Oct

7

Coming Home

Filed Under American Patriotism, Life, PTSD, Today's War 

by Stars and Stripes

dave-johnson

He’s a businessman now. He has leisure time. He reads his law books, looks for a house to buy. He sleeps on clean sheets, and takes Hawaiian cruises with his family.

But a part of Dave Johnson is still in Iraq.

A couple of times a week, he wakes up there – “in the middle of a giant explosion,” he said, like the one on his second tour that took out his patrol base, killed one colleague, maimed another and injured a dozen more.

The former sergeant, who enlisted after getting a law degree to do his duty for his country – then was stop-lossed for 18 months – revisits the battleground in his waking life, too.

Every now and then, he says, he’ll have a flashback – “a very, very vivid memory” – of one among six or so events during his first Iraq tour.

A certain suicide bombing in a market, for instance.

“It was the last one I ever went to. We were the first responders,” Johnson, 30, said. “I felt the concussion. The blast wasn’t as big so there were much larger body parts, an arm here, a leg …

“It was me and Capt. [Matt] Lee and a member of the British Parliament. The entire market burned to the ground,” he said.

The memories creep in without warning, he said, and the acute flashback, including increased pulse and perspiration rate and a pounding heart, lasts about 30 seconds. Johnson’s twin brother, who spends a lot of time with him teaching him the family roofing business, can tell when it happens.

“He says, ‘You’re twitching again, dude.’

So Johnson wasn’t surprised to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The nightmares, the residual feelings of terror, the loss of sleep – all of it “affects you all day,” he said. And to have a flashback in the courtroom would not be good, he said.

Experts estimate that fully 20 percent of Iraq-deployed troops have developed PTSD and that nearly all show some post-combat anxiety. Yet despite a Defense Department effort to remove the stigma surrounding such psychological impacts of combat, many soldiers are still hesitant to admit they may be having problems and seek help.

Now Johnson spends his days learning the family roofing business from his brother. He’s looking for a starter house. Evenings he reads up on civil law so he can assist with the firm’s legal work.

Life is good, he said.

Yet as glad as he is to be out, he has few regrets about having been a grunt.

“Riding in a helo, staying up for 50-some hours straight, carrying a machine gun … I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.”

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