Sometimes when a Soldier or Sailor comes home, they don’t come home as the same person. There maybe remnants there could be deep scars that no-body will understand. There is no simple fix all treatment. No special pill that it will make it go away forever. One particular soldier i consider a hero. He didn’t win medals he in all their glory. He didn’t even receive the purple heart. To many in his family we knew he didn’t need the purple heart. He tried to fight for his medals not for the fame not for the glory, but for the closure he needed to put his life back together. I remember like it was yesterday i was in school waiting impatiently because i was a lawyer in teen court at my middle school. I got the call to the office in second period my grandmother was in the office crying. It was about 10am and we were about to move in the next week.  She was with the principle and told me that my brother’s ship the U.S.S. Cole was hit. My grandma found out the night before around 5 am. He was missing presumed dead.

What had happened as my brother told me later is that he was walking from  the ATM machine with some money so he could go to the little PX on the ship. An explosion went off and he was thrown back into the ATM crushing it and injuring his back. After a moment he got in pain and went into the chow hall it was ablaze a giant hole in the bulkhead. He ran to the hole and saw a female sailor floating in the water disoriented and trying to swim. My brother dove into the water and safely assisted her. This is where he was presumed missing. A few hours later we saw an update of the attack at home and thought that one of the sailors lying in bed was my brother the sailor was crying with his face rapped in bandages.

My dad tried everything to try to find his son from Florida my step mother even got all the way up as far to the pentagon to try to find him if i remember right. I was in Arizona i couldn’t do anything.

My brother when he got back onto the ship he started working on the damaged electronic. He was in pain from his back. sitting there working he wouldn’t leave. He loved his ship it was his home for four years. Just a little over a year before this happened i actually took a tour of the ship. I saw all his pictures his possessions. I could understand now how this was his home. he had nowhere really else to go.

The Sp’s (ship police) had to remove him because he had refused medical care so he could help repair his ship.

Now he’s at home in eastern U.S. with his two daughters and a wife with a small farm. I stayed with him for a little bit in 2005 He was different, he wasn’t the funny go-lucky person i knew as a kid. He hurt, and every word he spoke gave him pain, every time he fell asleep he would have nightmares and even accidentally hurt his wife . Every-time he closed his eyes he would get a vision of picking up the remains of his family on that ship. I was his blood family but i knew he would never care for me as he did for his fallen comrades. He was a hero standing there in front of me. He was 100% disabled but he would still work his 10 dollar an hour job at the department store just to make ends meet. He is shattered for life never to be the same. He will never be the same brother i used to know. All he could do was go through life, unable to watch the news because the way it affects him.

I just wanted to write this to get his story out. I know he would never tell it to the public i know it would hurt since I’m the writer in the family I will do it for him. I will ask  you to please remember those on the U.S.S Cole not for me but for my brother. He needs it. He was going to school to be a C.S.I

http://www.cole.navy.mil/Site%20Pages/Memorial.aspx