For suffering veterans, help is the highest honor

For suffering veterans, help is the highest honor
By Kevin Cullen
November 6, 2011

Two veterans, two stories.

The recruiter caught Bryson Alexander at just the right time. He was a senior in high school and wanted to see something other than his hometown of Fort Myers. He had watched the Twin Towers fall months earlier. He wanted to be a Marine.

A year later, he was driving a Humvee toward Baghdad. Two years later, he was back in Iraq for a second tour. He was 21 years old, in charge of 12 Marines, a dismount squad that left their armored vehicles for the madness that was Fallujah.

“The second tour was a lot harder for me,’’ he says, sitting in a restaurant in Porter Square.

IEDs exploded everywhere. His platoon commander was shot and killed. His dreams were chaotic.

He got out and went back to Florida and found he couldn’t relax. He bought a truck, bought a condo, began working at his family’s financial business. But he couldn’t turn it off.

He walked down the street, looking at empty cars, thinking they were going to blow up. He started drinking, taking painkillers, because then there were no nightmares, just darkness.
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