War... The Marlboro Man

Post-traumatic stress disorder is an ailment resulting from exposure to an experience involving direct or indirect threat of serious injury or death. Symptoms include recurrent thoughts of a traumatic event, reduced involvement in work or outside interests, hyper alertness, anxiety and irritability. About 317,000 veterans diagnosed with the disorder from all wars were treated at Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers and clinics in fiscal year 2005. And there are many more to come...

The photo of the ‘Marlboro Man’ in Fallujah became a symbol of the Iraq conflict when it ran in newspapers across America in 2004. Now the soldier has returned home, where he battles daily the demons of post-traumatic stress.

Ode to Fallujah

by Gary Jacobson © February 2006

Ode to the Marlboro man, Hallelujah!
Come from the battle for Fallujah
But he never really left Iraq
His granite stare still picturing the attack
Still lying fresh in tarnation’s mind
Memories of demons wielding guns unkind
Of a purpose to dissipate mankind
My weary eyes chronicle the hurt
Captured behind a mask of blood and dirt
Steely eyes so cold on high alert....

....Soldiers returning to America bring home the war, too.
"Wizards" ... military psychologists in military speak coo-coo
Briefings on PTSD to returning warriors imbue
Nobody pays much attention to a shrink creep
Even guys taking antidepressants to help them sleep
Didn't think much about long-term consequences
Of war that robbed them of humanities frail senses.
Still, a part of them wishes they could go back
To find the part of them so vilely wracked
Left back there in Iraq...

....I wonder about generals careworn
My brother’s souls baseborn
The living and dead from this life shorn
By heroes of the sword born.
I think of men I saw through rifle scope
Whom I did not give any vestige of hope
I wonder: Were they terrorists fighting against America?
The answer known only to a small group esoterica
Or did they simply fight to protect their homes
Like me, caught up in haunting war’s grisly syndromes?

http://namtour.com/fallujah.html