Matt the Vet

I saw Matt arrive a few months ago from another prison. He’s a vet – Post 9/11 – and served two tours in Afghanistan on the Hindu-Kush Range, the mountainous region dividing Afghanistan from Pakistan. I recognized Matt when he walked in; he and I had been at the jail together. He sat there awaiting sentencing – and DOC transfer – for bank robbery. He used a shotgun and robbed two banks in the greater Richmond area of a little over $50,000. “When I mustered out, I couldn’t find a decent job,” he told me back then. For those two robberies Matt received 9 years each – two sentences to be run “consecutively,” i.e. one after the other. Eighteen years, a PTSD rating, a purple heart (shrapnel wound to the leg) … “Thank you for your service to your country.”

            When I first met Matt he was very angry and bitter. He had enlisted after 9/11 to defend his country. Then, he climbed to the ranks of Sargent and did multiple deployments while people at home waved flags, put bumper stickers on new cars that said “we support our troops” – yet less than 1% of the population had anyone in uniform – and the country knew nothing of the places their sons and daughters were sent to fight and die. They cared even less about the ramifications of America’s political decisions being made which effected lives of those troops. Benjamin Franklin said, “Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel flees.” Old Ben understood modern America.

            This generation of vets – the post 9/11 young men and women – are no different than the Vietnam vets. America talks a good game about service, but the political consensus, the political will is “fuck them.” Harsh? Yes. But 9/11 vets have higher PTSD rates, higher homelessness, unemployment, suicides, and incarceration rates than other returning vets … and still no one seems to care.

            Matt’s not the bitter, angry young man he was when I met him in 2009. And he’s here to take advantage of his VA education benefits, earn his degree and move on with his life. Matt mellowed – prison will do that to you. You see how screwed up this place is; you realize how much worse off others have it; and you find your faith. For Matt, that was converting to Islam. For me, it was believing that Sunday school song “Jesus loves me, yes I know …”

            In the weeks to come I’m going to profile Matt and the other vets. I want people to see there is more to some of the felons in here than we might assume. There are fourteen young men in here who served their country after 9/11. For eight of them, they were in harm’s way, saw combat multiple times. Does that excuse their crimes? No. But, there is more to the men in here than just their criminal records.