likewise.
My Afghan deployments were actually relatively peaceful compared to Iraq. My time there was a lot easier and not near as stressful, where that second deployment to Iraq, I thought I wasn't going to come back.
The first time I went to Afghanistan, we were sent to be instructors at a police academy. We taught the Afghani recruits to become police officers. So we worked hand in hand with Afghani police, as well as Department of State individuals.
Our facility was the first to introduce females into the police force. When things started going the way they went, I would guess that a majority of those women that were taught have been probably killed because they don’t want women to be in any kind of position of authority.
While at each area, I picked up souvenirs or purchased things or just - like I have some sand from Iraq and from Afghanistan. So those are things I just collected. I have some objects that have made me realize how lucky I am to be alive and to be where I'm at.
And other objects I have, that makes me remember people that I've served with, especially if they've passed on. It's just things to remember them by and know that they were good human beings, and they will be missed. And this is my way of kind of carrying their story forward.
I've got a little rock that one of my translators gave me. It's - it's just a flat rock with a picture of, I don't know, some sort of human on it. You know, we were just having a heart to heart conversation, because at that time, he was feeling kind of low, because they wouldn't allow him to go into the mess hall because he was Iraqi. And so he felt discouraged that even though he was helping us, he was still kind of being ostracized and not allowed to get food. And so I look at that and remember sitting out in the sun early one morning talking with him about, you know, the world's not fair sometimes. And he took that rock up off the ground and drew that little person on it and handed it to me and said, 'I want you to have this as a remembrance.'
And so I was like, 'Okay.'
When I'm at home, or if I have people visiting and I show them this stuff then there's questions. Saying, 'Well why do you have this, or tell me more about that.' And it opens up dialogue, which I think talking about the things that I have went through has definitely been a saving grace as far as like, keeping my sanity. You know, from the time we got out of Iraq or Afghanistan, we had therapists there to talk to us and I've been able to talk to my family. I have my journal writings. So I've been able to talk about it which I think has allowed me to heal and not harbor these - these skeletons in my closet. Now they don't bother me as much.
WHITE: Support for Bringing War Home comes from Utah State University, the National Endowment for the Humanities Dialogues on the Experience of War, and Utah Humanities. More resources available at upr.org
