Part III: "We begin to travel the country to find more vets"

Carol scrapes enough money together and we start the long drive south from Connecticut. We leave in the late afternoon and stop in Virginia at midnight, and hit the road early the next morning.
In Georgia, we meet Erick, who worked in a motor pool in Baghdad. Erick was fairly amazed at the lack of major media coverage of a march in Washington that he participated in. “You have all these vets, they’re against the war for a reason, you’d think people would want to know.”
Adam, in Atlanta, was ready for payback after 9/11, but he could never make any logical connection between Iraq and the World Trade Center. “Most of the hijackers were Saudi. We don’t have a single soldier deployed in the war on terror in Saudi Arabia,” he says wryly.
In North Carolina we spoke with Jimmy, a very amiable former sergeant in the Marines, who tells us a harrowing tale of a speeding car that would not stop at a checkpoint in Iraq, where he was in charge. The Marines opened fire, killing everyone but the driver. It was a miscommunication—they were not terrorists. The driver, unharmed, was in agony and began pulling his hair out by the roots. He approached Jimmy, and raised a finger. “You did this. You killed my brother.” Jimmy could say nothing in response. “That’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life,” he tells us quietly.

Part II: "Our film begins to take form in Amherst, Massachusetts"

What is this documentary about? We have no game plan and I’m hoping it will take shape as we continue. Are we going to talk with vets from “both sides?” That’s the only fair thing, we’ve been told. I guess that makes sense.
In Amherst, Massachusetts we meet Kevin, purely by accident. He tells us of a very different kind of casualty of war, one that is not on any list. His son, Jeffery, came home without any visible injuries, but he was a very different person. Jeffrey was hallucinating and his behavior became increasingly erratic. He spoke of terrible things that happened in Iraq. He asked to sit in his father’s lap one evening. The next day, Kevin found his son’s body in the basement—he’d hung himself. “He looked peaceful for the first time in months,” Kevin told us.
Tears stream down our faces and I can’t recall being so moved. Kevin tells us that they later learned, from Jeff’s therapist, that the dog tags he wore around his neck had belonged to two unarmed Iraqi men he was ordered to shoot. “He wore them, not as trophies, but to honor those men he knew he was responsible for,” Kevin tells us.

We now know that we don’t have an ordinary documentary on our hands, with the filmmaker’s viewpoint dominating via the omnipresent narrator. People simply need to hear what these vets and their families have gone through, in their own words, and nothing else.

Part I: "We started this film on the Boston Commons"

My wife Carol and I wander a little dazed among the crowd of protestors and anti-protestors. A group of young men and women scream into each other’s faces. “Just sign up,” one woman blasts, through a wicked smile. No one at all appears to have ever done any military service. I turn the movie camera on.
An Iraq vet named Joe takes the microphone on stage. “Don’t tell me to sign up,” he says. “I did my time in Iraq. The recruiter’s office is over there.” He points, and the anti-protestors quickly become silent.
Alex, an Iraq vet, tells us about his shock when he first learned, from a trusted sergeant, that they weren’t there to fight for Iraqi freedom or to topple Hussein. “We’re here for one thing and that’s oil,” the sergeant said. The only motive they were left with was pride in their unit and the need to look out for each other. This was something we were to hear again and again.
We take to the streets. There are many groups present. A huge “get the hell out of Boston” chant goes up outside of some sort of Christian temple. Here, the buildings are tall and close together and the noise is unbelievable. Although the tone is vigorous and confrontational, no one really expects any violence. A neat row of Boston’s finest on horseback stands nearby, watching, and suddenly heavy snowflakes begin to fall.
We realize we have no idea what we’ve gotten ourselves into.

View the Trailer

You can view the trailer for this film
on the official site:
http://mywarmystory.com/trailer.html
or on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD-3tXyxiqc

Director's Statement

My wife Carol & I traveled across the U.S. to make this documentary. Our motive was simple - we felt that an important story about the war was not being told. These vets who oppose the very war they fought in were not making sweeping statements or generalizing. Their ideas developed after seeing and hearing specific things in Iraq.
One vet, an ordinary guy named Dave, from Illinois, went to Iraq believing that the U.S. was there to help the people of that country. He witnessed massive upheaval in their lives -- cities in ruin, civilian deaths, no water, and no power. These experiences eventually helped to change Dave's mind about the war.
Where can you hear stories like this? We weren't exposed to anything like these stories on the major media. There was broad support for the war, on the one hand, or stories of big scandals on the other, but nothing like this, the quiet opinions of many ordinary vets. These are stories that need to be heard.