"We never rid ourselves of the smell of death"

Like men, women veterans bring problems home from war

Jane Ann Morrison

Posted: May 30, 2011

Women fought to be treated as the equals of men in the U.S. military, and now some of them find they're equal to men in another way: post-traumatic stress disorder.

Marine Jessica Goodell had one of the most gruesome jobs in Iraq. She picked up body parts of American soldiers to return them home for burial. Sometimes those remains were vaporized mush, she recalled.

"We never rid ourselves of the smell of death," she said.

In 2005, she came home to fight other battles, battles with PTSD, depression and substance abuse. She didn't tell her friends she was a veteran.

When she finally reached out for help, she wrote a journal, that turned into a book, "Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq."

But there are differences between how men and women cope when coming home from deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not much is known about those differences.
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Like men, women veterans bring problems home from war