Letting go of war

Capt. Charles (Chip) Rankin came home from war on a Friday in July.

He dropped his backpack inside the back door of his beige rambler, looked at his wife and young son, and thought how happy he was to be there.

But within a couple of days, he was thinking, Now what?

In Iraq, his Bravo Company -- Company B, 2-136 Infantry, based out of northwestern Minnesota -- had seen more action and more death than any other unit from the state. They'd lost three men; two had died together in the same attack that robbed another man of his legs. And they'd been deployed longer than anyone else, much of the time in dangerous Anbar Province.

But it had been rewarding, too. In Iraq, Rankin, 33, had known what to expect and what was expected of him. Duties, responsibilities and chain of command were set in stone. His men had his back, and he had theirs.

Now he was back in the small prairie town of Litchfield. His old job as a high school teacher and wrestling coach was waiting for him. The fatigues he'd worn on his athletic 6-foot frame for the past two years were stuffed in the duffel bag stashed in his garage. The soldiers he'd watched over and fought with were scattered around the state.

He was a commander with no one to lead, a warrior with no enemy, a soldier who had excelled at a job that no longer needed him.

Hard as Iraq had been, Rankin was learning, letting go of it was harder.

• • •

Far from the headlines of suicidal soldiers and homeless vets lie the quieter hardships of the returning military.

Of the 1.5 million soldiers who have come home from Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11, about two-thirds have worked through their return without major problems, said Mike Colson, a mental health counselor for the Department of Veterans Affairs in the state of Washington.

But on some level, they all have struggled.

"Does anybody come back unscathed? No," Colson said. "But if you say you did, you probably are a pretty good liar."

In Minnesota, nearly 80 percent of the 2,600 National Guard members who came home last summer after 16 months in Iraq have readjusted to home life reasonably well, said Lt. Col. John Morris, a Minnesota National Guard chaplain who has worked to help soldiers returning from war.

Yet, much as they had looked forward to their return, once they were home, many of them wished they could go back. Like Rankin, they missed the excitement and adrenaline rush of combat. They missed the structure and clarity of the military routine. They missed the tight camaraderie.

"You get swept up in something bigger than yourself," Morris said.

And then they're thrust back into civilian life, where nobody really understands what they have gone through.

• • •

Anbar Province, October 2006

Dawn had yet to break as two platoons from Bravo Company closed in on the village in rural Anbar Province.

The adrenaline was pumping, and Rankin was nervous.

This was Bravo's first raid, and Rankin's first combat mission as a commander.

For the first six months of his tour, he'd been pushing paper in an office. But all that changed in September 2006 when his commanding officer called him in and told him to get down to Camp Fallujah.

The insurgents were raising hell in the villages and along the roads of Anbar Province, and there'd been a dangerous spike in IED activity there. Rankin's orders: Drive out the insurgents and make the roads and villages safe.

Now, as his troops hustled into the city under cover of darkness, Rankin stayed close in a Humvee, sweating in his Kevlar vest and helmet, working the radio to stay abreast of developments.

Within minutes, things started to heat up.

The troops raided two dozen houses, waking residents, rounding up suspects and finding wires and switches used in IEDs. Among their discoveries -- a high-profile Al-Qaida terrorist.

"It was like starting to put the pieces of a puzzle together," Rankin said later.

Over the next three hours, Rankin inspected the bomb-making materials and listened in as interpreters questioned the people detained. It was his call on who to arrest or release. It was his call on what to do next.

It was like being a coach again. Six months into Iraq, he was an on-the-ground commander, leading men and calling the shots. It felt good.

• • •

Even in the heat and sunshine of a Minnesota summer, those first days home seemed cloudy and gray.

With his wife, Becky, working as pharmaceutical director of a hospital, and Nathan in day care, Chip hung out at home, killing time. But fixing the mower, cleaning the garage and washing the breakfast dishes felt meaningless.

In a few weeks, he was supposed to head back to work. Since 1998, he'd taught science and coached wrestling, softball and football in Litchfield, and the school wanted him back. But Rankin was itching for a change.

Before leaving Iraq, he had applied for an administrative job in Mora, two hours away and closer to where he grew up, in Little Falls. As August spun out, he spent hours in the small bedroom office of his house, sitting at the computer, compulsively checking the war news, e-mailing his buddies and waiting to hear from Mora.

"I was going stir crazy," he said. And he was starting to drive Becky crazy, too.

They'd been married for five years, but they'd been apart for nearly half of that time. Now, they had to learn how to negotiate and compromise all over again.

"Chip was a leader over there, and I am used to being a leader here," said Becky, now 32. "He comes home and honestly tries almost to boss me around. I didn't take that very well. It was like he didn't even say 'please.' ... He wasn't my husband, he was a soldier."

She worried about the Mora job. How could he reconnect with his family if he took a job two hours away? He couldn't commute every day from Litchfield. He'd have to live in Mora, at least for part of the time.

Chip knew the timing was bad. "Everyone wants to tell me after going to Iraq to 'go home to return to your life,'" he said. "Well, how do you do that? How do you go from doing a sprint to going home and doing nothing?"

Mora offered Chip the job the same day he interviewed. He took it.

He had just gotten home, and now he was leaving again.

• • •

Rankin started his new job as dean of students at Mora High School in August. He was given a small office just down the hall from the principal, with a narrow window overlooking a picnic area and the football field. He put up a framed poster of the 2003 Litchfield wrestling team that he had coached to the state championship, but he didn't move in much beyond that -- the shelves were filled with books and manuals and posters left over from his predecessor that he never bothered to remove.

He found a place to live about 20 minutes away, a hillside cabin at the end of a gravel road on the east side of a lake. He could grab his bow and arrows, head across a cornfield and be in the woods for deer hunting in five minutes.

Rankin stayed at the cabin four nights a week, making the long drive home to Litchfield on Tuesdays and Fridays. Weekends, he tried half-heartedly to dig into the home remodeling projects that Becky had hoped to finish.

"It's tough just to settle down and go back to my old life, and I don't know why," he said. "I've got the greatest little 4-year-old boy in the world. ... Financially things are good. I've got probably the greatest wife in the entire world. I've got a good job. But yet, there's something missing."

It wasn't easy for Becky, either. She had looked forward to his return, but now that he was home, it was almost easier to have him gone.

"I think the thing that surprises you is just how hard it is," she said. "Other people in this situation know what I'm talking about. It's something you and your soldier have to figure out."

• • •

Anbar Province, Dec. 2, 2006

Those first two months under Rankin's command had gone well for Bravo Company. So well, Rankin said later, that, "It was almost like we were bulletproof."

Then came Dec. 2.

Rankin was attending a conference at Taqaddum Air Force Base that afternoon when his battalion commander pulled him aside.

A Humvee driven by a Bravo Company specialist had hit an IED while on patrol south of Camp Fallujah. Early reports said Specialist Bryan McDonough of Maplewood had been killed instantly. Four other soldiers in the Humvee were hurt, and two of those were critical.

Rankin was stunned.

McDonough was just a kid -- 22 years old, good-looking and fun-loving. A practical joker. Just weeks before, he'd teased Rankin at the chow hall about wanting to become a science teacher and coach, just like his captain.

When Rankin bit, McDonough laughed.

Now, Rankin raced to the hospital to meet the medics as they brought in his guys.

Sgt. John Kriesel came through the doors first, on a stretcher. One leg was gone, the other dangled by his side.

Sgt. Tim Nelson came next, reeling from a concussion and bleeding from a cut to his face.

Then came a body covered by a sheet. But when the cloth was gently pulled back, Rankin was startled. It wasn't McDonough, but Corey Rystad, a 20-year-old specialist from Red Lake Falls.

A few days before, Rankin and Rystad had eaten together at the chow hall and made plans to go deer hunting when they got home.

Now, medics were pulling the ID cards from Rystad's body as the last rites were administered.

Rankin wanted to stop time, get outside and catch some air, but he couldn't. He had to find McDonough. He tried calling out, but the phone lines were down -- protocol, following casualties.

When he finally got through almost an hour later, he got the news he was dreading. McDonough had been killed instantly, and his body had been taken to Camp Fallujah.

Rankin's heart sank.

For two months his unit had seemed indestructible. Now, in an instant, the faith, the confidence, and two good men -- all were gone.

As he walked out of the hospital, Rankin worried about the families back home and the heartache that was coming. He worried about his men, too, and how they'd get through the next hour, the next day, and the years to come.

There'd been a lot of close calls in the last two months. He'd always wondered how long they'd be lucky, how long they could cheat death.

Now, he knew.

• • •

Chip Rankin stepped to the tee box of a golf course in Stillwater and let 'er rip. As he watched the tiny white ball land in the lush grass of the fairway, he smiled.

It felt good to be back on the links and hanging with the guys.

But this sunny late summer morning was bittersweet. Rankin and his Company B comrades were playing in a memorial tournament for McDonough. For Rankin, it was particularly sobering. As an officer, he felt a responsibility toward his men, as well as to the families of the soldiers who hadn't made it back.

Coming home had been a tougher adjustment than he had expected. And he knew that it was tough for his men, as well. He had their names and e-mail addresses, and he let them know that if there was anything they needed -- anything -- just ask.

He wasn't their commander anymore, but it wasn't that easy to pull back.

He went deer hunting with Rystad's younger brother, as a way to honor the promise he had made to Corey. And he put in a good word for a few guys who listed him as a reference for a job or for school.

He worried about some of his men, too, like Jeff Srisourath, who was struggling to walk on a rebuilt heel that had been blown apart by an IED in November 2006.

Srisourath was only 24, a wide-eyed specialist from Warroad, up by the Canadian border. He'd been in Texas for nearly a year, undergoing surgery after surgery. There'd been no hero's welcome for him in Warroad; in fact, most didn't even know he was back in the States.

"He's one of those guys nobody knows about," Rankin said. "And that kind of bothers me."

Rankin also was concerned about Specialist Brian Micheletti, who had lost his best friend when McDonough died. Micheletti had helped carry his body to the helicopter for the first leg of the long journey home.

Now Micheletti was living with McDonough's sister, Katie, and they were helping each other through their grief. Still, Micheletti struggled. He was anxious. Automobile traffic bothered him, and he had trouble focusing at work.

"I get lost in everyday life sometimes," Micheletti said. "If I don't really have an agenda, I just don't really do anything. In Iraq, I was always ordered to do something."

There were others, too, who were having a tough time. Like the soldier whose knees were so banged up he couldn't return to work. Or the guy with steel rods in his legs who had to leave the Guard because of medical disability. Or the one who, months after coming home, decided he'd rather hunker down at home and draw unemployment than go out and look for work.

Rankin couldn't tell them what to do or how to get help. But he couldn't turn off those feelings of responsibility.

"You worry about 'em. You hear stuff about 'em, and you want to help 'em," he said. "The toughest part right now is that it's not your thing. It's letting go."

Richard Meryhew • 612-673-4425

The push-pull life gets difficult, and Rankin realizes that something has to give.