When we were just learning our way around Camp Fallujah in early September 2004, there were always hordes of Marines hanging out near the old theater on the former Iraqi army base, waiting for their “Warrior Transition Brief”. We called this the “don’t beat your wife brief”- it was the training you got to tell you what it was going to be like when you went back to the world and how you were supposed to act. We were jealous of the short-timers; we had a long way to go.

My relationship with my girlfriend Julie had been tenuous. We met in the first week of college, fell in love quickly, and after years of dating it had become clear to both of us that we were soul mates. But my insecurity and the impact of her childhood divorce had badly damaged our relationship and for two years she wouldn’t have anything to do with me. I moved around the US and eventually to Japan, living a solitary, masochistic existence. She moved in with her boyfriend.

When I told Julie I was going to Iraq, she suddenly wanted to see me, and sounded interested in me for the first time in years. Her visit the week before I deployed was the happiest four days of my life, despite the looming hardships. I felt unstoppable- I was going to fight the good fight and my woman had come back to me.


During the Iraq deployment, I relied heavily on Julie, and it seemed all the baggage between us had been silently forgotten. She was still the woman I had always loved, and I felt like the kind of man she deserved. The war was all consuming and I spent my free time thinking about how I would leave the Marines and we would spend the rest of our lives together.

When the time came for my unit to go home, we were cocky and incredulous during our own warrior transition briefs and Post Deployment Health Assessments. No way were we screwed up, we thought. Many of us had led reasonably sheltered tours, so we felt we didn’t even rate any psychological issues. Later, I’d realize that this attitude was part of my problem.


When the plane from Kuwait landed at March Air Reserve Base and I walked out onto the tarmac, I felt satisfied. When the bus pulled onto the parade deck at Pendleton- the PA system enthusiastically announcing our arrival- and I stepped off the bus to hug Julie, I felt like a rock-star. But by the time I went to get my luggage and put it in my parents’ rental car five minutes later, I was already a little depressed.

The welcome home weekend probably would have been the best four days of my parents’ and Julie’s lives, if it hadn’t been among my worst. I was a jerk. I couldn’t make simple decisions like when to eat. I didn’t want to hang out with my family. I drifted in and out of thought, ignoring people around me, morose and sulking. Every recreational activity seemed idiotic and self-indulgent. In the parking lot of the San Diego Zoo, I couldn’t find the willpower to go inside, and when my mother asked me, intuitively, if I wanted to go back to Iraq, I thought the question was absurd- until the word “yes” came out of my mouth and I started crying.

I don’t think anyone realized the significance of that moment at the time, but looking back, I realize that it was a red flag that my war wasn’t over, and that I had unanswered questions in my head. While spending my welcome home weekend at the Hotel Del, I enviously watched the Navy SEAL trainees working out in the surf in front of their base on Coronado. I envied their fraternity- the type of lifestyle that had sustained me for the last four years when Julie ignored me and my family was thousands of miles away. In three months I would be off active duty, heading back to NY to start a new career. I had a sense that the most important chapter of my life was closing and I wasn’t ready for it.

When Julie left that weekend to go back to NY, I was devastated, sobbing alone in my hotel room at the sight of a love note she had hidden for me. But when I put on my desert uniform and showed up to work on Monday, snapping salutes in the early morning sun outside our battalion command post, I felt comfortable again. I was surprised by how happy I was to see the same guys I’d spent the last 210 days with. I allowed myself to be re-enveloped by my family of warriors at the cost of paying attention to my own family and Julie.

In the end, coming home from Iraq would be the deathblow to the relationship I’d spent years trying to rebuild with the woman I wanted to marry. Unable or unwilling to think about anything but being a Marine each day and to focus on daily self-indulgences like bullshit hobbies I hadn’t had time for in years, I ignored Julie and lived in my own little world.

My last day on active duty was a big one. I found myself leading the Battalion over a hill on a large formation run, carrying the colors for one last time. The CO smiled at me as I ran by- I could tell people were sad to see me go. Later that day I promoted one of my best troops to Corporal, making him into a non-commissioned officer. The XO sat me down in his office and told me my career plans were bullshit and that he could only see me as a Marine. Better than half of me believed he was right. By the end of the day, I was one of the last Marines in the command post- I drove home in my uniform. I felt like I was getting kicked out of the house, even though I’d chosen to leave.


When I got to New York, there was no homecoming for me with Julie. I felt like I had buried my war tomahawk on the long drive from San Diego, but Julie was no longer interested in me and seemed fully ensconced in her metropolitan lifestyle. For two more years, she’d respond to me haphazardly, occasionally let me take her out to dinner, and refuse to share a single moment of substance. Eventually I cut the last lines tethering our ships together, and watched her sail away without looking back.

Through this entire trauma, I had loaded my plate up with as much work as I could handle, trying desperately to keep my life moving forward. But the omnipresence of the war would not let me be. I worked out relentlessly, read books on tactics, looked into Arabic classes, and called reserve units to find out when they were deploying. Since arriving home, I had promised myself to put Julie before the Marines, but if she wasn’t interested, then maybe I’d go back to the desert and answer some of those unanswered questions. My parents looked nauseous when I told them I was thinking about joining a reserve unit. I hated civilian life and there was no reason to stay here anymore.


When the Walter Reed scandal broke, the military crapped their pants. Within days I got a phone call from a defense contractor that had been hired to call all the Iraq and Afghanistan vets and have a little chat about their health. It was a post-post deployment screening. On the phone, I found myself lying again. No, I was not stressed out. No, I did not have trouble talking to people or sleeping. Yes, I was doing just great.

In reality, I was, and remain, wracked with guilt and insecurity- different than survivor’s guilt and far less noble. This is the guilt of leaving to pursue another career when the Corps needed strong leaders like me. The guilt of not having gone all-in when gambling with my life; of not having been catastrophically injured. The guilt of not having killed and the guilt of not living with the timeless veteran’s regrets about his killings. The guilt of being indifferent to the hundreds of opportunities available to me because they all bored me and all I wanted to do was fight. The guilt of having destroyed the most important relationship in my life because of all this guilt about the war.


I’ve been eyeing the presidential candidates all year, waiting for the time when I thought I could stomach the idea of maybe getting killed in a war I still didn’t believe in- but was nonetheless the place on earth where I belonged. Last month, one of my friends from the Marines who never went to Iraq and became a Wall Street lawyer after active duty, quit his job, joined an elite reserve unit, and began preparing to go fight. He is the third person I know who has done this, even after I was the first one talking about deploying with the reserves.

I know why he did it before me though. The sense of guilt and insecurity is deeper with him, since he hasn’t been over there yet. I only hope his experience is meaningful enough to keep him from wanting to go back or distracting him from the things in life that are most important.