The United States’ involvement in the war in Iraq officially ended on Dec. 15, 2011 with the ceremonial lowering of the flag of American forces in Baghdad. But for many of the men and women who served in the nine-year conflict, “it’s never going to be over,” said Stanley McCracken.
McCracken, senior lecturer at the School of Social Service Administration and a social worker who has years of experience working with veterans, said he hopes the country won’t adopt an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude toward its veterans now that the conflict in Iraq is over. “We need to provide care to those for whom the consequences of war are ongoing.”
That “out of sight, out of mind” attitude is exactly what Cristopher De Phillips is trying to avoid. De Phillips, AM’09, felt that a group of veterans who had fought in one of the nation’s longest wars deserved a homecoming that would honor the “scope and scale of the mission they just completed,” he said.
De Phillips helped found Chicago Welcomes the Heroes, an organization that is putting together a major downtown homecoming parade and veteran’s resource fair at Navy Pier on Dec. 15.
“It just seemed like the right thing to do,” De Phillips said.
To help raise money for the event, De Phillips also organized a Nov. 10 screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary Hell and Back Again at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. The film will be followed by panel discussion featuring McCracken, De Phillips and Iraq war veteran Paul Pipik, AM’09.
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Hell and Back Again, which documents the wartime experience and tumultuous homecoming of a young Marine named Nathan Harris, speaks to many of the issues veterans face when they return to the United States. The film shows “how terrifying normality can be” after years at war, De Phillips said. “In his one story, we see hundreds of different Marines’ stories.”
Soldiers like Harris are far more likely to survive their injuries than previous generations of veterans, McCracken pointed out. “The good news is that they’re alive, but the bad news is that they’ve sustained serious wounds,” he said. In addition to their physical injuries, veterans who survive blast injuries can struggle with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. “Recovery and recuperation is a challenge,” he said.
Still, despite these difficulties, McCracken is heartened by the efforts of the American military and civilians like De Phillips to help soldiers reintegrate. McCracken, who served in Vietnam, remembers his own homecoming as “a non-event”—still an improvement over the experience of some of his friends who were actively criticized and denounced for their involvement in the war.
“I think we learned some things from the Vietnam era to now,” McCracken said. “Even people who were against the war in Iraq and did not support our going there—and I have to say, I’m one of them—made it very clear that they were behind the troops.”
For his part, De Phillips hopes both the film screening and the Chicago Welcomes Home the Heroes event will remind veterans that they have the support of their community. “We thought it was important that they know they were coming home to a country that wanted to say ‘thank you.’”
Hell and Back Again will be shown in the Logan Center Performance Hall, 915 E. 60th St., at 6 p.m. The suggested donation is $10.
—Prof. Kunle Odunsi
