Following 'Soldiers,' To The Battlefield And Back

September 10, 2011
Following 'Soldiers,' To The Battlefield And Back
Filmmaker Heather Courtney didn't set out to make a war story. "I set out to make a story about rural America," she says. Her new documentary, Where Soldiers Come From, is both war story and small-town homecoming saga; it follows a group of young men who sign up for the National Guard, serve in Afghanistan, and then return home to their families in Michigan's woody Upper Peninsula.

Courtney joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss the documentary, along with two of the young soldiers featured in the film, Dominic "Dom" Fredianelli and Matt "Bodi" Beaudoin.

On his assertion in the film that serving in Afghanistan taught him "to hate people":
Matt "Bodi" Beaudoin

Beaudoin: "I was so mad at the time. I obviously don't feel that way anymore. ... It was a crazy time in all of our lives, and I was so jaded because of how many times that I got blown up that I hated everything about that place. I don't regret what I said because at the time that's how I felt. ... What I love about the film [is that] Heather wasn't afraid to put the times like that into the film, because that's as real as it gets."

Beaudoin has been diagnosed with severe traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. He says he fooled the military into letting him continue to go out on missions:

Beaudoin: "I would kind of bend the truth — tell them, 'I feel fine, I feel fine, let me keep going out.' They have what's called a TBI test — a traumatic brain injury test — and I kind of cheated and memorized it. ... I could have sat out way earlier on the explosions, but I didn't want to because I wanted to go out with my boys. I'd rather get me blown up than my buddies."

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Every once in a while I am reminded of an argument I had with an Iraq veteran. He was drunk, or high, or a combination of both. He was convinced God was "an evil bastard enjoying the suffering of children." There was no goodness left in the world to him because he had seen way too much of the opposite.

My challenge was to prove to him the existence of a loving God, which was nearly impossible considering where he had been.

"Look around you right now. Think about the fact almost everyone here is armed with guns and knives. What are they doing?"

He looked around. What he saw was a bunch of bikers talking, laughing and hugging with one arm and a beer in the other hand. He looked at everyone for a long time, turned back to me and said "So what!" as if it was no big deal at all. He'd seen all that going on a hundred times but never really thought about it.

"It's easy to see what God allows but you have to look for what God prevents." Then I walked away. He followed me. "What's that supposed to mean?" I told him that if he only looks for what is bad, that is all he'll see. There is a lot of good going on at the same time."

When we see someone suffering, we often miss the love they are surrounded with at the same time. We think of only the suffering and wonder where God was when right in front of our eyes proof of His love and mercy are right there.

In the midst of horror the simple fact that someone can still cry, feel the pain inside for someone else, that is proof that love and compassion survives everything. Those emotions were not created by "an evil bastard" but by a loving God more powerful than the worst man can do to man.

Someone just has to point all that out. How can they see what God stops from happening when they are not looking for it? He keeps humans from hardening to the point where they just stop caring about anyone. He allows compassion to survive when surrounded by people willing to blow themselves up and take as many others with them as possible.

He causes a soldier to pray another life is not taken by his hand just as much as he prays one more of his friends does not have to die that day. If evil was the only thing left, that would not be possible. It would be like a computer game when they are more concerned with scoring points than the lives taken. Any goodness within them had to have come from somewhere and the source has to be a lot more powerful than the source of the evil because the good survives.

It is that goodness within them that causes so much internal suffering. Focusing on what was bad becomes all they know and faith is eroded.

If Beaudoin in the above article could see that his thoughts were for his friends above all else, he'd see that came from love and it lasted no matter what else was happening.

The young Iraq veteran I was arguing with kept asking more and more questions, more determined to shatter my own faith than to restore his own. Finally I asked him the question he needed to think about. "Did anyone help you?" He fought to hold back a tear. "Ya" I let him think about that for a while. "Then why would "evil" send help to you?"

I think it's really funny when I hear someone say you cannot prove God is real. I wonder if they believe someone loves them when they cannot "see love" or prove it. We know love is real with what the other person does, says, looks at us and cares for us. Well, we can know God is real the same way. We can see God everyday if we only look for Him and understand that there are things happening all around us surviving whatever "evil" attacks it with.