His mohawk sets him apart from the older generations of veterans.
But make no mistake, Matthew Jensen knows where he comes from. And what he wants to be in the here and now.
“I call myself a new generation of war. We’re not about getting out of uniform with a high-and-tight,” the 28-year-old Iraq War veteran said. “We did our job, we came home, we want to be civilians again.”
Jensen in 2008 emerged from a third Marine combat tour severely troubled, with post-traumatic stress disorder that still troubles him.
“It’s hard to sit in a chair and have someone sitting behind me,” the 2001 Santa Rosa High School graduate said.
He called 911, suicidal, shortly after his return from duty. Police found a 1940s-style assault rifle in his parents’ home, taken, he said, from a dead sniper.
Jensen was charged with felony possession of an illegal weapon. In 2009, the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor and he is on two years of probation.
It wasn’t the war that turned him inside out, he said. It was coming home.
“In Iraq, there was a brotherhood. I was sober, clean, in shape. It sucked, but it was more home than coming home to America.”
Being here ground away at him. Other drivers. People moving slowly. People who, in his estimation, didn’t understand the war.
“Here, it’s blame everything on the military, but they don’t understand the politics,” he said. “It’s too liberal here.”
He was angry, drinking, depressed.
“I screwed a lot of things up between two years of my life, it’s just a blur,” he said.
He needed help and found it at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He joined substance abuse and anger management classes, started going to counseling.
“If I didn’t walk through the VA doors, like a lot of people don’t, I’d be in a lot worse shape. Jail. Dead,” he said. “I’d have committed suicide. I’m a lot happier now.”
But he wrestles with his thoughts.
“I’ll never get over it. Whose son I killed? Whose brother? Whose father?” he said.
He watches news reports of soldiers in Afghanistan searching for the roadside bombs that have killed thousands of his comrades and goes crazy.
“Freaking, we’re still doing the same s---. We haven’t learned that walking around looking for IEDs by foot is not a good idea,” he said.
He wants to make sure all veterans get the services they need and that those services are plentiful. He wants an emergency VA clinic in Santa Rosa.
“That’s my main goal,” he said. “Killing’s not an honorable thing. I’m trying to give back to the community by doing honorable things.”
Today, he will go to Petaluma for the Veterans Day parade because “that’s where I feel more thanked for my service,” he said. “There’s nothing in Santa Rosa, no parade. It’s sad.”
He said he’ll be in Petaluma just hanging out.
“I’m proud that I was a Marine and I always will be, but I don’t want to draw attention,” he said.
The Iraq War is ending. All troops are to be home by year’s end.
No, Jensen said, the troops should stay.
“It’s not done, look at the killings” since President Barack Obama’s announcement in October, he said. “It’s never going to wrap up.”
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