Because veterans are increasingly vocal about the difficulty of transitioning from the military to the civilian world, Capt. Steve Donaldson (whose name I’ve changed for the sake of privacy) knew long in advance of leaving the Marine Corps that a tough process awaited him.
After returning home from his final official Marine Corps Ball in November 2018, Donaldson sat on his couch in total darkness. The leather creaked, the medals on his dress blues jingled, and he had a major realization. With immense difficulty, Donaldson finally spoke his thoughts into the silence: “This is the last time I’ll ever wear this uniform.”
In this state of mind, Donaldson knew that hitting the liquor would be a mistake, so he walked to his room and got into bed.
After a year of interviews discussing the overarching themes of his military transition, this was one of several more personal stories Donaldson shared with me last week, when he called from outside an overseas bar where his present-day graduate school classmates were celebrating a typical Friday night. These off-the-cuff stories illuminated the joys of Donaldson’s military career, and his acute pain in leaving it behind. Each was new to me, which was a surprise given that Donaldson and I have been friends for nearly a decade.
Plans Interrupted
Donaldson’s transition process began with a careful plan, though planning had counted for little in the course of his infantry career. “Story of my life: bad timing,” he said wryly every time we reviewed the twists of fate that characterized his time in the military and beyond.
Donaldson joined the Marine Corps to fight a war. When he finished the grueling Infantry Officer Course in September 2013 as part of the school’s smallest class in a decade, the fight was slowing down. Assigned to the reserves, he now struggled to find full-time employment. Following two requests to be transferred to active duty, Donaldson joined the 7th Marine Regiment in summer 2015, just months after finally receiving job offers with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the local police department.
After three years and two back-to-back noncombat Middle East tours, Donaldson requested an assignment training young war fighters, or returning to a simmering conflict zone. Instead, he got orders to a desk job in Georgia.
Being in an infantry battalion, Donaldson explained, “was absolutely miserable in that you’re physically exhausted, hungry, tired, overworked, maybe getting four-to-five hours of sleep a night in garrison.” On the other hand, pushing papers in Georgia was “the easiest job I’ve ever had, and I hate[d] it so much.”
“I always knew I was going to get out,” Donaldson told me. “But [that] was the trigger.” He felt that the martial culture of his beloved Marine Corps was eroding in preparation for peacetime, while the military itself was “turning into a public relations firm … all about managing the Twitter narrative and not about killing [terrorists].”
Donaldson informed his command of his intention to resign his commission. For the next year, while often drinking away his bitter anger, Donaldson applied for jobs and graduate programs covered by the GI Bill as he prepared for the next phase of his life as a veteran and a civilian.
Transition Begins
Donaldson’s transition process would be characterized by struggles unique to his generation of Marines. “We joined while there was a war and were raised by the actual warriors, so we have this very particular mindset even if we never saw the elephant ourselves,” he explained. “That mindset is really not in the Marine Corps anymore and it’s certainly not in civilian society, so we’re not sure where to put ourselves, how to make sense of it.”
After leaving the Marine Corps in June 2019, Donaldson had a series of plans in place. He would spend several months decompressing, reconnecting with family, and traveling the world, and then enroll in the fall semester of a graduate program overseas. That meant a “sell-by date” on the relaxation, something “serious and imminent not too far after [he] got out and the paychecks stopped.”
The Marine Corps had provided classes on the transition process but offered no insights on the mental and social adjustment processes that awaited new veterans. During the summer, on the advice of fellow Marines to stay active and busy, Donaldson ensured there were “certain things [he] got up and made [himself] do” every day.
On the advice of his Veteran Affairs doctor, Donaldson enrolled in a Department of Veteran Affairs course on sleep hygiene, which offered practical solutions to regain a Circadian rhythm “obliterated” by the years of bad sleep habits formed out of necessity in the infantry. The newly-implemented Mission Act also helped him avoid long waits for VA doctors and schedule important visits with out-of-network practitioners before leaving the United States.
A Student Again
Moving to a foreign country to start life as a student tested the limits of Donaldson’s planning. Nothing could prepare him to rejoin the civilian world he had been apart from for so long.
Outside the Marine Corps, Donaldson no longer “had a herd.” Loneliness occurred in the military, but in “a familiar context and generally with people you’d do anything for [because] you have that uniform, they have that uniform.” In the civilian world, loneliness was more isolating. “You have no connection and responsibility except for yourself. That freedom is great,” he explained. But “living for yourself?” Donaldson asked emphatically. “I don’t know how to do that.”
In August, Donaldson was dismayed when he was among the last of his friends to learn that a Marine he served with had died in a tragic accident. Learning so late, and being unable to attend his brother-in-arms’ funeral “emphasized that I’m out, I’m not a Marine anymore.” He stopped studying and started “drinking a lot.” Unexpectedly, a fellow student reached out and offered a friendly ear. Her caring, Donaldson said, opened “a whole new window. That wasn’t me coping. That was me being a recipient of kindness.”
In passing months, Donaldson would forge other important friendships with classmates. His school also created a bridge between civilians and veterans by hosting a Veterans Day panel where student veterans told of their military experiences. During the panel, Donaldson shared stories of his former platoon sergeant and an inspirational sergeant major, emphasizing that “it’s the people that make [the Marine Corps] … real, enduring, and worthwhile.”
The Future
The Marine Corps made a permanent impact on Donaldson. Almost seven years of service left him with lingering injuries and limited tolerance for nonsense. It also endowed him with confidence, self-reliance, cynicism, a “very high pain tolerance,” and an appreciation of “the little things [like] not sleeping on the ground, having good food, [and] being in America.”
In the final calculus, Donaldson misses his Marines but not the Marine Corps. The job of fixing the institution’s problems has passed to the next generation, and Donaldson’s sights are set on his own future.
He still has hard days, when he struggles to find his purpose and to rationalize the opportunity costs of his decisions. “Not so long ago,” he explained, “in below-freezing temperatures I could run 10 miles in full kit, kick your ass, use any weapon in the infantry battalion … and none of it matters” in the civilian world.
Seven months after Donaldson left the Marine Corps, I asked if transition had been harder than he expected.
“It is harder than expected,” he corrected me. For Donaldson, the transition process is ongoing.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
