Victor Lopez’s time in Afghanistan still follows him to class.
Andrew Moore remembers the face of a burning child.
Scott Camil became a target after coming home.
Separated by age and deployment times, the three share a bond, having stared death in the face and seen comrades killed.
“The pain is still there,” Camil said.
On Thursday night, a day before Veterans Day, they shared their once-repressed stories, acting out their experiences during a theatrical performance downtown.
Joined by an African-American U.S. Navy veteran who faced incessant racism and the widow of a U.S. Air Force pilot, they spoke about the heartbreak of war and the struggle of returning to civilian life as a part of “Telling: Gainesville," a free play running from Thursday through Saturday.
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In a quaint, dimly lit room inside the Actors’ Warehouse on North Main Street, the strum of a guitar guided an audience through their stories, woven into an overlapping narrative of the military experience.
Enlisting. Deploying. Coming home.
Jeffrey Pufahl, who works at UF as the director of outreach theatre for the Center of Arts in Medicine, directed and produced the play, as part of the national Telling Project. He casted the ensemble after putting out fliers throughout the city and contacting veterans groups. He said he wanted to bridge the gap between service members and civilians.
“It’s time to speak and time to listen,” he said. “That’s at the heart of this project.”
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After four years in the Army, time he spent avoiding bullets, Lopez feels like an outsider walking through UF’s campus.
During his time in Afghanistan, his unit was often under mortar and machine-gun fire. After leaving an army cafeteria with his comrade, he narrowly dodged a rocket-propelled-grenade assault.
Sharing look-out shifts from a guard tower with an Afghani soldier, he worried about Taliban infiltrators, pressing his back against a wall and clutching his rifle closely to his chest.
Before his deployment, Lopez held his then-5-month-old daughter, hopeful he would return alive. But when he returned, he realized he was absent for much of her early life.
“I missed my daughter’s first steps, I missed her first teeth, I missed her first birthday and I didn’t want to miss anything else,” he said, fighting back tears.
The following weeks, he spent time sitting alone in the darkness of her room, contemplating what his service meant.
“I started thinking about how fragile human life was,” he said.
In class, his professors often announce his service, at which point he is asked the usual questions.
“How was it?” they wonder.
When the 28-year-old veteran shares memories of his time overseas, other students avoid him or change seats in class.
“There hasn’t been one semester where that hasn’t happened,” the UF sociology senior told the crowd.
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During an especially gruelling three weeks in Iraq, Moore attended 20 funeral memorials for fallen soldiers.
“Casualties just were happening back-to-back, to back-to-back,” the 39-year-old Williston resident said.
On the battleground, he didn’t have time to think about death.
He only had a moment to grieve. Anymore time could jeopardize the lives of the men still standing beside him.
After seven years in the army, one memory continues to haunt him.
Driving in a car, a civilian family — mother, father and children — wound up caught between Moore’s unit and an enemy vehicle. After a U.S. tank shot at the enemy vehicle, the vehicle crashed into the family.
The family’s car burst into flames.
He remembers the father “wiggling like a worm” and a boy’s fingers falling off his hand. But there was no time to help, no time to find out if they survived.
“What happened to that family?” he wonders. “Did they live?”
When he returned home, he was a different man. He would get mad at his kids for playing in the house and still cannot stand loud noises.
He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep apnea. He said soldiers who visited the military’s mental health counselor were labeled weak, which discouraged many to go.
“People are afraid to get help,” he said.
After being medically discharged for injuries including a herniated disk, he continues to think of the men he left behind and his service.
“Sometimes, I still miss it,” he said.
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In Vietnam, success was measured by body count.
After an attack killed five U.S. Marines, and wounded 20 more, Camil wanted retribution.
In one of many “free-fire zones,” which were assumed to be evacuated areas, he and his comrades once killed 292 Vietnamese, including women and children, he said.
The war conditioned him to see the women as “communist baby factories,” and their children as future fighters, he added.
“From that point on, it wasn’t about fighting communism,” the 70-year-old UF graduate said. “It was about payback.”
As a Jewish man, he heard stories about relatives escaping the Holocaust and Nazis shedding innocent blood.
After 20 months in Vietnam, he felt like them.
Looking back on the deaths, he still feels betrayed by his country.
While at UF, the trajectory of Camil’s life was changed after hearing the actress and activist Jane Fonda claim the U.S. government misled the public about the war. She urged veterans to speak out about what they witnessed.
“She said the government was lying about Vietnam,” he said.
In 1971, Camil — joined by other veterans and Vietnamese civilians — disclosed their painful memories during the so-called Winter Soldier Investigation, a media event sponsored by Vietnam War Veterans Against the War.
He soon became an organizer for the anti-war group in Florida, Alabama and Georgia. He organized demonstrations and his own winter-soldier investigations across the region.
But, years removed from war, Camil soon became a target.
At its height, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called to “neutralize” Camil because his activism had become a threat to the country, Camil said. Federal agents later detained him in Gainesville during a drug sting, shooting him through his back and nearly killing him.
“Once again, I felt betrayed,” he said.
A participant in a war many Americans have since disavowed, and one of the few veterans who adamantly continues to criticize it, Camil said he feels like an outcast among other Vietnam veterans
At reunions, he can’t relate.
“It’s hard,” he said. “But the bottom line for me is that I got to be able to look into the mirror and respect the man I see.”
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After war, the men rarely shared their stories, closing themselves off from those around them.
They each took long periods of time before speaking about the horrors of their own experiences and sympathized with one another throughout the play, as members of the audience cried.
“Civilians don’t know about being in the military. This is an opportunity for us to share our stories and for you to learn a little,” Camil said.
The men’s battle didn’t stop when they arrived home. They were unanimous in having struggled with PTSD.
Lopez plans to use his sociology degree after graduating to establish a support group for veterans. He wants them to know they are not alone.
During the play, Janet Davies, 57, wept in the audience.
The Gainesville resident said she couldn’t believe the comradery among the veterans — their sacrifice to the country bonded them.
By the end, she felt she had a newfound sense of empathy and insight into military life.
“They were vulnerable,” she said. “It makes me feel vulnerable.”
