Soldiers Once: My Brother and the Lost Dreams of America’s Veterans
My brother, Jim, a Vietnam veteran whose life unraveled in the decades following the war, was buried on the eve of 9/11. He was a soldier once, proud and courageous, but in the end he lived in poverty and isolation, with little more than a drawer full of medals to show for twenty years of service. Thinking of my brother as I watched new wars being engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, I wondered how we could keep the promise to support the troops, not just in the urgency of the battle, but in the long aftermath when they return home. Told in Soldiers Once, my brother’s story is the centerpiece of a larger story about our nation’s moral duty to heal our wounded warriors.