Former Army infantryman Ryan Conklin does duty on MTV reality show - Military TV, Television - Military Times

Former Army infantryman Ryan Conklin does duty on MTV reality show

Ryan Conklin’s road to “The Real World” began in Baghdad back in 2005. He was serving as a guard in the Army’s Alpha Company, Third Battalion of the 187th Infantry Regiment — the famed “Rakkasans” — during the first trial of Saddam Hussein. He and his buddies were talking about future plans when someone asked him what he wanted to do after his deployment.

“I don’t know,” Conklin told them. “I’ll probably go to college for a little bit and then I’ll probably get on ‘The Real World’.”

What started out as a joke became a reality when Conklin, 23, happened to be in Pittsburgh when MTV was holding an open casting call for the show, now in its 21st season.

“I talked to my friends again on the phone and I’m like, ‘you remember when I always said I was going to make it on “The Real World”? They have an open casting call. I’m going to live up to my joke and do it.’

“And one thing led to another and I actually made it on. It kind of makes the joke even funnier.”

Conklin was one of eight strangers picked to live in a pimped-out house in Brooklyn, have his life taped and “find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” He’s only the second former service member in the show’s 17-year history and, not surprisingly, found it difficult to relate to his new roommates.

In one episode, Conklin confronts a roommate and begins shouting. The others in the house speculate it may be a result of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Given his background, Conklin isn’t surprised the others would blame PTSD.

“With my experiences, I think they kind of expect it out of me, I don’t know. I never saw it as a problem,” he says. “It’s just something I did, and it’s something I can deal with on my own. I do my own thing. Obviously, everyone has their own way of coping with things and everybody can vent in their own way. I had my own methods: my sarcasm, my music, my pranks.”

Those pranks — like re-stringing his roommate’s shoelaces upside down — were honed in Iraq and perfected in the Real World house. It’s how he and his best friend from the show, Chet Cannon, were able to bond.

“Ryan got upset as much as any of us,” Cannon said. “Any one of us could have been made out to be the comedian or the angry person or the nice guy. All of us are humans. [The producers] will take anything and just run with it.”

Cannon, a Mormon originally from conservative Utah who has cousins in the service, says he instantly identified with Conklin.

“The thing I respect most about Ryan is his loyalty,” Cannon says. “There were kids that, because of the way I dress, were trying to call me out on the street and Ryan is the first one to get in their faces. I don’t know if that’s what the military did to him. He’s just kind of like a protector.”

Before enlisting in “The Real World,” Conklin enlisted in the Army at age 17 and only after convincing his mom to sign a waiver — “She said it was the heaviest pen and the hardest signature she ever had to write,” Conklin says to his roommates — and he rose to the rank of Specialist (E-4). He served one yearlong tour in Iraq, first in Baghdad and then in Tikrit. His unit was responsible for securing the perimeter around the courthouse where Saddam Hussein was tried; although he never got close, Conklin remembers watching the deposed leader being escorted from a helicopter to a shuttle bus and back during the trial in 2005.

“It was just very busy every time he came in and went,” he says.

Despite plenty of IEDs and sniper rounds, his closest call came during a patrol with a Quick Reactionary Force.

“One day my platoon was parked in an Iraqi Army compound, so you kind of feel safe but you don’t really feel safe,” he says. “We’d have times where it was so hot, you’d just swing open your doors and take your Kevlar off, open up your vest and just kind of chill out a little bit; you wait for something to go boom in the city and then you react to it.

“All of a sudden, not far away — I want to say 20 or 30 yards — an explosion just ripped through right next to all of our vehicles. We didn’t know what it was; some people were thinking it was a rocket, but I knew immediately. I was like, ‘that was no rocket, there was no preparatory sound or anything. It was a suicide bomber.’”

That night, Conklin got to thinking. “That dude could have come right over to our vehicles and he could have taken out a Humvee or he could have taken out quite a few American soldiers.”

Experiences like that — and losing two fellow soldiers in Iraq and one back home to suicide — make relating to non-military peers difficult, Conklin admits.

“When Ryan told me he was in the military, I had a lot of newfound respect for him,” Cannon says. “A lot of the kids in the house were very liberal, saying that we shouldn’t be at war, we need to fight our own wars, but it was like a childhood dream of mine to go be a soldier. I wanted to go into the military but I didn’t nut up.”

It seems Conklin strives harder than any other cast member to understand the others.

“I went in thinking, I’m just going to do anything and everything,” Conklin says. “So whenever roommates did something that they were involved in, they would always ask if anyone was interested to incorporate us. If I was free, I’d be like, ‘yeah, I’ll to your art show, Sarah.’ Or, ‘I’ll go to your interview, Chet.’ I get the chance to meet other people in the process and I get to see other things that people are passionate about.”

Conklin is determined to be a positive voice in a sea of anti-war sentiment. He got involved with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America while in New York and plans to become more involved in the organization, advocating for veterans rights.

The group’s founder, Paul Rieckhoff, a former Army lieutenant and author of “Chasing Ghosts,” was impressed when Conklin approached him.

“That’s really courageous,” Rieckhoff says. “Just going to the VA is a good thing, but talking about it on television, I think that’s a really important thing that he’s doing.”

He goes through his ups and downs on the show, Rieckhoff say, but he helps put a face on a war that’s faceless to a lot of Americans.

“I think he has an opportunity to be a really powerful spokesman for veterans,” Rieckhoff says. “He’s really got a chance to inspire a lot of other vets and educate the American public about what it means to be an Iraq veteran.”

“Even when you get out,” Conklin says, “you have that mentality that you look out for your buddies, so I guess my role with the exposure of the show, it would be a wasted opportunity if I didn’t do something to put the word out there that there are things that need some help, such as the VA and veterans benefits.”

Conklin has a lot going for him. “He’s probably one of the more talented people I’ve ever known,” Cannon says.

“I’ve actually written a pretty lengthy memoir of everything I did over there,” he says. “I get it out of my head, I get it off my chest and I get it on paper.”

He won’t say what the title is but he admits it will be, for better or worse, an honest account of his experiences in the military.

“It made me who I am, whether I like it or not,” he says. “It was a chapter of my life I’ll never erase.” Ë

WATCH NOW

Watch Ryan Conklin on “The Real World: Brooklyn,” airing every Wednesday at 10 p.m. EST on MTV.