The State We’re In, 7 November 2009. Veterans Day, Remembrance Day, Armistice Day: from Iraq War vets making paper from their uniforms, to a KGB general to a Mau Mau rebel in Kenya, we speak with veterans from around the world about how their experience of war has marked them. Plus we commemorate 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell.

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Veterans Day Special
 
Tearing up the uniform
Former US servicemen Drew Cameron and Jon Turner were both traumatised by their tours in Iraq. Now they’re turning military uniforms into paper to deal with what they’ve been through. They tell Jonathan about the difficult journey from war to art.
 

 
Commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall
 
The case for the wall
Oleg Kalugin became the youngest KGB general of his generation and spent more than thirty years in the world of espionage. He now lives in the US but and twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, he speaks candidly about why Soviets like him thought that putting it up was a good idea.  
 

 
Life after the wall
Gabriele Beaudin was a teenager when she escaped East Germany and fled to the West. She’d always been a rebel, but her dreams of freedom didn’t quite live up to expectations. She now lives in the United States and speaks about the deep ambivalence she feels about having grown up under communism.
 

 
Continuing the Veterans Day Special
 
More Mau
Gitu Kahengeri may be eighty years old but even his age hasn’t dampened his fighting spirit. He’s leading a veterans’ group demanding compensation from the British government fifty years after being part of the Mau Mau rebellion which fought colonial rule in Kenya.
 

   
Fighting for liberty
War veterans in Zimbabwe have had a lot of bad press. Thirty years after helping to liberate their country, they’re still trying to get recognition for their efforts. Their involvement in the invasions of white-owned farms has not helped their cause. Four of them talk about trying to redress their reputation and their continuing fight for freedom.