Erie Hebert walked into a Wyoming mall after being thrown out of a drug treatment program and signed up with a recruiter to join the Army. Twenty-four years later, the 46-year-old Iraqi war veteran counsels other veterans and other clients as the executive director at the Meadows Outpatient Center in Northwest Austin.
To understand what veterans have experienced, you have to be a veteran, Hebert said. “They are baptized in some pretty traumatic stuff and there’s no way to really explain it to civilians,” he said. As a sniper in the Iraqi war, he experienced and saw gruesome incidents, including a soldier getting their legs blown off and being injured himself when his vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
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Hebert, who grew up in New Orleans, said joining the Army in 2004 helped him overcome his drug addiction.
“My family was riddled with addictions and I had a lot of childhood trauma,” he said. He stopped doing drugs during Army training. “I was fueled by redeeming myself,” he said. “It was a big catalyst for me to shoot well, be the fastest one, be the team leader.”
In 2005, he deployed to Baghdad with the “Crazy Horse” troop in the 8th squadron of the 10th cavalry regiment, which was part of the Fourth Brigade Fourth Infantry Division, he said. During one attack about two months after he got there, a member of his platoon was hit by an Iraqi explosive and lost both of his legs, said Hebert. He said he managed to maneuver a truck around to provide cover while calling in for medical help. When the Black Hawk helicopter touched down three minutes later, he said, soldiers rushed over with the wounded soldier’s severed legs thinking they could be reattached.
Erie Hebert, the executive director of the Meadows Outpatient Center in Austin, holds a picture of himself as a U.S. soldier helping Iraqi children. (Claire Osborn)
During his seventh month in combat, his vehicle hit an improvised explosive device and turned over, Hebert said. He was knocked unconscious from the explosion and suffered a traumatic brain injury. After taking a few days off, he returned and served another five months in combat, Hebert said. He then went to officer training school and came back in 2010 to lead the same squadron, he said. It was during the time the U.S. was starting to draw down its forces, Hebert said, and he was in charge of accounting for millions of dollars in equipment and orchestrating security.
He spent a year doing that, he said, but a few months before he left his best friend was killed in action after a base was bombed. His friend had been planning to live with Hebert and Hebert’s wife in Copperas Cove while looking for an apartment, Hebert said.
“It was really traumatic to come home and find these boxes he had mailed to me with his handwriting on them,” Hebert said.
When Hebert retired from the Army in 2013 because of his injuries that caused migraine headaches, he had attained the rank of captain and received a Bronze Star medal. But he felt lost after retirement and missed the sense of purpose and the camaraderie in the Army, he said.
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The message he got from being in the Army, he said, was not to get help. “Real men go forward, do their jobs and keep going. That was the culture,” he said. Hebert said he decided to try to join the Special Forces, but in the process of navigating that he had a mental breakdown.
“Something broke in my head and I thought I was back in Iraq,” he said. “I was having an overabundance of flashbacks. It completely consumed me to the point I had to drink a whole lot.” Hebert said he went to several psychiatric hospitals for treatment. Along the way, he met a social worker who told him she noticed he had a passion for connecting with other veterans and should consider going back to school to be a social worker.
Hebert, who already had a bachelor’s degree in hotel and restaurant administration from the University of New Orleans, said he took her advice and got a bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of Mary Hardin–Baylor in Belton. He then completed a master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in 2018.
Hebert said he considers his work counseling veterans who are in crisis to be an honor. The outpatient center is part of the Meadows Behavioral Health company that provides mental health treatment for a variety of issues, including substance abuse disorders and emotional trauma, according to its website.
“I could have destroyed myself,” Hebert said. “But I get the ability to hold space with someone who is crumbling and that to me is worth everything. I love fighting something that seems impossible.”
Veterans have challenges adjusting to society when they return from combat, he said. They may feel they have lost their identity as soldiers and may feel like other people view them as too intense, Hebert said. They also may face the additional challenge of returning to school because their skill set doesn’t transfer to the workplace. Going back to school can also be daunting, Hebert said.
“You can’t focus on a professor if you are having flashbacks and 18-year-old students are not going to understand you,” he said.
But Hebert said he wants other veterans to seek help.
“My story is unique but help is out there and reaching out and finding the good help is the key.”
He said his message to veterans is to keep serving their communities. Veterans can be recovery coaches for other veterans who just got out of the military or they can volunteer at schools, he said.
“It increases the quality of your home life and family,” he said, “and you are a better person when you feel connected and have a sense of purpose.”
Hebert said Veterans Day causes him to look back on his experiences in the Army with good memories because of all the mental health work he’s done for himself and other veterans. The first Veterans Day was celebrated in the U.S. in 1919 to celebrate the end of World War I.
“I’m glad,” Hebert said, “that I put myself in impossible situations and was able to serve when most people wouldn’t even consider being put into something like that.”
