Student Veterans

In a landmark study, two researchers studying combat stress during World War II concluded that after sixty days of continuous combat, 98 percent of soldiers ended up with severe psychological problems—the remaining 2 percent, they decided, had already possessed “aggressive psychopathic personalities.” Jon “Johnny” Kuskie is one of the former. At the ripe age of 22, he’d already completed three tours in Iraq. First the invasion, then the assault on Fallujah, then a back and forth between Fallujah and Ramadi. He was a machine gunner, and unlike Warner who recalled instantly the fire fight in Nasiriyah, Kuskie’s had so many kills that he had to ponder the question for a while before he could recollect his first one.

In his last deployment to the Fallujah-Ramadi area, he saw so much combat that one out of every five Marines in his platoon was killed in action—that’s eight guys. He is fine, he insists, but every now and then, he wakes up screaming. But really, he’s OK with it, honest. “Every time we lost a guy, we felt like we needed to get a kill,” he explained. “I guess everyone handles it differently, but the big majority of the guys in my unit were just all about payback.”

Kuskie is now an Agricultural Business major at Chadron State College in northwest Nebraska. But in his head, he is still over in Iraq. He is still in it. He is still a Marine. With one finger always on the trigger, he learned to shut himself off, to dial down his humanity, and 24 months in Iraq had ingrained the pattern deep into his psyche. “I didn’t learn a ton of handy job skills,” he confessed. “I ran around with a machine gun.”

Last semester, the whole screaming thing scared off his girlfriend. But over the phone, Kuskie sounded an upbeat note. “I go to school on the GI Bill,” he said. “It’s a great deal. I get a check and it covers my tuition and my living expenses... I don’t have a job… I don’t do anything but go to school.”

For college administrators, the issues veterans bring with them to campus can be overwhelming. “Some vets have a lot of resentment, some are trying to struggle with the violence they witnessed,” explained Lori Berquam, the dean of students at UW-Madison. “I don’t know what burden they’re carrying, what life they’ve lived. Here’s a 19-year-old person who truly had to witness some horrific things. I will never ever be able to understand that.”

At UT, Corbin tries to keep her burden private. “When I came home, I was just in shock,” she said, sputtering. In November 2005—just a few months after coming home to Texas—her husband got called back into active duty from the reserves. In April 2006, he was sent to Iraq. She worried constantly, especially after he appeared in a homemade insurgent video on CNN. The video showed him standing in the street as a sniper shot and wounded the man next to him. Corbin is still home alone with their three-year-old son, counting down the days until his return.