Young Veteran fights against homelessness and PTSD

A young Vets fight against homelessness
WTNH - New Haven,CT,USA


Young Vet fights against
homelessness
Last Edited: Tuesday, 25 Nov 2008, 12:06 AM EST
Created On: Monday, 24 Nov 2008, 11:10 PM EST

Alan Cohn
Bridgeport (WTNH) - One young solider says his life was going well until he signed up to serve his country. After surviving the danger of war, he came back to the states and found his real battle is surviving a new reality of homelessness.

It's estimated about 300,000 service members who served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 suffer from Post Traumatic Stress. And, a growing number of them are winding up on the street. One of them is named Joe Johnson.

It took a little more than a year. Johnson went from returning hero, greeted by Governor Jodi Rell when his National Guard Unit returned home, to down on his luck and out on the street.

"It's difficult coming back from that situation and never thinking you're going to be homeless at some point and there it happens," he said.

Johnson was a member of the Branford-based Delta Company, of the 102nd Infantry, spending a year in Afghanistan just steps from Pakistani border.

"A 107 rocket flew over my head 20 feet up in the air and exploded about 50 feet behind me," Johnson said. "That was a scary moment; the scariest moment of my life."

It was a year he had one foot on the battlefield and one foot at home.

"The phone calls were very difficult," Johnson said. "My three-year-old daughter over there, 'Daddy when are you coming home from Afghanistan? I want you home daddy.'"

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