A Soldiers Blog

Lying on the hood of the Humvee he used as his bed for much of the war, Brandon Nordhoff would put on his earphones, turn up the volume on his Discman to drown out battlefield noises, and imagine himself at a party back on the Indiana University campus.

After one such dream, Nordhoff determined that when he returned to campus, he would pledge a fraternity and make up for the social life he lost while deployed with his Indianapolis-based Marine reserve unit.


He has made up for lost time with his social life, but for Nordhoff and many of the thousands of Iraq (news - web sites) war veterans, the transition from war zone to campus hasn't gone smoothly. They acknowledge they struggle to mend war wounds, mental and physical, while trying to readjust to the relative triviality of life as a student.


As the oldest pledge in this year's Acacia fraternity class, Nordhoff, 21, often feels awkward. Partying while many of his Marine buddies are still in Iraq now seems frivolous. And the occasional war protest on campus can make him furious.


"Going to war changes you," said the corporal, a junior from Kirksville, Ind., a small farming community near Bloomington. "I feel 200 percent different than the people in Bloomington and a lot of the kids at the university."


In the first few weeks of the school year, veterans affairs officers at campuses throughout the Midwest have reported being inundated with soldier-students looking for help collecting their education benefits under the Montgomery GI Bill.


The officers can help them straighten out their benefits, but universities have no one designated to help the GIs with the transition from battlefield to classroom.


Although the Iraq war hasn't generated the unrest on campuses that the Vietnam War brought in the 1960s and 1970s, divided opinion on the current conflict is obvious. Some returning soldiers complain that their classmates and professors often have a shallow view of the war and that they don't show enough support for the troops.


"Inevitably in classes, you have these kids who criticize the war and criticize the president and don't know what they're talking about," said Cpl. Daniel Rhodes, a Marine reservist from west suburban La Grange and a senior in political science at the University of Illinois in Champaign. "I want to say to them, `Do you realize that you're sitting here in a classroom, living freely, because we're willing to fight?'"

Yahoo! News - For ex-GIs, fitting in on campus a struggle