This is the story of four men who’ve gone to war and come back home again.  Each of them affected in their own ways by their experiences and their actions, each of them moving on in different directions.  It’s also the story of one man who didn’t get to come home.

Javorn Drummond played football in high school, but with a GPA too low to go to college, he signed up for the army.  He hated it.  Back home he was beaten by police officers and forced to apologize to them, he works in a hog processing plant, and he’s using his GI Bill to pursue a degree in criminal justice.

Jon Powers grew up in a solid family, was in ROTC and eventually an officer in the army.  Returning from war, he works as a substitute teacher and is running for Congress.

Michael Gross’ war experience involved a checkpoint incident that resulted in the deaths of children.  One his second tour he was charges with aiding the enemy when he gave some kids some scrap materials and was discharged from the army.  Back in the US, he spent some time living in his car with his wife and four kids, and now he’s a cage fighter who is fighting to get his discharge status changed.

Stuart Wilf was given a choice by his father, join the army or go to jail for throwing a party at and trashing a house his mother, a realtor, was listing.  He partied in the army, and even got his picture in Time magazine’s Person of the Year issue.  Now he doesn’t care much to talk about the war, and is more interested in putting it behind him and playing with his band.

Joe and Pat Colgan remember the day their son Ben went off to war, when they dropped him off at the airport and he waved to them as they drove away.  It would be the last time they would see him alive.

How to Fold a Flag is the fourth documentary from Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker about the war in the Middle East.  In 2004’s Gunner Palace, they were embedded with the 2/3 Field Artillery and told the story of soldiers on the ground in Iraq.  Now we catch up with a few of those same soldiers back in the world in 2008.

There isn’t much to this documentary that is surprising or shocking.  The central message that war doesn’t end when the soldiers come home is one that has been told time and time again, but it almost needs to because people don’t want to think about war when they can think about other things.  It is interesting to get a little insight into the different ways that people can be affected by war.  I wouldn’t say How to Fold a Flag is a must see film, but I will say that time spent watching it isn’t time wasted.