Battlefield Iraq, Battlefield Home for Peter Mohan

Clarification: Homeless Veterans story
LEEDS, Mass. (AP) -- In a Jan. 19 story, The Associated Press reported that Mike Lally, a Marine veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress after two tours in Iraq, had been kicked out of his home by his wife.
His wife, Gretchen, said in a follow-up interview that while she had threatened to leave him if he did not stop drinking, their decision that he enter treatment was mutual. She said Lally has since completed a substance abuse program at Soldier On, a facility for troubled veterans, and has returned home.
AP-ES-01-20-08 1645EST



In wake of Afghanistan and Iraq, a new generation of homeless veterans emerges

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

- Erin McClam, AP National Writer


LEEDS, Mass. - Peter Mohan traces the path from the Iraqi battlefield to this lifeless conference room, where he sits in a kilt and a Camp Kill Yourself T-shirt and calmly describes how he became a sad cliche: a homeless veteran.

There was a happy homecoming, but then an accident - car crash, broken collarbone. And then a move east, close to his wife's new job but away from his best friends.

And then self-destruction: He would gun his motorcycle to 100 mph and try to stand on the seat. He would wait for his wife to leave the morning, draw the blinds and open up whatever bottle of booze was closest.

He would pull out his gun, a .45-caliber, semiautomatic pistol. He would lovingly clean it, or just look at it and put it away. Sometimes place it in his mouth.

"I don't know what to do anymore," his wife, Anna, told him one day. "You can't be here anymore."

Peter Mohan never did find a steady job after he left Iraq. He lost his wife - a judge granted their divorce this fall - and he lost his friends and he lost his home, and now he is here, in a shelter.

He is 28 years old. "People come back from war different," he offers by way of a summary.
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