Original subtitles

Eric was reliving this horrific death every night

in his dreams.

He would tell us that he was killed.

How were you killed?

And he would say, I was crushed.

His pictures started looking crazy, bodies going everywhere.

It was all so frightening.

Elijah talked about dying and falling from an airplane.

He was just irate.

He would scream.

He would cry.

There was really nothing we could do.

Something really traumatic was happening.

He was being consumed by thoughts of war.

We became scared that something might happen.

That's when the horror set in.

He yelled, incoming.

I said, oh, god, what are we going to do?

From the time Eric was born, I never got a full night's sleep.

I was concerned that Eric's past life trauma was affecting

him in this life.

Oh, my god.

This is really happening.

Chenoa is a small town of about 1,800 people.

The word Chenoa is a Native American term that

means dark and bloody ground.

That term dates back to the mid-19th century.

Typical small town in Illinois.

Most of the people in Chenoa, Illinois

are associated with farming.

Jen and I have two children--

Eric and Salem.

James and I had a lot of problems getting pregnant.

It took us 14 months to get pregnant,

and then we lost the baby.

We had to wait two months before we could start trying again,

and then it took us another 10 months before we got pregnant

with Eric.

I was very happy when I got pregnant.

I was very excited.

Finally, finally, pregnant.

Eric was born June 21, 2006.

Eric was very adventurous when he started crawling.

You'd have to keep an eye on him because he'd

be all over the place.

He would speak complete sentences way ahead

of his peers.

He had all of his milestones early.

He started walking around 11 months, chattering very young,

speaking in small sentences shortly

after he turned a year old.

He was very healthy.

Very smart for his age.

Eric was around a year and a half

the first time I ever heard him say

that he had had a bad dream.

Eric suffered from night terrors.

From the time Eric was born, I never got a full night's sleep.

I was exhausted.

And he had had a bad dream, and he started to tell me

about how he was in his castle up in the sky

before he was Eric.

And he met me and his dad up in the castle

before we became mom and dad.

I remember what color my castle was.

It was blue.

Up in the sky on a big cloud.

And he would have conversations about the castle

in the sky and how he was up there,

but he could look down and see everybody

and how he picked his mommy and me.

He told me that he was really scared to leave his castle

to come down and become Eric.

And he said that it was because he was scared, that that's why

he didn't come the first time.

I immediately thought about the miscarriage.

He was telling me that he was actually that baby

that I had lost.

All those years I had thought that I lost the baby.

That I had an angel baby, this other child that I never

got to hold.

So for Eric to tell me about it, it was--

it was kind of a relief.

I immediately was trying not to burst out

into tears in front of him.

It made me feel like I actually had the child I was supposed

to have.

I asked him how he got down here to become Eric,

and Eric told me that he climbed down a ladder to become Eric.

And I asked him how he knew it was time to leave his castle

to become Eric, and he looked at me

and he goes, well, duh, it was my birthday.

As we approached Eric's third birthday,

he was getting super excited about it

and would ask me all the time to show him on the calendar

when his birthday was.

Eric's birthday is June 21.

I would tell Eric, this is your birthday and point to June 21.

And he would say, no, that's my birthday,

and point over to June 26.

He would argue that the 26th was his birthday, not the 21st.

That he was just irate that that was his birthday.

We didn't really know what was going on.

Things were quiet for a little while,

and then something else happened.

Eric's middle name is Cole, and whenever

he would say his full name, he would say Eric Coe.

I thought he had trouble pronouncing the L,

so I would try to pronounce it more clearly.

It's Cole.

And he said, no, it's Coe.

It was my mommy's name.

And I said, your mommy's name is Jennifer.

And he goes, is that your name?

And I said, well, yeah, I'm your mommy, aren't I?

And he goes, no, you're my kid.

That's my daughter's name.

You're my daughter.

Ninety Six is a great little town.

I've lived all over the country and all over the world,

and this place is great because it's a small town.

Everybody knows everybody.

Kids can go play in the park.

You don't have to worry about them.

You can leave your doors unlocked at night.

Ninety Six has a historic past.

It's the home of two Revolutionary War battles.

One of the battles at Star Fort was one of the most famous

in the Revolutionary War.

I recently returned from a tour in Iraq.

I came back in May of 2012, and to the joy,

I was able to embrace my family.

It was one of the greatest things I've ever experienced.

My husband and I have two children-- our oldest,

Mia Elizabeth, and our son, Elijah.

From the very beginning, I knew that Elijah

was an exceptional child.

Most kids come out kicking and screaming,

and he came out just very calm, just kind

of checking the place out.

They cleaned him up and laid him down in a little bassinet,

and he rolled over.

And that was just unheard of for a newborn baby

two minutes after being born to roll over.

And then things start happening with him.

When he was crawling, he would pull one leg behind him.

And I said, Elijah, what are you doing?

You're crawling like a lobster sideways.

I took him immediately to the doctor

to see if something was wrong with that leg,

and he told the doctor, shot.

And the doctor said, we didn't give you a shot.

He said, no, bang, bang.

Elijah would talk about the things that

had happened to him.

They were kind of like little shock moments.

He would have something that would happen,

just normal things for toddlers his age--

you know, fall down, get a scratch,

and, oh, I fell out of that airplane

and my pillows didn't open fast enough.

And you think, pillows?

What is he talking about?

And then he'd say, the pillows over my head.

Well, that's not going to do anything

to help you when you fall.

Oh, wait a minute, you mean parachutes?

And he was like, yes, parachutes.

When I would put Elijah to bed sometimes,

he would start talking about children.

He said children getting hurt.

I said, yes, children get hurt.

Children with thing on their shirt.

I said, what are you talking about, baby?

And he would get this little book that he would draw in.

He said, these children.

And he would put x's all over their little side.

And I said, are you trying to draw a star [inaudible]??

What are you talking about, baby?

I think you're making up things.

His pictures started looking crazy--

people hiding in the dark.

You could see children laying down,

or you could see people blowing up and bodies going everywhere.

It was all so frightening.

He would talk about being shot, and the pain,

and talked about the blood that was all over himself.

What got me was he talked about his ears

ringing from explosions.

And these are things that a two or three-year-old kid just

wouldn't know.

Some of the things that Elijah would talk about,

the bad things that happened to him,

they were kind of painful to watch him go through explaining

them.

I think the most emotional for me, the most painful moment,

was when he was a toddler and we had gone to a friend's house

for 4th of July celebration, and they

were starting the fireworks.

And immediately, I saw his terror.

He yelled, incoming.

Something really traumatic was happening.

Almost as soon as Elijah could talk,

he started drawing lots of scenes of war.

My mind was swirling.

I was so confused.

I didn't know what to make of it.

We would go watch fireworks.

It would scare him to death.

He couldn't actually sit and watch fireworks.

We had gone to a friend's house for 4th of July

celebration.

They were starting the fireworks,

and immediately I saw his terror.

He yelled, incoming.

Where did that come from?

And he ran to me and threw himself over me to protect me.

He kept saying, head down, mom, head down.

And he kept pushing his hand on my head.

I yelled for Matthew.

Something really traumatic was happening.

I said, oh, god, what are we going to do?

Matthew just held Elijah and said, it's not happening.

This is not happening.

This is fireworks.

There's no bombs.

He was so small, and I knew that he was hurting inside.

And it frightened me, and I wanted to take it away,

but I couldn't.

Holding him and comforting him wasn't going to fix it.

I'm a Southern Baptist.

It frightened me.

And I told my son-in-law, Matt--

I said, Matt, Elijah scares me.

While we were trying to figure out all that Elijah was going

through, my husband understood what was happening.

I think a lot of people's natural reaction

would think that there's something

wrong with their child.

What really helped me out was some experiences

that I had when I was younger.

When I was a young boy, I was having these reoccurring

dreams.

I was in trenches as if it was World War I

and there were artillery shells coming around me.

To this day, those memories I still have.

I mean, we didn't even have a TV until I was six or seven.

So to have the images in my head and the memories

that I had had to have come from what I believe

was a past life experience.

It was very important for me to find out what was really going

on with this because when I was a child,

I was told that it's just a dream, you know.

Move on.

It's just something that you watched or you heard about

or you listened to on the radio.

This isn't something that you experienced.

You just had a nightmare.

Well, I knew it wasn't that.

When you have the same dream over and over for many years,

it's not just a nightmare, and It's not just a dream.

It's some kind of memory trying to get out.

It seems only fitting that my son would

go through the same thing.

It was easy for me to understand and know

that this is the direction that we need to go.

We need to find out what he's experienced,

and if there's anything we need to do to help him.

One of the things that stood out the most to me

that Elijah and I experienced together

was when he was first learning how to read,

we would do flash cards together,

and I picked up the word no and he said nine.

And I was like, that's extremely weird.

I turned around and I said, no, no, Elijah.

This is not a number.

This says no.

And he said nine.

He kept shaking his head like he knew exactly what he was

talking about.

He was speaking a different language.

One evening, when Elijah was a toddler, the TV was on

and it was on the History Channel.

And they were talking about World War II

and Hitler was standing up and he was speaking,

and you know how he is with such a boisterous voice.

And Elijah was looking at the TV,

and he just started laughing like crazy.

I said, what is it?

And I said, Elijah, what are you laughing at?

That is Hitler.

There's nothing about that man that's funny.

He said, oh, mama, he thinks he's beautiful.

Then the translation came up.

Hitler was actually telling a joke.

He was actually making moves like this, like he's handsome.

I couldn't even understand what the man was saying,

but moments later, when the translation came up,

it verified what he was talking about.

And he just laughed as if it was normal.

Everybody should know how to speak German.

I'm more skeptical, more analytical,

and I thought Elijah had these memories.

Maybe he got it from this or that.

But when he was understanding German,

that couldn't be denied.

Some of the things that Elijah was telling me about--

the wounds that he had, the shells falling around.

Then he started talking about jumping out of airplanes

and pillows opening, or parachutes opening, and Hitler,

I knew that it had to be World War II.

So that's where we knew we needed to start looking.

I knew he had to have been a German soldier,

but come to find out, he wasn't.

Sometimes I thought Eric was just telling stories,

that he had a really good imagination

and was making up stories to share with me.

I didn't know what he was going through.

I was extremely nervous.

Eric's middle name is Cole, and whenever

he would say his full name, he would say, no.

It's Coe.

That was my mommy's name.

I freaked out.

It was like somebody slapped me, that I could feel it down

into the very core of me.

What was he talking about, his other mommy?

And I said, your mommy's name is Jennifer.

And he goes, is that your name?

And I said, well, yeah, I'm your mommy, aren't I?

And he goes, no, you're my kid.

That's my daughter's name.

You're my daughter.

It was the strangest thing I'd ever heard him say.

It still is.

From the time Eric was able to speak complete sentences,

he was always talking about Hollywood.

He talked about Hollywood everyday.

He wanted to go to Hollywood because he had to go to work.

He needed to do things at his other house.

He had things he needed to fix there, things he needed

to buy for his other house.

And he had to go to Hollywood so he could make the money

to be able to do the things for his other house.

As time went on, he was getting mad for not taking him

to Hollywood.

Eric started to put up a fight for everything.

He wasn't going to go to school.

He wasn't going to eat.

He wasn't going to take a bath or go to bed until we took him

to Hollywood.

We didn't really know what was going on with Eric.

Eric's fascination with Hollywood

got so bad that his father and I worried that he might wake up

one morning before we were up and climb on a chair to unlock

the door to go ahead and try to leave on his own

to go to Hollywood.

We became scared that something might happen because of it.

We didn't know if had come from watching the TV,

but he watched a lot of cartoons,

and there's not really a whole lot of Hollywood spoken

in cartoons.

I was a stay at home mom, and I controlled everything

he was exposed to on TV.

My first thought was that somebody in the family

let him watch something while he was over.

And I was actually kind of mad over what my family might have

exposed him to.

And through all of this, his night terrors

kept getting worse.

He would wake up every night, sometimes crying.

And on a few occasions, he would tell us

that he was killed.

How were you killed?

And he would say, I was crushed.

And as a parent, you want to protect them,

but there was really nothing we could do.

It made me feel helpless because he was having them

every single night.

Our three-year-old son, Eric, believed his birthday was

on the wrong day, that he had another mother,

and suffered from night terrors.

I never got a full night's sleep.

I was exhausted.

All of these things that had been going on--

the other mommy, the other house, his birthday,

having this fascination with Hollywood-- none

of these things really made sense.

As we're trying to figure it out,

James said, well, maybe he's remembering a past life.

And everything clicked at that moment.

It was the first time that there had been anything suggested

that could make sense of all of Eric's weird behavior.

We were sitting at the kitchen table having dinner.

Eric was just in a real Hollywood mood.

He's just saying he was going to go back to Hollywood,

he's gotta go to work.

He would keep saying that he has to go to work.

So I said, well, what do you exactly

do you do for work out in Hollywood?

And he said, you know, stuff.

You know, like a two, three-year-old would say.

Well, what kind of stuff?

Are you an actor?

He goes, oh, no, I don't like actors.

I said, well were you a director?

And he would just shrug his shoulders.

And I said, did you write something?

Were you a writer?

And Eric goes, yeah.

I write movies and other stuff.

So James goes, well, did you write "Casablanca"?

And Eric said, no.

And I asked, did you write "Ben Hur"?

And Eric said, no.

And then James asked, did you write "Gone with the Wind"?

And Eric's face just lit up and he lifted his head

and he said, yeah, I write that movie.

You know that movie?

That's my movie.

I had always been open to reincarnation,

but I had never thought about it in relation to Eric

and what Eric was remembering.

I mean, my heart just started racing.

I went to the computer and did a search

for who wrote "Gone with the Wind,"

and I discovered that a man named Sidney Howard wrote

the screenplay for the movie.

The first thing that caught my attention was his middle name

was Coe.

Eric had always pronounced his middle name

as Coe instead of Cole.

And as I read down through it, it

said that Coe had been his mother's maiden name.

Eric had told me that he was named Coe after his mom.

Then, it listed his children's names,

and his oldest daughter went by the name Jennifer.

When Eric found out my name was Jennifer,

he told me that I was his daughter.

And I saw off to the side that it had his birthday

as June 26, which was the day that Eric insisted

his birthday was.

At that point, I was a believer.

He was Sidney Howard.

That's when his mother also looked up the way

that Sidney Howard passed.

Sidney Howard died because he was crushed to death

by a tractor on his farm.

And Eric was reliving this horrific death every night

in his dreams.

I couldn't do anything to help him with the nightmares.

I couldn't prevent them.

I couldn't even do much to calm him down afterwards.

I was concerned that Eric's past life trauma was affecting

him in this life.

As Elijah had these memories, it

seemed that his whole little childhood was being consumed

by thoughts of war.

What if he had a memory that was so traumatic--

I mean, my family's full of soldiers on both sides,

and I know what they feel when they come back from war.

Imagine being born with those memories.

Some of the things that Elijah was telling me about--

the wounds that he had, the shells falling around.

He started talking about jumping out of airplanes and pillows

opening, or parachutes opening, and Hitler.

I knew that it had to be World War II,

so that's where we knew we needed to start looking.

I knew he had to have been a German soldier,

but come to find out, he wasn't.

I actually took Elijah to an antique store,

and we found some World War II displays--

different metals, different displays.

He pointed to one particular knife that

had a swastika on it, and he said,

I took that off a German soldier.

I had one just like that.

After watching a particular movie, he heard the name Peter,

and it triggered a memory.

My name is Peter--

like Peter, not Peter, but he wanted me to call him Peter.

Elijah drew the airplane for me first,

and it was as good as he could do at two years old.

So it gave us a direction to start looking.

And so we got on the computer and scrolled through images

of airplanes from World War II.

And I told him, I said, you point at the one

that you think is it.

And so as we went through, he kept saying, well,

that might be it.

That's kind of like that, but it didn't have that kind of tail.

And then, all of a sudden, we scrolled up,

and he said, that's it.

And he almost put his finger through the computer.

He said, that's it right there.

Turned out to be a Russian airplane.

Another very good clue as to where he may have come from--

Peter is a strong European name, and a strong Soviet name.

So we had another direction.

And we had to find out more.

I'm glad that at the time he was at least an ally.

At first it was very confusing to me

about all the different experiences

he was having, and then I started finding that

they were all connected.

I just started seeing a thread of common experiences.

The fact that he spoke German, that he spoke of planes

and drew pictures of war.

He reenacted battles with his action figures.

All of this was leading me as if it was a mystery to solve

of maybe who Elijah was before.

My son, Elijah, drew pictures of World War II, a Soviet plane

over and over.

He could understand and speak some German,

and insisted on being called Peter.

He had memories of being a soldier

and drew pictures of war.

All of this was leading me as if it was a mystery to solve

of maybe who Elijah was before.

Elijah started talking about helping children to safety.

He drew pictures, and I can remember

seeing the little figure and the children with him.

He always had his gun and his cross on,

and he was just leading them.

I said, where did you take them?

We slipped them out and took them to different countries.

He talked about being underground,

hiding in caves, tree houses.

I thought, what in the world?

Children?

It was time to put it all together,

so we started investigating where this came from.

I started looking for underground, Russian,

Russian children, any kind of trigger words that he had said.

And suddenly the Russian partisan

popped up in my search.

And as I looked into that, I realized

I had found the missing link.

When we found out about the Russian troops that

were dropped in to help the partisans,

they were dropped in by air.

They came in in the same type of airplane

that Elijah spoke to us about.

Many of them were intercepted and shot down.

Then they had to get out really quick.

And all this was coming together.

I thought, my baby was in the middle of that,

and he has memories of that.

And I think that's when the horror set in

because I thought, my god, what had he experienced?

How can he handle this now?

I'm Elijah and I am 11 years old.

My mom found this book at a college.

We had looked through, like, 200 pages to find me.

We found something kind of like me--

someone kind of like me.

Yeah, we think it's him--

well, me.

I found a man that had started out as lieutenant,

had been promoted to colonel due to a battle right

on the border of Belorussia that matched a battle that Elijah

had described.

He had the part of the air assault.

He had been shot down, of course, when that was crushed,

and how he had become part of the Russian partisan movement.

His name-- Colonel Petrovsky.

It matched everything that Elijah

had said about being Peter.

Petrovsky.

Everything started coming into play.

Every question that we had, every detail that we had,

and every clue that we had as we started trying to fit it

into this puzzle--

it snapped in.

It was amazing because they didn't fit anywhere else.

We tried.

I knew that was him.

I just knew it was him.

Elijah had given us enough clues about being injured with a trip

wire and injuring his ankle, several things about being shot

down, and it all matched.

It all matched.

And we were so thrilled.

But then something happened that shocked me more than anything

he had ever done before.

Our son, Eric, would talk about things that

happened before he was born.

It hurt to know that I couldn't prevent the nightmares.

I couldn't do anything to help him.

I couldn't prevent them.

I couldn't even do much to calm him down afterwards.

I was concerned that Eric's past life trauma was affecting

him in this life.

A few months before Eric turned four,

things had gotten worse with him.

His fascination with Hollywood was really becoming extreme.

I was very protective of Eric.

I never spoke with anybody about it.

I just didn't want him subjected to anybody teasing him

or doubting him because I totally believe that Eric has

had a past life.

We began to be worried about him and his well being.

I feel like Eric had unfinished business from his past life,

so we located the two surviving daughters of Sidney Howard.

Contacted the Howard family, and ended up arranging a trip

out there for Eric.

I thought taking Eric to the Howard farm

would give it some sort of closure,

and actually, we thought that might break his night terrors,

too.

When we arrived out on the Howard farm,

the daughters were very receptive, very

friendly, hugged Eric, took us on a tour of his house

and the grounds and up to the farmhouses.

Just down from Sidney Howard's house,

there's a small pond with a man made waterfall.

Eric walked over and stood near the waterfall.

He said that he always liked that spot.

The pond that we were at was a pond

that Sidney Howard and his wife enjoyed swimming in together.

It was kind of like their little romantic spot.

And Eric had a great day.

He actually, to me, felt right at home there.

There wasn't any nervousness.

Usually Eric is pretty shy when he walks into a new house,

or there's a lot of people around.

So he definitely felt relaxed around there.

We were able to tour the cemetery where Sidney Howard

was buried.

When we pulled up to the cemetery, Eric seemed angry,

and he said, I know this place.

Why are we here?

I was worried that the trip might have triggered

some traumatic memories for Eric.

I was extremely nervous.

When we pulled up to the cemetery, Eric seemed angry.

And he said, I know this place.

Why are we here?

I was extremely nervous.

Eric didn't need any direction.

He pretty much walked right up to Sidney Howard's headstone.

I felt like Eric knew what he was doing.

He did know this place.

I'm sure he recognized the place.

For him to walk right up to the tombstone,

to me, was an affirmation that he knew where he was,

that he had been here before, and that he

knew what was going on.

The trip to Sidney Howard's farm didn't ease Eric's nightmares.

"Gone with the Wind" was for released the year

that Sidney Howard died.

He became the first person to posthumously win an Oscar.

Sidney Howard wasn't there to receive his award,

and he didn't live long enough to know

how huge the movie became.

I'm not sure if I feel like Eric had unfinished business

from his past life, but Sidney Howard

was only 48 when he died.

When I step back and think about how it must've felt for him,

it devastates me as his mom who loves him unconditionally

and would do anything for him.

It's hard for me to accept that he had

to go through that struggle.

Nothing seemed to help him, so I did the only thing

that was left to do.

Take him to Hollywood.

I want to go to Hollywood because I've

been talking about Hollywood since I was little.

I used to live in Hollywood.

Eric, we're finally here.

We're in Hollywood. Are you excited?

- Yeah. - Yeah?

I bet you are.

How long have you been waiting to come to Hollywood?

Since I can remember.

Eric's been asking to go to Hollywood his entire life,

so I'm hoping that by bringing him here and allowing him

to see some things and tour some spots that have connections

with his past that maybe it'll help him find closure.

Hi, Eric, welcome to the Hollywood museum.

I've arranged for a "Gone with the Wind"

expert to give Eric a Sidney Coe Howard tour of Hollywood.

I'm hoping that Eric will be able to connect

with his past life.

Eric, I understand you have a special fascination with "Gone

with the Wind."

Mm-hm.

Do you want to be a writer when you grow up?

Yeah.

I'm glad I finally got to bring him out here so that he

could just achieve this dream and to have that connection

to who he used to be.

Have you ever touched an Academy Award?

Would you like to hold this one?

I brought Eric to Hollywood because it was such a huge part

of his past, and I wanted him to be able to put

his past behind him.

I am relieved that this is behind us.

Eric's memories were a huge part of my life

and this family for so long, but it's getting further away

from us now where normal is starting to look

like life without the memories.

Moving forward in his life, Eric has to be Eric.

I hope he just does what he wants to do

and is his own individual.

Since coming home, Eric's

been a normal, happy, seven-year-old boy.

Eric really enjoys riding this bike.

He rides it through the neighborhood, up to the parks,

and to play with friends.

And I think he's definitely going

to move forward as Eric now and leave

Sidney Howard in the past.

We knew that he was a Soviet soldier.

We knew that he had something to do with an underground dealing

with children.

The second I heard about this man's life,

I just knew it was him, but then something

happened that shocked me more than anything

this amazing boy had ever done or said in the past.

I found out that my unit was getting ready to be deployed

to Iraq in direct harm's way, and I

knew I had to break this to my family.

So I decided to talk to my wife first about it,

and we both decided to go in and talk to the children about it.

We sat them down, and I'll never forget the looks on their faces

when I told them that I was getting ready to be shipped

overseas to Iraq.

Elijah told me that he needed to speak with his father man

to man, and he asked me to leave the room.

But I stayed in the hallway and listened.

I was expecting, daddy, don't leave.

Daddy, are you coming back?

Daddy, where are you going?

Will I be able to talk to you?

Instead, it was a veteran soldier

talking to a man that was getting ready to go into war.

He said, when these bombs start falling down on you,

it's OK, just get down.

You'll be all right.

The lower you get, the better you'll be.

I-- I never forgot that.

I took that with me--

the fact that my son told me something like that.

And I needed it.

I needed it later on.

So we arrived in Camp Taji, Iraq.

The very first day, you're getting a look around,

you're starting to see what's going on around you,

and next thing you know, out of nowhere--

boom.

This loud explosion.

The shell just went off.

My boots just hit the ground, and we're under attack.

In that brief moment, you're like, oh my god.

This is really happening.

So I hit the dirt, cupped my ears,

and I'm sitting there thinking, this is not

the way I want to die.

I'm thinking, OK, as soon as this stops,

I'm going to get up and run for our bunker.

And then that moment comes across

of my son told me that when the shells start falling,

just get to the ground.

Get as low as you can.

There was a lot of peace that came over me

because I knew this was going to be OK, you know.

I just went back in time to that moment

when he was sitting there in my living room what that stoic

face telling me, when the shells start falling,

just get as low as you can and you'll be OK.

And I knew I was going to be all right.

And as soon as there was a lull, I jumped up.

I cleared about 100 yards in probably two seconds.

I moved into a bunker, and everybody's grabbing

me-- are you OK?

You know, want to make sure I wasn't hurt.

Yeah, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

People slapping me, moving me around.

You OK?

You sure you're OK?

I'm fine.

And when I got in there, it was just, OK.

I'm going to be all right.

I'm going to make it through this.

Did Elijah come to me for that moment?

Was he sent from the past to help me get through something?

Was this a gift to me?

Who knows?

I don't know, but I'm sure thankful he was there.

Now, I believe that he did do this because of the things

he's told us.

There's no way that child would have known without being there.

He had no way of knowing.

He's too young to know.

We have adjusted, and we know now that things happen

for a reason.

We don't know why he was given to us, now,

but we are thankful.

Now that I've experienced combat,

I've seen the things that I've seen--

this changes you.

And I understand the reason why Elijah is the way he is.

Even though it was in another life,

I'm sure that so many things carried on.

And we have, I think, a stronger connection.

Elijah-- it's getting a lot better.

He can deal with these memories.

I've often thought to myself, if I could take this from him,

would I?

If I had the ability to remove this--

these memories and everything from him, would I do it?

And that answer is no because I know that it's

part of his personality, and there's

a reason why this has happened.

What Colonel Petrovsky did deserves honor and respect,

and I hope that that will lead Elijah

into having the same lifestyle of honor and respect

and taking care of others.

In this life, I still want to help people,

but in different ways.

I do not have any kind of form of wanting to be a soldier.

That's in the past.

If you're a parent and you're going through this,

it's so much better to try to help that child through it.

This is who they are.

This is part of their soul.

And you need to allow them to grow and just see what they're

going to become.