BY CHARLIE MARSHALL

 

Take one look at Riley Leonard and you’d never know he was once in the Army. But ask him and he’ll tell you that’s exactly the way he wants it. His long, wavy haircut and untamed beard make him look more like a surfer than a soldier. The truth is he is somewhere in the midst of a transition between the two.

     “Once a soldier, always a soldier,” Leonard says with a measure of reluctant acceptance 

in his voice.

     It’s not that he’s running from his past. He was a soldier and knows that will always define him in some way; he just doesn’t want it to be the only thing that defines him. With his time in the military behind him, Leonard has come to Charleston seeking a change of scenery and a life after the service, but he understands that it’s an ongoing process.

     Leonard, now 27 years old, is nearly half a decade removed from his four years of 

service, which spanned from 2005 to 2009. His term featured two tours in Afghanistan that had him spending more than a year in active combat on foreign soil. Since then he’s traded the desert sand for beach sand and his rifle for a surfboard.

     “I’m hoping to get out on the waves tomorrow,” he says hopefully as he looks at the rain falling outside.

     The lack of similarities between the Lowcountry and the warfront was the fuel for Riley’s decision to move to Charleston from his childhood home in rural Virginia three years ago. “That was kind of my reason for coming down here,” he says. “I needed a change of scenery to get away from things. I was struggling for a while, so when I saved enough money, I just decided to go.”        

     Upon coming home after the war, Leonard had problems adjusting to life outside of the 

Army. Though he says he has never suffered from any kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, his stories—such as the time he trailed a mail truck for miles, mistaking the driver for a roadside bomber—seem to suggest otherwise. Mostly, though, he found himself struggling to decide what to do next. He did not want to return to service—that’s one thing he knew—but with no specialty training that could help him in the workforce, he didn’t know what his next step was. When asked if the Army aided in his battle of returning to normalcy back home, Leonard’s tone echoes the dismissiveness he accuses the Army of showing him. “No, not at all,” Riley answers before the question finishes. “They didn’t care. Once I said goodbye, they said the same. They turn the switch on and don’t tell you how to turn it off.”

     If that switch left on was the root of Riley’s early struggles, then all the time he missed from civilian life was the stem. “I was in for four years, overseas for close to two. You don’t realize how much can change in that time,” he explains. “When I tried to go back to school [to earn a degree from Trident Technical College], the first day I was sitting there with a pencil and notebook and everyone else was pulling out laptops. I was still using those handheld CD players. I wasn’t the best student to begin with, but now the gap was even wider.”

     So how has Charleston helped in his effort to rejoin society? “It’s just a good place to be,” he says. “It’s relaxing; exactly what I needed after the service.”

     Charleston has given Leonard a place where he can find a new beginning on his own terms one step at a time. The city has been his self-prescribed remedy, and he believes it’s working. He does not attend any veteran counseling programs nor does he log any time down at the VA Hospital. For him it’s more about accepting the past but also realizing that he needs space from it to truly move toward the future.

     Riley now works at the Marina on the docks, surfs and just enjoys the weather and the laid-back vibe of the city. His next step is to finish what he started at Trident.

     “I don’t care if I end up working a mid-level job, if I’m just laying bricks my whole life. The sun, vitamin D, I can curse all I want—that’s all I need. But I feel like I need to finish school. The GI bill is what I enlisted for in the first place, so I feel like I should use it.”

     In the meantime, Riley’s content with the fact that his biggest concern is that the rain holds out long enough that he can catch a few waves tomorrow.