As veterans make their transitions into civilian life, it often gets overlooked, the path they took to get there. Many have dedicated portions of their lives to the U.S. armed forces, while others used the time to fill a short part of a long career, but all veterans find their way back to everyday life.

In a census done by the Veteran Affairs, there have been over 41 million people who have served in an American war--dating from the American revolution in 1775 until today’s current campaign against global terror. Of those 41 million, 23 million are still living today, working in professional careers, raising families, and bringing together communities.

Elon Professor, Randy Piland, a Desert Storm Army Trooper Veteran and Army Photojournalist, resonates with the lack of services provided to older members of the military upon return home.

“When my brother, Emmet, returned home after a year of service in Vietnam, he was assigned to a base in Colorado where he had little to no duties assigned,” Piland said. “He and several others would be used to clean the barracks and other duties that had no real purpose...when requesting to go back to Vietnam, they couldn’t be guaranteed rejoining the unit until they were formerly assigned.”

Alex Luchsinger, a former member of the Marine Corps, Purple Heart Recipient and Elon University professor experienced some of the discharge services first hand, after his time serving in the military. After one too many close calls, according to Luchsinger, he chose to pursue civilian life, where he noticed a lack of diversity when it came to veteran services. What interests veterans, such as Luchsinger, is the resources provided to those who served in previous wars, compared to that of more recent veterans.

“I think that the government has gotten better at it (providing resources to veterans)," Luchsinger said. "When I got out it was kind of like, ‘See you later,”’.

“If you look at news, there is a lot of mess with the VA, which are supposed to provide the support and programs for veterans, but that varies from place to place," Luchsinger said. "There are 1,400 hospitals in the country, it's the largest hospital system in the country, but some can be very very good and others just abysmal.”

For veterans, the discharge process can be one filled with all kinds of emotions, experiences and obstacles which adds to the chaos that is coming from home.

At age 69, Benny is a retired accountant and high school athletic referee, living with his wife and child in Burlington, North Carolina. He was an infantry squad leader during the Vietnam War and is now living with PTSD.

"We never got real close in Vietnam. We didn’t call each other friends, we called each other buddies. Because a friend means you know a friend for life, buddies is just a term. If he gets blown away tomorrow you know that’s no big deal.”

— Benny Kidd, Vietnam War veteran

When Benny Kidd first got drafted in 1969, he had a feeling he’d end up in Vietnam, but thought if he was lucky he’d end up being stationed stateside.

“That never happened,” he said. Instead, he came to grips with where he was headed and decided it was time to man up and serve his time.

“At the time that I was there, I didn’t know why,” he said. “The American people didn’t want us there, the Vietnamese people didn’t want us there. We darn sure didn’t want to be there, but we didn’t have much of a choice. But I think after coming home and looking back it was a good experience.”

Kidd considers the two years he spent in the war as some of the best years of his life because of the personal growth it sparked within him. He became more appreciative of the things he had by witnessing the Vietnamese people and how little they had.

“I don’t take life for granted because it can change at any time,” he said. "We never knew from one night to the next if the guy beside us was going to be there or not.”

But what he was able to take away from the experience did not translate to his home reception. People viewed him and other Vietnam veterans as menaces to society and it showed during their return to the states.

Re-entering civilian life

“We weren’t welcomed too much coming back home by the American people,” he said. "They told us the first chance we get take our uniforms off because they were waiting at the airport and everything spitting on us, calling us baby killers, throwing rocks at us, throwing defecate at us.”

That negative stigma followed throughout all areas of civilian life, including when trying to find work. According to Kidd, even just mentioning that you were a part of the war would cut job interviews short.

Eventually, Kidd was able to find stability in life through his job and family, but it did not come without personal complications from the war. Today, Kidd suffers from PTSD, a mild heart condition from agent orange exposure, poor hearing from rounds being shot and persistent night terrors.

“Certain smells, certain sounds trigger things that were happening,” he said. “[I have] trouble sleeping. I might get up three or four times during the night just to check the house just to make sure nobody’s in there and go on back to bed even though I hadn’t heard anything.”

One of the things Kidd says helps him the most is talking things out. Though he previously felt uncomfortable sharing stories about Vietnam, he now sees talking as “good therapy” and uses it as a method to get his feet back on the ground. Organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) have aided in the process.

Veterans of Foreign Wars

For two years, Kidd has been a member of the VFW post in Burlington and describes its main goal as being committed to taking care of veterans who may have fallen on hard times or who may just need a hand. He recalls his challenges when returning home and feels that the VFW mission is to make sure that experience isn’t repeated.

“We don’t want ever, ever, ever again for a veteran to come home and be treated the way we were when we came home,” Kidd said.

It wasn’t until a good friend of his, Carl Norris, had mentioned the organization that Kidd even knew about the post. The two had known each other for years after meeting through their shared experience of having disabled children at the Arc of the United States, an organization dedicated to serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. After several conversations of getting to know each other, they learned they had both served time in the same war.

“I told him you need to be in the VFW, you’re a veteran,” Norris said. “And I finally told him, ‘Benny, if you come to a meeting I’ll pay your first year’s dues,’ and of course I was obligated to pay his dues for the first year. After that, he really took an interest and saw it as something he wanted to do. He’s gone on and worked very hard in the VFW and has been appointed to quartermaster.”

Norris sees the VFW as having helped Kidd’s PTSD by giving him a positive activity to focus on.

“If you’re involved in any activity, you won’t have time to think about that,” he said. “The VFW helps him do what he likes to do.”

Six VFW posts reside in Alamance County with roughly 240 members total. Kidd describes it as a place with good camaraderie that provides veterans with the services they need. It’s trying to stray away from its old stereotype of being a club-like scene for veterans.

“The mindset of the old VFW is that it’s a place where you go and sit down and drink beer and liquor and smoke cigarettes and talk old war stories to your buddies sitting there next to you,” Kidd said.

To change the way the community views the VFW, the Burlington post is actively working on becoming more family oriented by hosting special events for veteran parents to attend with their children.

With money raised over bingo nights as well as through membership dues, fundraising and occasional donations, the organization maintains itself as a resource in the veteran community.

According to Norris, Kidd’s involvement in VFW has been huge and has even surpassed his own. He keeps everyone up to date on the organization’s affairs, makes sure members are attending meetings and is at the post every day.

“I’ve never seen anyone who didn’t like Benny,” Norris said. “It seems like everybody who comes in knows Benny Kidd.”

At only 28 years old, Garrett Carnes has been deployed two times to Afghanistan. Now a double amputee, Carnes lives in North Carolina with his wife, two sons and daughter on the way.

“Everyone else that was there didn’t suffer physically inside the skull from the IEDs, but a lot of those guys suffer more from PTSD than even I did because they witnessed...It’s almost like a dream to me whereas those guys, it’s reality.”

– Garrett Carnes, post-9/11 Veteran

Injury

“My father was a Marine stationed in Camp Lejeune, so I kind of grew up there and was around the Marine Corps culture my entire life. And I’ve known for as long as I can remember that that’s what I wanted to do,” said veteran Marine Garrett Carnes.

The morning of February 19, 2012, Carnes and some of his corpsmen entered a compound and swept the area with metal detectors, continuing when no metal signatures were detected. Moments later, he stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED).

He said the IEDs contained carbon rods—which have a lower metal signature than aluminum or steel—and were able to pass unnoticed by their detectors.

Recovery

“On the spot of the injury, I pulled my own tourniquets out and started applying my own tourniquets to try and stop the bleeding. When your femoral artery is severed, you have about 90 seconds before you bleed out and you’re considered dead,” Carnes said. “When all those Marines around me were injured from the blast, they couldn’t run over to me and start applying aid right away, because there’s so much dust in the air you don’t know who it is that’s injured.”

His legs were amputated on the scene, but 22-year-old Carnes’ immediate action saved his own life.

After the explosion, Carnes was flown to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he spent 18 months, still enlisted as a Marine.

Each day, he was taken from three to six appointments with various doctors and physicians throughout the hospital.

“From the inside, it is the most inspirational place, I think, in the world. Because you do have guys that have horrible, horrible wounds of war that they are walking around with—and that they will walk around with forever—but everywhere you went, there was a smile on these guys’ faces,” Carnes said. “They were happy, they were laughing.”

While Carnes credits the hospital for their hard work, he gives equal credit to his wife.

“She sat there with her log book like a Marine and noted every single thing,” he said. “She handled it like a medical professional herself, because, at one point, she was kind of my—almost like a general power of attorney over me. She had total control over me and, like a guardian angel, she made sure everything went according to plan and went right.”

Despite his extended stay in the hospital, Carnes said it strengthened his relationship with his wife.

Carnes lost both of his legs from an improvised explosive device (IED)

Life after war

“Public speaking I got into by accident when I was at Walter Reed. The Marine Corps, it grooms you to be public speakers,” Carnes said. “I don’t believe that you have it or you don’t. It’s a trained skill.”

Carnes said the Corps trained him to be a public speaker. Marines in leadership positions are constantly giving briefs to people in your own peer group, and to those above and below you.

In the hospital, he said there were times they needed a certain number of people to go speak to schools of new officers at Quantico. At first, he volunteered to go; a few times later, he looked at the schedule and asked to go speak at certain schools.

“You’re not going to reach every single person with the words that you speak, but if you can impact at least one person, that’s a pretty good rate, I think. So I was able to, hopefully, impact some of these Marines’ lives,” he said. “I was using it as a therapy point for myself, up onstage, to speak to these guys.”

Carnes said that when he came home to Alamance County, he discovered that word had gotten out about his speaking and a few schools in the area reached out to him and asked him to speak to their students.

REA

While still adjusting to his home in a new county, Carnes was honored as part of a Homes for Our Troops event. At the event, Carnes met Stephen Baker, president of Resource Exchange Association (REA), a non-profit organization in Burlington, NC. Carnes was a recipient of REA’s REAch Wounded Warrior Toolbox Program, where toolboxes containing a few essential tools are delivered to post- 9/11 veterans.

“I met him at that first ceremony, and then I went to another ceremony where he was at supporting another veteran for Homes for Our Troops and I went up and reconnected with him,” Baker said.

Carnes and Baker spend time practicing their hunting skills together.

Carnes mentioned his public speaking hobby and, after speaking briefly at the event became an on-the-spot job interview for REA, he ended up running the toolbox program for three months, getting to know more about REA and Baker.

“Very loyal—he would do anything in this world for you, no questions asked. No matter what time of the day or what time of night, if I called him, he would be the first one that would be there,” Baker said.

Baker said the two are gym partners in addition to being friends. He calls Carnes a role model, both for himself and his daughter

Despite forever changing his life, Carnes says he would do everything all over again, including stepping on the bomb.