Thank You For Your Service

Schumann’s wife met him when they were both young and happy. She is attractive, but her compassion has petered out. She is bitter at how her life has turned out, and envy is something she often feels: for those who get better financial help or outcomes from VA, for the attention and care her husband gets, and for the care and tenderness Schumann shows his army buddy, Emory. She has intense road rage, and as Adam finally gets into a program, Saskia seems to be working against his progress, texting and calling, blaming him for her now needing anti-anxiety meds and counseling. She seems to waffle between wanting her husband home and well and wishing she’d never met him. She is frequently sarcastic and impatient, and can be seen as a secondary victim of the war.

Aieti is regarded by others as a hero, as he saved two men from the Humvee on the fateful day described in the text. But as he collapsed with a broken leg, he remembered he hadn’t gotten to another soldier, Harrelson, who burns to death in the Humvee’s driver seat. Aieti feels guilty for not saving Harrelson and is haunted by images of him in dreams and while awake, the dead soldier asking why Aieti didn’t save him. Aieti is quiet, has a stunned look on his face most of the time, and comes from American Samoa, as does his wife. He once had a more happy-go-lucky disposition. He has serious memory issues, PTSD, TBI, and ADHD, as well as insomnia and joint pain. He is a good soldier, and does what is expected of him. He gets violent after having his vivid nightmares. He also feels bad for the soldiers he saved, worrying they resent him, too. He gets help and works to overcome his trauma and find a way forward.

Theresa, like her husband, is of Samoan descent. Her sister is also married to a soldier and lives nearby. Theresa is pregnant when Aieti begins acting out violently following his nightmares. She is worried about her husband killing himself, having heard about other soldiers who returned home and took their lives. It’s hard for her to imagine her fun and funny husband being such a dark person. She calls 911 one night because she says Aieti hit her while she was holding their baby.

Amanda is the wife of James Doster, someone who became very close with Schumann during Schumann’s last deployment. Amanda “has a kind, round face and long curly hair” (23). She is a mother to two young daughters. Growing up, her family was very unstable and she’s not close to her parents. She was and is madly in love with James, and feels her life became good and stable only after he came into it. She teeters on the edge of obsessive-compulsive disorder, needing to control everything, from how to observe James’s death anniversary to how the pantry is organized. She is overprotective of her girls, and tends to become clingy with friends. She is obsessed with keeping everything related to James, and tries to find out every detail on his death. She secretly wonders is he is still alive and sometimes sees him around. For a period of time, she drove around with his ashes in her car.

Doster is dead from the beginning of the book, but still an important figure in the text. He was a kind, strong man who cared deeply for the men he served with. He traded video time with his wife with Schumann, whom Doster knew was troubled, and went in Schumann’s place on a mission, on which Doster was killed. He stays in the thoughts of the men he served with.

DeNinno started out in the army feeling like a true patriot, but begins to feel differently over the course of his deployment. He is overwhelmed by his memories of the horrid things he saw and those he killed. He says to his wife, Sascha, that he feels “like a monster” (51). DeNinno works hard to recover from his severe PTSD, spending two years in WTB, two stints in treatment, and surviving a pair of suicide attempts. At the end of the book, he expresses concern about his reliance on medication, and asks his case manager at the VA to help him get off the pills he’s taking. He is still married at this point. DeNinno represents what the army wants a soldier to be in war, but one who doesn’t know how to reintegrate into civilian life successfully.

Emory is the soldier Schumann saves by carrying him over his back and down three flights of stairs while Emory’s blood runs like a river into Schumann’s mouth. His is over 200 pounds and has a wry sense of humor. Emory returns from war in rough shape. He is paralyzed on one side, and requires a nurse to help him dressed and get his walking braces on, in addition to aiding Emory run errands. 

Emory has managed, through extensive rehab, to stand, walk, and talk again. He continues to struggle neurologically and his violent outbursts have led to him being divorced and his daughter leaving to live with her mom. He is mostly alone, and went through a suicidal period, but feels like as hard as life is, it remains worthwhile.

Walker is a Soldier Family Advocate. She has 49 veterans assigned to her care, in addition to a severely-disabled husband, who is also a veteran. She has a son and a daughter, and seems to care for everyone, except herself. She aids the veterans in her care with job placement, finding treatment programs, and locating other means of financial support. She finds herself frequently angry at a system that she perceives as having abandoned veterans. She has a maternal way with the soldiers, and seems to never run out of compassion for them. Walker is the person who gets Schumann into the Pathway program in California. She tries to be a support to the veterans’ spouses as well, though Saskia resents her.

Golembe served alongside Schumann. Golembe once said to Schumann that James Doster wouldn’t have died if Schumann had been on patrol that day. These words haunt Schumann, even though Golembe meant it as a compliment. Golembe has tattoos to remember Doster, and seems to drink heavily. He isn’t doing well, and when he and Schumann reunite later, after Schumann finishes his program, Schumann urges Golembe to go for help, too.

Gusman is the older gentleman who heads the Pathway program Schumann goes to. He is patient and dedicated. He began working with Vietnam vets a couple of years after Vietnam ended. He believes in leading the veterans through a thorough program, going through not just the main trauma of the war, but also who they were before they enlisted, which has an impact on how they cope. Gusman himself was the abused son of a veteran, and he has dedicated his life to seeing the good in everyone, as his grandmother taught him.

Robinson is a worst-case scenario of what happens to a solider suffering from massive PTSD. He had abused two wives, was consumed by paranoid thoughts, and suffered from depression, anxiety, and OCD. He attended therapy, but it seemed to be doing little for him. He became violent and cruel to Kristy, one of his former wives. Robinson kills himself three months after she leaves him. He was on 12 different medications at the time he died. While in a psych wing of the VA hospital, he sent numerous texts asking Kristy’s forgiveness and expressing love to her. Once released, however, he wasn’t able to see a way forward. Robinson’s story highlights how limited treatment options, which have been shortened by VA over the years, are not sufficient for the intense care these wounded warriors need.

Kristy Robinson is introduced in one of the monthly suicide reports as the estranged wife of a veteran who commits suicide. She is a patient, soft-spoken woman and doting mom to an infant daughter, Summer. She keeps a journal via her cellphone, in rushed snippets, fearful of Jessie, her husband, catching her. She does her best to stay as long as she can with Jessie, then later feels guilty for staying as long as she does. She indulges her husband’s demands and paranoia. When she moves out, she still reaches out to Jessie, asking him to call for help when he’s suffering. After he kills himself, she eventually starts dating, but calls off her wedding when she realizes she still hasn’t gotten over Jessie.

Holmes had been in charge of weapons for his military unit, so all the men knew him. Before the war ended, he had begun a huffing habit and was reclusive. He met his fiancée, Shawnee, at a party when she was 19 and he was 30. He would look at graphic photos from Iraq and later admitted to Shawnee he had killed lots of people, and had never felt badly for it. Postwar, however, these killings begin to have an impact. Holmes keeps seeing a girl he believes he killed, though others say it’s an invented memory. Holmes’s brother, bipolar, hung himself years prior to the text’s narrative present. Holmes doesn’t seek treatment after he’s back from war and becomes increasingly erratic. Shawnee begins pulling away, feeling smothered. One night, she goes out, drives drunk, and gets arrested. While she’s in jail, Danny is watching their infant daughter and hangs himself.

A young wife in over her head, Shawnee loves her husband, Danny Holmes, and doesn’t fully understand what’s happening to him, after he comes back from war. She seems to have some predisposition towards addiction, and at the book’s close, she admits to having entered into another abusive relationship and needing the police to intervene. She is haunted by Danny’s suicide and has constant fatigue. She takes antidepressants and often drinks to excess. She functions as symbol for the human wreckage created by wounded warriors who fail to take the difficult steps towards healing.

A divorced father of one, Russell teaches math at a community college. Aieti is enrolled in his class and likes him very much. Russell meets Kristy Robinson and they hit it off and begin planning a wedding. She calls it off, but he stays in her life, patiently waiting for her to get over the suicide of her former husband, Jessie Robinson.

Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Chiarelli, at one point, was in charge of all ground troops in Iraq. After this, he takes over trying to stem the tide of suicides among soldiers and veterans. During his time in Iraq, he lost 169 soldiers in a year. He kept their names and hometowns written on index cards and carried the stack around until they were too numerous. He wrote each family, attended each memorial service, and carried an additional burden of guilt at not including a certain soldier’s name on a monument dedicated to fallen soldiers. That soldier had committed suicide; Chiarelli says leaving the soldier’s name of off the monument is his greatest regret. He works hard to get a system in place to track veteran suicides, and attempts to learn patterns or lessons to take forward from these suicides. He tries to get support from high-ranking government official, and locate funds that would contribute to research correlating Traumatic Brain Injury and solider suicide. Both of these goals are hindered by the slow pace of bureaucracy. Chiarelli retires before the book has ended. He himself shows some signs of difficulty after the war, though his wife dismisses it as nothing.