Chapter 70: 60 Minutes

Captain Crowley simply congratulated me on making it through SWAT and then told me that I needed to call CBS in New York. He gave me a phone number and told me to let him know what was going on. For my mind, I was basically done with publicity. The Army had mustered me out a second time, so they couldn’t order me back to New York, and if 60 Minutes wanted to do something on the MPD, they had to come to us in any case.

The call went smoothly. Now that I was home from the Academy, CBS felt they had a priority on my time. I wasn’t rude about it, but I did let them know that I needed to get back to work, and they would have to work around our schedules. That wasn’t in their plans, but I didn’t care. They needed me, not the other way around. Houseman agreed to come down with the graphics guy and finalize the military segment. He would also check out WMGA and their facilities for taping the broadcast.

That happened on Thursday. I was scheduled for the evening shift that week, starting Tuesday night. I would finish my Wednesday shift at two in the morning, go home and sleep, and then meet him at Channel Nine at ten in the morning. For that meeting I didn’t need to be in uniform, since it would just be the behind-the-scenes people. When I met with Scott Pelley, I would need to be in uniform, and we would need to schedule that for when I had some time off.

It turned out that only Joe Houseman came to Matucket. His graphics guy had provided him with a tablet equipped with a touch screen and some special software that allowed me to draw on it with a fingertip. I ended up on a speakerphone with the guy back in New York, who ran me through the graphics of the battle, and then I could draw changes on the tablet, and he would see them on his end. Since he had already done most of the programming, if something needed to change, it could happen in a matter of minutes. It was spooky seeing things unfold; it was like watching a video game being played, but without the reset button. Nobody was coming back to life for another round.

Otherwise, for the first segment, the battle, it was just going to be a somewhat longer and more elaborate version of what I had already done. They had already contacted Jose, Bob, and the pilots and would have them do separate interviews and planned to talk to Barstow as well. The second segment, on PTSD and the VA hospitals, would need even less of my time. I was simply going to provide a brief introduction and a quick interview, but after that I was out of it. The fact was that I just didn’t use the VA system. It was a monumental nightmare, and I had excellent medical benefits thanks to my job with the MPD. I did make a few phone calls and introduced him to some of the vets at the IAVA and the West Georgia Veterans Coalition.

It was the third segment that worried me the most. According to Houseman, they planned to introduce it by stating that after I came home, I managed to get hired by the police, ‘the same department that just a few years before had been a national disgrace.’ His words, not mine. There would be some interviews with the Chief and a few other people, as well as some local concerned citizens. I could just imagine Reverend Pendergast getting into it! A big part of the segment would be doing a ride-along with me ‘through the tough streets of Matucket.’ I told him that as soon as I found some tough streets, I’d let him know. Oh, brother!

I got out of there and then went home, to get ready for my shift. I went in ten minutes early and told Crowley what was going on and mentioned the ride-along. He just shook his head and said, “Great, you’ll be our next contestant on Cops!”

“Protect and serve, Captain.”

“Get out of here and get to work!”

I got out.

According to Houseman, they wanted the show on me to open their new season, which was scheduled to start the last Sunday in September. That was September 26, and the day I saw him at WMGA was August 26. That meant they had a month to prep for the show, and Houseman considered that a ludicrously short amount of time. Absolute minimum, everything had to be ‘in the can’, which was a saying from when it was all done on film in cans, by a week earlier, so they could run advertising promos. Scott Pelley would come down on Monday, August 30, to do my interview. I was off on both Monday and Tuesday and wouldn’t need to report in until 4:00 PM on Wednesday. He hoped to do the ride-along later in the week. They had already begun getting some of the supporting interviews out of the way, and then would edit things and tie it together. Houseman complained that it didn’t leave him much time to get things set up, but that was out of my hands. The following weekend was Labor Day, and since it was the end of the summer and a normally big weekend, it was pretty much all hands on deck for the MPD. The odds were that I would probably pick up at least eight hours of overtime over the holiday weekend. There were going to be a lot of drunks driving around, including idiot college students away from Mommy and Daddy for the first time on a holiday.

Kelly and I talked about it and decided that I would be able to do the interviews on my own, without her holding my hand. My PTSD had improved immensely since seeing Bob and Jose and being able to talk it out with them and a few other guys. I still didn’t consider myself a hero, and probably never would, but I also wasn’t being consumed by dark thoughts when my family wasn’t around. That Monday I put on my uniform, packed a spare in a hanging bag for when I spilled coffee on myself, tossed some civilian clothes in a gym bag, kissed my wife off to work, and then headed down to the station.

I hadn’t met Scott Pelley up until that point, but I had certainly seen him on television. He was one of 60 Minutes’ regular reporters, as well as being a frequent reporter on the CBS Evening News. He had been to Iraq and Afghanistan several times. Supposedly he was going to take over the Evening News sometime in the spring. He seemed nice enough. He had flown into Atlanta with the rest of the crew Sunday night.

“Welcome to Matucket,” I said, shaking his hand. “You find us easily enough? I’m Graham Reaper, but just call me Grim, everybody does.”

“That’s quite the nickname, Sergeant. I’m Scott Pelley,” he replied.

“You guys staying in town or in Atlanta?”

“We’re at the Best Western.”

I nodded. “Sounds about right. Sorry, but we don’t exactly have a Four Seasons in Matucket. There is the Armonk House, which is pretty nice, but a little pricey.”

“The Armonk House?” he asked, smiling.

“Very nice for a romantic evening or a weekend getaway, but maybe not what you are looking for in a business trip. Nice restaurant, too. I’m guessing you ate this morning at either the Best Western or the Shoney’s across the street?”

“Breakfast is breakfast. Maybe you can tell us where to eat for lunch and dinner. How are you, Sergeant? I am very glad to finally meet you! When Joe told me about this project it seemed hard to believe that one man could be involved in so much,” said Pelley.

“I’m fine, sir. This has all been a bit overwhelming. Kelly and I will be glad when things settle down again. We’re really average people.”

“Kelly is your wife? I hope we’ll be able to get her involved, too. Joe told me you two are fairly inseparable.”

I shrugged. “We needed to get back to work. I have a couple of days off, but she has classes. She promised to come over as soon as she was done. Until then, it’s just me.”

Houseman took over at that point, ordering us off to makeup and getting us ready. He had managed to set up in a small studio off to the side of the station; it was very simple, two chairs facing each other but at an angle, with two cameras pointing so that neither was in the other’s view. The background wasn’t much more than black curtains and drapes. As soon as I was done with makeup, I checked my uniform and medals, slipped the Medal of Honor around my neck and fastened the clasp, and then ran a lint brush over everything. I returned to the set and waited for Pelley to finish with Houseman. Pelley sat down in one of the chairs and I took the other.

“Sergeant, this is going to be a little different than what you have probably done so far. Up until now I would imagine that most of the interviews have been you come out onto the stage, the interviewer has to explain on camera what is going on, and then introduces you, correct,” said Houseman. He was adjusting our mikes as he said this.

I nodded at that. “Pretty much.”

“Okay. In our case, most of that introduction will have already taken place, in an introduction piece ahead of time, and maybe some voiceovers. Outside of a quick, ‘Thank you for talking to us.’, Scott is simply going to ask you some questions and have you describe the battle on the video monitor. We’ll bring that in as needed.”

“Got it.”

With that, he got off the stage. There was a brief sound check, and then he said, “Action!”

“Thank you for talking to us, Sergeant Reaper.”

“You’re welcome.”

“My first question, I have to ask, did your parents really name you after the Grim Reaper?”

I laughed at that. “No, not really! I was named Graham Wendell Reaper, after both of my grandfathers. When I was little, though, my baby brother couldn’t figure out Graham, so he called me Grim, and the name stuck. We should probably blame him.”

“Why did you join the Army? Family tradition?”

“Nothing like that. Other than my grandfather in Vietnam, nobody that I know of in the family has served. It’s pretty simple. I had nothing better to do.”

“You had nothing better to do than join the Army?” he repeated.

“Basically. My girlfriend was a year behind me in high school, but she was already spending part of the time in college, and I knew she was going away to a fancy school of some sort, and I also knew I wasn’t. Me, I was going to be pushing a broom down at my grandfather’s feed mill and going to Matucket County Community College at nights, and that just sounded incredibly boring. Wow, was that a dumb move!”

“How so, Sergeant?”

“More than a few times over in Iraq I’d be under fire and be thinking, if only I’d stayed home and worked in the mill, nobody would be shooting at me back in West Georgia! Pretty much everybody said that at some time or another,” I replied.

There was some more chit-chat sort of stuff, most of which I knew would be cut and edited out. Pelley said, “We showed your service record to a few military experts, and they were astonished. One of them commented that you were probably the most decorated American soldier since Audie Murphy in the Second World War. Another, when asked about your decorations, said that it wasn’t what you had, but what you didn’t have. The only medal missing was the Distinguished Service Cross. What do you say to that?”

I thought that was rather overblown. “Well, I am sure that is overstating things. I don’t think anybody will ever match up to Audie Murphy. Besides, how do you count these things? Assign point values or something? I just did what I had to do.”

A large video monitor was brought in and set to the side where I could see it but it wouldn’t show on camera. Houseman explained that Scott would explain where Outpost Whiskey and Anaconda Three were, in a voiceover with a computer-generated map on the screen. He would also be asking me some questions about the battle as it was showing on the monitor. Ultimately it would all be blended into a video description of the battle with voiceovers for a lot of it, though my facial reactions would be recorded and cut in as needed.

It was very strange watching the computer video of the battle. It was like watching a video game, but with real people. The worst part was seeing the positions of the men in the compound, and then watching a black X go through the position as the men died. First Terrence, then Tomas, followed by Nanda and DeFrank, and finally Riley got a black X on their spots, with red Xs on the bunker for Jose, Bob, and the pilots. Only my position, another red X at the last gun truck, was still showing at the end. This was the first time I had seen the Xs, and it shook me. Before I could continue, I had to take a deep breath and look away from the screen.

“Sergeant?”

“I’m good.” I took another breath. “It’s not easy watching that, no matter how many times I’ve been over the battle. Those men weren’t just Xs on a screen. They were my friends, some of the best friends I’ll ever have. It’s just not easy watching it.”

They gave me a few minutes to get myself together, while they pulled the video monitor back away. Pelley told me that he would do the voiceovers later, in production, and describe the battle with the relief convoy, again, with computer-generated video. Interspersed with the computer animation would be actual video footage taken from drones, both during and after the battle, showing the utter carnage involved.

Jesus, was that shit weird!

After the break, there was talk of the aftermath, me in the hospital. Pelley said, “One of your doctors described you as ‘a bloody bag of broken bones held together by hundreds of stitches.’”

I had to smile at that. “That’s probably about right. Last year one of my doctors looked at my X-rays and described my skeleton as a jigsaw puzzle.” We talked a little about my wounds and my time in three different hospitals. Again, most of that would probably be cut.

Next would come some voiceovers of what had happened after that, how I had gone home and gotten on with my life and suffered from post-traumatic stress. They also would mention how the Army had lost the first paperwork on the Medal of Honor and listed me as dead. “What did you think when you discovered your old unit thought you were dead?” he asked.

“That was pretty bizarre. The way I heard it, the guys had been told I died on the helicopter, which was only partially true, and nobody ever told them otherwise. I never went back to Fort Drum after I was discharged, so nobody knew I had survived. The rest of the Army knew I was alive, but not my old unit. Very, very strange,” I admitted.

There was some more stuff, but that would be the end of the first segment. Kelly showed up mid-afternoon, just in time for me to change out of my uniform into khakis, a dress shirt, and a sport coat, and Kelly joined me for the segment on the VA system. This was planned to be very simple and quick. I would do an interview with Pelley on my problems and my feelings about the VA, but that would be cut and interspersed with interviews with VA bigwigs and other vets. There wouldn’t be any fancy graphics.

We were positioned in a love seat facing Pelley, who opened the segment by introducing Kelly and then asking, “Sergeant Reaper, what was the first thing you thought when you woke up in the hospital?”

I looked over at Kelly, who squeezed my hand and nodded. “Go on. You can do this.”

I nodded back. I turned back to Pelley and said, “Shame. Failure.”

He gave back an astonished, “Shame and failure?” It seemed that this was considered good interviewing technique. Throughout the interview, if I said something he wanted to emphasize, he would repeat my words back to me.

“Yes. The last thing I saw during the battle, before passing out, was the wreckage of the smoking bunker. I had ordered my men inside and then called in the artillery. It was my fault they died.”

“But they didn’t die. They survived,” he argued.

I shook my head. “That wasn’t how I felt, not at all. The Army gave me seven soldiers and told me to take care of them. Five died and another lost a leg. That’s no victory that I ever heard of. It was a very bad time for me.”

“Was it made worse by the fact that nobody ever contacted you?”

“Very much so,” I agreed. “I was ashamed of not taking care of them, and I figured they were ashamed of me and avoiding me. It turned out that nobody knew I was alive, and that was why they didn’t call or write. Very strange.”

After that, he asked me about my psychological care at the hospitals I had been in. I shook my head. “In all the time I spent with them, I only saw one decent psychiatrist, a doctor in Germany. He wanted to help. Just about everybody else wanted to get me out of their office as quickly as possible. They gave me some Prozacs and sleeping pills and told me to get a good night’s sleep. Otherwise, they were pretty useless.”

“Useless?” he repeated.

“Not everybody. Most of the doctors and nurses are very nice, though overworked. The administrators and staff are terrible. They basically treat most vets as a bunch of whiny slackers who just need to suck it up and leave them alone.”

“So, how did you get over your problems?”

“Family, mostly. I was very fortunate in that I have a very strong family, who really helped. Kelly, my parents and brothers, my grandparents, I couldn’t have made it without them. Certainly not without my wife. Nobody let me get lost.”

Kelly squeezed my hand, “Always with you, Grim.”

“I know a lot of guys who didn’t have that support, and they really have problems. My grandfather helped a lot. He never talked about it when I was growing up, but he had been a Green Beret in Vietnam, and has most of the same medals I do. We would talk about it together, and even joke about my catching up. He had some problems, too, when he came home, and he talked to me about what had helped him. That helped a whole lot!”

“Did that cure you?” I was asked.

“There really is no cure for PTSD, just ways to cope and minimize the issues. Probably the best thing that happened was when the Army tracked me down for the Medal. I thought they were coming to arrest me, and court martial me, and I had a full-blown panic attack, but after that was over, the last two guys from the squad learned I was alive and tracked me down. They told me how I had died, and we were able to spend time together. That helped immensely,” I answered.

“You learned that they weren’t ashamed of you.”

“Basically. My psychiatrist had some fancy terms for it, but basically, they changed my view of what had happened. I’m not cured, but I’m better.”

“Your psychiatrist? I thought you didn’t have any luck with the Veterans Administration doctors.”

“I’ve been involved in a few officer-involved shootings here in Matucket, and as part of that, you have to see a department shrink to get back on the force. He was much more helpful than whatever the VA did, and I saw him about once every month or two for a while.”

Pelley finished with, “What’s your opinion of the VA hospital system?”

I knew this was probably going to finish this segment. “I don’t understand what it’s for. It’s basically a health insurance program, right? So why not just give us a card saying we have VA health insurance? We have a perfectly fine hospital here in Matucket. Believe me, I know hospitals! Why do I need to drive over an hour away to go to a VA hospital in Atlanta? It just makes no sense.”

After that, the session ended. Since Kelly was present, they shot some fluff about how we met and our growing up together; bits and pieces would be sprinkled through everything. All of that would be done in production and editing. Pelley would be staying in Matucket and interviewing other people tomorrow. I had given the names of some other vets in the area to Houseman who they would talk to about the VA. Pelley invited us to dinner and we went to the Armonk House, though it was just the three of us. Houseman and his team needed to work on the video they had made. All during dinner, Pelley quizzed us some more on growing up in Matucket. It was all part of the basic bio we had prepared and given out back at the start of the publicity tour.

Tuesday morning, I got a call from the station. The 60 Minutes crew was there shooting background stuff, B-roll they called it. I didn’t need to be there, but they wanted to let me know. Wednesday, they planned to do some interviews with Chief Jefferson in the morning, and I was requested to come in a couple of hours early to prepare. I wasn’t looking forward to that, because there was nothing worse than a bunch of cops to give you a ration of shit about being on television!

Wednesday, I reported to the station about two hours early. Scott Pelley and the crew had been interviewing people, and I devoutly hoped most of that would end up being edited out. They had also spent some time prepping one of the TRV Tahoes with small dashboard-mounted cameras - they would be focused on me and Scott as we rode through the ‘mean streets of Matucket’ - and another camera was mounted up on the light bar and would supplement the regular forward-looking dashboard camera. Most of my fellow officers wanted me to take them to exciting places; most of the commanders wanted me to just drive around the parking lot. Meanwhile a camera guy was following me around with a shoulder-mounted camera watching me do everything except take a pre-patrol leak. They even taped roll call and inspection. What a pain in the balls! I was never going to live this down!

Then I managed to go out on patrol. Pelley would ride in the front passenger seat, and the cameraman would ride in the back, hopefully not in the shot from the two front cameras. If we stopped, he would get out with his camera. Before we ever got in, I said, “Okay, I don’t want to sound rude or bossy, but we need to make something very clear. This is a working police vehicle, and I am a real police officer. I know you signed the releases to do the ride-along, but let’s be very clear on this. If I tell you to stay in the car, you stay in the car. If something happens, you get down on the floor and stay there.”

Pelley smiled. “You say that like you are expecting something to happen.”

I didn’t smile back at him. “I expect a routine patrol. The problem is that even on a routine patrol shit can happen. I was three weeks out of the academy when my training officer and I rolled up on a speeder. As we approached the car, three drug dealers started shooting at us with machine pistols. Jerry got hit and I had to handle the threat.”

“You killed them,” he stated. While I didn’t talk about it, it was certainly part of my record, and he obviously had researched my record.

“Yes, I killed them. The point is, though, that it was a normal routine patrol, right up to the instant it wasn’t. If we can go through the next ten hours without anything exciting happening, I will be very, very happy. Excitement is bad!”

He laughed. “Then let’s go and be bored together.”

I nodded and we went out to the TRV which had been set up for the night. I rigged my seat belt behind the head rest, but when Pelley saw what I was doing and started to duplicate it, I stopped him. “You get to ride around normally, with a seat belt on. I’d hate to have to give you a citation. Actually, I’d probably have to give myself the citation. Buckle up, please.”

He shrugged and got in. “So why don’t you buckle up? I would think it would be dangerous if you had to be in a high-speed chase or something.”

“It is. Still, I could be in and out of the vehicle a dozen times on a shift, and my equipment catches on the belt. Again, God forbid it gets exciting, but if it does, those few seconds could be important. Like I said, shit happens,” I replied.

We got into the Tahoe, and Houseman looked at the video monitors to see if any final adjustments needed to be made. We were both wearing small wireless mikes. Then it was off to patrol Matucket, keeping the citizens safe and the criminals fearful.

Not much happened. For the first few hours we drove through East Matucket. I issued a speeding ticket, gave a warning for speeding, and then was called to ‘see the driver’ about an accident. It was the late summer, and the deer were being stupid. The poor guy managed to hit one and bust up his grill, which also busted up the deer. I dragged it off to the side of the road and wrote up an accident report for the guy’s insurance company. I then called Dispatch and reported they needed the road department to clear the road the next day. After that I wrote up a fix-it ticket for a bad taillight.

“Was the department aware of your PTSD when you joined the force?” Pelley asked.

“Somewhat. It’s not a requirement that you pass a psych eval to become a police officer, but you are being evaluated by other police officers. We don’t want crazy people on the force, either. It was no secret that I had seen a lot of action in Iraq. On the other hand, I was never crazy. My issues weren’t like that. I told one of my training officers that the war had affected me, but I couldn’t imagine not being affected by combat. The guy I’d worry about was the guy who wasn’t affected, you know?” I replied.