http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/48788/60,000 Marriages Broken by Iraq, Including MineBy Stacy Bannerman, The Progressive. Posted March 5, 2007.
When one military wife got the news that her husband was coming home from Iraq, they didn't tell her he was going to bring the war back with him.- snip -
Each week, I heard of a friend's husband or son: wounded, maimed, shot, hit, hurt, burned, amputated, decapitated, detonated, dead. A glossary of pain. I checked icasualties.org all the time, cursing and crying as the numbers rose relentlessly, praying that Lorin wouldn't be next.
I got involved with Military Families Speak Out, which is exactly what the name suggests: an organization of people with loved ones in uniform who are adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq. We were breaking the military's traditional code of silence by publicly protesting this war, and the pushback was intense, particularly for military wives. I was ostracized by the women married to men in my husband's company, and my husband was reprimanded by his superior officers. I was an "unruly spouse," and Lorin could "expect adverse career consequences."
I thought being forced to serve in a war based on lies was itself an "adverse consequence." I said as much during an interview on Hardball with Chris Matthews, which just happened to be broadcast on the big-screen TV during lunchtime in the mess tent at Anaconda. Lorin didn't see it, but approximately 5,000 of the troops he was serving with did. He heard about it for weeks, but never asked me to stop. He had his own questions and concerns about Operation Iraqi Freedom.
- snip -
Lorin spent hours loading coffins onto cargo jets; I spent days on red alert. Finally, the phone rang with the news that my husband was coming home, after nearly a year in Iraq. They didn't tell me he'd bring the war with him.
He'd been back for almost two months, but he was still checking to see where his weapon was every time he got in a vehicle. He drove aggressively, talked aggressively, and sometimes I could swear that he was breathing aggressively. This was not the man I married, this hard-eyed, hyper-vigilant stranger who spent his nights watching the dozens of DVDs that he got from soldiers he served with in Iraq. He couldn't sleep, and missed the adrenaline surge of constant, imminent danger. The amateur videos of combat eased the ache of withdrawal from war, but did nothing to heal my soldier's heart.
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