After fighting for his country, Iraq vet fights for a job

After fighting for his country, Iraq vet fights for a job

BY ROB HOTAKAINEN
MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Eric Smith calls himself one of the lucky ones, returning home from the war in Iraq in 2008 with two arms and two legs.

U.S. Navy veteran Eric Smith considered himself lucky to return home to Baltimore, Maryland, after tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Smith has found finding full-time employment rough and his VA disability check too small to cover expenses, forcing him to move back in with parents while waiting for his luck to turn.
Doug Kapustin / MCT

But his luck has yet to produce a full-time job. In the past year, the 26-year-old Baltimore veteran has found part-time work as a bartender — which paid $4 an hour, plus tips — and as a mail sorter, which paid $8 an hour. And when he was desperate enough for income, he volunteered to be a test patient in a drug study, which earned him $1,200 for a four-night hospital stay.

It’s not exactly what Smith had in mind.

After getting bored with high school, he quit as a 15-year-old sophomore and enlisted in the Navy two years later, serving two deployments in Iraq. He became a senior hospital corpsman, leading a four-man team in a 20-bed intensive care unit, gaining experience that he thought would easily translate into a good-paying civilian job.

That never happened.



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