On Jan. 10, the Veteran Administration released a report on veteran mental health that concluded that women were more likely to have their PTSD claims denied than their male counterparts.
—“Women, combat, and PTSD,” 27 January 2011

We give them tons of support as they head off to battle, even while they are there. Yet when they come home we are afraid to approach them. We think they don’t want to talk about it. Or we just don’t know how to talk to them. The truth is, they do want to talk about it; they want to know people care and will try to understand what they are going through.
—Sara Nesson

“I was always a good soldier,” remembers Robynn Murray. “She could always carry a heavy ruck,” she says of herself, “And she’s the one they wanted female soldiers to look up to, because I could suck it up and I could take their sexual harassment and I could just shut up and drive on.”

The pronoun changes make sense as you listen to Robynn describe her experiences in the U.S. Army—first in Iraq and now Stateside, as a veteran contending with post-traumatic stress and red tape. Every day is an ordeal. “I’d like to say I’m super, but I’d be lying” she tells a collections agency officer on the phone at the start of Poster Girl, Sara Nesson’s terrific short documentary—nominated just this week for an Oscar. The film screens 1 February at Stranger Than Fiction, followed by a Q&A with Nesson and Robynn Murray.

As Robynn explains to the woman on the phone why she’s behind on her bills, you glimpse the quick wit that helps her to stay sane. She’s been waiting for the Veterans Administration to start her disability payments, she says, then comes up with an idea: maybe the collections agency can give the VA a call, “to see if you can get them to pay me.”

A sense of humor is helpful in dealing with the seemingly endless runarounds within The System, as is a guide, here Vietnam veteran Bill Perry. He points out that he can assist with navigating meetings and paperwork, but still, the essential damage is deeper. “They took an American apple pie cheerleader and pretty much crushed her,” he sighs, following a scene where he must calm her following her discovery of a ticket on her vehicle. Robynn kicks the car and curses, the camera observing from a close distance, as it does throughout the film. Perry is at once weary and earnest, speaking with the full understanding of someone who’s experienced what he’s describing. Though he’ll attempt to “make her whole again,” in truth, he says, “We’re not gonna make her whole, she’s never gonna get over this. However, we can try to ease her pain, we can try to gradually bring her back to where she can function in society.”

Some of that functioning means describing her suicidal thoughts to a VA doctor whom she describes afterwards as having “no emotional response.” You can only imagine he’s heard thousands of similar stories, but hers is her only one. Head down, voice rising, she trudges through snow en route to her car. He asked her “other thoughts,” she reports, and she told him, “Stabbing through my wrist with my craft knife, careening my car off of a highway, you know, creative things like that. And his tone never changed.”

Robynn’s pain—and the sense no one else gets it—are common in veterans suffering from PTSD, she knows. She also knows that her situation is not her fault, and yet, of course, she feels guilt. Poster Girl listens to her: she lists the many medications she’s been prescribed (while the camera pans dozens of bottles, for pain, for anti-anxiety, for acne) and she reads from journal entries (“My hands hold my nieces and nephew, my fingers have been on the trigger of a gun pointed at another human being. They are tattooed with a story of war, regret, yet pride,” she says, as you look at her tattoos: broken guns on her wrists, the word “VET” on her knuckles).

She also speaks before a Northeast Winter Soldier meeting, for Iraq Veterans Against the War. Here her listeners nod with recognition, and the film illustrates her narrative with pointed photos of bodies, devastation, and weapons. As Robynn remembers a commanding officer ordering her to shoot at civilians when their humvee was taking fire: she refused, wanting to fire at a target, the sniper shooting at them. The film shows angled images of guns and camo uniforms and an armored vehicle, emphasizing the very limited range of vision and panic of that moment.

As Robynn recalls entering a home where a family has been shot and killed, she emphasizes the blood on the walls and mattresses. “They got shot in their sleep,” she says, then reflects on her own lack of response at the time: There was this piece of bread,” she recalls, “And there was this piece of brain on it.” Sent to assess the scene, she did just that, until she remembers walking up the stairs and seeing a bloody handprint o the wall. Here Poster Girl shifts time and place, pulling you into Robynn’s sense of lurching up the stairs: her steps are heavy, the camera pitches. The camera arrives in the attic of Robynn’s mother’s home, where Robynn is punching the wall, with boxing gloves. She slams through the surface, then reflects again: “Oh, that’s a problem,” she observes, as she sinks to the floor, beginning to sob. You hear more steps approaching. Her mother, Ann Marie Hacker, comforts her.

This is the point: times and sites bleed together, as do memories and visceral responses. Trauma is never quite over, despite the term “post.” As Robynn finds her way through her own experience, as she engages in protest against the war and discovers a community among other veterans—specifically, a group called Combat Paper that makes art out of old uniforms—Poster Girl makes the case that, as extraordinary as Robynn may be, she’s also too typical. She may have been a poster girl, literally appearing with her weapon and two women comrades on the cover of Army Magazine, but she’s also come out the other side.

Looking back, she says she was “indoctrinated,” believing that Iraqis were “my enemy, they were brown, they were hajjis.” Now, she sees herself again. Poster Girl insists that you see, too.