Gear: Chapter 7

Soldiers and civilians live in different Americas. But we don't have to. For images, links and more, go to articlesofinterest.substack.com https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  All right, all of you, listen up. Today, we are on the eve of something grand, something intense, a day of reckoning. This is our moment. This is the very reason we have trained you so hard. Now is the time. We will not be late for our appointment with destiny. On my command, forward, march. Chapter seven.

• 0:35Avery Trufelman?

  Victoria Chamberlain left the Army.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  I ultimately left because it just was a good time for me, age-wise, to have enough time to try to do something else.

• 0:44Avery Trufelman?

  She's a podcast producer now, actually. That's how we met. But even now, in her civilian life, Victoria still wears some of her military clothes, only certain ones.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  And they're good, they're called silkies.

• 0:57Avery Trufelman?

  Silkies are these lightweight boxer shorts you can wear as underwear.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  I know everybody wears those.

• 1:01Avery Trufelman?

  As much as soldiers and veterans, including Victoria, don't like to wear Army clothes or Army-looking clothes out in the world, Victoria says that she and a lot of veterans do wear their silkies because, one, they're really comfy, and, two, they're subtle. Civilians might not even recognize them as military. Same goes for this thermal that Victoria was allowed to keep. It looks exactly like waffle tops she's seen at REI.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  I had to do a double take because I thought it was the legit tan waffle top that I was issued. And they look the same, and they're like $180.

• 1:36Avery Trufelman?

  These are the military clothes Victoria continues to wear in civilian life because these are some of the only military clothes she was allowed to keep.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Anything that touches your skin, you get to keep.

• 1:48Avery Trufelman?

  Everything else soldiers have to give back when they leave the Army. From the moment Victoria got her uniform, she was always told. One day, you're gonna have to return all this.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  When you get to basic training and you're issued that initial dump of stuff and you get the windbreaker, it's a Gore-Tex. They tell you like, never lose this. They're like, you don't want to know what happens if you lose this Gore-Tex. And like, they're not kidding. 20 years from now, it's gonna stop you from getting out of the Army when you need to.

• 2:14Avery Trufelman?

  Really? Like, you can't leave the Army if you don't give your gear back?

• 2:17Speaker 02

  If you are missing something that you have to return, you get a statement of charges from your commander and you like, can't leave until you've settled it. I know people who were like, missing stuff and it was like, hundreds of dollars.

• 2:27Avery Trufelman?

  Victoria was very diligent and kept track of all her stuff. Her gear return was relatively seamless. As was her return to civilian life. That was relatively smooth as well. Victoria had enlisted when she was in her late twenties. Her civilian identity was already pretty well-formed. She already had a good idea of who she was before she put on the Army uniform, and so she knew who she was after she took it off. But not all soldiers feel that way. Did you enter when you were 18? How old were you?

• 2:56Speaker 03

  I was 17 when I signed an ROTC contract at the University of Mississippi. And my dad had to fax his agreement that I could join.

• 3:05Avery Trufelman?

  This is Stacy Baer.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  You can go die for your country at 17. You can't smoke or vote till you're 18 and you can't drink until you're 21.

• 3:12Avery Trufelman?

  Stacy served in Bosnia in 2003, then he did landmine clearance for a couple of years, then he served in Iraq.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Man, I just loved being a soldier. And that's the thing, Avery, like, I fucking loved being, I loved being a soldier. I loved putting on a uniform every day. Just incredible people that I am so thankful that I got to meet and work with and learn from. I loved the people I got to work with. I loved the mission. I loved the discipline. I loved that we were all trying to be something bigger together than we ever could be individually. I loved it.

• 3:46Avery Trufelman?

  Stacy really bonded with the people he deployed with in Iraq.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  We all told the Army, like, we want to stay for another six months because the group we're with is here for another six months. We would like to stay with them. And the Army was like, yeah, but you've got to go back, turn your gear in, get new gear, and then be open to wherever we need you because we have somebody else slotted in. Because that's the thing, the military is just looking at numbers and big shapes versus like, the individual relationships. I hated how we were being used at the end of the day.

• 4:14Avery Trufelman?

  I thought you wanted to stay.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  I tried. I tried really hard to stay twice. But I couldn't do the things that the military wanted me to do.

• 4:22Avery Trufelman?

  And so in 2007, at the age of 29, Stacy found himself back in the US, turning in his gear. Although actually Stacy was allowed to keep a lot of his gear.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Because it's damaged and it can't be reused, right?

• 4:35Avery Trufelman?

  Stacy saw a lot of action.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  A lot of the stuff was damaged and unusable, like all my uniforms, all my boots.

• 4:42Avery Trufelman?

  But Stacy did not want to keep his gear, not any of it.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Like, I just chalked it.

• 4:48Avery Trufelman?

  He just threw it all away in a dumpster behind a liquor store.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  I was so over it. I just needed a clear break.

• 4:56Avery Trufelman?

  But why was that line in the sand between your two identities tied up with the clothes?

• 5:01Speaker 03

  I just needed it out. I needed to clear the space. And I'm a little regretful of it now. I think there might have been a poncho liner in there.

• 5:08Avery Trufelman?

  But at the time Stacy needed to wipe it away so that he could enter civilian life, enter his new role as a grad student studying city planning and urban design.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  The faculty and students at that school took the brunt of my coming home and just wonderful people. I wish every veteran could have such a wonderful welcoming home as I got from Penn Design. And I think as a veteran coming home with a lot of anger and drug issues, I can't say enough good things about my classmates who really accepted this like large, angry, coked-out vet.

• 5:42Avery Trufelman?

  Is it cliche if I'm like, "You are self-medicating with all your cocaine"?

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, cliches are cliches for a reason, right? I mean, there's oftentimes a lot of truth to them. I mean, there were some very traumatic things that happened while I was in Iraq. And I don't know if it was my unwillingness or capacity to process those at the time. I think it was a feeling of deep unworthiness to accept the love that was on offer and a deep desire to be different. And individual, because when people say, "Thank you for your service," they don't really know what you did, but it's a reflexive, like, "I know I should be grateful for what you did." One of my friends called it "pet a vet," right?

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Like, "Well, I bought a veteran a beer so I can absolve myself of even thinking about their everyday horrors or why we went to war." And I was like, "Well, if you want to thank me for my service, maybe take a minute to get to know my experience. Maybe get to take a minute to get to know my experience with the Iraqi people." And it's one of those things where, as an angry young veteran, if I had time with somebody, I'd be like, "Well, what of my service are you thanking me for?" And, and yeah, I mean, I was also, you know, coked out of my head and drinking a tremendous amount of booze every day, so I wasn't necessarily one for a lot of great conversations at the time. I also used to, when people were like, "I can't imagine what you did," I wanted to be like, "Try fucking harder." But again, I was really angry if you, if you're picking up on that.

• 7:14Avery Trufelman?

  Stacy started choosing to sleep outside, sometimes in a sleeping bag, sometimes just on the street.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  You know, it just felt more comfortable.

• 7:22Avery Trufelman?

  Why?

• 7:23Speaker 03

  It's a hard thing to explain, but it just felt easier, it felt safer than being in a building. It felt like I was more in control of my situation.

• 7:32Avery Trufelman?

  Wait, because it's like-

• 7:33Speaker 03

  I'm not saying it's a logical decision. You drank a lot, you've done a lot of drugs, and I was very suicidal. I mean, I had so much love and kindness and so many people wanting me to do well. Why was I so angry? Why was I suicidal when I had all this love and kindness around me?

• 7:52Avery Trufelman?

  And Stacy wasn't alone in this feeling. According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, veterans are more likely to report suicidal ideation than civilians, particularly in that period when they transition back to the civilian world. The majority of first suicide attempts, 57% of them, occur after veterans have been separated from service. Veterans are most vulnerable in their first three months of adjustment.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  I know I hurt people during that timeframe, and I'm deeply regretful.

• 8:27Avery Trufelman?

  There's this gaping rift between the United States military and United States civilians. Soldiers feel alienated from "regular life." Civilians feel alienated from war and from the people fighting it. But this is a tear that has to be sutured in a real and pragmatic way because we are inextricable. As you've heard, in the United States, the outdoor industry helped shape the mindset and look of the military and vice versa. Our fates are interwoven. And so, rather than ignore the military or pretend I have nothing to do with it, I'm

• 9:06Avery Trufelman?

  realizing that instead, I should ask more from it. After the break.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  Hey there, it's Robyn from PRX. If you're a longtime listener of Radiotopia, you may know that we had a podcast that ran from 2016 to 2020, discussing every episode of the show The West Wing. Well, I'm excited to tell you The West Wing Weekly is back. Joshua Molina, who starred on The West Wing as Will Bailey, and Rishi Kesh Hirway, creator and host of Song Exploder, have reunited to discuss the hit Netflix political thriller, The Diplomat. Just as they did in their original run, they're discussing each episode of the series in sequence, joined by special guests from the show and from the real world of diplomacy. Rishi and Josh will be wrapping up the first season with a special live taping at Union Chapel in London on November 14th. Subscribe now to The West Wing Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 10:03Avery Trufelman?

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• 10:46Avery Trufelman?

  Start shopping now at the realreal.com articals.

• 10:51Avery Trufelman?

  When outdoor companies talk about how healthy and beneficial the outdoors can be, they're implying that these activities are done in the right way. The Teddy Roosevelt way. The way where you're supposed to gear up and get in a car and leave the city. Go out into the country. Go do all this stuff in the right place. You're not supposed to do what Stacy did. You're not supposed to fall asleep on the street. And the sad irony wasn't lost on me that on my way to functional fabric fair, on my way to so many corporate headquarters all across the Pacific Northwest, as I walked to all of these places that espouse the value of getting outside, I walked by so many people

• 11:34Avery Trufelman?

  who actually do spend all of their time outside, sleeping in sleeping bags and tents. And unlike Stacy, not necessarily by choice.

• 11:45Speaker 05

  I make a show actually about fashion. A fashion dropout at Seattle Central. No way?

• 11:50Avery Trufelman?

  I should have guessed that Leah was a fashion school dropout. She dressed the part.

• 11:54Speaker 05

  And I re-repurchased jewelry.

• 11:56Avery Trufelman?

  She was wearing keys as necklaces and a hoop earring as a bracelet.

• 11:59Speaker 05

  I asked my friend last night, "Do you have the other hoops?" She like, "Lost it." So they become my bangles.

• 12:03Avery Trufelman?

  Leah dropped out of the pattern making program at Seattle Central because she already got a job at Nordstrom corporate.

• 12:09Speaker 05

  I got actually an assistant pattern maker position at Nordstrom's.

• 12:13Avery Trufelman?

  Leah left that job at Nordstrom corporate to become a paralegal, and now at 47, she is, in her words, unhoused.

• 12:21Speaker 05

  I've heard unhoused, I guess it's cool because it's one of those PC words. Like, if I was good at knowing all of them, and like, I like learning about them.

• 12:27Avery Trufelman?

  Leah was living in a fairly typical tent encampment in Burien, a city a bit south of Seattle. There are easily 100 people living in this small fenced-in area. Some tent brands I recognized, but most names were obscured by the blue tarps which were draped across the top of the tents.

• 12:46Speaker 05

  The rain devastated us, yeah.

• 12:48Avery Trufelman?

  As high-tech as a tent might be, it's still not a house. It's not meant to withstand Seattle rain 24/7.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  A lot of people I hear from a crisis, that something happened in their life, a change, a death, like they lose somebody or something changes in their life and they they don't overcome it. And whether they start using in their old life and that makes things fall apart, or they're out here and trying to to adapt and they start using. For me, that's what happened. My son died, my teenage son died, and then my husband died a year after that. And I was just newly out of, on a medical leave from my job. So I was like, for the first time in life, not working, not a mom, not a wife. You know, and each person is, we're only, I think the common is with not having a house, but what we have in common is that something happened that we weren't able to overcome. So, and and you come out here, it's quiet, people are in bed, or just like washing

• 13:42Speaker 05

  their face and getting up and just, we're just regular people.

• 13:45Avery Trufelman?

  And yet, what Leah's doing is technically illegal. The city council in Burian passed an anti-camping ordinance. So Leah is packed into this small sanctioned space out of view of downtown, forced to share portajons with a lot of people who she'd prefer not to share portajons with.

• 14:05Speaker 05

  We're only here because they told us that this is where we should go and we won't arrest you.

• 14:09Avery Trufelman?

  Burian is following the lead of cities like Boston, San Diego, Seattle, Newark, LA, and well over 160 other American cities who have passed these ordinances that are called anti-camping laws, that are a direct response to record highs in urban homelessness. To give you an idea of how bad the situation is, on a single night in January of 2024, well over 700,000 Americans were unhoused. And the fastest growing group of unhoused Americans are older adults. But still, in the United States, even though we're told that it's healthy to go outside,

• 14:51Avery Trufelman?

  that sleeping under the stars does a body good, if you live in over 160 American cities, You legally cannot do it where you live. This partition between society and nature is the dark conclusion of the Teddy Roosevelt separation of the outdoors. There's just something about camping where you're not supposed to that drives people nuts. Even during Occupy Wall Street and the Columbia University encampments, where protesters were sleeping in tents and sleeping bags, this freaked people out. You're only supposed to camp in the right places. Not that Leah would like to sleep in a tent. She would rather have a roof.

• 15:36Avery Trufelman?

  But for lack of a comprehensive social safety net, Leah and so many other people can only rely on their gear.

• 15:44Speaker 05

  I have a backpack that's a body size and has everything I own in it. And we put that somewhere and hide it to keep it safe. But a lot of folks are just like backpack, bag, and tent, and sleeping bag.

• 15:57Avery Trufelman?

  Granted, there are lots of different reasons why people end up without a place to sleep, but in the case of Leah, I cannot help but see similarities with Stacy's story. Because Leah suffered a series of traumatic losses and is self-medicating. And Leah doesn't have a lot of resources. She spends a good part of her days figuring out how to eat and where to sleep. But Leah would have a very, very different experience of homelessness if Leah were a veteran.

• 16:29Speaker 06

  A lot of vets are homeless because of their experiences in conflict, and we owe them the service of getting them back on their feet.

• 16:37Avery Trufelman?

  Jasper Craven, who writes about veterans' issues and the VA, which stands for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Veteran homelessness used to be a major, major, American problem.

• 16:50Avery Trufelman?

  In the late 80s, nearly half of all homeless American men were veterans because Vietnam veterans were suffering from high rates of PTSD and addiction without institutional support or access to affordable housing or mental health institutions. And the image of Vietnam veterans living on the street became emblematic of the homelessness epidemic in the United States. It was this great American shame that continued for decades well into the late aughts.

• 17:22Speaker 06

  But then during the Obama administration, they surged a lot of money into communities, created a lot of interesting partnerships between the feds and local housing authorities and nonprofits.

• 17:33Avery Trufelman?

  In 2010, there became a coordinated federal effort to truly try to end the problem of veteran homelessness. The Obama administration did not want a repeat of the Vietnam veterans story. Also, cities like Denver and Toronto had tried Housing First models, where someone gets housing before they are quote unquote "stable", and that was shown to work. So, veteran homelessness was this problem that Democrats and Republicans could all agree they wanted to solve and that the Obama administration felt they could deliver on.

• 18:07Speaker 06

  There's this program called HUDVASH, which is Housing in Urban Development, NVA, coordinating to understand stock and need and care and get people in.

• 18:16Avery Trufelman?

  HUDVASH is a way of subsidizing rent for veterans and getting them case managers. Individual veterans were tracked by name. There were street outreach teams. This program was run like an emergency response, not a charity.

• 18:30Speaker 06

  They also benefit from the fact that landlords are more likely, it seems, to accept a housing voucher from a vet.

• 18:35Avery Trufelman?

  Veteran homelessness has gone down precipitously. When the program first started in 2010, veterans accounted for 11.5% of homeless adults. By 2024, that was cut in half. It was 5%. It's sort of amazing. It's the one piece of moderately good news as homelessness rises across all other populations, including families, individuals, children, disabled, and elders. Rates of homelessness is rising for everyone, except, it seems, for veterans.

• 19:11Speaker 06

  The VA has done an incredible job in eradicating veteran homelessness in many major American cities.

• 19:17Avery Trufelman?

  Homelessness can feel so tragic and unsolvable and complex, and I feel so helpless when I see it all around me. How could we live in a society that is this rich and yet surrounded by this much poverty? And yet, here's a case study. For a subset of people, the United States government has kind of figured it out.

• 19:39Speaker 06

  The VA has shown that it can be done and that the government can do it. It's investing. It's putting people on a health care and housing path. It's making sure that they're being housed close to medical care. It's spending a lot of money. The formula for ending homelessness is at the VA for everybody.

• 19:57Avery Trufelman?

  But veteran homelessness was solvable because of a bureaucratic advantage. While unhoused civilians have to navigate their own way through a fractured maze of nonprofits, federal Medicaid, state mental health agencies, and local city shelters, all while finding somewhere to take a shower, veterans have the VA, which is a single, powerful federal agency with one database and one set of eligibility rules.

• 20:26Speaker 07

  When you leave the military, you have your DOD veteran card, and you are organized in a giant system.

• 20:32Avery Trufelman?

  Seasoned consultant, military costume historian Charles McFarlane.

• 20:35Speaker 07

  My joke is like, the only way we're going to get universal health care in this country is we draft everybody and then discharge them, and then we all get VA.

• 20:43Avery Trufelman?

  The VA is this big centralized system that could solve a lot of problems that plague American civilian life, like paying for college and healthcare and affording a home and getting on food stamps.

• 20:54Speaker 07

  These things are incredibly hard for individual civilians to manage and work through these very complicated systems. And I'm not saying that the military system is not complicated, it certainly is. But when you look at what's on offer, the military is our only really socialist, socialist government that we have in the United States that operates outside of the civilian world.

• 21:15Avery Trufelman?

  Some of what is on offer is through the VA for veterans. Different offerings are through the DOD for active-duty soldiers. But all of it is part of what some academics call the military welfare state.

• 21:29Speaker 07

  Everything from childcare to marriage counseling to base housing, all of this stuff is covered. They have created a system that actually works.

• 21:39Avery Trufelman?

  Are these systems perfect? No, no way. They're super flawed. The VA is chronically underfunded, and a lot of soldier services have been contracted out to private-sector businesses.

• 21:51Speaker 07

  I know a lot of people who are in the military, used to be in the military, and they all complain about the VA, or they complain about their housing, like all these things, right?

• 21:58Avery Trufelman?

  Which is normal. It's the same way people in the UK like to complain about their National Health Service.

• 22:03Speaker 07

  I'm not saying they're just crabby complainers, but like, at the end of the day, it's like, these things are being taken care of for you in a way that no other American has access to.

• 22:13Avery Trufelman?

  This is part of the military-civilian divide. We functionally live under different governments. But I really don't think we have to.

• 22:22Speaker 07

  I think things can change in a way that would allow everyone to feel as secure and as frustrated with their health insurance as people who are in the military.

• 22:31Avery Trufelman?

  Rights have been extended before. Just think all the way back to chapter one of this series, when historian Kristin L. Hogenson was telling us about how voting back in the 1800s was considered a privilege reserved for soldiers and veterans.

• 22:46Speaker 08

  The valorization of force was often used as a justification for keeping women out of politics because the voting rests on physical force, it rests on guns, it rests on the capacity to kill.

• 22:58Avery Trufelman?

  Which seems wild now, but how much weirder is it that healthcare and housing is contingent on fighting?

• 23:04Speaker 06

  And yes, some veterans really hold on to those benefits and they don't want them expanded.

• 23:09Avery Trufelman?

  Jasper Craven again.

• 23:11Speaker 06

  One thing that I've really been thinking about a lot recently is this whole idea of the military-civilian divide, and it's sometimes described as a crisis that civilians aren't connected to the military in the way they should be. They don't know people who served. But I think frankly, the larger problem is that the military injects its people with all of these big lofty ideas and self-importance, that many in the military have complete contempt for civilians. And they think that they are doing so much to protect these cowards out in the civilian world because they feel that they're somehow superior to civilians, which is a toxic belief. Many others don't.

• 23:52Avery Trufelman?

  This is something I've heard from a lot of soldiers, this resentment towards the lazy narcissistic American civilian who is shopping, taking selfies, eating snacks, oblivious and unaware of the difference between Sunni and Shia.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Because most people didn't understand what it is we were doing. I would remember naming battles or naming situations, thinking it was national news back home. And people were like, what?

• 24:21Avery Trufelman?

  Stacey Barrett again.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Well, and I think that's where that thank you for your service, like, and me being upset about it, that is my contempt, right? Like, I'm upset that you haven't taken the time to understand what I've gone through and why have I gone to war?

• 24:32Avery Trufelman?

  Do the work, yeah. This is not a uniquely modern problem. It's always been a little hard to get regular civilians engaged in war.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Who benefits from any war? The reason that only 3% of the American population or whatever cared about the Revolutionary War is because most people were just trying to get through their everyday.

• 24:53Avery Trufelman?

  And that's me. I am one of those civilians who wakes up preoccupied every morning by my to-do list and my little life.

• 25:03Avery Trufelman?

  I mean, I'm trying not to be too oblivious. I pay my taxes. I try to keep up with current events, but looking forward. Okay, humor me. I don't quite understand what sacrifices the members of the armed forces are making for me. I don't mean to sound disrespectful. I understand that members of the armed forces have given up a lot of their autonomy. They are making personal sacrifices. They are living very hard lives. They are doing lots of drills and they are getting really, really prepared, but like, prepared for what?

• 25:43Speaker 09

  You'll have missiles flying way behind enemy lines. You'll have cyber attacks on American cities.

• 25:49Avery Trufelman?

  This is Shashank Joshi, defense editor at The Economist.

• 25:53Speaker 09

  So there's a kind of quality of total war that we have only last seen in the West in the 1940s that is very, very distinctive from the contained wars that took place far away in the 2000s.

• 26:08Avery Trufelman?

  And it's like, what? How did that happen? Shashank is saying we're suddenly threatened with like World War II-style total warfare. And it makes no sense this is on the table because for my whole lifetime, the United States has been able to ward this off with the threat of our big scary weapons. Nuclear deterrence seems to have been able to keep this kind of warfare at bay.

• 26:36Speaker 09

  Deterrence is working. Deterrence works. And you can't prove that it works because you can't prove a negative. And there's a great scene in The Simpsons where Lisa has her magical rock. I think she's trying to persuade Homer or something and she says, "I've got this magical rock."

• 26:51Speaker 10

  I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.

• 26:53Speaker 09

  Oh, how does it work?

• 26:54Speaker 10

  It doesn't work.

• 26:55Speaker 09

  Uh huh.

• 26:56Speaker 10

  It's just a stupid rock.

• 26:57Speaker 09

  Uh huh.

• 26:58Speaker 10

  But I don't see any tigers around here, do you?

• 27:00Speaker 09

  He sort of pauses for a minute and then says, Lisa, I wanna buy your rock. I want to buy your rock. It's a good encapsulation of deterrence. You can't prove that it's it's working. But by and large, I think that these military capabilities are important.

• 27:13Avery Trufelman?

  But if we can't prove that these rocks keep tigers away, and no one wants to actually use the rocks, couldn't we all just get rid of the rocks?

• 27:22Speaker 09

  I think that you can always imagine a world beyond it, but you also have to imagine the pathway from here to that world and ask, what does that pathway look like? And how do we get there? This world of conventional disarmament is... We are so much further away from it today than we were in the 1990s. We envisioned that world in Europe. We went for it.

• 27:50Avery Trufelman?

  Europe pared down most of its militaries and disarmed.

• 27:53Speaker 09

  That's why the Netherlands, to take one example, got rid of all its tanks. It got rid of every single one of its tanks.

• 28:01Avery Trufelman?

  The whole promise of nuclear deterrence was that wars would never be the same. Peer-to-peer ground combat was gonna become a relic of the past. And then the war in Ukraine was like, nope, wars can still look a lot like they used to. Eventually, the Netherlands had to lease tanks from Germany.

• 28:17Speaker 09

  What happened? The Russians continued to arm. They didn't give up any of their weapons, and Europe was basically caught short.

• 28:26Avery Trufelman?

  And as many European countries are starting to rearm, the United States is no longer offering them as much military protection.

• 28:34Speaker 09

  It leaves allies profoundly vulnerable because we are so greatly dependent on American military, particularly in Europe, but also in Asia.

• 28:45Avery Trufelman?

  Under the Trump administration, the US has been pulling back defense for allies, with one tremendous exception being Israel, even while multiple international agencies declare Israel's actions in Gaza to be genocide. But everywhere else, the US is taking military protection away, just when Europe is feeling the most vulnerable and unprotected.

• 29:08Speaker 09

  So on the one hand, you know, yes, this is a story of European fecklessness. Why should America be devoting these huge resources to the protection of a wealthy continent that has lots of people, lots of money, and in theory, lots of weapons should it choose to build them? However, translating money and resources into capability doesn't happen overnight. And my gut feeling is it would take Europe 10 years to be truly capable of defending itself if America were to pull out tomorrow.

• 29:37Avery Trufelman?

  And Shashank warned me, this like global rearmament thing isn't just some abstract policy. This might impact me more than I think. If the US indeed relinquishes its role as a world police, the average American will be affected too. Like, countries don't give Americans special privileges because they like our movies.

• 29:54Speaker 09

  American hegemony for the last 80 years has not just been some generous favor to the world, it's been a package deal in which allies have often, if not always, shown deference to American leadership on a range of issues.

• 30:08Avery Trufelman?

  I, as an American, have lived in a world where I can assume everybody cares about my politics. Everybody speaks my birth language. I can travel, for the most part, where I like to.

• 30:22Speaker 09

  The rest of the world has lived in this world for 80 years. We've lived in a world where if you travel to the wrong jurisdiction, American secondary sanctions, American extradition, American political reach can get you. That's unnoticed in America because it's just like gravity.

• 30:36Avery Trufelman?

  I've reaped the tremendous rewards of this American hegemony, which have come in part from our expansive military enterprise.

• 30:46Avery Trufelman?

  I can pretend I have nothing to do with America's global military dominance and that I don't care about it, but I benefit from it.

• 30:55Speaker 09

  It's all around you. It's the default state. If you flip that and ask, what about a world in which it's China that calls the shots? I think that the world looks a lot less comfortable. You get your way less often. I think it's a world in which you have less freedom of maneuver.

• 31:10Avery Trufelman?

  Whether or not the US military goes fully isolationist in the coming years, the truth is, the American military already has been scaling down.

• 31:20Speaker 09

  We live in a society that is pretty demilitarized by the standards of the last 80 years.

• 31:26Avery Trufelman?

  Even though it super doesn't feel like it to me, American military spending has gone down significantly.

• 31:34Speaker 09

  In the United States today, you spend about 3.5% of GDP on defense, right?

• 31:40Avery Trufelman?

  Right.

• 31:40Speaker 09

  At the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you spent nearly 5%. This is not ancient history. This is 2010. And go back before that point. In the 80s, you were spending upwards of 6%. In the 60s, at the height of Vietnam, you were spending upwards of 9%. Go back to Korea, it's like 13, 14%. I repeat, American society is relatively demilitarized compared to the Cold War.

• 32:11Avery Trufelman?

  War generally has less of a presence in American life. Sure, our government continues to carry out pointed killings and raids and insisting we're not at war, and we remain in this twilight between war and peace. But there's this very, very, very strong desire that if we are going to actually get entangled in a true ground conflict again, it should be for a very, very good reason.

• 32:38Speaker 09

  I think that there is a widespread view that waging the global war on terror compromised our ability to prepare for more serious and less optional campaigns, for which America is now unprepared because it spent 20 years in the deserts and mountains of Iraq and Afghanistan. You have a generation of Iraq and Afghan war veterans who feel that ultimately...

• 33:04Speaker 09

  It was all for nothing.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  I don't know, right? I mean, the strategy of the war changed three times while I was there.

• 33:11Avery Trufelman?

  Stacey Bear, again.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  When I got to Iraq, we were still fighting weapons of mass destruction, turned out not to be there. Then we were fighting the global war on terror. We ended up creating financial resources to train more terrorists. And then we were fighting for democracy, but very, very different than the democracy that we were protecting back home. And that's what I mean when I say, what do you mean, thank you for your service? Because most people didn't. And I don't blame them anymore, but didn't understand what it is we were doing.

• 33:43Avery Trufelman?

  And I wonder if perhaps this helped contribute to the deepening military civilian divide. That in wars that lacked purpose, or where the purpose was shifting all the time, and it was hard to keep track of what was happening, civilians felt more distant from the fight, and soldiers turned inwards and felt bonded to one another, like a closed ranks fraternity.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  Do I think my service was worth it in Iraq? Absolutely. And I'm very proud of my team and what we did. I did my best to make sure that as many Americans got home as possible, and that as many Iraqis got home.

• 34:20Avery Trufelman?

  And so now, in an attempt to heal all of this, the army has been trying to say, look, let's move on. And now, soldiers can trust that we will only ask them to fight for really good reasons, and citizens can look upon their army with pride and confidence. And the way the army has been trying to relay this message has been with a massive fashion makeover, which I will tell you about after the break. I first heard about The RealReal, I think, a decade ago. Suddenly, it was this place where you could get Prada pumps and Burberry jackets and Gucci handbags for a song.

• 35:02Avery Trufelman?

  Like, I recently got this vintage 90s Yoji Yamamoto skirt that I wear constantly. The RealReal is adding thousands and thousands of items every single day, so it really does still feel Like a treasure hunt, even though it has all the convenience of shopping online. And I periodically use it to clean out my closet. They make it so easy. The RealReal sends a representative to my tiny apartment to pick up my things and assess them for me, and then it's done. Money just appears in my account. The RealReal is the most trusted name in authenticated luxury resale. With over 10,000 new arrivals daily, no one does resale like The RealReal. And now, get $25 off your first purchase when you go to the realreal.com articals.

• 35:46Avery Trufelman?

  That's the realreal.com articals to get your $25 off. Start shopping now at the realreal.com articals. I just want to read what it says to our customers. "Wearing the uniform of the United States Armed Forces is an honor and a privilege. The Exchange takes great pride in being the only approved source for you to purchase your military uniforms." When Marine reservist Alex Dragone took me to The Exchange, which was the store on the military base where I bought my Army pants, there, in the uniform section, was a big display about the new Army service uniforms.

• 36:23Speaker 11

  A service uniform is when you're presenting yourself as a professional, and it's supposed to be like, yep, I'm here on business.

• 36:29Avery Trufelman?

  The service uniforms are different from the combat uniforms. The Army combat uniforms are the ones that are camouflage. Those are for everyday wear. Those are what you actually wear to fight. The service uniforms are the nicer business suits for attending weddings, or funerals, or parades, or fancy meetings, like everyone at the AUSA conference was wearing their service uniform.

• 36:52Speaker 11

  Marines who testify on Capitol Hill will wear their service uniforms. So I think this is what the Army's got.

• 36:57Avery Trufelman?

  I mean, Alex doesn't know. He's a Marine. He has his own service uniform. Every branch of the military does. And for the Army, their service uniform used to be blue. It was this blue suit with gold buttons and gold-rimmed epaulettes. It sort of made soldiers look like very decorated airline pilots. But then, in 2018, a new service uniform design was introduced, and it was slowly rolled out in 2020. Yeah, it says like, "All new Army green service uniform coming soon." And it looks like, and I say this with so much love, cosplay. Like, it looks like they're in a movie.

• 37:36Speaker 11

  This is like a retro. This is like, this was brought back from the Second World War.

• 37:39Avery Trufelman?

  It looks. Exactly like the jacket that General Littlejohn designed. It's a version of the ETO jacket or the Ike jacket. It's kind of wild. But it's not like this is a triumph of General Littlejohn. He would be turning in his grave, knowing that his beloved design is not being used for combat. And also, in addition to the Ike jacket, soldiers can choose a cut that looks more like a four-pocket tunic. But both styles are dark-green, slim-cut suits that make everyone in the Army look like General Eisenhower, or General MacArthur, or General Littlejohn.

• 38:19Avery Trufelman?

  Now, all Army soldiers walk around looking like officers from the 1940s. And even though the official name of this service uniform is the Green Army Service Uniform, you'll hear it called the pinks and greens. Why are these called pinks and greens? They're just like sepia-toned.

• 38:37Speaker 11

  They're more just like green and tan, green and khaki. I don't see any real pink on there.

• 38:42Speaker 12

  They're called pink, but it's like a khaki with a pinkish hue to them because of the way they're dyed.

• 38:49Avery Trufelman?

  Our civilian layperson expert Joshua Kerner says that in World War II, officers wore khaki-ish pants.

• 38:56Speaker 12

  To make sure that, let me say, you wore out your trousers quickly than your jacket, and you couldn't get trousers that matched perfectly with your jacket. So it would be an intentional enough mismatch.

• 39:06Avery Trufelman?

  As opposed to a traditional suit where the color match is supposed to be perfect. So the pinks and greens are truly supposed to be a reboot of a design from World War II.

• 39:16Speaker 13

  My team didn't really design that uniform.

• 39:19Avery Trufelman?

  Annette LaFleur, the clothing designer for the military.

• 39:21Speaker 13

  It really came from an existing design from the past.

• 39:24Avery Trufelman?

  Annette and her team actually created a new, updated design for the Army Service Uniform, but in the end, Army leadership just went with the old pinks and greens.

• 39:34Speaker 13

  We've helped with improving the fit and some different characteristics of it, and then it was kind of modernized a bit.

• 39:40Speaker 07

  Obviously, they are a throwback to World War II uniforms, but they are also... So incredibly bad.

• 39:48Avery Trufelman?

  Costume historian Charles McFarlane again.

• 39:49Speaker 07

  They look like shit. Ah ha! Like, they are absolutely atrocious looking.

• 39:54Avery Trufelman?

  But, ah, the military, as ever, is a reflection of society here.

• 40:00Speaker 07

  If you walk down the street and you ask anybody what their suit size is, I think very few would know what their size is. We don't wear these things.

• 40:07Avery Trufelman?

  We civilians are also really bad at wearing suits now. The military, they're just like us.

• 40:13Speaker 07

  How many companies are making suits in the United States today? Like, one or two. And as a result, these are being made by non-suiting manufacturers in the United States to comply with the Berry Amendment, which is great. And they fit like trash bags.

• 40:28Avery Trufelman?

  And civilians and soldiers alike were all starting to dress a bit too casually for work. Soldiers were just starting to wear their camouflage fatigues all the time, like they were dressing for combat to file paperwork.

• 40:40Speaker 07

  People just want to go to the office wearing their comfy casual combat uniform instead of wearing a suit and tie.

• 40:48Avery Trufelman?

  And Charles thinks part of the change of the pinks and greens was to get the army back into a suit and tie again. It's putting the army back into fancier, more ornamental dress again.

• 40:59Speaker 07

  Trying to re-posture the military towards more of a peacetime look.

• 41:05Avery Trufelman?

  Which I get, but that didn't mean they needed to dress like World War II officers.

• 41:10Speaker 14

  Well, why are we making this style choice? Why are we making a style choice at a particular time?

• 41:15Avery Trufelman?

  Former naval officer Andrea Goldstein.

• 41:17Speaker 14

  When the pinks and greens came about, it was also as the war in Afghanistan was driving down. You know, the war in Iraq had largely ended, but the conflict has continued. You know, we still have Americans on the ground in Iraq. But it was largely seen as a, let's engage in World War II nostalgia because we haven't won a war in a while.

• 41:39Avery Trufelman?

  Dressing nostalgically for a war that felt like it had a clear reason. A war that felt right and justified. Which, you know, dressing for it won't make it so, especially since this is so obviously ceremonial.

• 41:57Avery Trufelman?

  The army doesn't fight in suits. Soldiers fight in Gore-Tex. They fight in gear. The pinks and greens are an anachronistic costume that hides the truth. Which is that soldiers and civilians don't dress that differently now. We all wear fleeces and range shells and camelbacks and gators and hiking boots. Many made by the exact same companies. We don't dress that differently. And yet, that did not stop Stacy Baer from chucking all of his stuff in the dumpster behind the liquor store.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  I was so angry and so pissed off. And I could not see through the fog to accept what was being offered. Holy, I could not fully accept it. And the feelings of suicidal ideation, I think there is something there of like, how close do you touch that line when you peer over into the abyss? And what is actually holding on? What is holding you?

• 43:07Avery Trufelman?

  Did you tell anyone?

• 43:09Speaker 03

  I said, you know, I wanted to die, but that's why my buddy Chuck got me out rock climbing.

• 43:13Avery Trufelman?

  After grad school, Stacy landed in Boulder, Colorado. And Chuck was like, go buy some climbing shoes.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  Chuck is my size, right? He's big, tall, lanky, redheaded dude, also a veteran.

• 43:26Avery Trufelman?

  He took Stacy to the Flatirons, which is this beautiful mountain peak in a city park. It's a great place to learn to climb.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  He roped me up and he puts anchors on the wall in case we fall. So that you only fall to your closest anchor, right?

• 43:37Avery Trufelman?

  And so you're on the side of a mountain?

• 43:39Speaker 03

  On the side of a rock. But at the time, like I said, I was very suicidal. But every time that I felt like I was gonna fall, I'd yell up to Chuck and I'd say, "Take." And that means take the rope. So that the rope is very tight, right? Because if it's slack, you're gonna fall. I kept saying, "Take." And so I was like, "Fine." I didn't want to die. And we moved so slowly. And the thing about climbing is you're together, but not, because you're... Feet away and then you come together.

• 44:05Avery Trufelman?

  By the second pitch, Stacy started to gain confidence.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  And so a pitch is the length of a rope, right? And then he led and then you're apart and then I came up.

• 44:14Avery Trufelman?

  By the third pitch, his breath began to even.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  And it was so painstakingly slow.

• 44:20Avery Trufelman?

  By the fifth pitch, his mind shut down.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  And you've got to move softer and allow your body to soften.

• 44:26Avery Trufelman?

  And then, at the end of the climb, the reward.

• 44:30Speaker 03

  And it was at that moment where I got up there and sun clears and you're on this beautiful rock face and you can see the entire front range in front of you. You know, you can look down and see the prairie coming up and then you can look in a different direction and see the Rocky Mountains. I saw and was overwhelmed by beauty and was overwhelmed about what I could do in this body that I assumed was broken and this mind that I assumed was broken because somebody had reached out and I had actually taken their help. I had actually accepted their love and it was this deep somatic experience and I'm shaking and that's awe, right? That was an overwhelming sense of awe. And so that moment has really reverberated throughout my life.

• 45:12Avery Trufelman?

  Stacy started a nonprofit dedicated to helping veterans heal through the outdoors. He's even led skiing trips to Afghanistan and Iraq so that veterans can experience the beauty and culture of places they had only associated with violence.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  I've done all these amazing things in life that you could look at and be like, wow, you've done landmine clearance, you've gone back to ski in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the VA is without a doubt the hardest expedition and journey I've ever been on. I went to the VA for the first time and followed through to get my benefits this year.

• 45:46Avery Trufelman?

  His experience accepting help and opening his heart in the outdoors allowed Stacy to get to the place where he could accept help in his life. He signed up for therapy.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  I should have got my benefits 10 years ago, 18 years ago, but I didn't have the, for whatever reason, I didn't have the capacity. And that capacity was built over the years through.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Veterans and non-veterans alike, and over time, that became people I met in the outdoors. Over time, it became the activity of the outdoors. For a long time, I thought the outdoors was so great for veterans because it replicated the things that we learned at war, right? Camaraderie, sense of purpose, physicality, mission. But what I've come to realize is that the military actually is a shadow of what we can have outside. But the military is a lot easier to access than the outdoors for most people.

• 46:39Avery Trufelman?

  Because the military pays you. The outdoors costs a lot of money.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  We're like, oh, the outdoors is free, but it's not. You're gonna need sun protection and shoes and sunnies or a winter jacket. And those things cost money. You know, the gear industry has done such a good job promoting such a very intense version of visual awe that I think we end up creating these classes of people such as yourself where you're like, I don't really see myself as outdoorsy.

• 47:06Avery Trufelman?

  Stacy let the cat out of the bag. I'm not an outdoorsy person, at least not in the traditional sense. I never really have been, and I never understood why I didn't like it. And for a while, I was like, maybe I'm asexual, but for nature? I mean, I get the appeal. I'm not a robot. I too love sunsets and beautiful landscapes. But after making this series, I realized my problem is the gear. I don't want to buy all that stuff. It's not my style. And like, I don't know where I would put it. And I don't like the way that you're supposed to do it.

• 47:48Avery Trufelman?

  I don't want to go shopping and get in a car and drive an hour or two out of town and walk in a circle and then drive back home. You know what I mean? There's something about it that feels so artificial to do something that's supposed to be so natural. I would prefer to just take a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge or bike to Queens, wearing my own clothes that I already have.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  But to your point, there are oftentimes material needs to be able to access some of these bigger moments, right? But I think that's a lot of the work that Friends of Grand Rapids Parks has helped me show.

• 48:28Avery Trufelman?

  Stacy is now the executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Grand Rapids Parks in Michigan.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  You can have really meaningful outdoor experiences with the trees on your street and the plants near your apartment, and you deserve that beauty. And we all deserve that beauty. I think everybody deserves awe, and it doesn't have to be denial. But the great thing about America and our public lands is we all own that. That's yours too.

• 48:56Avery Trufelman?

  That is, ultimately, what Stacy and so many, many millions of others before him have fought for: the land, whose beauty should be open to everyone. By the great good fortune of being alive on the planet, all of this is already yours. The outdoors are your birthright. You live in it, whether you dress for it or not.

• 49:45Avery Trufelman?

  I'm Avery Trufelman. I report, produce, and make articles of interest.

• 49:51Avery Trufelman?

  But I'm gonna do some kind of long, sappy credits here, if that's okay, because the series sort of took a lot out of me and I'm very grateful to the people who helped out. I always like to read the acknowledgements at the ends of books and stuff, and maybe you do too, so this is gonna be like that. Biggest thanks to my partner in crime on this, Alison Behringer, who is my editor, running with me stride for stride, step for step, being both my cheerleader and my taskmaster and making sure I never got away with a lazy script, ever. And also, on this last episode, I was edited by the brilliant Sayar Kavedo. Your poetic soul never ceases to amaze me. And fellas, he's single. Thank you, Charles McFarlane, for nerding out with me most weeks and taking me to

• 50:33Avery Trufelman?

  class on the military. I feel like you gave me your master's degree. Thank you for being so generous with your knowledge. There's so much more to say about the military and fashion that I couldn't possibly get into. If you want to know more, there are endless rabbit holes. Follow Charles's writing at combatthreads.substack.com. Thank you so much also to the attention and care of fact checker Yasmin Al-Sayad, especially since you got a new job while this was happening and you continued to work on the show. Thank you so much. Thank you to my friends Ray Royal, Sasami Ashworth, and Sean Seymour of Lullatone. Scoring these stories is always so much fun. Thank you all for letting me talk over your work. Huge, huge thanks also to Jocelyn Gonzalez, who is saintly in both her patience

• 51:18Avery Trufelman?

  and ability to perform miracles. Thank you for mixing and mastering these stories, Jocelyn. They are so safe in your capable hands. Can we also give Ray Christian, like, the Oscar in podcasting for those drill sergeant announcements? Ray's a star, and his podcast, once again, is called What's Ray Saying? Generally, a huge thank you to the Outdoor Recreation Archive in Logan, Utah, and its founders Clint Pumphrey, and especially Chase Anderson, who has been my guide in the outdoor world and led me to so many interesting people who I talked to for this series. Special, special thanks, this particular episode, to Will James and Sydney Brownstone. These are two Seattle-based reporters who have worked extensively on homelessness. They were the ones who helped me approach encampments and talk to Leah, as well as a

• 52:00Avery Trufelman?

  A bunch of other people. Will and Sydney made sure I went about this the right way and not just like barge into people's homes with a microphone. If you'd like to learn more about the situation in Seattle and hear from Will and Sydney a bit themselves, check out their remarkable podcast, Outsiders. Also, special thanks to actor and audiobook narrator Ari Fleikos. I had interviewed this top-secret defense expert who needed to remain anonymous, and Ari actually imitated him perfectly and did such an amazing job, and then I didn't even use it, which is such a tragedy. So, thank you, Ari. And I'd like to take this moment to give a huge shout out to the many, many people who I didn't get to include in this series, including George Sandler, Alex Carlton from Filson,

• 52:42Avery Trufelman?

  Stephen McCullough of Functional Fabric Fair, the inventor of the sports bra La Jean Lawson, fabric tester Diana Wyman, fashion icon Julian Carter, Brad Garman of the Michigan Outdoor Creation Office, legendary uniform designer Stan Herman, Ken Fisk from Primaloft, Oliver Berkman, author of 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and Will Dunn of REI. I really could have made a whole second series with all the voices I had to cut. And I learned so much from you, and I really enjoyed spending time with you. I'm so sorry, I just had to whittle things down. And thank you so much, Radiotopia, for being the best partner a podcaster could dream of, especially to Yori Lasordo, Audrey Davidson, and Melissa Garcia-Hul. And special shout out to Audrey Martovich. Welcome to the world, Wendy. Can't

• 53:22Avery Trufelman?

  wait to meet you. Thank you also to Shorefire Media, especially Greg Jakubek and Henry Thomas. You rule, guys. And I know I thank my fiance Drew in every episode, but it's not to be like, "I am a fiance." I mean, the reason I've been able to make this work is that Drew functionally turned my life into a writing residency and allowed me to give up all my other responsibilities so I can just stay inside and work all day. So, thank you so much, dear Drew. I know you gave up a lot for this. And most of all, thank you. You, listening to this right now. Wow, you listened all the way to the end. That's really cool. That means a lot. I know these episodes are kind of intense and that it asks a lot of you. They're not exactly like passive listening. I feel like I'm

• 54:07Avery Trufelman?

  giving you all my effort and you're giving your effort back to me, and I feel very connected to you. So, thank you very much. Drop me a line. Stay in touch at articlesofinterest.substack.com.

• 54:24Speaker 00

  Radiotopia.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  From PRX.