Thank You For Your Service

Schumann’s aid worker knows that he loves to hunt, so when a wounded warrior pheasant hunting trip is arranged, she extends the invitation to Schumann and his family. On the way to the hunt, Schumann and Saskia get into a horrible argument, and Schumann takes them home, then proceeds to the hunt alone all weekend. He is given a rifle as a present. He ends up leaving early, feeling lost and out of sorts, and returns home with the gun.

Schumann’s aid worker, Patti Walker, cares for 49 returned soldiers, 50 if you count her severely injured husband, who also has TBI. She works on helping the soldiers and their families with housing, jobs, therapy, and anything else they may need: “[N]o one feels more about wounded soldiers than Patti […] and sometimes what she feels is irrepressible anger over their raw deal—the high unemployment rate, the high rates of PTSD and TBI, the high suicide numbers, all of it” (129).

One of the soldiers from Schumann’s company deployed several times. On his last deployment, he shot in the neck, and came home traumatized. He would forget where he was in the middle of an intersection and choke his wife in his sleep.