The Unimaginable Reality

They still hold their breath every time a door bell buzzes or a phone rings. Their nights are still sleepless with worry and thinking the worst. They hate seeing government looking cars going down their street. It's seven long years since shock and awe started. Nine since the Taliban were first defeated.
Young men and women still go time after time to the senseless wars our nation's leaders can't seem to avoid or don't want to avoid. The ultra rich and fat cats seldom think of them. The average American hardly remembers them. The mainstream media seldom mentions them. What are they doing there, again?
A few years back I wrote a piece about parents waiting for them. I asked the readers to imagine staying up late at night wondering where your child is at that very moment in Afghanistan or Iraq. Are they one of those Marines going through the hell of a Fallujah or a Marjah? Are they pinned down at some remote outpost near the mountains of Afghanistan?
Imagine a parent wondering why their child has been asked to go three, four, five times to the two wars no one at home seems to remember. Imagine a son or daughter who has seen their parent only 24 months of the last 60 months. The parent missed all their recitals, school plays, basketball games, first proms, field days and birthdays while they were gone to a war.
Imagine a young wife left behind by her husband 3 months after their marriage. Living on base is impossible to think about. A constant reminder of where he is. Going back to mom and dad's place seems like one step back. Living with his parents is out of the question. So a dingy studio apartment in a rough part of town seems the alternative. Skyping and emails hardly makes up for the lost intimacy. Minimum wage jobs hardly helps pay the bills even with his private's pay.
Imagine a reservist who has already lost his heating company because he could no longer be in the country to run the jobs. He could no longer bid jobs and expect to get them because his contractors knew he was likely to leave again for one of the wars. They support the war and all but they have to make money. Too bad the reservist got the wrong end of the stick. Who knew he'd end up going back three more times. Too bad his wife faces foreclosure with him out of country at war. Someone should do something.
Imagine the poor lost kid who barely made it through high school because of his ADD. His mom insists he stay on medications but the recruiter says he can enlist if he stops them and signs a waiver. The military doesn't care about the ADD as long as the kid can learn to be a grunt infantryman. Imagine the kid off meds in the middle of a firefight. He gets shot but it hits him in his Kevlar. The guy who befriended him isn't so lucky. He takes a round in the head and bleeds out in front of the kid. The kid makes it through the firefight but the images haunt him. His ADD kicks in big time with impulsive behaviors and disorganized thoughts being in the forefront. He tells his 1st Sgt. to "f' off. He drinks excessively. Misses formations. Fights with his squad leader. They put him on report. He's restricted and spends his time obsessing about the firefight. He sinks into depression and thinks about "offing" himself. He thinks about killing that "top". They put him on suicide watch and place him in a closet with a fire hose and fire axe next to the quarters of the First Sgt.. Smart.
Imagine the parents of the young Marine who came back and fell into the abyss of alcoholism. They keep taking him to the VA but the VA keeps kicking him back out on the streets to return to his torment and his booze. They say he has to be sober before they can provide services. The stupid cycle repeats itself over and over as the frantic family sees their son spiral toward the drain. On one evening the young Marine wants to sit on his father's lap and be held as he was held as a child. A young combat Marine wanted this. The next day the family finds their son hanging in their basement. He will always be known as a suicide but his parents know he was a casualty of the war.  He died of the neglect we have allowed ourselves to have toward the returning troops.
Imagine a parent sitting up late at night going through family photos to take to the memorial service of their dead son or daughter. Imagine the young wife devastated by the suddenly abusive husband returning from the war. Imagine the young woman returning home after doing her tour of duty in Iraq surviving the IEDs and firefights but not the rapist who was a member of her combat unit.
Imagine seeing the blood of an infant drained from the body at the site of the exploding cluster bomb. Imagine seeing the sniper round hit your best friend in your combat unit. Imagine his brain matter splashed across your face. Imagine coming to the aid of one of your men whose leg is lying in a horrifying pool of blood across the road. Imagine the arterial blood pumping from the stump of the quickly dying man who screams from the fear and excruciating pain.
Parents sit up late at night wondering if they will see their chld again. Wives get up each morning fearing their husbands next rage attack. Children go to school unable to talk about their mom who has been gone for a year in a place they know nothing about.
Parents and wives, husbands and daughters, sons and brothers, sisters and friends all wonder about their loved ones but feel angry no one else seems to remember them. Imagine that their loved one survives the combat but ends up addicted, incarcerated or dead at the hands of a cop after waiting six months without an appointment with a VA psychiatrist. Imagine a mom being told her son died from " friendly fire" but later is told her son committed suicide. When she questions how he could have shot himself in the temple with a rifle the story changes to "unknown" cause of death.  Imagine being awarded a bronze star and purple heart and finding yourself lined up at a local homeless shelter only six months after discharge.
We no longer need to imagine these things. They've all happened along with countless other tragic and detestable stories  Defenders of the "holy wars" of Christianity against the "godless" Muslims will likely say "things happen" but most of the troops are treated well. For the families and friends of the victims of these wars, all they know is the hellish truth of what happened to their loved ones. Only thing is.....no one wants to hear them.
Wm Terry Leichner, RN
USMC combat vet - RVN  '67-'69