Iraq and Afghanistan Vet Still Feeling the Impacts of 9-11

CHARLESTON - Joseph Grunning, 26, served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan during his 4-year enlistment and left the Marine Corps as a sergeant E5.

The son of a Marine, Grunning said the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 convinced him enlisting was the right decision. He was already leaning toward the military, joining up was something of a family tradition.

"Everybody in my family was in the service," he said. "(My dad) being in the Marines was why I joined (that branch). Something we always did when I was young was go out to Paris Island. We had a beach house in Beaufort." 

Grunning lost his father in a freak accident when he was 11 years old. He returned to Paris Island seven years later just weeks after graduating high school.

Like most people all over the country, Grunning saw the event of Sept. 11 unfold on television. Unlike most, especially people outside of the New York and Washington D.C. metro areas, he and his family in Greenville knew someone working at one of the sites that was hit by a hijacked airliner.

That morning, Grunning's aunt, a brigadier general assigned to the Pentagon, watched American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the building while driving to work along a northern Virginia freeway. For several hours that morning the family had no idea if they would ever talk to her again.

"That really affected me," he said. "She was getting off the HOV lane on the freeway when it happened, so she was OK. If it had been 10-15 minutes later we don't know..."

"Right after 9-11 is when I really decided to enlist,” Grunning said.  “I’ve never been school oriented. I decided I’d rather go defend my country than go to school."

He signed up before he had finished high school and reported to boot camp at Paris Island two weeks after graduation.

Grunning was an amphibious assault vehicle (a.k.a.: AAV or amtrak) crewman in Iraq with the 2nd Division 2nd Marines, and among the first wave of troops in country, at the tip of the spear, where Marines are usually found.

Grunning's unit was hit with an ambush in the early days of the Iraq war at An-Naziryah, one of the first major battles of the conflict, and an event that earned the southern Iraqi city the moniker Ambush Alley. His unit also spent time in Fallujah.

He was in-country for nine and a half months.

"It was supposed to be six months," he said.

He went back to Iraq on his second deployment as well.

"It's crazy over there," Grunning said. "They train you to think a certain way, once you're over there you realize it's not a training exercise anymore."

The most stressful part was the uncertainty, he said.

"You'd have people running up to you, for the most part they thought you were there to help, but we had kids run up and we'd have to shoo them off because you didn't know if they're strapped with C-4," Grunning said. "We had families come up and try to thank us, but everything was so crazy you couldn't really appreciate their appreciation."

Grunning’s third deployment sent him to Afghanistan where he spent most of his time on foot, walking 15 – 20 miles each day.

"We hiked through mountains, deserts, you name it," Grunning said. "It was actually a little bit cooler in Afghanistan though."

Spending time in two active war zones made him truely appreciate the American way of life, Grunning said.

"Every deployment I came off of, when I got home I kissed American soil," he said. "It gives you a great deal of respect for the American lifestyle. It actually does give you a sense of what it is to be free."

Grunning came home from his service with more than a greater appreciation for his home country though, he also brought home a diagnosis for PTSD and bi-polar tendencies, neither of which make adjusting to civilian life easy.

Finding it difficult to get work as a carpenter in his native Greenville, and eager for a change of scenery and better job opportunities, Grunning moved to Charleston in April. He lives in West Ashley with a couple of roommates he met after moving to the area and works as a carpenter, plumber, electrician and just about anything else he can find.

He said re-adapting to civilization is tough.

"You're trained to feel there a threat at all times," he said. "I'll find myself going out to eat, or in a public place, and I evaluate everything, every single thing when I go out; all the exit points, any surveillance cameras, I never sit with my back exposed to an entry point."

Grunning said he also sometimes has problems coping in crowds.

"In highly congested areas it's hard to relax," he said. "I can't stand Walmarts, at big public events I find myself sitting back and watching. I don't do fireworks real well either."

He's noticed that people treat him differently when they learn he is a veteran. Most people, especially older adults are friendly and offer to buy him drinks or a meal when he encounters them at a bar or restaurant, even though many of them tell him he looks too young to have been through two wars. But he finds members of his own generation are less supportive.

"A lot of times younger people don't understand anything about it," he said. "I have been asked so many times, 'How'd it feel to fight in a pointless war?' But we didn't really have a choice, we all signed a paper to defend the U.S. against all enemies."

"We were all following orders," he continued. "We didn't volunteer to go to Iraq. It's a slap in the face."

Grunning is proud of the efforts he and his fellow service members performed in Iraq.

"We stabilized a lot of that country," he said. "When you're gassing thousands of Kurds and people in the south couldn't eat while you're shitting in a 24 karat gold toilet, something needed to be done."

"I don't agree with all the politics of it, but I don't agree with politics in general," he said.