Into the Trenches

My name is Jacob Fadley and I was a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Army. I am part of the most recent generation that went off to war in the Middle East nearly a decade ago and have been fighting ever since. I find myself still experiencing a familiar range of emotions that I thought I left over there, but here I am, two years removed from my last foray into a combat zone still battling those same emotions. Of course there is anger--it’s war after all, even if the name has fallen out of use. And contempt for the deployments itself, dragging me away from the people I love. And then there’s the paradoxical mix of fear and sadness associated with most missions: fear upon leaving the wire, followed by sadness when nothing happens. But it’s surprise that’s the worst. No amount of training can prepare you for the small concussion burst that comes with unexpected gunfire. It reverberates in your chest like some kind of crude war drum and your entire body turns into a fluid motion of annihilation. Your unthinking hands grasp the front of your weapon, lifting the butt of your M4 Carbine to a small nook that exists between the body armor and your shoulder. Taking a deep breath, you depress a finger and release the machine’s song: DA-DA-DA. You’re excited, ashamed, furious, tense, and satisfied all at once. That which felt like an eternity is over in a flash and you awake to find yourself still alive and yet somehow a casualty.

To look at me, you’d think I was just an average American guy. A middle class male from a Midwestern city. A lot of us tend to seem like everyone else and you’d never think about it twice, unless you’re one of us. But we’re out there. With our distinctly straight gaits and our habit of always being on time. We scan the faces of every crowd we enter, looking for anything out of place. And sometimes, we startle our partners when we wake up in our old, familiar beds not knowing where we are or whom we’re with. We’re a minority you can only tell buy our service records. We are the modern war veterans and each of us just want to be heard.

It is my aim to develop a distinct cinematic experience that will refine the way that people perceive the realities of war and the true cost it bears. Popular perceptions need to extend beyond the simple labels that are used to quantify struggles. Being a soldier is about split second decisions and weighty moral choices. It’s about wounds received as well as inflicted. It’s about getting lost in a sea of others just like you and finding a way to rediscover who you really are after you’ve been away from yourself for so long. It’s about forgiving ourselves first before we can accept thanks.

I want to make this film in order to translate the soldier’s experience of shame, guilt, and regret to a wider audience and use it to engage in the ongoing human struggle to come to terms with all emotional pain. As soldiers, some shake our hands in thanks for our service, while others tell us they appreciate our sacrifices. But the truth is, most of us feel guilty about the war and our role in it. So when we’re thanked it’s a reminder of something we’re ashamed of, like given a trophy to the pain.