The War Comes Home to My House

[Gary Sisco]

The brother of the horsegirl who lives with us is a Special Forces noncom whose Iraq tour is over (this time) and arrives home on Friday. Last week he was in the midst of one of the larger suicide bombings, unharmed himself, thankfully, but many died, including one of his comrades, who took a large hunk of shrapnel square in the chest. Cat did all he could do to keep the guy alive but there's not much one can do for a wound like that, and so the guy died in his hands, literally.

Home by Christmas, baby.

[Coda]

I can't imaging the trauma your friend has and will feel from this incident. God bless our troops and all the sacrifices they make, they really deserve the hero treatment.

I do hope our government takes the lead and helps heal the emotional scars that your horsegirls brother most certainly feels.

[Gary Sisco]

Yeah, I'm quite sure the gubmint will. Like they have for all of the other vets of other wars.

The Bush admin has forbidden the VA to do *any* sort of outreach to vets about their benefits or the services to which they are entitled by law (never mind by elementary morality).

It is also busy cutting those same benefits and has been all the while.

Any vet who looks to the gubmint for help has a big surprise coming. It's called the Big Red One, right up the ass.

The only thing that will help this cat out is (hopefully) his family and friends, but since his wife is still ferociously angry with him for even going in the first place (he's a pro so he was a volunteer; I mean, it is what he does for a living after all), I have an educated gut feeling that the guy's in some deep shit and won't be having much of a good time, never mind a good holiday.

No one ever gets over things like that. They'll haunt his dreams for life. At best, one learns to live with the horror that never goes away and is always, to some extent, on one's mind, from then on.