Editor’s word: This story is a part of our Salute to Service protection, Nov. 1–11. Study concerning the schedule of occasions.
On Sept. 11, 2001, a gaggle of latest Army recruits have been at primary coaching in Fort Benning, Georgia, on the rifle vary when the drill sergeants began to huddle round. It was apparent they have been agitated, after which got here the rumors, tales, truths and lockdowns, Michael Baumgarten recalled.
Michael Baumgarten (pictured right here in Iraq in 2007) served eight and a half years within the 1st Ranger Battalion of the US Army. Picture courtesy Michael Baumgarten
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He was a brand new recruit when terrorists crashed two airplanes into the World Commerce Middle, a aircraft into the Pentagon and one other aircraft right into a subject in western Pennsylvania.
Baumgarten had enlisted within the delayed-entry program for the U.S. Army whereas nonetheless in highschool. After primary coaching, he went to airborne college, then certified and have become a U.S. Army Ranger.
He served eight and half years within the 1st Ranger Battalion. He was deployed to fight 10 occasions — 5 to Iraq and 5 to Afghanistan.
“You be taught quite a bit about human conduct — about your individual, concerning the adjustments you’ve got as a struggle ages, and also you do too,” stated Baumgarten, now a second-year PhD scholar of cultural anthropology at Arizona State College’s College of Human Evolution and Social Change. “You study loss, you study grief and a extremely big selection of human emotion from triumph to tragedy. However you do that in a extremely compressed period of time.”
He spent his final couple of years within the Army as a part of an teacher staff for the Navy Seals in San Diego. In 2013, Baumgarten felt a calling outdoors of the Army and needed to produce other experiences in life. He enrolled in junior school in San Diego.
Baumgarten’s focus from college shifted when he acquired a name from a buddy and Navy SEAL, Ray Mendoza. Mendoza had an concept for a brand new docuseries and needed Baumgarten to work with him. The present, “The Warfare Fighters,” aired on the Historical past Channel. Baumgarten shared his private experiences within the episode “Goal Brenton.”
“I’m actually pleased with this work,” Baumgarten stated. “We interviewed veterans who talked about their experiences with fight and even suicide. We needed to cowl all of those fights and guys shedding their pals in locations that nobody would in any other case learn or speak about.”
After a couple of years of tv work, Baumgarten returned to highschool and completed his bachelor’s diploma at California State College, Northridge. Throughout his senior 12 months, Baumgarten participated in The Warrior-Scholar Venture.
The Warrior-Scholar Venture runs boot camps all through the summer time throughout 25 school campuses in the US, together with Harvard, Cornell and Princeton. The one- and two-week camps are a kind of college-preparatory course and provide introductions in humanities, STEM, enterprise and entrepreneurship. This summer time, Baumgarten volunteered his time as a fellow in this system. He desires veterans and active-service members to know that everybody belongs in school.
“If there are veterans which can be studying this, know that there are packages on the market just like the Warrior-Scholar Venture,” Baumgarten stated. “Even if you’re at present an undergraduate scholar at ASU, it is by no means too late to take part.”
Researching PTSD and suicides in veterans
Michael Baumgarten at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, along with his mother and father. Picture courtesy Michael Baumgarten
Throughout his undergraduate years, Baumgarten occurred to learn concerning the work Sarah Mathew, affiliate professor at the College of Human Evolution and Social Change, was doing concerning warfare.
“Sarah’s work is the rationale why I’m right here,” Baumgarten stated. “What I research is similar to Mathew’s and a postdoc of her’s, Matt Zefferman, who can also be a veteran. They might have completed a few of the first cross-cultural post-traumatic stress dysfunction (PTSD) analysis at her subject website in Kenya.”
Mathew is Baumgarten’s advisor. Baumgarten is focusing his analysis on PTSD and army veteran suicide throughout all branches of the army.
“Michael is ideally positioned to conduct this research, along with his deep private {and professional} connections with and dedication to his fellow service members and the broader veteran neighborhood,” Mathew stated.
“Earlier than coming to grad college, he co-produced a docuseries for the Historical past Channel, ‘The Warfighters,’ which featured intimate first-person narratives of U.S. Special Forces missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Getting service members to open up about tough experiences is just not one thing everybody can do — which is a hurdle for analysis simply as it’s for filmmaking.”
Baumgarten desires to construct bigger information units about how totally different teams of individuals expertise and cope with struggle. And he desires to get extra information behind why Marines are the smallest unit within the army however undergo essentially the most losses from suicide, in accordance with reseach revealed in 2020.
“I strive to have a look at the army the identical manner anthropology has checked out just about each different group of people on the planet,” Baumgarten stated. “I attempt to use evolutionary anthropology strategies to ask a few of these larger questions on our personal evolution throughout the conduct of struggle. What function does tradition play on this?”
Baumgarten stated it’s essential to proceed to analysis why the US’ expertise of combating in wars is totally different in contrast with different cultures around the globe.
“Based mostly on Sarah’s work, there appears to be cultural variability in some PTSD signs and suicides,” Baumgarten stated. “Turkana are a bit much less depressed general, and they’re on this fixed state of warfare. So, the U.S. expertise is totally different, proper? We’re extra depressed, and our wars are fought some other place, proper? We’re not sitting in Phoenix and worrying about, say, Denver coming to raid us. So now you’ve got this range in expertise and context.”
Baumgarten welcomes any veterans who wish to speak about his analysis, experiences or the Warrior-Scholar Venture to succeed in out to him by means of e-mail.
“I’ve been fairly struck by Michael’s humility,” Mathew stated. “That stage of humility is just not cultivated a lot within the academy. … The ethos of not drawing consideration to oneself, however slightly drawing consideration to at least one’s staff or mission — it appears burned into Michael.”
