The phone rings in the St. Paul office of Maj. John Morris, a
chaplain with the Minnesota National Guard and point man in the Guard's
effort to “reintegrate” soldiers returning from Iraq.
The caller is a woman from Crookston, wife of a soldier who came home last summer after an extended tour.
“We've been walking on egg shells, and we can't take it anymore,” she
tells Morris, her frustration billowing like black smoke from a
sabotaged Iraqi oil well.
“The kids come to me for everything,
like they've been doing the past two years,” she said, as Morris
recalled the conversation. “He doesn't want to spend time with our
friends; he thinks their interests are trivial and they don't know
anything about what his life has been like.
“He says, ‘I just want to be with my war buddies.' ”
How can we help? Morris asked her.
“Send him back to Iraq.”
Family members often were more receptive to a helping hand than the
returning soldiers were, he said. “They had seen things when the troops
were home on leave - things like anger, feelings of isolation. They
thought, ‘Boy, this is going to be harder than we thought it would be,
pulling this family back together.' ”
Also, family members
“had been more exposed to media and had heard stories from other
families about soldiers coming back with problems,” Morris said. “They
had a better idea of what might be needed.”
