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New Pic of Mike in Missy's piece from below-
Also, don't miss the Memorial day contribution from syndicated columnist Debra LoGuercio!

Sometimes the deepest wounds can't be seen- a Memorial Day Tribute

Because I Say So
May 24, 2007
Debra LoGuercio



Sometimes the deepest wounds can’t be seen

On Memorial Day, we (hopefully) pause to honor those who’ve served our country, in particular, those whose lives were cut short in a visible way. Like returning home in a body bag. Or not at all.
Thankfully, most returned home in relatively better shape, scarred or missing limbs, and we honor them too. But what about those wounded in ways that can’t be seen? In some ways, those are the hardest wounds to heal.
My father suffered one of those wounds. He went into World War II as a second lieutenant, straight out of Bordentown military school, graduating at the top of his class and fluent in five languages. He went out of the war via an extended stay in a US Army hospital in Germany, babbling like a child, barely able to write his own name. It’s amazing the effect seeing your entire unit being blown to bits will have on your mind.
My father rarely spoke of it. He once told me it happened in some building or warehouse, during the Battle of Normandy. They heard German planes coming and hit the ground. The ack-ack-ack of bullets shattered the building. When my dad looked up, every single soldier in his unit was dead or dying. Outlining the place where he lay were two rows of bullet holes. He wasn’t even scratched.
It was his first and only maneuver, and it ended in disaster. Seeing his unit slaughtered utterly traumatized him. At 18, he was unprepared for what he saw in France. You see, back in the 1940s, there were no gory war movies or video games to desensitize future soldiers to the sight of bullets exploding someone’s skull or a grenade turning a body to hamburger. They didn’t watch “Saving Private Ryan,” they lived it. Scraping your buddy’s intestines off your face can really do a number on your mind, long after you leave the battlefield.
Back then, they called it “Shell Shock.” Nowadays, we call it “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” – PTSD. Seems like in all this time, we could do better than come up with a label, like provide comprehensive psychological treatment for all veterans who’ve seen active duty. But in talking with soldiers who’ve recently returned from Iraq, it doesn’t seem like much has changed. No meaningful, intensive treatment for PTSD, just an honorable discharge, some pins on your chest and a shove toward the door to civilian life. Unless, of course, they can coerce you to reenlist first.
So, those with Shell Shock and PTSD muddle along as best they can. If they’re lucky, they learn to cope. My father wasn’t quite so lucky. True, he eventually “recovered” from Shell Shock (as far as the Army was concerned), and devoted himself to saving lives rather than taking them, and became a physician. On the exterior, all was well. The interior was another matter.
Years went by, he married, had kids, but his invisible wound continued to fester. He attempted to soothe it with alcohol, and was unable to recognize that ultimately, this only made it worse. As time went on, his thoughts and behavior became increasingly disturbed. He was consumed with the idea that enemies were perpetually after his family and it was his job to keep them at bay.
I vividly remember him coming into my room in the middle of the night and whispering, “Stay down. Keep quiet.” He’d close the door behind him and step down the hall. Soon, I’d hear his footsteps outside the window, slowly trudging around, and see his silhouette from the streetlight, his rifle at the ready. I chalked this bizarre behavior up to “alcoholic” or “paranoid” just plain “nuts.” It was only last year that someone snapped it into focus: “Don’t you see? He was still protecting his unit.” I felt like a lead weight was dropped onto my chest. For the first time in my life, I finally “got” him. He spent his life obsessing; making sure his “unit” didn’t meet the same fate as his first.
Was my dad’s wound disabling? Absolutely. Was his life cut short? Positively. Was his invisible wound ever acknowledged? No. You don’t get a Purple Heart for a wounded mind.
So, this Memorial Day, remembering the fallen. Remember the wounded. Rather than scramble to the mall to get that great deal on pillowcases, leave a flower on a soldier’s grave or say “thank you” to a veteran, even if he doesn’t have a wound you can see. Maybe particularly so.

The Wetting of the Stripes

Happy Memorial day. I will be signing books at Barnes and Noble of Alisa Viejo on Memorial Day and remembering the lives lost.... My many relatives and the many I never met.

Doc will visit Dupes grave. Missy will be on her way to see her brother off for re-deployment. Here are pics of the ceremony, The wetting of the Stripes. Please look it up if you can, it's an amazing ceremony. More pics when I get back! JL









Chris invited me to his ceremony to "pin" him in his new rank of Non Commissioned Officer: Sergeant. The ceremony dates back to Frederick the Great. In prior days, you pulled the sergeant stripes off if the dead sergeant, pinned yourself and moved on. The ceremony is now a bit more civilized.

Picture of My Sailor

As promised, here is a picture of my husband, Jay. This picture was taken at the airport the day that he flew to Japan. It has been over a month since then and it already feels like a year. Sometimes I think you can see it in my eyes in this picture...I missed him before he was even gone.

My Sailor

I wanted to take a few moments to tell everyone a little about my Sailor. We always hear they are being deployed and that they are working hard, but do we ever really hear what they are actually doing. It takes a lot of sweat and tears to keep an air craft carrier going, and I am proud to say that my husband is a part of that.

My Husband is a 3rd Class Petty Officer, and is part of the Hull Maintenance Department. He just recently finished what is known as "C" School for Welders. He finished in the top 5 of his class, making him a Super Welder. Along with many others in his division he is in charge of welding. What might there be to weld on a ship you might wonder? Well a lot of things, every single day. They will be the ones to get up in the middle of the night because of a break or a leak, and just might be responsible for saving the ship from going down.

This division is also mostly comprises the fire squad, which my husband has been a part of since he joined the Navy. On his last command he was team leader of his fire squad, but he has yet to take his place on his new ship. I have no doubts that he will work his way to the top again.

On top of all of this, he is a magnificent husband, and once we are together again he wants to be a magnificent father. That will come in due time. For now we just have a cat! Thank you all for your kind words. I truly appreciate them. Other than this, I will post pictures as soon as I can. I am without a computer of my own right now (I let Jay take mine on deployment!) so as soon as that happens the pictures will come. I promise.

Casey Nicholson.

Letter from Assemblywoman Wolk

Here's an excerpt from Lois Wolk, Assemblymember eighth district:

"...your book shines light on the homefront experience and what it means to be patriotic. The citizens of our region are fortunate to have someone with your talents and insight among them."


Lois Wolk
May 3,2007

Home Front: Calm Before the Storm - Ahwatukee Foothills News, May 9, 2007

(click the above title to activate link)
HOME FRONT: Calm before the storm

Commentary by Missy Martin
My brother Mike is going to war. He’ll do his part to provide security for convoys in Iraq by driving an armed Humvee.

I’m trying to muster the same “bring it on” fortitude to cope with his deployment that he and his fellow soldiers first exuded at their boot camp graduation. But soldiers’ families aren’t trained to fight on the home front even though we face enemies too – those of the psyche – things like fear, anxiety and depression. We figure out how to deal as we go.
Before Mike joined the Army he was my neighbor in this placid suburb, where the war was on our TVs, not on our radar screens. For all the war’s ideals and flaws, they were all too remote from our suburban lifestyle to identify with. The only oppression I ever fought was the letters I received from our homeowners association about the trampoline in our backyard.

I never fought for freedom or security for anybody. While our family was once the target of a “lawn job” when some teenager peeled out, leaving behind a 2-inch-deep skid mark, I could never imagine my family as the target of roadside bombs that leave behind 3-foot-deep craters and broken hearts.

My only beef with sand has been that it fills my kids’ sneakers at recess and then spills onto our wood floor when they remove their shoes after school; of course it never seemed relevant to worry about it jamming a weapon during an ambush. Now I need to expand my resolve to cope beyond the trials of my suburb to those Mike will face in a combat zone.

For his pre-deployment leave, Mike packed his vehicle with every possession that would fit in it and drove for two days to my house, where I’ll store everything in the garage while he’s at war. On the day he was due to arrive, my three kids spent the morning making 12 “welcome home” cards and laid them out on his bed. Then they perched themselves in the backyard fort that overlooks the block fence so they could see every car that turned into our neighborhood.

When they finally spotted his shaved head behind the wheel of his gray SUV they bypassed the fort’s ladder and leapt to the ground, where they ripped a trail to the front yard and greeted Mike with literal jumps for joy.

For the rest of the day we sat on the patio and drank beer, barbecued steak and listened to Mike’s favorite songs programmed into his iPod. The kids asked questions. “How will you get there?” and “Are you scared?” Mike used the kids’ toy machine gun to demonstrate how soldiers are trained to clear rooms. The kids played the bad guys; lying in wait with their own plastic pistols cocked, but Mike’s technique prevailed every time. I felt glad.
The weather was perfect, the grass was green and lush, blooming plants splashed bright colors throughout the yard. Birds were chirping and we all could smell the orange blossoms.

We sat relaxed, enjoying ourselves, laughing and watching airplanes make contrails in the cloudless sky long into the night when a one bisected the moon. My husband brought out the telescope.

I’ve etched this day in my mind and hope in my darkest moments of worry it will supercede any visions of Mike in a violent combat zone. Soon he will be on a plane en route to a war defined by conflicting arguments whose validity in terms of our national interest, our soldiers’ interests and my personal values often leave me confused about my own position on the war.

But there’s one thing I know for certain: when Mike arrives “over there” he’ll be ordered to write a so-called “If you’re reading this” letter, a note every soldier writes and families receive only if their soldier is killed. All of the political chatter will be muted by the single-minded chorus of my family’s prayers to never receive that letter, and to see Mike come home again to spend another day drinking beer on the patio beside lush green grass, while the birds chirp and airplanes make contrails in the peaceful blue sky.


--Missy Martin is an 11-year Ahwatukee Foothills resident, mother of three and editor of Bombshells: War Stories and Poems by Women on the Homefront. Her brother, Michael Dunn, is a graduate of Arizona State University and a U.S. Army Specialist about to be deployed to the Middle East.