Point of View

At War with My Thoughts

I was reading, with tears in my eyes, from the New York Times today a story of war veteran’s home from Iraq, but not home from the war in their heads. Most suffer from a form of post traumatic stress disorder and are left dangling to deal with the images that scar their brains. The transition back into a civilized society is daunting and traumatic in and of itself and it saddens me that our government, the same government that called them into service seems to take a back seat to their rehabilitation. My transition back to civilian life was challenging and at times frightening. Loud noises would cause me to leap out of my skin and my fit-full nights were haunted with images and even the smells of the events of my experiences.
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The following is an excerpt from the New York Times story, written by Deborah Sontag and lizette Avlarez:
    Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army.
This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.”
Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it.
“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.”
Head bowed, Mr. Sepi scurried down an alley, ignoring shouts about trespassing on gang turf. A battle-weary grenadier who was still legally under-age, he paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.”
In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr.Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him.
“Who did I take fire from?” he asked urgently. Wearing his Army camouflage pants, the diminutive young man said he had been ambushed and then instinctively “engaged the targets.” He shook. He also cried.
“I felt very bad for him,” Detective Andersen said.
Nonetheless, Mr. Sepi was booked, and a local newspaper soon reported: “Iraq veteran arrested in killing.”
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If your heart doesn't go out to this young man, and the many other veteran's struggling to survive then you are part of the problem. Why are the very people providing our freedom's living homeless in the streets and loosing the very thing they give us?
Hug a veteran and let them know that they matter and are welcome home.




C.Anthony