Six years ago today, U.S. and coalition forces invaded Iraq. Since then, thousands of Wisconsin soldiers have served in the war, including 3,500 Army National Guard troops who left last month. Army studies have shown that at least one in five Iraq veterans has serious mental-health problems, such as depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Today, we meet two local veterans who were deeply wounded by the war, but didn’t know it until much later. WUWM’s Erin Toner reports.
They needed each other to get through this interview. So, the three of us – Tom Kronenburg and Jim Gabrish, and I – are sitting at Tom’s kitchen table in Greenfield drinking coffee. It seems strange to be sitting here talking about war because all around us are happy things – a swing set and toys outside, dozens of little cow figurines on a side table, and photos of smiling kids all over the refrigerator.
But for Tom and Jim, life is strange…even four years after coming home from Iraq. Jim says he still has nightmares.
“Sometimes I have the dreams where I can taste, smell and hear things that I had to do and observe while I was overseas. I left part of my soul in the desert and I’m trying to get it back I guess,” Gabrish says.
Jim lives in Mukwonago. He’s 51 years old with a salt and pepper beard and long brown hair. He’s wearing a black t-shirt with “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and a big scorpion on it. Jim is medically retired from the Army because of injuries and brain damage he suffered in Iraq. He was stationed in Kuwait with the 1158th Transportation Company out of Beloit. He drove heavy equipment trucks across the border.
“We’d haul Abrams, strikers, killing machines we’d haul ‘em on our trailers and take ‘em to the front lines throughout Iraq,” Gabrish says.
He says the convoys were huge, slow-moving targets and were constantly getting hit with gunfire and roadside bombs.
“As I was driving you could hear the pings, you know the bullets hitting the side of the armor and you just keep going because you can’t see ‘em. I guess I grew accustomed to it over time. To this day, I don’t know why I’m here, why I came back because I missed ‘em all, they missed me. But a lot of people they didn’t miss,” Gabrish says.
Jim says when he came home in 2005, he thought he was fine, but there were lots of clues he wasn’t. For one, he slept outside his house to protect it.
“For weeks, two months maybe, I don’t know. I don’t like crowds to this day. I gotta know where my front and rear entrances are. I have a weapon in the garage, a nine millimeter. That’s the sad part, I never really thought about that stuff before I went over. Now I do,” Gabrish says.
Jim was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury from getting tossed around when his truck got bombed.
His buddy, Tom Kronenburg, also has PTSD and brain damage. Kronenburg, now 41, went to Iraq in 2004 with a National Guard Engineering unit from Idaho.
“You seen any, uh, Red Line? Ok, Saving Private Ryan? All the guys that were walking and going forward and landing on the beach, engage, destroy the enemy, hold this town, while you get shot at, that’s me,” Kronenburg says.
Tom closes his eyes and scrunches his face when he tries to recall details about his mission. He says he’s suffered severe memory loss. He remembers one time a Humvee he was riding in got hit.
“I scanned and saw what I was sure was two heads sitting by what was two clumps of mud and I took off towards the field and they lit the secondary off and I remember being in the air, landing, and I engaged, and took ‘em out. That was it, that’s what I was supposed to do,” Kronenburg says.
He says for years, he didn’t even know he was injured from his time in Iraq or his service before that as paratrooper. Tom says it was probably the adrenaline that allowed him to ignore the pain. But after he came home this last time, he knew.
“Well, we’ll put it this way, I am 41 years old and I am retired. I’m 100 percent permanently disabled through VA,” Kronenburg says.
Tom says he suffered more than a dozen concussions while serving, 43 broken bones in his feet alone and is two inches shorter than when he joined the military. And he’s had five surgeries on his shoulder.
“They basically reput my right arm on, and used cabling to pull it back the inch and a half that it had been out, they figure since February or March of ‘04. I continued even to lift weights. I was bench pressing about 325 and doing 270-280 in shoulder presses and my arm wasn’t even connected,” Kronenburg says.
Both Tom and Jim are being treated for PTSD with medication and psychotherapy.
For Jim, the struggle’s been not having a mission anymore…not driving big trucks down the road in Iraq. For Tom, it’s not being healthy enough to still be in the Army.
Listen to Part Two of this story to hear more about their recovery and their lives now.
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