Soldiers need support at home, too

ED GRANEY: Soldiers need support at home, too
Joseph Serino would tell the driver to slow down, that he needed to scan the tops of buildings for snipers and the roadside for bombs. He would look at a bush moved by the breeze and wonder if the enemy lurked behind. He always wondered what danger waited around the next bend.

He was in Palo Alto, Calif., at the time, in the charming, affluent city in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, where some of the world's most famous high-tech companies surround Stanford University.


By all accounts, he was in heaven.

But even while passing all the Colonial homes along the tree-lined streets, Serino's mind drifted back to Southern Baghdad, back where his Army vehicle was ambushed in June 2007, back where it hit a bomb and his legs were blown off, back to hell.

"It took awhile to adjust (coming home)," Serino said of those days while rehabbing in the Bay Area. "I was very paranoid. It doesn't go away. Some soldiers deal with it. Some can't."

Many just give up and kill themselves.

More than you can imagine.

The words have been repeated for years now, painted on buildings and stuck to automobile bumpers and printed on T-shirts and shouted from atop parade floats.

Support Our Troops.

There should be an addendum to that motto ... Especially When They Come Home.
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