August 18, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ken Scar didn’t join the Army looking for redemption. He was in his 40s, broke, and ready to disappear. What he found instead was structure, belonging, and a camera that gave him a new perspective on the world. Assigned as a combat photographer, Ken began capturing life through a different lens. With each mission, he found purpose in the faces, movements, and moments others missed.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Up next, a story out of Clemson, South Carolina. Today,
(00:30):
the oldest a person can be if they wish to
join the army is thirty five, but for a short
time during the War on Terror, one could join in
their forties. Our next story comes to us from one
of these men who joined late in life. Here's Ken scar.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
My whole life, I was an artist. I was the
exact opposite of someone you'd think who would join the army.
And I grew up in the eighties and nineties, which
was a very peaceful time for our country.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
We weren't really at war.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
The military is what was what other people did. I
never even considered it was. I always wanted to be
in the arts, be a writer, and I ended up
working in theater and television for a long time. I
was a scenic artist, like for Broadway plays and television shows.
We're the ones who paint the sets for plays, drops
(01:26):
and the murals that are in the backgrounds. Of television shows. Yeah,
I was always the art kid in high school. You know,
I was the nerdly, nerdy little guy. This was back
in the eighties. Like I said, when I was in
high school, I took art class like two or three
times a day. That was sort of my refuge because
you know, I wasn't one of the popular kids, and
(01:47):
I got bullied by the football players, you know, like
all of us nerds did back then. So art was
my refuge. And so I was always artistically creatively inclined.
And that's not the typical type of person. And that
joined the military. When I was growing up, the people
that joined the military were like rednecks and people that
(02:07):
couldn't get into college. At least that was the perception.
And that was my perception. And I'm ashamed to say
I had the wrong perception. Like a lot of people
back in in those days in America. What happened was
I was, you know, I was in show business. I
lived in San Diego. I was working at the Old
(02:27):
Globe Theater in San Diego, and then I went into television.
There's a lot of television that happens in San Diego.
And then me and I got married and my wife
and I had kids, and the cost of living in
San Diego is so high that we decided to move
back to our hometown in Colorado, and I started my.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Own painting company.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
But then my marriage fell apart very suddenly, and it
kind of sent me off the rails, and I got
to a really low point in my life, and I
started looking into options, basically to kill myself.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I looked into buying a gun and shooting myself. I
even went to a gun store and looked at guns
for the first time in my life.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I'd never even thought of owning a gun until then.
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
The thought just kind of hit me of my kids
moving on in life without their dad and knowing their
dad had done.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So I'm like, well, maybe there's another way I could
go out that's maybe more noble. And so I actually
looked into the foreign legion. There's still a foreign legion,
believe it or not, and that sort of led me
into the American military, looking into the military. And at
the time, this was two thousand and nine, so we
were at the height of the Two Wars, and I
(03:48):
reckon Afghanistan. The army had raised its maximum age to
forty two. It's back down, I think to thirty five.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
They just raised it up to that for maybe a
year or two. Most people my age that were forty
that tried to join back then didn't make it through MEPs,
which is where you go to get analyzed if you
can even be a soldier. You know, most people my
age had back problems or knee problems, and they're like,
you know, I would get denied, but I passed all
(04:19):
the tests, and so the Army's like, come on in,
be a soldier scar And I said, well, I'd like
to be a photojournalist. They're like, oh, there's only like
a few of those in the whole army. There's no
spots for that. And I said well thanks anyway, and
(04:40):
I left. Then they called me back a couple months
later because I had scored really high on the ASBAB
sort of like the sat or that you take when
you graduate high school where they sort of determine how
smart you are and what you know and if you're
smart enough to join and be a soldier. So anyway,
I scored really high on that test, and so they
called back a couple months later and said, hey, you
(05:01):
still want to be a little journalist. You know, a
spot opened up. I said, Okay, I'll do it. So
that's what led to me being in the Army at forty.
It was basically a weird, kind of half best suicide attempt.
I like to tell people when most people ask me,
I say, I just wanted to serve, you know, And
that window opened up for people my age, and I
(05:23):
kind of jumped through it.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And that was also part of it.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
When I went to basic training, they did give me
a lot of grief, old man Scar, you know, and
my name itself. My drill star just loved my name.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Scar.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Scar is my last name, right. They're like, bring your
pride over here, Scar. We know you just can't wait
to be king, the whole lion king thing, you know.
You know when I first bust into basic training that
you know, they put you out in buses.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It's just like in the movies.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Man, you're all a bunch of fresh faced, you know, ignorant,
don't know what you're in for in your civilian clothes.
You get on a bus and they take you onto
the base and the bus parks and a drill sergeant
jumps on the bus and just starts yelling at you.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Just like in the movies.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And this drill sergeant jumped on our bus with his hat,
you know, and his uniform just he's just completely squared
away yelling at us. And then his eyes locked on
me and he looks at me and he's like, you look,
you look seasoned, he says. He says, how old are you?
And I said, I'm forty drill sergeant, and he says forty.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I'm forty, and I'm about to retire.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
He says, if I had to do this all over
again at this age, I cut my own nuts off.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
That was my first five minutes in the military.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And you've been listening to Ken Scar tell his story,
and what a story it is. For all purposes. He
was just a meandering artist who struck up a decent
gig in San Diego doing production arts for TV sets
and for for theater. But his marriage dissolved and then
everything goes sideways and he's contemplating suicide but doesn't take
(07:07):
it all the way, praise God. And then he finds
the military and that sergeant, and what a funny scene
that must have been for him, certainly not the sergeant.
When we come back more of Ken Scar's story here
on our American Stories. Lee Habibe here the host of
(07:31):
our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
(07:54):
to Auramerican Stories dot com and give and we continue
with our American Stories and with Ken Scar. When we
last left off, Ken had decided to join the army
(08:16):
in order to, in his own words, kill himself after
his marriage fell apart. He did this in his forties,
making him much older than most of the recruits and
subject to some jokes at his expense. Let's continue with
the story.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
I got grief from the minute, literally the minute I
arrived at basic training. But then when they had to
run with me, I usually had the fastest runtime in
an army.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
I'm pretty much in any of the services.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
If you have a good pets score physical fitness score
that gives you more respect than almost anything you get
immediate respect if you're in shape.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
In the Army. When I was.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
In the physical fitness test was how many push ups
you could do in two minutes, how many sit ups
you could do in two minutes, how fast you can
run two miles? Right, I could run two miles in
about twelve and a half minutes. That was enough to
pretty much beat any any other soldier in my unit
most of the time. As soon as they did, you know,
as soon as they saw I was in shape, that
(09:18):
kind of gained me some respect. And then when they
when they saw what I could do with the camera,
that also got me respect. But you know, every unit
I went to, and I wasn't in that many units,
but I had to earn respect as being an older guy,
and I usually did you know, you're in a bay
(09:39):
with sixty other recruits. All the other recruits in my
bay were eighteen twenty maybe twenty one. I went to
basic training at Fort Benning. It was one of the hardest,
you know, three months of my life. It was the
mental part, and it was the dealing with all the
stupid idiocy that comes with being with sixty young men
(10:05):
and living with sixty young men in a room for
weeks and weeks at a time, so much ridiculousness happens,
and as an older man, it was very hard to
just get through, get through that part of it, and
just like keeping myself from strangling one of these kids.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
That whole time.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It was just like in the movies, you know, they
did such it's designed to make young men do stupid things,
and they do, they do, and they did, and I
was just like, don't you see they're trying to make
you act like this, and now you're acting like this,
sneaking out of the bay in the middle of the
(10:46):
night to go across the street. Because in basic training
they take away everything. They take away your phones, they
take away sweets, they take away coffee, cigarettes.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You know, you don't get any of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
And some of these recruits that I was with, going
a month without a Snicker's Bar was like too much
for them, So they like snuck out of the bay
across the street in the middle of the night to
where there were some vending machines and bought a bunch
of candy and chips and tried to sneak back into
the bay with them, and of course the drill sergeants
caught them, and so we all got woken up at
(11:19):
three am that night. We all had to wake up
and they smoked us. And that means when they make
us do push ups and sit ups and all these
other physical activities non stop for you know, for an
hour as punishment, because when one person in the army
messes up, the entire unit gets punished.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And that was hard to deal with. That was hard.
That was a hard three months to get through.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Let me tell you, I got through it, and I
couldn't believe it, you know, and graduating basic training is
one of the proudest moments of my life, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
At forty years old.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
My gig in the army was I was a forty
six Quebec, which is a photo journalist or combat camera
they call us, and we kind of act as public relations.
We also like tell the story of soldiers. That was
the main job was telling the story of soldiers and
what they do and trying to bring them deserved recognition.
(12:16):
It was a really cool gig because when I was
in Afghanistan, for instance, I got to go see all
the different things soldiers do. I wasn't just stationed in
one combat outpost or one forward operating base right. I
got to go all over Regional Command East, which was
the area of operation that I was in. I got
(12:39):
to go on air assaults and black Hawk helicopters. I
got to go on transportation missions with transportation units units,
you know, driving across the country. I got to go
on foot patrols with scout units. I even got to
spend a day with John McCain when he came to visit.
So it was a big variety of things I got
(12:59):
to do, which was something a lot of people would
never imagine you can do if you joined the army.
So we deployed in August of two thousand eleven, and
my first unit was to forward Operating based Tillman and
I jumped out of the chopper. There was green smoke
(13:21):
going off on the landing zone. I jumped out with
all my equipment and my rucksack, and I could hear
the fifty caliber machine guns going off just over my
right shoulder. You could hear machine guns going off, and
that was intense. And I said it under my breath, Dang,
that's intense. And the soldier that had come to pick
me up, he's like, what's intense because he'd been there
(13:43):
for six months, and I said that machine kind of
going off up there, that's intense. And he's like, you know,
those are our guys shooting and I said, yeah, but
they're shooting at someone, right, they're shooting at someone. The
soldiers that had been there were completely desensitized. He's like, yeah,
what are you know? But to me it was like,
holy cow, what have I gotten myself into. I'm literally
(14:05):
in a war zone. And that's the first time it
really hit me, like what have you done?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Dude?
Speaker 2 (14:10):
What have you done? And then you know, the next day,
I mustard with the unit that was there. They were
going out on a foot patrol to patrol outside the
base all day. There was a place where they had
been getting shot at mortar rounds. So they were going
to go to this pooh point of origin where these
(14:31):
mortars had been being fired at the base. So we
were going to walk out the gates of the base,
out into the lands outside the base and through the
little villages out there until we got to this point
of origin to see what was going on, assess the situation.
So we mustard before dawn in the dark, and the
(14:53):
Platon leader, which was I think a second lieutenant he
gathered everyone around and said, okay, guys, we take fire
every time we go out, so just keep your heads
on a swivel, be ready for anything. And I'm standing
there thinking, how the hell did I get here? I'm
a forty years I'm a painter. What am I doing here?
You know, it was way too easy to get there.
(15:15):
I just got online and looked up how to join
the military, and less than a year later, I'm in Afghanistan.
I don't have to go out on my first mission
outside the wire. I had my full kid on, which
is all the body armor you have to wear. I
had my M four, which is the weapons they give us.
You know, as a military photographer, we have all the
(15:37):
same equipment as any other soldier. And then plus that
we have our cameras hanging around our shoulders to take
pictures of what happened. We walked out the gates that morning,
and I was just scared to death. I was scared
to death, but I could not do it. At that point,
I did it. I walked out with them, and within
a couple hours I felt a lot more comfortable because
(15:58):
I realized the soldiers that I was with knew what
they were doing. And if anything happened, I would probably
be okay, you know, they would know what to do,
And so I just started taking pictures of them walking
through these amazing mountainous regions where we were. And then
later in that day, sure enough, we got ambushed. We
took fire, and we all had to die behind you know,
(16:21):
rocks and return fire.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
And I earned my.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Combat Action badge, you know, my very first mission outside
the wire.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
That day.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
We were out there for over almost three days. I
think we spent the night on the top of a ridge.
A lot of things happened during that mission, but that
was my very first mission outside the wire, and by
the time I got back to fob Tillman, I was
a different person.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
I was a soldier.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And what a story Ken Scar is telling. And imagine
having to try and win the respect of a bunch
of eighteen, nineteen and twenty year olds when you're forty
usually it's the other way around, and then having to
live with them and all the nonsense. We all love
teenage boys, but my goodness, when you're in your forties
and you have to live in bunk beds with them
days and weeks and months at a time, well this
(17:09):
is a new test of will and character. And it
turns out this was a formative experience in Ken's Scar's life.
He gets deployed to a war zone. What have you done, man?
He asked of himself. And then that first mission outside
the wire three days and he said it best. By
the time I got back to the FOB, I was
a soldier. And by the way, any man who served
(17:31):
and then gone into combat has had the same experience.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And it doesn't mean people.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Who served it didn't go into combat aren't essential. But
there's something about combat, as Winston Churchill said in our
great Churchill piece, that bullet whizzing by your head, Well,
that's when you feel most alive. When we come back.
More of this remarkable piece of storytelling Ken Scar's story
here on our American Stories, and we continue with our
(18:09):
American stories and Ken Scar's story. Ken joined the Army
late in life, in his forties, after spending years working
as an artist. After graduating basic training, Ken would become
a forty six quebec or a photojournalist and was deployed
overseas where he took many photographs of our troops in action,
(18:30):
sometimes under fire himself. Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
The photographs turned out pretty good. I got a lot
of them, a lot of them got picked up all
over the world. I got some good shots of our
guys out there. As a photographer, it's always the ones
you don't get that kill you. When we got ambushed,
I hid behind a rock with a couple other soldiers
and they started returning fire and I got some shot
(18:59):
to them, which very good. But if I had to
turn my camera. Just to the left of me, one
of our guys had a SAW two four nine, which
is an automatic.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Machine gun, and he was like just opening up.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
You know, down this riverbed at the enemy, you know,
like just total like rambo stuff. And I just stood
there and looked at him, like, wow, that's really cool.
And I didn't think to like turn my camera and
take some pictures of him. And I regret that to
this day because those would have been award winning photos
if I had just thought of that, you know, And
years later I always think back, like, you know, I'm
(19:33):
a much better photographer now than it was then. I
didn't know photography when I first got to Afghanistan. I
didn't know how to work the cameras, you know, the
army gives us these really great Nikon professional cameras with
all the lenses, and I, you know, I sort of
learned as I went while I was over there. But
if I could go back now, I would take much
(19:54):
better pictures. But as it was, my pictures turned out
pretty good. You know, the composition was good. And I
was surprised because as military photographers military journalists, all our
content is public domain.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
It belongs to.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
The American public, and media outlets know that, so they
know to where to find our stuff if they're looking
for photos of a particular thing or if they need
a photo for a certain story. So my photos almost
immediately started getting picked up by USA Today, New York Times,
Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, Huffington Post, you name it.
(20:33):
I was amazed because also as military photographers, we can
go places that civilian photographers can't go, and my stuff
still gets picked up. I still find my photographs on
websites or friends will call me or you know, text me.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Like, hey, Scar, is this your photo? And I was like,
holy cow, it is my.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Photo, you know, an ap It's like, it's amazing the
places my content went.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
So that was kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
One of my most famous photos is of a was
when I went to orgon Ee on that first mission
before they flew me to fob Tillman. I had a
couple of days at Orgone, which is a weird name
for a place.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I still don't know why I was named that.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
We had a howitzer crew there, which is howards are
triple seven cannons, which are these giant weapons that can
send around I don't know, hundreds of miles with pinpoint accuracy, right.
These guys have to take into account the curvature of
the earth when they aim their weapon. I had a
couple of days at this base, so I went down
(21:40):
to just take some shots of these these cannon crews firing.
One of my shots, I captured the flame, the ball
of flame that comes out of these cannons that the
naked eye can't see, and the ball of flame just
perfectly framed the soldier that was pulling the lanyard to fire.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
The cannon, and I was like, oh, that's pretty cool,
you know.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
So I went back to the office and uploaded the
picture and it got picked up all over the place immediately.
I didn't even realize how how unique that photo was.
I had the US Army photo of the Year was
the easiest photo I ever took. I was in a
Shinook flying from Bogram to Jalalabad, and Jalalabad's where the
(22:25):
Kyber passes, big city. I don't know how far the
flight was a couple of hours maybe, but we got
into this big Shinook helicopter and the load master, which
is the soldier that's in charge of loading everything, whether
that's people or equipment into the aircraft and making sure
it's locked down strapped in. She saw I had a camera,
(22:46):
and she set me at the very back of the
Shinook and we took off and we're flying and you know,
between Bogram and Jalalabad are these incredible mountains. It's the Himalaya.
It's the roots of the Himalayan mountains. You know, if
you follow them up far enough, you'll get to Mount Everest.
So there are these incredible mountain ranges that were flying over,
just beautiful. And I don't know, we're like thirty minutes
(23:09):
into the flight and she presses a button and lowers
the tailgate of this Chinook helicopter midflight, so we can
look out and see all the mountains as we're flying
over them, and then she walks out and sits on
the edge of the tailgate. You know, she's like strapped in,
but she like dangles her feet over the edge of
(23:29):
this tailgate and just kind of watches. There's another Shinnik
following us, and she was sort of watching the shinek
and looking at the scenery as we're flying over it,
and I just kind of turned and like took a
shot of her sitting there, and it was the US
Army Photo of the Year that year, the easiest photo
I ever took. They have an entire awards system, so
(23:49):
it's kind of like the Emmys or the Pulitzers, and
the military has its own awards. It's a very big
deal if you're in that job field. So yeah, Partment
of Defense they have their own awards, and the Army
has awards.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
They are called the Keith L.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Ware Awards, and they're named after a Medal of Honor
recipient who was a public affairs officer. And I've won
twenty two of them, and one of them was I
was named the US Military Journalist of the Year in
twenty thirteen, which is the highest award given in that
job field. I came back in August twenty twelve, flew
(24:33):
back to Fort Hood. My kids were there to meet me,
which was great. The one thing I wanted the most
was a Starbucks coffee, because we have Starbucks in Afghanistan.
So I got myself a Starbucks coffee and it was
the best tasting coffee I ever had. Now I work
at Clemson University. I'm in public Information director, so I
(24:54):
do a lot of kind of what I did in
the Army. I take pictures, write stories. You know, this
was twenty fourteen, so I was still the standing United
States Military journalist of the year. So that helped me
get an interview at Clemson. That kind of got my
foot in the door, and that's sort of how I
landed the job. So I had an amazing portfolio after
(25:16):
five years as an active duty soldier, as a combat
camera photographer, you know, portfolio that a lot of photographers
would kill for, probably so because I had so much
opportunity to take pictures of amazing events and things. But
I'm proud of what I did when I was over there.
You know, I really tried to elevate what our soldiers
(25:39):
were doing and elevate the citizens of Afghanistan, you know,
winning hearts and minds was a big part of our job.
I would have never imagined when I was young being
a soldier, but now that I have been a soldier,
I'm glad that I was because it was just meaningful
to be a part of something bigger than myself.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
And a special thanks to Monte Montgomery for the post
production and Faith Buchanan the pre production on this story.
And a special thanks also to Ken scar for sharing
his full story with us and the hard parts especially,
and that part of his life where everything could have
turned south. And I have experienced suicide in my own
(26:21):
family and anyone who knows the consequence. A beautiful niece
of mine took her own life, and if she had
gotten through that day, anything was possible for her. And
my goodness awards for shots, his photos appearing everywhere, ap HP,
That's Huffington Post, the NY Times, Fox News, USA Today,
(26:41):
US Army Photo of the Year, from suicide to that
and more. And he said he was proud of his
military service, proud of what he'd done with his life.
Now he's doing on a great American college campus, and
that's the campus of Clemson University in South Carolina. The
story of Ken Scarr here on our American story.
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Up next, a story out of Clemson, South Carolina. Today,
(00:30):
the oldest a person can be if they wish to
join the army is thirty five, but for a short
time during the War on Terror, one could join in
their forties. Our next story comes to us from one
of these men who joined late in life. Here's Ken scar.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
My whole life, I was an artist. I was the
exact opposite of someone you'd think who would join the army.
And I grew up in the eighties and nineties, which
was a very peaceful time for our country.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
We weren't really at war.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
The military is what was what other people did. I
never even considered it was. I always wanted to be
in the arts, be a writer, and I ended up
working in theater and television for a long time. I
was a scenic artist, like for Broadway plays and television shows.
We're the ones who paint the sets for plays, drops
(01:26):
and the murals that are in the backgrounds. Of television shows. Yeah,
I was always the art kid in high school. You know,
I was the nerdly, nerdy little guy. This was back
in the eighties. Like I said, when I was in
high school, I took art class like two or three
times a day. That was sort of my refuge because
you know, I wasn't one of the popular kids, and
(01:47):
I got bullied by the football players, you know, like
all of us nerds did back then. So art was
my refuge. And so I was always artistically creatively inclined.
And that's not the typical type of person. And that
joined the military. When I was growing up, the people
that joined the military were like rednecks and people that
(02:07):
couldn't get into college. At least that was the perception.
And that was my perception. And I'm ashamed to say
I had the wrong perception. Like a lot of people
back in in those days in America. What happened was
I was, you know, I was in show business. I
lived in San Diego. I was working at the Old
(02:27):
Globe Theater in San Diego, and then I went into television.
There's a lot of television that happens in San Diego.
And then me and I got married and my wife
and I had kids, and the cost of living in
San Diego is so high that we decided to move
back to our hometown in Colorado, and I started my.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Own painting company.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
But then my marriage fell apart very suddenly, and it
kind of sent me off the rails, and I got
to a really low point in my life, and I
started looking into options, basically to kill myself.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I looked into buying a gun and shooting myself. I
even went to a gun store and looked at guns
for the first time in my life.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I'd never even thought of owning a gun until then.
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
The thought just kind of hit me of my kids
moving on in life without their dad and knowing their
dad had done.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So I'm like, well, maybe there's another way I could
go out that's maybe more noble. And so I actually
looked into the foreign legion. There's still a foreign legion,
believe it or not, and that sort of led me
into the American military, looking into the military. And at
the time, this was two thousand and nine, so we
were at the height of the Two Wars, and I
(03:48):
reckon Afghanistan. The army had raised its maximum age to
forty two. It's back down, I think to thirty five.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
They just raised it up to that for maybe a
year or two. Most people my age that were forty
that tried to join back then didn't make it through MEPs,
which is where you go to get analyzed if you
can even be a soldier. You know, most people my
age had back problems or knee problems, and they're like,
you know, I would get denied, but I passed all
(04:19):
the tests, and so the Army's like, come on in,
be a soldier scar And I said, well, I'd like
to be a photojournalist. They're like, oh, there's only like
a few of those in the whole army. There's no
spots for that. And I said well thanks anyway, and
(04:40):
I left. Then they called me back a couple months
later because I had scored really high on the ASBAB
sort of like the sat or that you take when
you graduate high school where they sort of determine how
smart you are and what you know and if you're
smart enough to join and be a soldier. So anyway,
I scored really high on that test, and so they
called back a couple months later and said, hey, you
(05:01):
still want to be a little journalist. You know, a
spot opened up. I said, Okay, I'll do it. So
that's what led to me being in the Army at forty.
It was basically a weird, kind of half best suicide attempt.
I like to tell people when most people ask me,
I say, I just wanted to serve, you know, And
that window opened up for people my age, and I
(05:23):
kind of jumped through it.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And that was also part of it.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
When I went to basic training, they did give me
a lot of grief, old man Scar, you know, and
my name itself. My drill star just loved my name.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Scar.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Scar is my last name, right. They're like, bring your
pride over here, Scar. We know you just can't wait
to be king, the whole lion king thing, you know.
You know when I first bust into basic training that
you know, they put you out in buses.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It's just like in the movies.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Man, you're all a bunch of fresh faced, you know, ignorant,
don't know what you're in for in your civilian clothes.
You get on a bus and they take you onto
the base and the bus parks and a drill sergeant
jumps on the bus and just starts yelling at you.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Just like in the movies.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And this drill sergeant jumped on our bus with his hat,
you know, and his uniform just he's just completely squared
away yelling at us. And then his eyes locked on
me and he looks at me and he's like, you look,
you look seasoned, he says. He says, how old are you?
And I said, I'm forty drill sergeant, and he says forty.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I'm forty, and I'm about to retire.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
He says, if I had to do this all over
again at this age, I cut my own nuts off.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
That was my first five minutes in the military.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And you've been listening to Ken Scar tell his story,
and what a story it is. For all purposes. He
was just a meandering artist who struck up a decent
gig in San Diego doing production arts for TV sets
and for for theater. But his marriage dissolved and then
everything goes sideways and he's contemplating suicide but doesn't take
(07:07):
it all the way, praise God. And then he finds
the military and that sergeant, and what a funny scene
that must have been for him, certainly not the sergeant.
When we come back more of Ken Scar's story here
on our American Stories. Lee Habibe here the host of
(07:31):
our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
(07:54):
to Auramerican Stories dot com and give and we continue
with our American Stories and with Ken Scar. When we
last left off, Ken had decided to join the army
(08:16):
in order to, in his own words, kill himself after
his marriage fell apart. He did this in his forties,
making him much older than most of the recruits and
subject to some jokes at his expense. Let's continue with
the story.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
I got grief from the minute, literally the minute I
arrived at basic training. But then when they had to
run with me, I usually had the fastest runtime in
an army.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
I'm pretty much in any of the services.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
If you have a good pets score physical fitness score
that gives you more respect than almost anything you get
immediate respect if you're in shape.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
In the Army. When I was.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
In the physical fitness test was how many push ups
you could do in two minutes, how many sit ups
you could do in two minutes, how fast you can
run two miles? Right, I could run two miles in
about twelve and a half minutes. That was enough to
pretty much beat any any other soldier in my unit
most of the time. As soon as they did, you know,
as soon as they saw I was in shape, that
(09:18):
kind of gained me some respect. And then when they
when they saw what I could do with the camera,
that also got me respect. But you know, every unit
I went to, and I wasn't in that many units,
but I had to earn respect as being an older guy,
and I usually did you know, you're in a bay
(09:39):
with sixty other recruits. All the other recruits in my
bay were eighteen twenty maybe twenty one. I went to
basic training at Fort Benning. It was one of the hardest,
you know, three months of my life. It was the
mental part, and it was the dealing with all the
stupid idiocy that comes with being with sixty young men
(10:05):
and living with sixty young men in a room for
weeks and weeks at a time, so much ridiculousness happens,
and as an older man, it was very hard to
just get through, get through that part of it, and
just like keeping myself from strangling one of these kids.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
That whole time.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It was just like in the movies, you know, they
did such it's designed to make young men do stupid things,
and they do, they do, and they did, and I
was just like, don't you see they're trying to make
you act like this, and now you're acting like this,
sneaking out of the bay in the middle of the
(10:46):
night to go across the street. Because in basic training
they take away everything. They take away your phones, they
take away sweets, they take away coffee, cigarettes.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You know, you don't get any of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
And some of these recruits that I was with, going
a month without a Snicker's Bar was like too much
for them, So they like snuck out of the bay
across the street in the middle of the night to
where there were some vending machines and bought a bunch
of candy and chips and tried to sneak back into
the bay with them, and of course the drill sergeants
caught them, and so we all got woken up at
(11:19):
three am that night. We all had to wake up
and they smoked us. And that means when they make
us do push ups and sit ups and all these
other physical activities non stop for you know, for an
hour as punishment, because when one person in the army
messes up, the entire unit gets punished.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And that was hard to deal with. That was hard.
That was a hard three months to get through.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Let me tell you, I got through it, and I
couldn't believe it, you know, and graduating basic training is
one of the proudest moments of my life, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
At forty years old.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
My gig in the army was I was a forty
six Quebec, which is a photo journalist or combat camera
they call us, and we kind of act as public relations.
We also like tell the story of soldiers. That was
the main job was telling the story of soldiers and
what they do and trying to bring them deserved recognition.
(12:16):
It was a really cool gig because when I was
in Afghanistan, for instance, I got to go see all
the different things soldiers do. I wasn't just stationed in
one combat outpost or one forward operating base right. I
got to go all over Regional Command East, which was
the area of operation that I was in. I got
(12:39):
to go on air assaults and black Hawk helicopters. I
got to go on transportation missions with transportation units units,
you know, driving across the country. I got to go
on foot patrols with scout units. I even got to
spend a day with John McCain when he came to visit.
So it was a big variety of things I got
(12:59):
to do, which was something a lot of people would
never imagine you can do if you joined the army.
So we deployed in August of two thousand eleven, and
my first unit was to forward Operating based Tillman and
I jumped out of the chopper. There was green smoke
(13:21):
going off on the landing zone. I jumped out with
all my equipment and my rucksack, and I could hear
the fifty caliber machine guns going off just over my
right shoulder. You could hear machine guns going off, and
that was intense. And I said it under my breath, Dang,
that's intense. And the soldier that had come to pick
me up, he's like, what's intense because he'd been there
(13:43):
for six months, and I said that machine kind of
going off up there, that's intense. And he's like, you know,
those are our guys shooting and I said, yeah, but
they're shooting at someone, right, they're shooting at someone. The
soldiers that had been there were completely desensitized. He's like, yeah,
what are you know? But to me it was like,
holy cow, what have I gotten myself into. I'm literally
(14:05):
in a war zone. And that's the first time it
really hit me, like what have you done?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Dude?
Speaker 2 (14:10):
What have you done? And then you know, the next day,
I mustard with the unit that was there. They were
going out on a foot patrol to patrol outside the
base all day. There was a place where they had
been getting shot at mortar rounds. So they were going
to go to this pooh point of origin where these
(14:31):
mortars had been being fired at the base. So we
were going to walk out the gates of the base,
out into the lands outside the base and through the
little villages out there until we got to this point
of origin to see what was going on, assess the situation.
So we mustard before dawn in the dark, and the
(14:53):
Platon leader, which was I think a second lieutenant he
gathered everyone around and said, okay, guys, we take fire
every time we go out, so just keep your heads
on a swivel, be ready for anything. And I'm standing
there thinking, how the hell did I get here? I'm
a forty years I'm a painter. What am I doing here?
You know, it was way too easy to get there.
(15:15):
I just got online and looked up how to join
the military, and less than a year later, I'm in Afghanistan.
I don't have to go out on my first mission
outside the wire. I had my full kid on, which
is all the body armor you have to wear. I
had my M four, which is the weapons they give us.
You know, as a military photographer, we have all the
(15:37):
same equipment as any other soldier. And then plus that
we have our cameras hanging around our shoulders to take
pictures of what happened. We walked out the gates that morning,
and I was just scared to death. I was scared
to death, but I could not do it. At that point,
I did it. I walked out with them, and within
a couple hours I felt a lot more comfortable because
(15:58):
I realized the soldiers that I was with knew what
they were doing. And if anything happened, I would probably
be okay, you know, they would know what to do,
And so I just started taking pictures of them walking
through these amazing mountainous regions where we were. And then
later in that day, sure enough, we got ambushed. We
took fire, and we all had to die behind you know,
(16:21):
rocks and return fire.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
And I earned my.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Combat Action badge, you know, my very first mission outside
the wire.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
That day.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
We were out there for over almost three days. I
think we spent the night on the top of a ridge.
A lot of things happened during that mission, but that
was my very first mission outside the wire, and by
the time I got back to fob Tillman, I was
a different person.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
I was a soldier.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And what a story Ken Scar is telling. And imagine
having to try and win the respect of a bunch
of eighteen, nineteen and twenty year olds when you're forty
usually it's the other way around, and then having to
live with them and all the nonsense. We all love
teenage boys, but my goodness, when you're in your forties
and you have to live in bunk beds with them
days and weeks and months at a time, well this
(17:09):
is a new test of will and character. And it
turns out this was a formative experience in Ken's Scar's life.
He gets deployed to a war zone. What have you done, man?
He asked of himself. And then that first mission outside
the wire three days and he said it best. By
the time I got back to the FOB, I was
a soldier. And by the way, any man who served
(17:31):
and then gone into combat has had the same experience.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And it doesn't mean people.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Who served it didn't go into combat aren't essential. But
there's something about combat, as Winston Churchill said in our
great Churchill piece, that bullet whizzing by your head, Well,
that's when you feel most alive. When we come back.
More of this remarkable piece of storytelling Ken Scar's story
here on our American Stories, and we continue with our
(18:09):
American stories and Ken Scar's story. Ken joined the Army
late in life, in his forties, after spending years working
as an artist. After graduating basic training, Ken would become
a forty six quebec or a photojournalist and was deployed
overseas where he took many photographs of our troops in action,
(18:30):
sometimes under fire himself. Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
The photographs turned out pretty good. I got a lot
of them, a lot of them got picked up all
over the world. I got some good shots of our
guys out there. As a photographer, it's always the ones
you don't get that kill you. When we got ambushed,
I hid behind a rock with a couple other soldiers
and they started returning fire and I got some shot
(18:59):
to them, which very good. But if I had to
turn my camera. Just to the left of me, one
of our guys had a SAW two four nine, which
is an automatic.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Machine gun, and he was like just opening up.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
You know, down this riverbed at the enemy, you know,
like just total like rambo stuff. And I just stood
there and looked at him, like, wow, that's really cool.
And I didn't think to like turn my camera and
take some pictures of him. And I regret that to
this day because those would have been award winning photos
if I had just thought of that, you know, And
years later I always think back, like, you know, I'm
(19:33):
a much better photographer now than it was then. I
didn't know photography when I first got to Afghanistan. I
didn't know how to work the cameras, you know, the
army gives us these really great Nikon professional cameras with
all the lenses, and I, you know, I sort of
learned as I went while I was over there. But
if I could go back now, I would take much
(19:54):
better pictures. But as it was, my pictures turned out
pretty good. You know, the composition was good. And I
was surprised because as military photographers military journalists, all our
content is public domain.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
It belongs to.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
The American public, and media outlets know that, so they
know to where to find our stuff if they're looking
for photos of a particular thing or if they need
a photo for a certain story. So my photos almost
immediately started getting picked up by USA Today, New York Times,
Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, Huffington Post, you name it.
(20:33):
I was amazed because also as military photographers, we can
go places that civilian photographers can't go, and my stuff
still gets picked up. I still find my photographs on
websites or friends will call me or you know, text me.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Like, hey, Scar, is this your photo? And I was like,
holy cow, it is my.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Photo, you know, an ap It's like, it's amazing the
places my content went.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
So that was kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
One of my most famous photos is of a was
when I went to orgon Ee on that first mission
before they flew me to fob Tillman. I had a
couple of days at Orgone, which is a weird name
for a place.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I still don't know why I was named that.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
We had a howitzer crew there, which is howards are
triple seven cannons, which are these giant weapons that can
send around I don't know, hundreds of miles with pinpoint accuracy, right.
These guys have to take into account the curvature of
the earth when they aim their weapon. I had a
couple of days at this base, so I went down
(21:40):
to just take some shots of these these cannon crews firing.
One of my shots, I captured the flame, the ball
of flame that comes out of these cannons that the
naked eye can't see, and the ball of flame just
perfectly framed the soldier that was pulling the lanyard to fire.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
The cannon, and I was like, oh, that's pretty cool,
you know.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
So I went back to the office and uploaded the
picture and it got picked up all over the place immediately.
I didn't even realize how how unique that photo was.
I had the US Army photo of the Year was
the easiest photo I ever took. I was in a
Shinook flying from Bogram to Jalalabad, and Jalalabad's where the
(22:25):
Kyber passes, big city. I don't know how far the
flight was a couple of hours maybe, but we got
into this big Shinook helicopter and the load master, which
is the soldier that's in charge of loading everything, whether
that's people or equipment into the aircraft and making sure
it's locked down strapped in. She saw I had a camera,
(22:46):
and she set me at the very back of the
Shinook and we took off and we're flying and you know,
between Bogram and Jalalabad are these incredible mountains. It's the Himalaya.
It's the roots of the Himalayan mountains. You know, if
you follow them up far enough, you'll get to Mount Everest.
So there are these incredible mountain ranges that were flying over,
just beautiful. And I don't know, we're like thirty minutes
(23:09):
into the flight and she presses a button and lowers
the tailgate of this Chinook helicopter midflight, so we can
look out and see all the mountains as we're flying
over them, and then she walks out and sits on
the edge of the tailgate. You know, she's like strapped in,
but she like dangles her feet over the edge of
(23:29):
this tailgate and just kind of watches. There's another Shinnik
following us, and she was sort of watching the shinek
and looking at the scenery as we're flying over it,
and I just kind of turned and like took a
shot of her sitting there, and it was the US
Army Photo of the Year that year, the easiest photo
I ever took. They have an entire awards system, so
(23:49):
it's kind of like the Emmys or the Pulitzers, and
the military has its own awards. It's a very big
deal if you're in that job field. So yeah, Partment
of Defense they have their own awards, and the Army
has awards.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
They are called the Keith L.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Ware Awards, and they're named after a Medal of Honor
recipient who was a public affairs officer. And I've won
twenty two of them, and one of them was I
was named the US Military Journalist of the Year in
twenty thirteen, which is the highest award given in that
job field. I came back in August twenty twelve, flew
(24:33):
back to Fort Hood. My kids were there to meet me,
which was great. The one thing I wanted the most
was a Starbucks coffee, because we have Starbucks in Afghanistan.
So I got myself a Starbucks coffee and it was
the best tasting coffee I ever had. Now I work
at Clemson University. I'm in public Information director, so I
(24:54):
do a lot of kind of what I did in
the Army. I take pictures, write stories. You know, this
was twenty fourteen, so I was still the standing United
States Military journalist of the year. So that helped me
get an interview at Clemson. That kind of got my
foot in the door, and that's sort of how I
landed the job. So I had an amazing portfolio after
(25:16):
five years as an active duty soldier, as a combat
camera photographer, you know, portfolio that a lot of photographers
would kill for, probably so because I had so much
opportunity to take pictures of amazing events and things. But
I'm proud of what I did when I was over there.
You know, I really tried to elevate what our soldiers
(25:39):
were doing and elevate the citizens of Afghanistan, you know,
winning hearts and minds was a big part of our job.
I would have never imagined when I was young being
a soldier, but now that I have been a soldier,
I'm glad that I was because it was just meaningful
to be a part of something bigger than myself.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
And a special thanks to Monte Montgomery for the post
production and Faith Buchanan the pre production on this story.
And a special thanks also to Ken scar for sharing
his full story with us and the hard parts especially,
and that part of his life where everything could have
turned south. And I have experienced suicide in my own
(26:21):
family and anyone who knows the consequence. A beautiful niece
of mine took her own life, and if she had
gotten through that day, anything was possible for her. And
my goodness awards for shots, his photos appearing everywhere, ap HP,
That's Huffington Post, the NY Times, Fox News, USA Today,
(26:41):
US Army Photo of the Year, from suicide to that
and more. And he said he was proud of his
military service, proud of what he'd done with his life.
Now he's doing on a great American college campus, and
that's the campus of Clemson University in South Carolina. The
story of Ken Scarr here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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