To the End of the Earth

‘When I Came Home’ tells the story of an Iraq War veteran who has no home.

By: Anthony Stoeckert
   Herold Noel had a story to tell, and he’d tell it to anyone who would listen. What he really wanted was to tell it to the media. Surely if people read about him in the newspaper or saw him on TV, if they just knew what he was going through, then he’d see action. He’d get the help a veteran coming home from Iraq needed.
   His government sure had failed him. It’s hard to think otherwise while watching When I Came Home, a documentary by Dan Lohaus about Mr. Noel’s life in Iraq. The film, which will be shown at the New Jersey Film Festival in New Brunswick Feb. 23 to 25, follows Mr. Noel’s life as a homeless veteran, living out of a car in late 2004 and early 2005. The Feb. 23 screening will feature an appearance by Mr. Lohaus during which he’ll discuss the movie and the homeless vet situation.
   During the period in which the movie was made, Mr. Noel had no place to live. He couldn’t stay with his mother because her apartment in the projects was filled with foster children. He and his wife and young son were living with his sister-in-law, but the quarters were tight so he ended up spending nights in his Jeep. An Emergency Assistance Unit official in the Bronx told him public housing wasn’t available. At the same time, he was dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. He spent a little time in a shelter, but it was violent and everything he owned was stolen during his stay there.
   At the same time Mr. Lohaus, a filmmaker from Brooklyn, was directing his first movie, about homeless Vietnam veterans. Over and over they told him the same thing was going to happen to today’s Iraq War vets. "They would say, ‘We don’t understand how this is not going to happen again’ and ‘We know what it’s like trying to deal with the (veterans administration),’" Mr. Lohaus says.
   He called veterans organizations and scanned the Internet looking for information about possible homeless Iraqi vets. About six months after the war broke out, he found an article in The Boston Globe about a homeless veteran named Vanessa Turner.
   "She came back injured from Iraq to Boston and was having trouble getting any kind of disability compensation and ended up homeless in Boston," Mr. Lohaus says. "So from that point on, I realized it was going to be a film about how the same thing that happened to Vietnam vets was happening again."
   So Mr. Lohaus moved back to New York from Los Angeles and contacted Black Veterans for Social Justice and met Ricky Singh, the group’s director for homeless services. Mr. Singh told the director about Mr. Noel.
   "The first day I met Herold, I told him, ‘I’m making this film and I’d really like to be able to film everything you’re going through,’" Mr. Lohaus says. "And he said, ‘Man, you can follow me to the end of the earth.’ That’s something a documentary filmmaker really likes to hear. He was like, ‘You can film everything. I want the whole world to see what a vet has to go through.’"
   The words "support the troops" are said so often, they’ve become cliché. For those against the war, it means getting them out now; for the war’s supporters, it means backing their mission. But Mr. Lohaus and his film ask if we’ll be ready to support them when they come back. When Mr. Noel went to the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs and told them he had PTSD, he was asked to show proof that he was in combat and to identify what caused his stress.
   "They’re coming home to a country that’s saying, ‘That war is meaningless, you’re not going to win and it was stupid to go,’" Mr. Lohaus says. "They’re hearing that, and on top of that, their own government is saying, ‘You prove that you were in combat, you prove that you deserve these benefits.’"
   Mr. Noel’s search for a home, for some help after serving his country, is an endless circle of referrals, like dealing with the world’s worst customer service department.
   In the New York Post’s Jan. 10, 2005, story on Mr. Noel, a representative for the Army’s Well-Being Division (the equivalent of human resources) said there were benefits for Mr. Noel, but that educating vets about them has been a problem. Either way, the result is Mr. Noel couldn’t find a home after fighting for his country.
   "He just couldn’t believe he couldn’t at least get into the projects," Mr. Lohaus says. "I guess that was his plan in the back of his mind. ‘I grew up in the projects, worse comes to worse, I can get a place in the projects.’ And like he says in the movie, ‘I joined the military to get out of the projects, now I can’t get back into them.’"
   Despite its serious subject, the movie has some lighter moments, most notably a scene where Mr. Noel tells his mother over the phone that he’s going to be on the cover of the New York Post. After a pause, he responds, "No, no I didn’t kill nobody."
   Also notable about the film is its dramatic structure. When Mr. Noel gets his media attention — he’s featured in the Post, and interviewed on radio and television — it feels as if the payoff is around the corner, the documentary equivalent to a training sequence in a Rocky movie.
   But all that attention resulted in little feedback, and at one point Mr. Noel comes to the decision that the best thing he can do is go back to Iraq. After all, he’d be able to support his family, and the death benefit was now $250,000. Maybe the best thing he could do for his family would be to die in combat.
   It isn’t easy to watch Mr. Noel deal with all of this, and it was particularly tough for the film’s director. Mr. Lohaus was convinced all that media attention was going to result in something big for the veteran.
   "With (all of the press attention), I’m going, ‘Herold, don’t worry man. You get this story out there, someone’s going to come through,’" Mr. Lohaus says. "And (the lack of a response) was crushing. Every time we went somewhere, to meet (rap star) Chuck D. or do an interview or go on the radio, we’d be thinking, ‘We’re going on Air America, this is going out to a million people, one of those people is going to be outraged and reach out to you.’
   "And maybe we’d get some e-mails," continues Mr. Lohaus. "We’d get e-mails from old Vietnam vets saying, ‘I saw your story and when my disability check comes, I’m going to send you a check for 25 bucks, I feel you brother, I’m with you brother." But there was little more than that.
   It’s tempting at times to think that Mr. Noel could be doing more for himself other than look for help, couldn’t he at least get a job? But think about this: He was 19 when he went into the Army and emerged six years later. How many of us wouldn’t need some help after that experience? (In fact, how many of us live at home well into our 20s, and even into our 30s, without having gone to war?)
   "I do think Herold really tried everything," Mr. Lohaus says. "I know what you’re saying, (people might think) ‘Why doesn’t he just get a job?’ And some people say, ‘Why doesn’t he sell his car.’ Let’s be real, we’re in New York, how much (will selling a car get you)? You need a lot. It’s hard enough for someone like me or you to get an apartment in New York. You need three months rent basically, good credit, a good job. He just needed some help."
   Besides, shouldn’t there simply be a support system for young men who fought for their country when they come home. Does "support the troops" have an expiration date?
   "I do believe the agencies you would have thought would help him, only gave him referrals," Mr. Lohaus says. "I know that because the same thing happened to (another veteran in the movie) Nicole Prince and to other vets I met across the country."
   Mr. Lohaus’ film résumé includes working as the assistant editor for On the Ropes, a 1999 documentary that was shown at Sundance and was nominated for an Oscar. When I Came Home is his directorial debut and won the award given to the best New York documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. It was also shown at last June’s Silverdocs, a documentary film festival presented by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel outside Washington D.C.
   Mr. Lohaus, who also has founded two organizations to help homeless people, doesn’t know what his next movie will be about, but says, "I’ve come to realize I’m gonna make films about things that p— me off.
   "I feel like I just want to be able to have the time to keep getting this film out there, to keep traveling with it and talk about the issue," he continues. "It would be strange for me to say, ‘OK cool, we’re done, let’s move onto the next thing.’ When I started the film it was all about getting the vets off the street, and it’s still about getting the vets off the street, but now it’s also about preventing it from happening to another generation of vets."
When I Came Home will be shown at the New Jersey Film Festival, Scott
Hall, Room 123, 43 College Ave., College Avenue Campus, Rutgers University, New
Brunswick, Feb. 23-25, 7 p.m. Dan Lohaus will discuss the film and homeless veterans,
Feb. 23. Admission costs $7, $5 students, $4 Rutgers Film co-op/NJMAC Friends.
For information, call (732) 932-8482.On the Web: www.njfilmfest.com.
Dan Lohaus on the Web: www.whenicamehome.com