Left. Left. Left. Right. Left.

Left. Left. Left. Right. Left.

Leader: "Mama, Mama look at me."

Flight: "Mama, Mama look at me."

Leader: "Look what the Air Force done to me."

Flight: "Look what the Air Force done to me."

Leader: "Took away my favorite jeans."

Flight: "Took away my favorite jeans."

Leader: "Now, I'm wearing Air Force greens."

Flight: "Now, I'm wearing Air Force greens."

Leader: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaaaa."

Flight: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaaaa."

Leader: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaaaa."

Flight: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaaaa."

Leader: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaaa."

Flight: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaaaa."

FLASHBACKS
Dusty heat. Heavy black boots. Burning feet. June 1986. Basic training.

My flight marched around Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Sgt. Carlton was our TI (training instructor) until she was relieved of duty. A recruit tied herself to her bedpost with her sheets; mentally, she was shot. Other recruits washed out like oil-slicked dolphins. Carlton hadn't even hit her stride.

"Yes, Ma'am-No, Ma'am" called us every obscene four- and five-letter word a female can be labeled.

She didn't break a sweat.

She didn't smile.

These were among the flashbacks surfacing as I slit my Air Force greens for the Combat Paper Project in Burlington, Vt. This was the last papermaking workshop with Drew Cameron, Eli Wright and John La Falce in conjunction with the "Combat Paper" exhibition at the Firehouse Gallery in Burlington. The exhibition was funded in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

The project, an offshoot of the People Republic of Paper, is based at the Green Door Studio, 18 Howard St. in Burlington.

"From uniform to pulp, battlefield to workshop, warrior to artist" is the motto of the project, initiated by Cameron and Drew Matott as an expressive forum for veterans, activists and artists.

"Utilizing uniforms worn in combat, veterans cut, cook beat and form sheets of paper out of their uniforms. In this way, veterans are able to use the transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniform as art and begin to embrace their experiences as a soldier in war."

IN THE SECOND WAVE
War. I never did it. I missed Desert Storm by a six-month early out. The Air Force was downsizing — I gladly helped them do so. Though I was called up while on inactive duty, Gulf War I ended before I deployed.

In one degree of separation, Cameron was a boy attending Oak Street School in Plattsburgh when I was bench-checking and repairing FB-111As' carrier aircraft equipment and short range attack missiles at Plattsburgh Air Force Base. Cameron's father, Spence, a navigator, flew my plane.

Not exactly in his father's footsteps, Cameron enlisted in the U.S. Army after he graduated from high school in August 2000.

"It sounded like a really good opportunity," said Cameron, who is the director of the Green Door Studio. "I was excited to be independent. I knew it would be good training and discipline and money for college."

On 9/11, he was at Fort Sill, Okla., assigned to 75th Field Artillery Brigade, 6th Battalion. Cameron was in the second wave to push into Iraq. A part of him was excited to do so.

"I made a commitment to my county. I took an oath. They were calling on me. I do what I have to do, what I said I would do. I was very young. I had no basis for questioning what I was being asked to do. I was ready to do my part. I was trained."

His father cautioned him to take it one day at a time.

"He was just kind of helping keep me focused, so I wouldn't lose my mind, so to speak. I focused on my mission, my soldiers, the work we had to do down the line until my time was up and we got out of there."

BETRAYED
Cameron did a four-year stint and re-enlisted for two years with the Vermont Army National Guard. He slipped through a lucky window that his stop-lost friends didn't.

"When I came back, I was very lost. What I had gone through and, more importantly, when it became public knowledge very quickly that the war in Iraq was based on lies, the soldiers were manipulated, the public was manipulated and the media was abused so the U.S. could invade this country — I felt very betrayed by that."

Cameron took his hard-won educational benefits to attend the Community College of Vermont for two years before transferring to study forestry at the University of Vermont. In 2004, he met Matott, co-founder of the Green Door Studio. Matott has a M.F.A. in book and paper arts from Columbia College Chicago and a B.F.A. in printmaking from Buffalo State College.

As a teen, Cameron had learned eastern papermaking from his father. He signed up for Matott's workshop, and they became quick friends. Cameron apprenticed under him.

"I became very serious about papermaking, starting to practice it and build my own portfolio of work. We had been friends and collaborating for a year. The idea of the project came through Drew. I had been doing a lot of activism for the peace movement. I took my uniform and cut it off my body and documented that event."

They promoted paper made from military uniforms within the book and handmade-paper worlds and started an outreach to veterans. Through Matott's paper-artist and academic connections, they came up with the model to take the Combat Paper Project around the country to teach vets how to do it.

CREATIVE REVELATION
"More veterans became serious about the project and developed a keen interest in the medium," Cameron said.

"It grew in this very organic way. We have a team of people working and developing different components of the project. It's very dynamic and strong. Our model of traveling and teaching is reinforced in this way. Other people are taking up this practice themselves and, in turn, teach others."

The paper is a tabla rasa for the veterans to rant, vent, distill and reflect upon what happened and is still happening to them.

"It's a chance for me to explore a really long, complex relationship with the military. I'm trying to understand what that is all about and express to other people what the narrative of the military experience is about, what warfare is about and what happens to people. This is a living artifact. Our poetry, our paper is a way to express that."

The Combat Paper Project empowers. It inspires creation and not destruction. It reveals and not buries. It strengthens vets fractured, fragile from war.

"We all have the ability to do something. We can push back," Cameron said.

In June, he travels to the United Kingdom. Wherever he and the other vets/artists go, the feedback has been powerful.

"There have been such wonderful messages left on the typewriter or written in the guest book about people's relationship to it. It's been across the board from veterans, people who have veterans in their families and no relationship to the military."

Cameron calls on the public to witness the power of art to heal.

"See it as a real mechanism of our culture to express these psychological things, psychological trauma, betrayal and brutality of war."

The exhibition's images and words move many to tears.

One young woman left the gallery weeping.

"It's part of them now," Cameron said. "They carry part of the Combat Paper with them now."

And so do I.

E-mail Robin Caudell at: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com