Army Veteran’s Iraq War Videos Reunite Him With Iraqis

Corby Vinson was on deployment in Iraq, shooting tapes as a pastime. More than two decades later, after he posted the footage on TikTok, a voice message and photograph brought a child from those tapes back into the former soldier’s life. That child is now fully grown, with a kid of his own.

Vinson had wondered whether the people he remembered from Iraq were still alive. Hearing from one of them brought him to tears, he told reporter John Clark in an Oct. 4 story published by the Temple Daily Telegram.

The reunion began with footage that the soldier recorded over 20 years ago. After digitizing the tapes, he posted the clips on social media.

Now, Iraqis from his time are seeing the videos from that deployment. Those who were on the tapes are recognizing themselves and reaching out to Vinson. The camera is starting to be a focal point for his past.

A Deployment Preserved On Tape

Vinson, a former Army sergeant who lives in Copperas Cove, Texas, initially hoped sharing the footage might help him connect with other veterans.

He told Clark he finished digitizing his recordings in January and began posting them on Facebook before trying TikTok. By Sept. 27, he had gained more than 3,000 new followers in less than a week.

The response he received went far beyond the military community. He received hundreds of private messages from people in Iraq. Some recognized themselves and sent the screenshots to friends who were in these videos.

What started as a way to share deployment memories became an opportunity to learn what happened to people he had encountered during the war.

“When I first heard that guy’s voice that sent me a voice message and a picture, I cried,” Vinson told Clark.

The recordings preserved their childhood faces. The messages arriving now are keeping memories alive and offering a window into what that life was like.

He enlisted in 1993, served as a Stinger gunner in Hawaii and deployed to Haiti for Operation Uphold Democracy. He left the Army in 1996, then returned in 2003 as a cavalry scout. Three Iraq deployments followed, beginning in 2004, 2006 and 2009. He left military service in 2010.

He also recently released recordings from his first Iraq tour in 2004, according to Clark. Vinson told his former peer that cameras have interested him since his youth.

He remains in contact with fellow soldiers from those deployments, allowing them to revisit their memories from these distant times. The Iraqis contacting him can provide another.

A soldier may remember a road as part of a deployment. Someone who grew up beside it may remember it as the way home. Bringing those accounts together could give the recordings a fuller history.

The War is Part of the Conversation

The messages were mostly positive, but like all things, there have been some negatives. Vinson said some of the people messaging him are angry about the war and its history. He knows that from his former life as a soldier, not everything is clear or easy to explain.

While Vinson holds regrets for some moments of his life, he knows he can’t go back in time. In some of the exchanges with his detractors, Vinson has found some reconciliation and smoothed over angst among the commenters.

He said he tries to engage with those people rather than dismiss their reactions. He acknowledges their pain, expresses regret and explains his experience as a soldier following orders.

In some exchanges, he said, listening to each other has led to reconciliation. Those responses complicate any easy description of the videos as a feel-good reunion story. The people contacting him lived through the conflict in their own country. Their memories do not necessarily match his.

The footage is just a starting point, easing him into conversations that include both affection and grief. Those conversations take time.

Vinson also received images from present-day Iraq. One woman took video from the present and sent him the footage, giving him a new outlook on the country.

After years of looking back at his own footage, he is now getting a fresh perspective on the land he once roamed as a soldier.

A Documentary Taking Shape

Vinson hopes to turn the exchanges into a documentary combining his deployment footage with photographs, newer videos and conversations with Iraqis.

He told Clark he is collecting material showing places where he served, including the roads his unit traveled and what they look like today. He uses ChatGPT to help translate messages and is seeking a translator for calls he wants to record.

The proposed film would follow those connections through brief clips that brought people together. It could bring together perspectives from both sides of the war.

The footage would allow the people in the film to tell their own stories. If a picture tells a thousand words, what does a video say?

Vinson also works as a videographer for Green Suitor Outdoors, a nonprofit offering free hunting and fishing trips to veterans, first responders and others, according to Clark.

For the Iraqis who recognize themselves in the clips, the footage offers a rare record of their own childhoods. Connection is found in unexpected ways, as Vinson’s videos show.