I just saw this great special on HBO. It was the making of "Flags of Our Fathers". I don't know if you've seen this movie or not. If you haven't and you like movies about wars or just World War 2 in particular, it is a must-see. It deals a lot with some of the difficulties some soldiers have in coming home after the war. Their situation was pretty extreme though. Here's my summary of that situation they were thrust into. You've got these 6 Marines who are forever iconed in a photo. The flash that will forever be remembered was of the soldiers removing and then putting up a new flag on the island of Iwo Jima. It happened out of the blue only someone took a picture of it. After that moment they continued to fight the war and take control of the island in a brutal battle that lasted a little longer than a month. I haven't done extensive research on this but from what I do know, this battle was ferocious and fierce. So here are these guys doing what soldiers do, unselfishly doing what their country has asked of them. In the days that followed three of the photographed six are killed in action on this island. This photograph is seen by some people who decide that this is THE photo that sums up the true grit of the American soldier, the heart and passion of the most well-trained and best-equiped military force on the face of the planet. These three men are summoned and their jobs now changed from war fighter on the ground to war fighter back home helping to raise money for the cause. The movie follows the media tour of these guys around the country as they did "show" after "show", speech after speech all trying to help raise money for the war effort. (I digress...I wonder how the American people today would take a media campaign rolling around the country with these brave men and women as the focal point to help raise money to fight the war in Iraq/Afghanistan. That's a thought I couldn't even imagine with today's political atmosphere.)

Anyway, back to these guys...here they are getting shot at, watching their buddies die next to them in combat and they are plucked out of the fight to return home to do a media tour. The movie is great at pointing out what happened to these men...all while doing their duty. Clint Eastwood directed this movie and pointed out some of the things that these guys went through. Just think about this for a minute...one day they are engaged in all-out battle. In the matter of a couple of days they are back home drinking a cold beer and shaking hands with people being called "heroes", which they all were by the way...just getting that in there. Can you imagine how these guys felt? Eastwood does a great job showing this. One of the many things he shows is the flashbacks. There was one scene that shows them climbing a makeshift paper mache mountain in what looks like a half-time show at a football game. The show goes all out and has the place dark, lights flashing all around partnered with loud explosions in an attempt to make it real for the audience. Can you imagine what these guys must have gone through on that "stage"? Believe me, I can only imagine how quickly they were taken right back to Iwo Jima. Taken right back to the war of gunshots and snipers and exploding artillery rounds they just left only days prior. I'll be honest with you, I don't think I could've done that and I didn't see anything close to what those guys saw. Those guys are heroes doing what they did.

We get home from the war too fast. That sounds so odd because the whole we are over there we dream of the day we get to come home. We all pack things in our pockets to remind us of home and carry them around like small pieces of our body. I carried a few things everywhere I went, especially when I went outside the wire (on a convoy mission...in Army terms). I carried a small Bible my dad gave to me. The words he penned on the inside bring tears to my eyes even today when I read it. I still have that little Bible today on my dresser. He always wanted me to remember my faith and to trust God. Inside that Bible I carried a printed copy of an email from my wife along with pictures of her and our beautiful little babies. I used to always pull it out and read it before I would lay down at night and talk to the pictures as if they could hear me. In my mind, they heard every word and even felt it when I kissed them. I wore on my head a bandana that had the 91st Psalm on it. I carried these items on every mission I went on, all 139 of them. I never left the base without them, not one time.

Then one day, when our turn is finished and someone else takes our spot, we turn in our weapon and get on a plane and go home. As soon as we step foot off of that plane we are met by our families and friends and someting else that doesn't let us forget the war. We don't have time to leave it behind because we're back now. It's difficult to just "come home". I mean in reality there is no other way to do it. We've just been gone for a year and now we're home. You can't expect people to be quarantined from society to "decompress" from the war. We want to get back to normal. Sometimes people can't do it seamlessly.

A good friend of mine told me an analogy during one of the harder moments I was having about 6 months after I returned home. I think it's perfect, too. Mike, also a fellow-soldier who took his turn in the desert as well, told me that we are like a piece of paper. Before we go to war we are clean, sharp and crisp. No marks or smudges at all, just like a clean sheet taken out of the pack. Every day we experience a tremendous amount of stress and pressure and that sheet of paper starts to get all balled up. Every mortar round that explodes, every rocket that whistles and impacts and wakes us up and every round that whizzes by us gets that sheet of paper a little tighter and a little tighter. Eventually that sheet of paper is pressed and reformed into this little ball that's wound up so tightly it's the size of a golf ball now. Some day, on a time frame all it's own, that little ball of paper is going to come unwound. It has to, once the pressure is removed. If you set that little ball of paper on the table, it will just sit there. It may loosen up a little bit. You may start to see some edges pop out of it. Mike told me that the best way to get that little ball unwound in an effort to try to make it look like a sheet of paper again was to grab it and start pulling it apart very gently so not to rip it. Will it ever be smooth and crisp and sharp again? One thing is for sure and that is that it will always have some marks on it. It will always have some wrinkles and creases in it but it will be a sheet of paper again...over time.

The day after Mike told that analogy I called the local Vet Center in my home town. It has been a great service. (Vets, it's free as part of our benefits so there is no cost to you...go there!!)

It takes time but it can be done. Those Marines in that movie were wound so tight when they got home and thrust into society. They continued to do their job even though it didn't entail carrying a weapon. They were true heroes. The stresses of coming home are, more times than not, unseen. I have heard stories of guys who "live...in a bottle...for a while after returning home. The whole time hiding it from everyone". It's tough when you get home. If you are one of those guys/girls or if you know someone who has come home from the war and you are maybe picking up on some of the signs of Post-war Stress, it's okay to go talk to someone. It's okay to get some help unwinding that little ball of paper.

If you haven't seen the movie, go rent it. It's great. Clint Eastwood honored those Marines well in the movie. It has some great insights into what some people go through when they come home from war.

Talk to you later. God bless our troops.

Kevin