At war's end coming home is only the beginning

War's end: The battle rages on
Article by: GREGORY ROBERTS
December 24, 2011

Gregory Roberts was an infantry staff sergeant with A Company 2/136 Infantry 1st Brigade Combat Team 34th Infantry Division. He served in Iraq from March 2006 to July 2007 and in Bosnia from September 2003 to April 2004. He lives in Lakeville and is a student at Northwestern College of Chiropractic. This essay is adapted from testimony he delivered Dec. 19 to a joint legislative committee on veterans.

The only difference, now that we're home, is that it's taking place on the inside.

The thing they didn't tell you is that coming home is the most difficult part of deploying to a combat zone.

Month after month, the thing that kept your chin up was the thought of home.

When all the stories have been told and retold 10 times over, the one thing every Joe will talk about are plans of what he's going to do when he gets home.

Buy a new truck. Go back to school. Call that one girl.

Home is painstakingly polished over and over again. And when you get there, you are let down.

Coming home isn't the answer to your pain and suffering, your troubles. Coming home is only the beginning.

But they don't tell you that.

You have a week stateside before being released back to your former life -- a life that is relatively the same compared to how different you have become. But you don't realize how much you have changed.

You are no longer the same person.

Things you once enjoyed, you no longer do. Things you once found antagonizing aren't worth the effort to complain about.

And the pettiness of the average person, with their insignificant problems, pisses you right off.

It doesn't take long before you realize you are a space alien on earth. Nobody "gets" you, except your buddies with whom you served.
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