American Veteran: Unforgettable Stories

JOHNSON: Next thing you know, Sergeant Riley says, you know, they have Miller. We’re going to have to surrender. I’m like oh. Oh, my God, oh, my God.

KLAY: In 2003, the convoy that army specialist Shoshana Johnson was in, got trapped by Iraqi forces. She and her sergeant took cover under the body of the tractor trailer they’d been driving…

JOHNSON: And then he goes up from underneath the vehicle, and I was like oh, my God, they’re just going to mow him down. But they didn’t and then Hernandez goes and then I feel someone grab my legs and drag me from underneath the vehicle, and they start beating the daylights out of us.

My Kevlar, my helmet falls off and they see my braids and then they step back like what the hell and I guess they realize I’m a female and they open up my flak vest and I’m wearing a t-shirt so they see boobs and they’re like stunned and then I’m immediately separated. They drag me to a vehicle…they just push me in the vehicle and they take off.

KLAY: From Insignia Films, and PRX for GBH, this is American Veteran: Unforgettable Stories.

In each episode we’ll hear one American vet tell us their story. Who they were before they joined, what they did, and who they became. 

I’m Phil Klay.

I’m a veteran myself. Like Shoshana Johnson I also served in Iraq… Now I write books about war, and about coming home. About the disconnect between the servicemembers who fight our wars, and the civilians who they’re fighting for. To help bridge that divide, veterans from every generation have spoken up to let Americans know what has been done in their name. These are their stories.

Klay: Shoshana Johnson was interviewed in a TV studio in New York, for the American Veteran documentary series...

JOHNSON: Yeah.

PRODUCER: Here we go.

JOHNSON: OK.

PRODUCER: Is the door shut?

KLAY: Like a lot of vets, Shoshana Johnson comes from a military family. Her parents are originally from Panama, and her father served in the first Gulf War. He went on to have a 21-year career in the U.S. Army. Which meant, the family moved around a lot...

JOHNSON: Fort Louis, Washington and Fort Carson, Fort Bliss, Germany, then he went to Fort Polk in Korea, Honduras, Desert Storm, all over the place.

KLAY: At one point in his career, her father was also the man whose job it was to mold new soldiers...with the loving methods the U.S. military specializes in...

JOHNSON: He was a drill sergeant for two years at Fort Bliss, Texas.

JOHNSON: Drill Sergeant John--Dad is…He’s a Latino. He’s machismo Latino man, (laughs) and then you put that into a military man, so there was a lot of structure in our household.

JOHNSON: I originally wanted to join the military. I was in JROTC in high school, but my parents were dead-set against that. They basically told me, we didn’t leave Panama and everything behind so you could stop at high school, so you’re going to college. I went to college. I had a really, really good time and my grades reflected that. I mean it was the first time I had like actual freedom, freedom because my dad was Drill Sergeant Johnson. Lots of parties, not much schoolwork and I ended up dropping out, and I had a lot of different jobs, but at about 24 or so I’m like I want more.

KLAY:...at that time, more for Shoshanna meant becoming a chef. 

JOHNSON: I love cooking.

KLAY: But after quitting college her parents weren’t willing to pay for culinary school, so Shoshana went back to her original idea… 

JOHNSON: I went to the recruiting office, and I went to the Air Force first and they said you got to lose like 50, 60 pounds. I said aww. I went to the Army and the Army said, lose 20 pounds and we’ll take care of the rest, so there you go in the Army, as a cook.

PRODUCER: What was your training like?

JOHNSON: It was physically rough. I was 25 years old. I had never run a whole mile in my life. I was overweight so physically it was a lot but mentally, it was all right. I mean like I said, I lived with a drill sergeant for years, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to me.

KLAY: After basic training, Shoshana got her first assignment, as a food service specialist…but cooking in the Army is a far cry from culinary school.

JOHNSON: Mom and grandma taught me how to cook, but the Army showed me how to cook for, you know, 50, 100, 200 and stuff like that, with no flavor…

You have to have it kind of bland because you’re feeding so many people and everybody’s taste are different and quite frankly, their stomachs are different, so not everybody can handle certain things, and I understood that…As time went on, I knew what I can do to add a little something to the food without going too far and getting myself in trouble.

KLAY: Bending the rules to make life more bearable is a hallowed military tradition. And as it turned out, one of the soldiers she was cooking for had eaten her food back when she’d had more freedom with the spice rack...

JOHNSON: I remember getting orders for Fort Carson and I tell my mom, and she was like oh, y’all are going to be close. I said y’all? She goes yes. Nikki got stationed at Fort Carson too and I was like holy crap. Are you kidding me? What the hell the Army doing? And then she gets there and they put her in the same regiment as me also. Now if you had asked for that, they would’ve never done it but they did it, and considering that she went to college…she was Lieutenant Johnson. I was PFC Johnson, and I’m the older sister…

KLAY: That happened to me too, put on the same base as my brother and he outranked me. The military, like life itself, is unfair. 

A few years into Shoshana’s service she got pregnant. She took six weeks leave after the birth, and then went back to work while her daughter went to daycare on the base. And then, everything changed…

Audio: “This just in. You’re looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center and we have unconfirmed reports this morning, that a plane has crashed into one of the towers….”

JOHNSON: Actually, two things happened. 9/11 happened. My sister ended up having a baby also.

Audio: “On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes… in Afghanistan…”

JOHNSON: It's six months. You have six months after giving birth to get yourself physically ready to deploy at any moment. My niece hit the six-month mark and my sister had to deploy. My parents drove up from El Paso to take my niece, and then I was like okay, I might be in the same situation. The reality is, I signed up for this. Nobody forced me. If they call on me to go I’m going.

Audio: “Now, this is what it looked and sounded like in Baghdad. It was this short and this is what happened…”

JOHNSON: What is it, not even a year after my sister’s come back, I’m deploying and leaving my daughter with my parents.

JOHNSON: It wasn’t a big deal in our family because we were so used to this. My dad had gone. I had cousins, aunts, uncles. My sister just came back from her six months. So in my head I was going to go do six months, save some money, lose some weight, and come back home. That was the plan.

Audio: “Half of Kuwait is now off limits to its own citizens, an operations base for 70,000 American troops ready to march on Baghdad.”

JOHNSON: I expected it to be like real horrible but they had these camps set up and there was bunch of tents, basically like a tent city. Most of the tents were air-conditioned and… it was much better than I expected.

Audio: “The major ground offensive toward the city of Baghdad begins tonight...we’ll get all the details as they work their way all the way from Kuwait there, you can see on the map, all the way…”

JOHNSON: I didn’t understand the big rush for us to push forward and push forward, but I was a specialist, a cook in a maintenance company… it’s not like I could question the generals and stuff like that.

We ended up being like a day behind the main convoy. So we go into the city of Nasiriyah, we’re rolling through, and then they…I guess they get a communiqué that says the city is not secure, get out, get out.

[beat]

JOHNSON: I remember we make a left and it goes along this curved road and then they have us turn around and I’m like what the hell’s going on, and they were like we got to get out of here, and I was like okay. We’re following back and we take the curved road and we end up going straight again and I was like weren’t we supposed to take a right to get out?

[beat]

They made another mistake so we had to turn around again and as we turn around to make the correct turn out of the city, that’s when the ambush starts…

[beat]

It sounds like popcorn, or rocks hitting a windshield. Next thing you know there’s a vehicle, a civilian vehicle that pulls in front of us. I think it was a dump truck or a tow truck or something. And we end up going to the side of the road. Hernandez tries to get the vehicle going again and we couldn’t … We felt a crash, he like sticks his head out the window really quick. His First Sergeant’s Hum-V has crashed into the back of ours. Lori Ann Piestewa was the driver… and I stuck my head out and I could see that she’s pinned in the vehicle. And I was like okay, Hernandez, we got to get out and I jump out the vehicle, here comes Sergeant Riley.... Hernandez comes flying out of the vehicle, and we go underneath the vehicle to take cover and return fire. I think it’s not even a minute underneath the vehicle, I get shot, both of my legs. Then Hernandez gets hit in the arm. Sergeant Riley says his weapon is jammed and I hand him mine, and I remember I gave it to him flap down, which is totally wrong. It gets dirt in the mechanism and of course, it wouldn’t fire after that. I remember something hitting the truck and it’s this RPG, and I turned my head and I closed my eyes and I wait for it to go off and it doesn’t go off, and next thing you know, Sergeant Riley says, you know, we’re going to have to surrender.

KLAY: And that is how specialist Shoshana Johnson, wounded in both ankles, was captured by regular Iraqi forces. She was the first Black female prisoner of war in American history. 

<<MIDROLL>>

KLAY: When the Iraqis discovered that Shoshana was a woman, they separated her and they dragged her to a vehicle...

JOHNSON: The person that pushes me in the vehicle gets in with me and he starts checking my pockets… and then he gropes me, and I scream and he slaps me…but he stops groping me.

KLAY: Shoshana was taken to a building…

JOHNSON: They brought in a doctor and another guy. I think he was probably a soldier, and the doctor talks to him and they’re pulling off my boots, and now that’s when the first time I really felt intense pain because he was not careful about it and the doctor looks over my legs and I said, you know, am I going to lose my leg and he speaks like a broken English and he goes no, soft tissue, soft tissue, and they pour iodine on it and wrap it, and then they leave me in the room.

[beat]

JOHNSON: It took them quite a while to take us to Baghdad. They stopped in every city to like show us off, they captured Americans, and by the time we got to Baghdad, it was I guess late evening and the ambush happened in the early morning, so I was really tired. I was in a lot of pain at that time and they…you know towards the end, you were blindfolded and dragged from room to room and you know they took the blindfold off and there’s a cameraman and there’s three other people in there and they’re asking you questions…

Adio: “Shanna? Yes. Where are do you come from? Texas. From any unit in American Army?”

JOHNSON: You’re trying to weigh what to say

Audio: “507th maintenance…”

KLAY: If I become a prisoner of war...I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. That’s from the military code of conduct, which every soldier learns in training.

JOHNSON: Also, I didn’t know a lot of the stuff they were asking me about because I was a cook in a maintenance company.

JOHNSON: The Iraqis actually performed a surgery. And they put me under general anesthesia to clean out my wound and do some repair, and I remember they made me sign a release. (Laughs) I’m like yeah, like I have a choice and they were…and they…but they told me, they said I could refuse if I want to and I was like how am I going to refuse. I’ll probably get an infection and die. So I had the surgery,

As part of the Geneva Convention, you’re supposed to separate the males from the females but as the only female, I’m alone most of the time and it’s hard. The only human contact you have is, you know, my guards or the doctor would come in to look at my leg. Sitting there alone, having to think about everything, I went through everything I had ever done wrong in my life (laughs) and apologized to God and you know thought about my daughter and God-willing if I got to go home what would I do with myself and you know I thought of those who I knew were dead and wondered about the rest of them.

KLAY: Here’s what Shoshanna didn’t know at the time. Eleven Americans from her company had been killed in the ambush in Nasiriyah. Six were captured. She did know that she was one of a group of five POWs being held in the Bahgdad area.

Audio: “They’re the grim faces of this new war, the first American POWs. Injured men and women forced to do interviews on Iraqi television. They haven’t been seen since this tape was first broadcast by the Arab news channel, Al Jazeera.”

KLAY: Remember the Hum-Vee that crashed into the back of their tractor trailer as they were trying to escape? That Hum-Vee had been hit with an RPG. The driver, Lori Ann Piestewa, survived that crash, but died later in Iraqi custody. She would be the first female soldier killed in the Iraq War, and the first Native American woman in our history to die in combat while serving in the U.S. military. Supply specialist Jessica Lynch was also in that humvee. The nineteen-year-old was wounded but survived.

Audio: “The top news and the best news of the day, an American prisoner of war rescued in Iraq.”

KLAY: Special Operations carried out a nighttime raid on the hospital where Jessica Lynch was being held. She was rescued. But Shoshana and the others remained in captivity. 

JOHNSON: They started moving us from prisons to homes and that’s very scary because the military was checking prisons. You can’t go and check every house in a city, so it would be getting harder to find us and…the dread starts setting in.

I remember the night before they had given us this really cool meal with soda and chocolate, and I was thinking it’s the last meal. They’re going to kill us. This is your last, you know and that was stuck in my head. They’re going to kill us. You know they gave us this before. They shoot us tomorrow, but nope. The Marines came to the rescue.

Audio: “They were approached, were told by at least one Iraqi, carrying the message that there were some Iraqi soldiers who wanted to surrender, and not only that, the Iraqi soldiers wanted to give up these prisoners that they had, of course the Marines raced in to grab the seven prisoners and put them on a helicopter and get them back…”

KLAY: Shoshana and the four other Americans had spent 22 days in captivity. They were rescued the morning of April 13th, 2003, taken to Kuwait, and then flown to Qatar.

JOHNSON: By the time we get to Doha, sure enough they had it on the news already (laughs) and um they’re trying to get a hold of my family and they couldn’t get through…I was like what the hell, man. So they get us to the hospital finally. It’s late at night and they already told me that I’m going to have an operation on my legs. We’re going to give you some morphine. It’s probably going to put you to sleep. Just before they stick me, I get a call.

Audio: “Dad? Shana, how are you? I’m ok.”

JOHNSON: I didn’t think I would break down like that but as soon as I heard my dad’s voice, I broke down and started crying. (Laughs)

JOHNSON: I remember trying to tell him that I was ok. That I wasn’t raped. You know with Dad, that was going to be a big deal for him so I tried to say it without saying it.

PRODUCER: Did you get to go home right away?

JOHNSON: No.

PRODUCER: What happened?

JOHNSON: Um we have to go through debriefing, and I was…I was pissed. I was pissed. I wanted to go home.

KLAY: In a debriefing, the soldiers have to discuss what they’ve been through. This is so the military can record what happened, gather intel, and hopefully learn from events. But it’s also for the benefit of soldiers who’ve experienced horror… It's the first time they sit down in a safe, structured environment, and begin to process their trauma. 

JOHNSON: At the time, I didn’t see the purpose in it but um it’s really what’s best for you to get a lot of things off your chest and just release everything that you’ve been holding in before you go and meet your family.

JOHNSON: They flew us directly to Fort Bliss, so I was going home. And then they were like oh, there’s a lot of people out there, and I was oh, it’s just my family, dude. You don’t know how many of them there are, and they’re like no, it’s a lot of people and I’m like I’m telling you, you don’t know how many…I have like six aunts and uncles on one side and then I got plenty and the cousins and stuff, but no, the City of El Paso turned out to welcome us home. There was like 2000 people there. And of course, my family was there too.

KLAY: This was early in the Iraq war, and the returning POWs had captured the country’s attention.

JOHNSON: It was nice that everyone wanted--was there to welcome me and give me support, but I just wanted to go home. I didn’t really want to deal with it.

KLAY: Homecomings are always delicate. Service in war brings up such complex emotions. The soldier might have seen heroism or horror or courage or cowardice or all the above. Some veterans feel conflicted. Some don’t know what to think, or how the experience has changed them. And then there they are, surrounded by happy families waving flags.

KLAY:Shoshana had just experienced the most traumatic event in her life, and here she was, returning to normal. Or as normal as a two thousand person parade in your honor can be. She didn’t know it at the time, but what she’d been through would affect her for years to come.

JOHNSON: I thought I was fine and I kept saying it. I’m fine. I’m fine. My aunt, my family said no, you’re not, no, you’re not.

I was different. They expect you to come home the way you left and that’s not possible. You’re not the same person. I remember sometimes my dad would be like I want the daughter that I gave the Army. I was like she’s dead and gone, dad.

KLAY: Shoshana was suffering from a couple of psychological injury...

JOHNSON: Um, PTSD with depression and you know, It’s a lot of things...My parents are like your daughter comes to us talking about mommy cries all the time and stuff, so they guilted me (laughs) into being more diligent about my care. There reached a point where I realized that this little girl is growing up with me who deals with these issues, what about her?

KLAY: People who work with veterans often tell me this is how they finally convince them to seek help. By appealing to that same sense of self-sacrifice that brought them into the military in the first place. This isn’t about you, or how stoic you think you are—it’s about your family. Shoshana sought help at the local VA health center in El Paso….

JOHNSON: I get excellent care and I still have issues. I’ve been hospitalized three times.

KLAY: The VA estimates that, in a given year, somewhere between eleven and twenty percent of veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer post-traumatic stress. There are effective treatments, but as with many types of physical wounds, managing psychological injury takes time and effort and knowledgeable health care providers. And informally, every veteran I know with PTSD, has leaned on other vets for support. 

JOHNSON: And in El Paso, they keep a military wing. We are all like housed together, and get our treatment together and so forth, and I think that does more for me than the actual therapy and the doctors. You’re back to living with fellow veterans. You all go to eat together. (Laughs) You know you BS together. You all go to sleep at the same time. It’s that…that structure of that military life back. That really helps more than anything because they understand like nobody else.

KLAY: Shoshana’s decision to treat her mental injuries didn’t just have an impact on her. She also helped spur other members of her family who were dealing with untreated trauma to finally get help. Including her father...

JOHNSON: He was different when he came back also. I don’t think he realized that until later on ‘cause I pushed him to get…go through the VA for psychiatric treatment also and he was diagnosed with PTSD also, but he had never sought treatment, actually, a lot of my relatives that served, it brought up a lot of memories for them.

KLAY: Shoshana was awarded a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and other military honors. She retired with a pension from the Army in 2003, and in 2011 she published “I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen--My Journey Home.”

JOHNSON: I wouldn’t change going into the military or being a soldier for anything in the world. The only thing I would change is that day. If I could go back and unring that bell and have all of us come home, that’s the one thing I would change. Sometimes you don’t realize it until you walk away and then you are like, damn, I really did have a good time. I remember being in a crisp, ironed uniform, highly shined boots and extremely puffed out and proud. And I miss that. I really do.

KLAY: Shoshana still lives in El Paso. Ft. Bliss is right there, and there’s a huge community of vets in the area. But when she travels, it sometimes shocks her how little people in other parts of the country understand military life…

JOHNSON: They have no idea. They assume that when you go to war, you go and then you come home, you’re home. And I was like you don’t understand it. Although, you’re home, you’re still practicing and practicing to go to war and you go to war and people are shooting at you. You’re losing your friends. You’re worried every day if you’re ever going to see your family again, and then they expect you to come home and be normal. How do you become normal?

KLAY: “How do you become normal?” That’s the question facing every veteran, especially those who have seen combat. You can’t unsee the things you saw or undo the things you’ve done, and even if you could, many wouldn’t want to. Most soldiers who’ve been through combat say the experience showed them they were stronger than they thought they were, that it made them feel closer to those they served with, and changed their priorities about what is important in life.

In Shoshana’s case that meant volunteering both at her church and at the local veteran’s court. And it meant finally going back to culinary school, courtesy of the GI Bill. And now? 

JOHNSON: I haven’t got a clue. My daughter just graduated high school, she’s starting college. And now I’m like, uh...I did the stay-at-home mom thing because I missed so much before but now, I have to live my own life because she’s got to live her own life. (Laughs)

PRODUCER: Great, let’s do room tone. We need 30 seconds of silence, so if you just stay right there?

JOHNSON: OK, can I add something?

PRODUCER: Yes!

JOHNSON: One thing that I’ve learned coming home, it’s kind of hard being a single chick (LAUGHS). Dating as a female Army veteran is not easy, especially when sometimes you have more medals than the guys. It’s not every guy that can handle that and for those females who find the right guy, you know they are a special breed of dudes too. So more power to them for the guys who can handle it. (LAUGHS)

KLAY: I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that one of the downsides of surviving capture in war is having to deal with insecure dudes. But as Shoshana says, power to those who can handle it...and more broadly, power to every American who pushes past their discomfort and tries to connect intimately with another human being. At the end of the day, returning to normal isn’t about erasing what you’ve been through and how it’s changing you, but about finding a community of people who can accept it. 

CREDITS

KLAY: American Veteran is a production of Insignia Films and PRX for GBH. The lead podcast producer is Curtis Fox, the composer and sound designer is Ian Coss, and the executive producers for Insignia Films are Amanda Pollak and Leah Williams. Steven Ives did the interview with Shoshana Johnson. Thanks to Kathleen Horan and Matt Gottesfeld for their research. For GBH, Devin Maverick Robins is managing producer, and Judith Vecchione and Elizabeth Deane are executive producers.

KLAY: Funding for American Veteran: Unforgettable Stories was provided by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding was provided by The Wexner Family Charitable Fund, Battelle Memorial Institute, JPMorgan Chase, and Analog Devices.

KLAY: For more powerful memories from veterans, visit PBS.org/American Veteran, where you can also watch the American Veteran television series and digital short films. You can also learn more by using #AmericanVeteranPBS. 

I’m Phil Klay. Thanks for listening.

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Note: Red text denotes Archival Transcription.