StoryCorps: Nashville Vet Thanks Wife For Helping Him Rebound After Combat

Zac Jenkins joined the United States Marine Corps during peacetime. When he finished boot camp, September 11th had already changed the world. Jenkins knew he’d be going to war, and he did.

In 2004, the native of Milan, Tenn., deployed to Afghanistan. Soon after he returned, he married Alma and left the Marines. But he was no longer the same.

“I met you before war, and you were a happy person,” Alma Jenkins tells Zac during their StoryCorps interview at the Downtown Nashville Library. “When you got out, I just wanted that guy again.”

Zac says he didn’t like being around himself. He’d throw “temper tantrums.” He finally got therapy.

The couple lives in Nashville. Zac runs a food truck called Electric Sliders.

They now have an 18-month old girl. Zac calls her his “medication.”

“I’m glad you stuck around,” he tells his wife. “You gave me another chance, and another chance and another chance. I wish I hadn’t made you give me so many chances to get it right.”