Another story of being redeployed with PTSD

Tough Return
Fighting for country, fighting for family
By ROBERT PLAIN, Reformer Staff



Saturday, May 3
BRATTLEBORO -- Ryan Willard was in Baghdad, just beginning his second tour of duty in Iraq, when his daughter was born at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital on Dec. 29. He didn't get the news until New Year's Eve, when he finally had an opportunity to check his e-mail.

"I didn't know for two days," he said. "I didn't know what to do. I wanted to hold her. Honestly, I cried I felt so guilty."

Not until last weekend, when Willard was back in Brattleboro for his scheduled two-week leave, did he finally get to hold Shaeleigh Ryan Patricia Willard, now 4-months-old. He said it was among the most extraordinary experience of his life.

"The first time you hold your child, it's very intense," he said. "She has the same face as me. It was very heartwarming."

However, there is more than just the 5,000 miles between Vermont and Iraq separating father from daughter. A dissolved marriage and the psychological trauma of war will still loom over their relationship after he is discharged in February 2009.

The horrors of war

Willard was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, in March of last year, after his first stint in Iraq. He suffers from severe mood swings and

has trouble controlling his temper, he said. He is prone to worry obsessively about the mundane and often has insomnia. He got into a car accident in Colorado because he thought he saw a roadside bomb and experienced a combat flashback during a severe lightning storm there.

"I just got real scared," Willard said, remembering the storm. "Sometimes you can't help remember the things that have happened."

"There is no way to come back the same," he added. "No one in Vietnam did. No one in World War II did."
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