There are no shortage of links written by very important people, but here are some words from a couple of soldiers. The first is an email sent to me tonight by my daughter Jenny. Her husband, William, is currently in Baghdad next to Sadr City.

Hey dad, this was written by a friend of William's and mine. He lived next door, but they moved. We still keep in contact. Anyway, I thought it was cool, and thought I'd pass it along: "I live and breath Iraqi dirt. I smell their life and their death. Things couldn't be going better with the occupation of Iraq. I'm lying. If you watch the news, which I don't suggest, you will see we are without an answer. As of now we just try and keep the peace between two parts of a religion (Sunni and Shiite) that hate each other. Anyway I have to go keep the peace in about fifteen minutes so I should go. Later."

Broken

I want to share with everyone here and experience that I had the other night. I was over at a friends house, and we were having a little party. After about an hour or so a limo rolls up, and I see my old friend Andy come out. Andy is in the Army, and he just returned a few weeks ago from an 18 month deployment in Iraq. I went to high school with Andy, and we played baseball together. We partied all throughout high school, and we had some great times. I could tell right from the second I hugged him that he had changed. He was hammered. He has been hammered just about every day since he returned from Iraq, so his best friend later told me. I asked Andy how he was doing. He said "I just got back from Iraq, how the hell do you think i'm doing". Of course he's not doing good, after an 18 month tour in Iraq i'm not sure how I would be. But he kept going. "I'm broken, I've just returned from the worst experience in my life." I can't imagine what he went through, and to be honest I didn't want to ask him any specifics. Still he kept going. "I want to go back." At that point I nearly spit out my beer. He wants to go back. I asked him why, and he responded "I killed someone, I killed many people. I've seen shit that I hope no one ever has to see in their lives. But I want to go back. I came back here after being there for 18 months and I get no respect." He was visibly shaken. It may have been the fact that he was very very drunk, but I could still tell he was shaken. "I'm on five different medications right now, they've diagnosed me with PTSD." Post traumatic stress disorder, which i'm sure just about everyone here is familiar with, is a problem plaguing the soldiers coming back from Iraq. He went on to tell me about his lack of sleep and his vivid nightmares. But what he told me next shook me to the core. Andy told me his best friend from the service became paralyzed from the waist down after an IED attack. He returned from Iraq to his home, to his wife, and to his child. His wife left him, and took the child with him. He was left without a job, and without anyone to take care of him. He was also diagnosed with PTSD. About a week ago, Andy's friend killed himself. Andy told me "I might be next."

[more]

  thanks to Steve Gilliard's News Blog

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