Harris County resident, longtime soldier featured in PBS documentary ‘American Veteran’
A resident of the Columbus area is among the former U.S. military service members featured in the documentary film “American Veteran” premiering on PBS.
Retired Army Command Sgt. Maj. Jeff Mellinger, 68, of Harris County is spotlighted in the four-part series scheduled to air on consecutive Tuesdays, Oct. 26-Nov. 16, from 9-10 p.m. ET, to coincide with Veterans Day.
Mellinger is one of the nearly 50 veterans interviewed for the project. When he completed his 39-year Army career in 2011, Mellinger was considered the last soldier with continuous active service who was drafted into the U.S. military.
“We thought that was pretty compelling, how someone who didn’t volunteer stayed in the service for the entirety of their professional career,” Leah Williams, the film’s director, told the Ledger-Enquirer in an email. “We thought that person would have a unique perspective, and Mellinger also had incredible stories.”
‘Troublemaker’
As an 18-year-old in Eugene, Oregon, Mellinger tried to join the Marines to follow his father’s path. But he was rejected.
“I was a troublemaker when I was a kid,” he told the L-E. “… Even in the middle of the Vietnam War, the Marines told me, ‘Not now.’”
No criminal record, Mellinger said, just mischief, such as breaking curfew and siphoning gas. It was delinquency motivated by rebellion, he said.
Then the Army drafted him in 1972 — among the last of the nearly 2 million men ordered to serve during the Vietnam War era before conscription ended in 1973. That saved him from his drywall-hanging job he held at the time.
“It’s the classic picture of joining the military and growing up,” he said. “There’s structure, and there’s consequences.”
Mellinger’s assignment during the Vietnam War was as a unit clerk in Germany. He served as a Special Forces military freefall instructor at Fort Bragg, a senior team leader in the 75th Ranger Regimental Reconnaissance Detachment at Fort Benning (2016 Ranger Hall of Fame inductee), an assistant professor of military science at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, a deployment in Iraq from 2004-07 and command sergeant major of the Army Materiel Command at Redstone Arsenal from 2007-2011.
His decorated Army career includes the Army Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster and Bronze Star Medal with Valor device.
‘Love talking about my soldiers’
About two years ago, Mellinger received an emailed request from the film company. He initially was reluctant.
“I love talking about my soldiers, but I’m not a big fan of talking about me, so it’s awkward,” he said.
But he finally agreed to participate in the project when he realized the documentary could help civilians gain more appreciation for military service personnel and veterans. He told the L-E that he has “some responsibility to help close that gap.”
The Chattahoochee Valley doesn’t have such a problem, Mellinger said.
“I see it as a place where it’s mutually supporting and respectful,” he said.
The message he hopes to convey in the film is, “Understand and respect these individual soldiers that aren’t seeking recognition. They just want to be heard.
“Not everything is gloom and doom in the military. There’s a lot of funny stuff you laugh about then and now. But there’s also a lot of sadness. You lose friends.”
Fourteen years after returning from Iraq, Mellinger admits he continues to struggle with the impact of the war.
“It’s not every day,” he said. “It’s not every minute. It’s not every week. But it is. … It’s difficult to explain. You have memories of things that just don’t seem to want to leave you alone. … While you and your bags are at home, I think a lot of us have got things we think about that keep us still sometimes not necessarily deployed but many of us think about the experiences. … Some people, they get back, and it’s like they never left. Other people get back, and it’s like they never came home.”
Mellinger is looking forward to watching the documentary with his wife, Kim, in their Cataula home — if he’s not traveling in his job as business development manager for Bell Flight, working on the project competing to replace the Black Hawk helicopter.
“It’s PBS,” he said, “so you expect it’s going to be good.”
He certainly was good for the documentary, Williams said.
“Mellinger has a great sense of humor, and during our interview, he made me laugh on more than one occasion, regaling me with stories of his time in the service,” she said. “And yet, as the senior-most enlisted man in Iraq for 34 months, with the entire country as his territory, his convoys encountered 27 roadside bombs. So it was more than sobering to hear him ask, who does he turn to when he has a bad day? … He appears in every episode of this four-hour series, and I’m so very glad he was integral in helping us tell this larger veteran story.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
