Pvt. Daniel Nichols Iraq vet, PTSD and Homeless

The invisible wounds of the Iraq War

Mar 29, 2008 7:53 AM (11 hrs ago)
By SUSAN HARRISON WOLFFIS, AP
MUSKEGON, Mich. (Map, News) - As dawn broke over Baghdad in the early hours of March 20, 2003, U.S. Army Pvt. Daniel Nichols was on the outskirts of the city, driving a Humvee in a 3rd Infantry division convoy, on his way to war.

It was 5:34 a.m. Baghdad time. Overhead the skies exploded with bombs, mortar shells and rockets raining down on the enemy as the enemy returned fire.

"It was just like something out of a movie," Nichols says.

Back home in the United States, where it was still 9:34 p.m. EST March 19, President Bush announced to the American people that U.S. forces had just invaded Iraq.


"The first couple of hours, everything was being blown up. We could hardly catch our breath. Everything was ringing," Nichols remembers.

Nichols, then a 21-year-old kid from Muskegon, had joined the Army out of a sense of patriotism after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. "I woke up that day and thought: What can I do to help? What if Muskegon got attacked?" he says.

The first night of combat, after dodging incoming mortar shells and being on high alert for deadly land mines on the roads he traveled, Nichols says, "I dug my foxhole really, really deep.

"I told the guys I was with: `This is not a game. This is real,'" he says.

Three weeks into combat, Nichols' commanding officer and four other soldiers were killed after being ambushed by insurgents. Nichols was "blown" off the roof of a two-story building while on sniper watch in Baghdad. For seven months, Nichols fought in Iraq, driving a Humvee through dangerous territory, never sure when or where he'd be under attack.

"Everybody I knew over there was blown up or shot," he says.

Although Nichols, 26, was not physically wounded, the husband and father of two is a casualty of the Iraq war.

At night, he is haunted by nightmares and images of war. During the day, he has panic attacks and can't concentrate.

"Do I regret having gone?" he asks, just days before the fifth anniversary of the war. "No, not really. I regret my commander being blown up. I regret what's happened to me."

Nichols has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and is being treated by doctors at the Veterans Affairs clinic in Muskegon. Doctors also suspect he suffers from a mild to moderate case of Traumatic Brain Injury - caused from an explosion while he was driving and the effects of being under constant mortar attack. Nichols planned to undergo special testing in Ann Arbor.

But in many ways, those are only superficial wounds.

Nichols tells a story of "thousands" of vets returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan, says David Eling, director of the Muskegon County Department of Veteran Affairs. Nichols is unemployed. Since coming home from war, he's held a series of temporary jobs but none that has lasted past short-term assignments.

His family is homeless.

For the past three months, Nichols and his family have lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the Veterans Service Center's transitional housing. On April 5, Nichols and his wife, Ardis, 25, and their two children, Mason, 3, and Jasmine, 1, will have to leave the premises. Their allotted time is up - and there is a waiting list of veterans and their families who need the space, too.

"I don't know where we're going," Nichols says. Eling calls Nichols' social and medical ailments "invisible wounds" of the Iraq War. "I don't know how we get across to the public about the sacrifices these guys have made," Eling says.
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