In her thoughtful and literary op-ed for the New York Times, "Back from War, but Not Really Home," Caroline Alexander quotes an epic poem thousands of years old that perfectly captures how it feels, even today, for the man or woman, home from war:

WASHED onto the shores of his island home, after 10 years’ absence in a foreign war and 10 years of hard travel in foreign lands, Odysseus, literature’s most famous veteran, stares around him: “But now brilliant Odysseus awoke from sleep in his own fatherland, and he did not know it,/having been long away.” Additionally, the goddess Athena has cast an obscuring mist over all the familiar landmarks, making “everything look otherwise/than it was.” “Ah me,” groans Odysseus, “what are the people whose land I have come to this time?”

But if epic poetry is not your thing, then perhaps the words of the unsinkable Max Cleland, who lost half his body to a grenade in Vietnam, can sum it up better, in his op-ed, "The Forever War of the Mind":

“EVERY day I was in Vietnam, I thought about home. And, every day I’ve been home, I’ve thought about Vietnam.” So said one of the millions of soldiers who fought there as I did. Change the name of the battlefield and it could have been said by one of the American servicemen coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan today. Wars are not over when the shooting stops. They live on in the lives of those who fight them. That is the curse of the soldier. He never forgets.

It is the sad lot of the war veteran, male or female, soldier, Marine, airman or sailor, no matter what the war, that people back home (other than friends and family) seldom give them a thought unless something horrific happens like the Fort Hood shooting of the other day.  Or a patriotic holiday.  Or maybe, a movie like Rambo.

Usually, though, returning vets are slotting into the "crazy" section of people's minds when something like this happens and the media lights up like a Christmas tree with all the stories about post traumatic stress syndrome.  And then the movies and TV shows get made of returning vets flipping out and taking hostages or shooting up a bank or turning serial killer.

This used to particularly bother my husband during the Rambo craze.  It seemed to him that in just about every action-adventure movie we went to see, the crazy criminal was a Vietnam vet gone nuts.  Now we're starting to see it updated, with Iraq or Afghanistan vets portrayed as the crazy war vet.

Now, do not misunderstand.  I do not for one moment make light of the serious problems faced by our men and women who have served in these endless wars, and statistics are bearing out that it as the multiple deployments that are increasing the rates of PTSD exponentially.  For each deployment, the chances go up.

So, the stats that say that 35% of troops who have served in these wars will at one time or another be diagnosed with PTSD are very true, and that is only those who have been diagnosed; there are many more who either have not received a formal diagnosis or who have not sought out serious help for their symptoms.

And it is true that signs of stress on our armed forces are straining the military beyond belief: rising suicide rates, family violence, divorce--even things that have only recently been measured, such as post-deployment motorcycle accidents that have resulted in fatalities, and things like barroom fights.  These are all serious signs of severe stress resulting from these constant and ongoing deployments.

Because what most civilians do not understand is that, even when they are not deployed, they are TRAINING for the next deployment, which means that they are still away from their families for long periods of time and they are still in simulated war games which can exacerbate combat stress, as well as family stress when they return from training exercises.

I am very aware of all of this.  So don't get me wrong.

But what I am trying to say is that so many of these men and women--thousands upon thousands of them--are managing.  Quite well, in fact.

They complete their tours of duty; they get out of the service; they return to school and/or find jobs; they marry, start families.  They join their communities.  They thrive.

The war is always with them, okay?  It just is.  That is their reality, and it is always going to be their reality.

Sometimes they have sleepless nights.  Nightmares.  Headaches.  Irritability.  Short tempers.  They struggle with that sometimes.  Maybe they apologize to their spouses a bit more often than you or me.

If they are fortunate, they'll have a spouse who understands and will be patient with them while they work through it.  If not, well, sometimes the marriage itself doesn't work out, but then, often, the next one will.

Maybe they spend a bit more time off to themselves than we do.  Maybe, in a group of people, they are kind of quiet.  Maybe they don't often talk about what is on their minds, and maybe there is a good reason for that.

Writes Alexander:

But it is “The Odyssey” that most directly probes the theme of the war veteran’s return. Threaded through this fairytale saga, amid its historic touchstones, are remarkable scenes addressing aspects of the war veteran’s experience that are disconcertingly familiar to our own age. Odysseus returns home to a place he does not recognize, and then finds his homestead overrun with young men who have no experience of war. Throughout his long voyage back, he has reacted to each stranger with elaborate caginess, concocting stories about who he is and what he has seen and done — the real war he keeps to himself.

...

Similarly, while Odysseus is lost at sea, his son, Telemachus, embarks on a voyage of discovery, also seeking out his father’s former comrades, but those who lived to return. First of these is old Nestor, a veteran of many campaigns, now at home in sandy Pylos. No mortal man could “tell the whole of it,” says Nestor of the years at Troy, where “all who were our best were killed.” In Sparta, Menelaus, whose wife, Helen, was the cause of the war, is haunted by the losses: “I wish I lived in my house with only a third part of all/these goods, and that the men were alive who died in those days/in wide Troy land.”

Men and women who have fought in a bloody war do not usually go around brooding on those things day and night but little things can remind them or set them off, as can anniversary dates, and they usually try to keep their moods to themselves to avoid upsetting those close to them.

My son, for example, will go for a long run rather than take it out on his girlfriend.

Sometimes it is just the heedlessness of those around them that is distressing. 

I'll never forget when I visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.  I began to sob as soon as I saw the names at the bottom level, and the further I walked toward the center of the monument the harder I wept until I stood, utterly and completely surrounded--not by names--but by what I saw as the faces of boys I'd known, boys I'd kissed good-night on my doorstep and sent Care packages to and mailed letters to, and I couldn't stop crying...while all around me, insensitive tourists too young to have known that war laughed, jostled, and posed for snapshots in front of the Wall.

These are the things that upset veterans.

Writes Max Cleland:

War is haunting. Death. Pain. Blood. Dismemberment. A buddy dying in your arms. Imagine trying to get over the memory of a bomb splitting a Humvee apart beneath your feet and taking your leg with it. The first time I saw the stilled bodies of American soldiers dead on the battlefield is as stark and brutal a memory as the one of the grenade that ripped off my right arm and both legs.

No, the soldier never forgets. But neither should the rest of us.

Veterans returning today represent the first real influx of combat-wounded soldiers in a generation. They are returning to a nation unprepared for what war does to the soul. Those new veterans will need all of our help. After America’s wars, the used-up fighters are too often left to fend for themselves.

One thing Caroline Alexander points out is that, even in the ancient times, nations seem more comfortable honoring the war DEAD than they do the war SURVIVOR: 

In “The Iliad,” Achilles must choose between kleos or nostos — glory or a safe return home. By dying at Troy, Achilles was assured of undying fame as the greatest of all heroes. His choice reflects an uneasy awareness that it is far easier to honor the dead soldier than the soldier who returns.

You would think, as Alexander points out, that one way to honor the modern war veterans would be heroic war movies, which have been made since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began.

And yet box office receipts tell a different story.  No one seems to want to pay money to watch them. 

What does THAT tell returning war vets?  We still read about Troy but YOUR stories don't matter?

There has been a strange disconnect from the beginning between these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the American public back home.  President Bush, who started both wars, asked nothing in return from the American people--no war-tax to help pay for them, no sacrifice of any kind.  He deliberately hid the war-dead from them, and when the public began to turn against the war, the Pentagon instituted a strict policy preventing war photographers from depicting photographs of wounded soldiers or Marines without the express written consent of those troops who, of course, were in no position to provide it, which sanitized the war even further.

And of course, there was no draft, so the same 1% of the population just kept fighting the same wars over and over again while everybody else went shopping.

At some point the war began to seem more like a video game or a movie or even a patriotic country-music song to be forwarded in e-mails to friends and family; somehow it just didn't seem real.

As Cleland points out in his piece, when it comes to funding wars, Congress has no problem coming up with billions and billions for all the Humvees and Predator drones and tanks and guns they need.

But when the soldiers and Marines who have been fighting those wars come home broken and wounded, suddenly, the dollars dry up.

We'd been at war for FIVE YEARS before the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed came to light.  Five years.

Cleland writes:

Weeks before the troubles at Walter Reed became public in 2007, my counselor put it to me simply. “We are drowning in war,” she said. The problems at Walter Reed had nothing to do with the dedicated doctors and nurses there. The problems had to do with the White House and Congress and the Department of Defense. The problems had to do with money.

When we are at war, America spends billions on missiles, tanks, attack helicopters and such. But the wounded warriors who will never fight again tend to be put on the back burner.

This is inexcusable, and it comes with frightening moral costs.

He goes on to detail the obvious, and then he points out something not so obvious:

We have a family Army today, unlike the Army seen in any generation before. We have fought these wars with the Reserves and the National Guard. Fathers, mothers, soccer coaches and teachers are the soldiers coming home. Whether they like it or not, they will bring their war experiences home to their families and communities.

In his poem “The Dead Young Soldiers,” Archibald MacLeish, whose younger brother died in World War I, has the soldiers in the poem tell us:“We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.” Until we help our returning soldiers get their lives back when they come home, the promise of restoring that meaning will go unfulfilled. 

So...you're sitting here reading this (still, I hope), and you're thinking, well, geez, what can I do?  I mean, I care and all, but I dunno...

Maybe you meet a vet or a soldier at an airport and you shake his or her hand and say, "Thank you for your service."

That's nice.  They appreciate that.

But here are some other ideas.

Once, when my son was on his last "free" night before deploying to Iraq with the Marines, he went out for a meal of sushi at his favorite place in San Diego.  Now, admittedly, that's obviously a military town, Camp Pendleton is right there, and although he was in civilian clothes he had that military bearing that is unmistakeable, and the haircut...

He got up to pay his bill, and the guy said, "Sir, your bill has been taken care of, by the couple at the end of the bar."

Dustin was so surprised, and he went to thank them, and they said simply, "Son, thank you for your service."

Now, I doubt many of you will have similar opportunities, but maybe you know a couple who might be struggling, and one of them recently served.  Do you think they could use a night on the town but are having trouble affording a babysitter?  How about you volunteer a night for free?

Or, say you get a coupon for a free meal at Olive Garden or whatever, you give it to a vet and say, Hey, I hate Olive Garden?  (Maybe you don't really, but you get my drift.)

If you're in a position to offer them a job, by all means do so--you won't regret it.  Or if you know how, help them beef up their resume and transfer their military skills to the civilian world.

Be creative.  There are a million ways you can quietly show your support for a man or a woman who are doing their best to adjust to civilian life after they have served.  You can let them know that you appreciate them just by being their friend.

That's it, really.

Just be their friend.  It doesn't matter whether you supported the war or you opposed the war.  It doesn't matter who you voted for.  This is a man or woman who stepped up, did their duty, and now, they're doing their best to adjust and fit in to a place where, let's face it, they are always going to feel different.

They just are.

Just by welcoming them, letting them know you appreciate their service and that you're there to help them move on, that can make all the difference in the world as to how well they are able to make that difficult adjustment.

In this way, you can help them give meaning to their service.  Because what you may not realize is that, each day that they are alive, they are living for their buddies who did not make it, and they want to make that life worth something, they want to make that life the best they can possibly make it.

They want to live a life their buddy would have been proud to live, if they'd only had the chance.

You can help them with that, quietly, without much fuss.

It's not Odysseus, but hey, it's a start.