Each time I hear of another soldier being sent for the second, third or even fourth time to Iraq, my heart sinks. It sank further this morning as I read an important--yet painful--article in the New York Times, "Long Iraq Tours Can Make Home a Trying Front," for I know the cost of war on a family.
When I was 11 years old, my mother married a military man--a non-commissioned officer (NCO) in the Air Force; just the type of soldier who would most likely be deployed multiple times in today's Iraq war.
Within a year after their marriage, I waved goodbye to him at the railroad station at 5am when he was ordered to fight in Vietnam.
I remember every detail of that day, though it happened many moons ago--the dank eerie darkness of the railroad station, waving to him as the train left knowing this was not an ordinary goodbye, trying not to feel the wave of terror that sought to crush me, and going to school that morning as if it was any other day, yet wanting to scream, "I just saw my Dad off to war."
That day--that one deployment to war--forever changed me, my step-father and our family. As a young teenager, I watched my mother go about her day in an anxious silence with distant, sad eyes, though she tried hard to smile. I watched my step-father and his fellow soldiers return home from Vietnam sullen and withdrawn, as if sitting on a pile of rage that could--and did--erupt at any time.
These soldiers returned home healthy--physically--but they were broken souls. Their broken souls affected all of us like falling dominos. Some of the returning soldiers, like my step-father, never held another job. Some became guards at the penitentiary, drank in sullen silence after work and barely communicated with their families. Some weaved together the broken pieces of their spirit into a fine, strong cloth--a life filled with laughter, a family they connected with and loved and work that made a difference: I almost died out there. Now it's time for me to make this world a better place.
But far too many soldiers and their wives and children could not reconnect. The broken souls led to depression, alcoholism, divorce, single-parenthood, financial stress and children growing up without their fathers. These falling dominoes, let alone the broken souls, are not included in the casualty counts, and they should be.
Damaged souls are harder to diagnose and heal than broken or missing bones. If we truly calculated the cost of war, would we still be sending our loved ones multiple times into the hornet's nest of the Iraq war?