Herold's War

Pcf. Herold Noel wasn’t expecting a parade. But when he and his fellow soldiers from the Army’s Expeditionary Unit 37 arrived home from Iraq in Hinesville, Ga. they got what one might call less than a hero’s welcome. Waiting for them as they deplaned were local police officers. In their hands were lists of names of soldiers with outstanding warrants, mostly for traffic and parking tickets left unpaid while off fighting the war.

“I had a couple [of unpaid tickets],” Noel recalls. “I told my family to meet me in the parking lot and I went out the side door.”

According to Noel, several soldiers were hauled away in cuffs as their families looked on.

The scene was an ominous sign of things to come.

Welcome back

Twenty-five year old Noel, who enlisted in the Army at 19, was part of the so-called “tip of the spear” during the March 2003 U.S. invasion. His job was one of the most perilous: hauling tank fuel on the frontlines all the way to Baghdad, and then in Fallujah, where the heavy fighting never stopped. His rig was so combustible that in the heat of battle his own tanks would turn and head the other direction when they saw him coming.

Noel, who received several medals for his actions, left Hinesville shortly after his less-than-heartwarming homecoming, heading back to his native New York City. The reception there was even more bleak. When he tried to apply for public housing, he was told there was a freeze on new applications. When he went to the city’s Emergency Assistance Unit, he was told there nothing they could do for him either. A brief stint at a city shelter for the homeless was a disaster – all his clothes, and his military medals, were stolen.

He is now homeless, traversing the city with his two-year old son, Anthony. For the last six months he has been lost in a Kafka-esque maze of public and private service agencies. His only shelter: his 1994 Jeep. He sleeps in the car, while his son crashes on friends’ and family members’ couches. He sent his two other children, twins aged six, to Florida to stay with their grandmother.

“We’re not asking for a lot, just a place to lay our heads,” he said. “I’m a solider. I risked my life for this country. I have given a lot to this country. I honor this country. For me to come back home and to have nothing to grasp onto – to be put out of the street – is wrong.”

In addition, Noel is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

He witnessed horrific scenes in Iraq, including loss of limbs among his own men, and scores of civilian deaths. While taking fire, he says he was forced to run over several Iraqis with his truck.

“I have nightmares, I get angry a lot,” he said.

He sees a psychiatrist at a local Veterans’ Administration hospital and has been prescribed three drugs, including trazodone, an antidepressant, and risperidone, an anti-psychotic.

He has yet to receive any disability checks, which can take more than a year to process.

Soldiers helping soldiers

Noel turned to Operation Truth, the New York-based veterans’ rights organization, for help. For the past two weeks, the organization’s one room Astor Place office has become a de facto day care center for Noel’s child while OpTruth director Paul Rieckhoff helped Noel get the word out to the media about his and other homeless vets’ stories.

“We are seeing a new homeless Iraq vet in our office every week,” Rieckhoff told GNN. “America clearly did not learn its lesson from the homeless vets of Vietnam. We still have no transitional programming for troops coming home. The resources are totally inadequate. The VA is dangerously under-funded. Every major veterans group in America has called for mandatory funding of the VA and the White House has blown them off.”

Rieckhoff added, “Vets already turning up homeless means that Herold Noel is only the tip of the iceberg. One in five troops is coming home with PTSD. Most will go untreated. That alone can result in a multitude of issues: marital problems, unemployment, alcoholism, drug abuse, crime, homeless, suicide. Herold Noel’s story should be a wake up call for America.”

Ricky Singh, of the Brooklyn-based Black Veterans for Social Justice, agrees the problem is real and only getting worse. He told GNN he hasseen at least 100 Iraq war veterans without housing come through his non-profit community service organization.

“The reasons for this vary,” Singh said. “Some of the reasons are the same kind of economic conditions that pushed them to military in the first place. If you come from a poor family, and you’re gone for three or four years, your room may be gone. The time away erodes and breaks down the support system. Some of them are coming back with mental health problems. It’s a complex set of factors.”

Singh said his organization cannot accommodate the needs of all the Iraq veterans seeking housing and mental health assistance – and it’s only going to get worse. His group already provides services for 5,000 veterans annually, mostly from the Vietnam era.

“I’m not sure the VA can address the problem, based on the numbers we know,” Singh said. “One-third of the homeless population [in the U.S.] are veterans. The VA only reaches 20% of them. That population is going to increase drastically with the soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The VA’s budget cannot meet this need.”

Bling, bling

One of the most difficult aspects to Noel’s return has been to come home to a culture that appears largely oblivious to the sacrifice its warriors are making on its behalf.

He used to be heavily into hop-hip.

“I used to buy all the CD’s. Now I come back you have all these rappers, ‘I got your house on my wrist, I got this car on my feet, I got one mill on my neck,’” he says.

“You got these reality shows where they’re throwing money at people. I’m fighting so the media can keep doing what they’re doing, so people don’t come in there and blow up people. I remember watching my friends die and lose their limbs, hoping that I could come home to watch those videos. Now I don’t want to see that shit. What they doing for me? I’m making them rich. I’m putting gas in their rides.”

“I know veterans going through what I did, they going through a struggle. These vets they’re not asking for a lot, pennies – so they can survive.”

Despite everything, Noel says he would enlist again.

“I’m always going to be a soldier. I’m going to speak so my country can be a better country. I’m not bashing the military – but if you want people to protect this country, you have to protect them.”

Anthony Lappé is GNN’s Executive Editor. He is the co-author of GNN’s new book, True Lies, and the producer of its award-winning documentary about Iraq, BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire’s Edge.

Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,...