COURTESY OF NATASHA YOUNG
Young, wearing a bomb suit, with Marine Corps General James Mattis and others in Iraq, 2007.
having mustered the stamina, the
professional skill and the courage to complete a second or third
combat tour, in a war that seems
to have no point and no end,
where the enemy is frustratingly
elusive but the blood and death
are real and immediate?
How to explain why a combat
veteran feels anxious in crowds,
startles at the pop of a toy balloon, wrenches awake with night
terrors?
How to express the rage and
sorrow of survivor’s guilt — that
a medical corpsman couldn’t
save a wounded buddy, that a
squad leader didn’t bring all his
guys home safe?
How to share the agony of a Marine platoon leader who is severely
injured and medevaced after an
IED blast kills two of his men and
abruptly removes him from the
men he had vowed to protect?
Outside the Marine Corps, severed from others with the same
experiences, Young unravelled.