Up First from NPR - Carlson’s War: Part 1

Episode Date: November 9, 2025

What does it mean to live through war? And can someone who’s experienced war ever get over it? These are questions NPR’s Quil Lawrence has been asking himself for years. A decade ago, Lawrence did a story on David Carlson, a veteran who’d excelled at being a soldier but struggled at home with PTSD, drugs and finally incarceration. Could Carlson find a way out or would the trauma of war come to define his life?Listen to Part 2 here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Before we start today's show, we want to share a warning that this episode has explicit language, descriptions of violence, and includes mentions of suicide. Okay, here's the show. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story. Veterans Day is coming up this week, so I wanted to invite NPR's Quill Lawrence onto the show to share a story he's been working on for 10 years. Quill has covered vets in the Department of Veterans Affairs for NPR since 2012. And for almost that whole time, he's been following the story of One Combat Veterans Journey Home.

So, Quill, welcome. Oh, thank you, Aisha. Now, just to brag a little bit, NPR is the only mainstream national network that has consistently had a dedicated veterans reporter. And Quill, that started with you. How did you get the job? Yeah, I was a war correspondent for about 15 years. In the end of that, I was working at NPR bureaus in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the beginning of those wars, I could just cruise around either of those countries in a beat-up taxi and just sort of keep a low profile.

As the wars got more intense, the only way I could get around was to embed with U.S. troops. So that's when I started getting to know troops. And so you're embedded with these troops, you're spending all this time with them. What did you learn from that? Well, besides just seeing the war from their perspective, as the years passed on and they were doing deployment after deployment, I just started thinking, what the hell are these troops going to do when they get home? Really, just how are they going to relate to people who haven't been to war? And how are they not going to resent the country that sent them to fight and possibly die at war?

and then kind of just stopped paying attention to the wars. And honestly, I had the same questions for me. I could see that being a work correspondent was stressing out my relationships back at home. And sometimes being at home, I didn't feel like I had any real purpose until I could get back to the wars. But I really wanted to come home. And so the beat for me, for NPR covering veterans, started out as a way to get home. But, you know, I thought it was important to chronicle the experiences of these veterans and what happens to them on the home front.

And we've heard your reporting over the years covering a wide range of stories about vets. In Paris Quill, Lawrence visits a family where a husband is the one who stays home and a mother goes off to war. A party at Jane Grimes House outside Fort Worth means all the enchiladas you can eat, Coors Light, and Real Texas Hospitality. Dodson is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed. by the group Paralyzed Veterans of America. Estimates vary about how many veterans have PTSD, but it's almost certainly a minority.

More importantly to me right now is that we're all hanging off about 800 feet up, and we're looking out at the gorgeous view of Yosemite. But for all my coverage over the years, there is one story I've been following the longest and that isn't really over yet. And that's Dave Carlson. I came across his story because a lot of my reporting,

can hear is about vets making the transition to civilian life. And the VA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, can be very helpful with this, with disability benefits, with health care, therapy, home loans, career counseling. But there's one group that doesn't really get those benefits, vets in prison. There are tens of thousands of veterans currently incarcerated in the United States. And when you go to prison, most of your VA benefits stop. And getting over PTSD in prison seems practically impossible. And I wanted to find out what that would be like for a combat vet. And I went looking for a vet to profile, and eventually I found Dave Carlson.

You have a call from an inmate at Waukesha County Jail. This week on the Sunday story, Quill tells us about Dave Carlson and the challenges he faced over 10 years as he moved from war to desperation to incarceration. Jail is the least therapeutic atmosphere you can probably ever imagine. Jail is you come in one way and you leave three times worse. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and C's Apply. This is a Sunday story,

and today I'm handing the mic over to NPR's Quill Lawrence. He's been interviewing a rock war veteran Dave Carlson over the past 10 years. So I first reached out to Dave Carlson in summer of 2015. I was interested in his individual story, But I was also trying to answer a question, and that is, can you ever really get past war? And maybe that was a question for me, too. So Dave Carlson, he's 31. He's a decorated Iraq war combat vet. But back then, he was locked up in jail in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

He'd been moved to the jailhouse from a prison because he had a hearing coming up. He'd already served most of four years for a long string of crimes. theft, drunk driving, battery. He'd done most of that stuff after returning home from his second tour in Iraq. But he'd gotten into more trouble in prison. And now, the judge was going to have to decide whether to add even more time to his sentence.

And we talked on the phone a few times from jail, but the first time I actually laid eyes on Dave Carlson was September 3rd, 2015 at his sentencing hearing. All rise, please. I could see him from behind in a prison jumpsuit. He stole a quick glance backwards toward all the family and friends who'd come, but then the bailiff told him to face front toward the judge. He was the only black man in the dozens of people in court that I recall.

Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. And I'm trying to square this thoughtful, decorated combat vet I've been on the phone with with this criminal defendant sitting in the dock. A lot of people had turned out to support him, though. His grandma took the stand. I have loved David Carlson, my grandson, from the time he was born. And before the hearing, I talked to a bunch of his war buddies. Sergeant David Rock said he met Carlson in 2007 at the beginning of his second deployment.

When it came to how to lead and how to kind of represent yourself, David was definitely on the list of people that I kind of held in an iconic standpoint. His old friend Josh Fridgen, who is in Special Forces, he'd known Carlson since 2003 when they met in basic training. When I think of mental toughness, Dave's one of the people that come right to the forefront of my mind, like, if he sets his mind on something and he believes he can do it, like he's going to do it. Or he's, you know, pretty much he'll die trying. We're here today on the matter of state of Wisconsin versus David Carlson. And as the court proceedings begin, the judge almost immediately starts reading off a list of Dave Carlson's past run-ins with the justice system. And there were a lot.

A felony operating out of the influence. He's arrested in O'Clair, loss of driving privileges. The defendant was convicted of at least four felonies and bail jumping. Each of them carry with them up to six years in the state prison system. So the max exposure here is 12 years today with six years of confinement. And so there I am in the back of the courtroom. and I'm just looking at his rock buddies talking about how respected he was

and I'm just thinking what the hell happened to Dave Carlson that it could wind up sitting here in a prison jumpsuit. I've met a lot of combat vets and Dave Carlson's not the first one I've met in prison. As I got to know him, I would find out how the war had affected him. Carlson has diagnosed PTSD and vets with PTSD are more likely than other vets to get in trouble with a law and wind up incarcerated.

It's also true that vets with PTSD often had pre-existing trauma and psychological issues before they even joined the military. They come with a lot of baggage, and that was exactly the case for Dave Carlson. He had a rough upbringing. His mom is white. She says she was trafficked as a sex worker and struggled with addiction. His dad is black.

He was drafted at 18 years old and saw combat in Vietnam. When I sat down with Carlson earlier this year and was really our first big in-person interview after years of phone conversations, he was blunt about his childhood. My dad was a crackhead and a pimp, nothing but violence, guns, like all kinds of stuff like that, drug dealing, all of that stuff. And he blames his dad for a lot of it. I was angry for a lot, for much of my life. I was very angry with my dad. But even his mom, who he loved, couldn't provide much parenting. By the time Carlson was a teenager, he was wanted for a string of crimes he'd committed with his older brother.

But then 15, my mom tried to kill herself again. She was in the psych ward. I went to visit her in the psych ward, and she told me that if I turned myself in, she'd go get long-term help. Carlson says that's how he wound up in juvenile detention. Eventually, he's released to his mom's parents. They lived up in the town of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, not such an urban setting. He was one of the few black kids in town, and this was a good time for him.

He started high school, and he did okay. At least that's what his grandma told the judge at his hearing years later. I can tell you that it was a pleasure always to go to every school conference for David, and he was always on the honor roll, and all teachers spoke well of him. And his grandma said he got good grades,

and he held down a part-time job, and he was on the football team. And then he took up Golden Glove boxing, and his coach, Johnny Strandlin, said he was polite, coachable, and considerate. In fact, Zani's wife said, David is a kind of boy you'd love to have as a son. Carlson actually made it to college on a scholarship, but then his past kind of started catching up with him. So as I went on, like it was hard, I was kind of just spinning my wheels. I started drinking.

Drinking became an issue. And so, like, towards the end of my first semester in college, Like, I was just, like, really depressed. I felt, like, really withdrawn from everybody else. I couldn't make friends. I had, like, social anxiety horribly. So he decided to outrun that past he would enlist. He wanted to go into the Army, but, you know, he had a felony record as a juvenile.

So they would have had to file this extra paperwork to get a waiver. So it was the National Guard recruiter. It was the one that was willing to do the extra work to get me in. So Carlson joined the National Guard, and he went to basic training. And he said it felt good. It felt right. I was like, I'm good at this. Like, I can do this.

And I feel something like, I feel a type of, like, purpose. When we come back, Dave Carlson goes to war. We're back with the Sunday story and NPR's Quill Lawrence. Dave Carlson enlists in the National Guard. and by the time he's ready to deploy, it's becoming clear that National Guard units are going to be doing extended combat tours. National Guard and Army Reserve troops in Iraq

will be staying a bit longer. Active duty troops are already being held longer than expected. Now Guard and Reserve troops are having their tours of duty extended to as long as a year. This is just a couple years after 9-11. And all of the recruiting zeal and people signing up in big number, after that, is running into the reality that Iraq is not going to be a quick or easy war.

And now guardsmen basically have to leave their jobs and spend a year in combat. And that was the case with Dave Carlson. He was told at the time he signed up that he was headed for war. He went on his first tour of duty to Iraq at the end of 2004. And it's just as the Iraq war was starting to get really nasty. He was sent to a base near a town called Duluia. and the name of that town actually just sends chills down my spine because I was in Iraq at that same time

and I know just how much violence and how much killing was going on in that town around that time. So Carlson's National Guard unit was mostly standing watch back at the base rather than going out on patrols. But Dave Carlson, he wants to do more and he wants to be out there where the fighting is happening. And he'll go out on patrol with anyone who, take him. I'd bounce around different squads, like sections going out, depending on, like,

my schedule, because I would pull, like, guard duty for like eight hours or ten hours, and then I would go on mission with them, or I'd get dropped off after mission, and then I'd go on guard duty. Eventually, he started going out on missions with one particular platoon, led by an army sergeant named Alwyn Cash, who will later be recognized as one of the heroes of the entire Iraq War. But at the time, he was just the sergeant that Carlson had to pester about going out on patrols. I was super nervous. I was a private.

I was like a PV2, right? Super nervous to approach this individual. And I'm like, can I come with you on tour? Like my snot nose, like, and he put up with it, right? And sometimes he'd wake up, like, Cash was asleep from having been out on patrol all night. And he'd be like, Carlson, yeah, okay, yeah, just, yeah, whatever. Yeah, you can come on patrol with us, just let me sleep.

And they would talk shit. Like, the other privates and stuff would talk shit and be like, why the fuck do you want to come out with us? But Carlson did well out there. But then a couple of the specialists, and then maybe one of the E5s came out to me, it was like, why did you join the guard? That was meant as a backhanded compliment. They're asking Carlson basically, why did you join the guard? Why aren't you in the Army?

And it felt really good. I felt like my entire life to anybody that accepts me, right? I just get like a fierce loyalty to them. And so that was, yeah, it was like the best thing in the world. You know, he felt like he'd found his place. And maybe, you know, maybe he'd found his new family. And then it's toward the end of that year-long deployment. And Cassius Platoon calls his National Guard commander

asking if they can have Carlson for the next patrol. He was just like, I'm not letting you guys go on missions anymore. Basically, he hears his National Guard commander say, you know what, no, we've been here for a year. I want to bring all my guys home. and we're just not going to send them out on any more of these patrols. Now, honestly, to you or me, great call, right? You want to bring all your guys home.

Who can argue with that? Well, Dave Carlson can. Even though we've been doing this all year, for you to fucking make it home and be able to, like, say that you brought everybody brought everybody home, like you're willing to, like, deprive this other company of a resource that they may need. In other words, to him, it was like saying, let's not do that, let's let those other guys do that.

Let's let Cash go out and do that. And all these other guys that he's starting to feel a loyalty to, guys he's been under fire with. Let's let them go out. And this is another really crazy, cruel turn of fate. You know, I'm not sure if it was on that day that that call came through, that they said, no, I'm not sending him more guard out. But it was definitely within those couple of weeks. It was October 17, 2005, Sergeant Alwin Cash and his platoon get ambushed. Cass lived for like two weeks.

Like 90% of his body had third-degree burns on it. During this attack, you know, the explosion, somehow, you know, Cash's uniform gets covered with diesel fuel. But he's going back into his burning vehicle to get his men out. And then Cash catches fire. He's on fire. And he goes back in several times. He gets seven of his men out of this vehicle

while they're getting shot at and then he refuses to get on the medevac until all his men are out. He gets on last and he doesn't die of his wounds till over three weeks later at an Army hospital in Texas. Years later, he'll be recognized with a Medal of Honor, one of only eight people to receive the Medal of Honor

in the whole Iraq War. It's the military's highest medal. You get it for doing things that no one could ever reasonably ask of even a fellow soldier. Cash was the only black man to get this medal. since Vietnam, by the way. But that's all years down the road. Right at that moment,

all it means to Dave Carlson is, I should have been there. Like, why wasn't I there? Why did those guys die? Why did I survive? And those questions, they still haunt Dave Carlson, even all these years later,

when he retells the story. backham was an interpreter their interpreter for the eCP burned to death in that in that uh A couple deep breaths, whatever, have a sip, something. You never know when that stuff's going to hit. I think there's water. We're having this conversation almost 20 years after these men die. But I can see for a moment, he's back in that place in Dulauea, Iraq. And at the time, Carlson says, he's just supposed to move on.

By November 2005, his tour is over, and he goes back to Wisconsin. You know, the regular army, they come home, and they're still in the army, and they're supposed to have some dwell time. They're supposed to do a, you know, a job back here in the States before they're deployed again or before they leave, and they're with their same unit. When you're in the guard, everyone scatters to their towns and cities and goes back to their day job,

and they're just back on the streets of the USA. When you came home, are you just... It's home. You're done. You're basically... One week in a month, two weeks a year. And you're going to school. Yeah.

So it's like you're a civilian suddenly. Right back to being a civilian. It was bizarre. So not at war, but not really a civilian. And so I was just in a really bad head space. So eventually I was like, I think part of the nightmares were about the fact that, like, I couldn't...

Like, there's people still over there dying. Like, every day I was kind of, like, tormented, feeling like a coward. Just not feeling like it was right. And so he just starts looking for ways to get back to war. So he volunteers for a second tour. And I didn't even tell my girlfriend at the time. I didn't tell her until I was headed to the first drill. So after being home for about 20 months,

Dave Carlson is back on the battlefield, back at war. And in his second tour, he's doing well in combat. but he's also clearly not right after his first deployment. He told me later was like watching himself from the outside. He recalled this one battle where it was just like he stopped caring. I just sat there like I just don't give a fuck. Like I just didn't care. Like it was like complete calm.

I'm seeing tracers everywhere. I'm fucking hearing gunshots. And I'm just calm as shit. There was no sense of urgency. There was nothing. It was like I was just, I'm watching this shit. And that came back to my mind. It was like, it's like a disco.

Something is off about his behavior. He's more and more disengaged on the battlefield, and then when he's not on the battlefield, he's just full of anger. Near the end of his tour, he's heading for some R&R, and he assaults an airport policeman. And he got out of the guard with an honorable discharge barely. When he's released, his mom, Heidi Carlson, is there waiting. I picked him up at the airport,

and I could not believe... It was at that time that I coined... There were two phrases. It was the dark place and the Iraq laugh. And his eyes were just completely blank. And he had the craziest laugh. It was very forced and very shallow. And he's like, yeah, Mom, didn't make it through this one so good.

They really got your son this time. And he was just going on and on and on. And I was horrified. And right away, he just starts spiraling out of control. He's getting drunk. He's fighting. Escalating, escalating, escalating, thinking that like, like, I'm like some kind of like Jason Bourne or some shit situation.

But really it's just like I'm like deteriorating psychologically. Like I'm like losing my shit, basically. He told me a story that at one point he was shooting out streetlights with a Glock and the police converge on him. The cops were up on the, on the bridge in front of me. They're shining the spotlight down. They're on the sides. And they're just basically they're yelling, drop the weapon, drop the weapon.

So I got it down on my side. And like I'm like consciously sitting there. like, I need to just, like, raise it up and just, like, fucking end this shit, right? And I was just scared to do it, I think. I just couldn't do it, like, point the pistol at them and just basically suicide by cop. He's eventually taken to a VA psych ward. His mom was shocked by what she saw there. When he was strapped to the bed, just crying and screaming that he was a murderer,

and I'm just rocking him like a baby. That stay in the psych ward stabilizes him, but not for long. Carlson starts descending back into drugs and violence, arrests, bar fights, jail time. His special forces buddy, Josh Fridgen, remembers seeing him after he got out of jail. And I was like, holy shit, I think Dave got worse. So obviously, Carlson is making some pretty bad choices here. But there's something bigger going on at this point in America. We've never fought wars this long with no draft,

just the same volunteer army doing one, two, three combat tours. And the VA and the services, it provides, those are optional. No one can make you go. But what that means is combat vets like Dave Carlson, many of them with untreated PTSD, are often in free fall. I think that sometimes it crossed my mind that like maybe I'm, I mean, I'm crazy. Like I might be crazy. His friends, his mom, they're terrified. Our lives have been consumed with where is David? What's he doing? Is he a lot? Is he okay? I'm calling the VA. It's their outreach workers. My son is missing. You've got to go find him. Here's what he looks like. Sending pictures, sending faxes. I have a son who served his country. And now he's out in the woods somewhere homeless. Then one day Heidi Carlson says she hears this guy on the radio, a Vietnam vet named Mike Orban. And he's talking about a lot of the same things from his perspective as having returned from Vietnam and not found the help he needed for a long time.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us and welcome to another educational segment of stigma-free bet zone. And so she gets in touch with him. She called me and she said, I'm desperate. My son is in a lot of trouble. She said, can you go down to the Greyhound Bus Depot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and give my son enough money to buy a ticket so he can get back home to Minneapolis? And I said, sure, I'd be happy to do that. And he goes down to the bus station. In downtown Milwaukee. And David's show. up and noticed immediately he had a big gash on the top of his forehead, open gash, no, no bandages,

no stitches, no nothing, just an open gash. David had been going out to the bars at night, taking drugs, getting drunk, and all of that sort of thing, and had gotten in fights. And that's how somebody had taken a pool cue and hit him over the head. So Mike Orban asked Carlson if he was hungry, and he said, yeah, so he took him for a burger and fries. When he sat down, and he's sitting across the table from me so we're looking right at each other right in the eye and all of a sudden his forehead just fell down on top of his hands and he started crying and I don't mean crying

I mean weeping and I just looked at him and my heart was just breaking for him because I knew not exactly what he was thinking but I certainly knew how he felt and I say what's going on and what's the problem he said I just don't even know who I am anymore And this is where we got to ask, what do we owe these guys?

Dave Carlson, with Mike Orban's help, he gets on a bus. He gets home, and soon enough, he gets busted again for DWI and a string of other outstanding charges. This time, he gets sent to where he's been headed, probably for a very long time, the Dodge Correctional Institution north of Milwaukee. It's there in probably what's the worst place for a veteran with PTSD, that Dave Carlson begins to find a way out. That was probably the big turning point for Dave, where he just started kind of rebuilding.

Be sure to listen to the second part of our series about a rock war veteran Dave Carlson. Can a combat veteran in prison with PTSD make it on the outside and rebuild his life? You can listen to part two of Carlson's war right now in the upper First Feed.