It's funny how happy news can make you cry.

My nephew, Capt. Troy Mills, F Co. commander, 52nd Inf., a Stryker Brigade, who served 15 months in the Diyala Province, has returned home safe and sound and in one piece, and I thank God for it, yet again.

This marks the first time that we have not had a Mills family member deployed in a combat operation in Iraq since the war began, although Troy thinks he may have to return eventually for another year.

For each deployment of each young man, I sent a funny card stuffed with jokes and cartoons every single week, and Care packages as often as I could, crammed mostly with food and oddments like insect repellant or glove liners, depending upon the season.

Christmas boxes, too.  Many of them.

Our family deployments have marked the arc of the war. 

When my nephew Mike was first deployed with the Marines as an enlisted "grunt", with the Third Battalion Seventh Marine at the beginning of the war, he said that when they were out on patrol, children would run out from the schools and wave at them.

When he returned the next year, the children did not come out to greet them.

By the third deployment, he said the kids would come out of the schools and throw rocks at the 3/7 Marines as they passed.

Each successive deployment was more bloody and horrific than the one before.  One incident was particularly tough for Mike, when on a foot patrol, a buddy of his at the rear was blown up by a roadside bomb that Mike had just passed safely.

"I didn't see it," he agonized, blaming himself for something that was, most surely, not his fault.

The buddy survived, but was badly hurt and spent many months recovering.  He never blamed Mike.

My son's two deployments were also almost too grim to describe, beginning with the Battle of Fallujah in November of 2004, which was the worst battle the Marines had seen since Khe Sanh.  More of the highest combat honors available in the military were rewarded to Dustin's unit, the Third Battalion, Fifth Marine, than has been awarded to the entire United States military.  The 3/5 was also there to provide security in the Anbar province during the first elections in January 2005.

When they entered Fallujah, one of the things my son's platoon came upon was torture chambers used by insurgents on kidnap victims--horror chambers bathed in blood.  They were able to rescue two innocent, barely alive Egyptians chained to the wall before they documented the place and then blew it to smithereens.

They also discovered houses located in residential areas packed to the ceiling with explosives, and weapons and explosive caches stockpiled in mosques and schools.

They were back the next year, which was one of the more deadly and demoralizing deployments the unit ever saw, with IEDs blowing up vehicles every single time they went out on patrol, including one driven by my son.  He was medivacced out, then sent back to battle.

Dustin's unit also participated in helicopter missions--late-night forays many miles out in the desert, where a platoon would be dropped off in the dead of night, hump it to some village in the middle of nowhere, and conduct raids to round up terrorists and insurgents responsible for so much death and destruction, not just to American military, but to their own people.

Also during that deployment, another 3/5 platoon discovered and freed Jill Carroll, an American Christian Science Monitor reporter who was being held hostage.

During both deployments, the Marines slept in abandoned bulidings mostly, or out in the streets or the desert, going weeks without showers or hot meals or anything more than two-minute Sat-phone calls home.  (Mike's unit, the 3/7, enjoyed similar happy comforts.)

My nephew Mike completed his service about a year ago, and my son did the same a few months ago.  Both of them endured unimaginable harrassment because they refused to re-enlist.  During Mike's last deployment, after he'd been through so much and fought so bravely and so well, in his last few weeks in Iraq, he was relegated to an army base to pick up trash, simply because he refused to re-enlist.  Dustin endured similar humiliations, but left the service at the rank of sergeant.

Neither one EVER wants to see that country again.

But meanwhile, Dustin's unit, the 3/5, recently deployed for a FOURTH time to Iraq, back to the Anbar. 

This deployment, however, was different.  Because the insurgents who used to kill them decided to take money instead, NOT to kill them, there were very few violent incidents. 

The Marines helped to build schools and so on.  But I can tell you that, for the young officers who'd sent home so many of their men in body bags on previous deployments--they had to swallow a lot of bile in order to make nice to the people who'd been responsible.

But for the enlisted, as Dustin's buddies told him, it was "boring."

Recently, the 3/5 returned to Pendleton without a single lost Marine, thank God.

But next time, they deploy to Afghanistan.

God bless those boys.

Our sons' dangerous deployments to war has profoundly changed both my sister-in-law Kay, and myself.  She has dedicated herself to supporting the troops in every way possible.  For one thing, she's active in the Dallas U.S.O., which shows up at DFW airport every Sunday afternoon, seeing off army troops who are deploying.  They provide Care packages with phone cards and tell the boys, "Call your mama as soon as you arrive safely.")  And they're there when the troops return home, cheering and waving flags.

She also attends the funeral of every soldier or Marine buried in the Dallas area.  She's sent out literally thousands of Care packages, and writes many condolence letters to bereaved mothers and wives, often visiting them if she can.

Her politics are very conservative, and we have clashed from time to time, but we are sisters of the soul, bound together by an agony no one else can possibly understand who has not endured it, and that link will be with us forever.

Like my sister-in-law, I was changed too, but unlike her--though I supported the troops in every way I knew how--I could not support the war they were being forced to fight.  I have dedicated my life and talents to ending this war and bringing our men and women out of harm's way.

Along the way, I set aside a career.  I earn no money doing this.  But none of that matters, not if my small voice can join the gathering chorus of shouts to end this travesty of a war.

My son and nephews know where I stand.  Dustin has always been supportive--he bought me this computer with part of the combat pay he brought home from his first deployment to Fallujah, and as the war has dragged on, he's become my biggest cheerleader.

With my nephews, I've avoided any talk of politics, except for teasing, such as, "I'm praying for you honey.  We'll see if God listens to a Democrat."  And during the primaries, I put in a plug or two for Obama.  Other than that, I just support them and the fine job they are doing and have done under impossible circumstances.

My nephew Troy's situation was considerably different from his cousins', but no less dangerous in its way.  For one thing, he's army, not Marines, and for another, he is a captain, a company commander as part of a Stryker Brigade.  Thanks to Bush's so-called "surge," his unit had to deploy a month early, before they'd even had their desert training, and two weeks after they arrived, their deployment was extended to 15 months.

Even though he was an officer, there was to be no luxury for Troy either, since Petraeus's plan to take troops off of big bases and disperse them throughout the population.  So, like the Marines, they holed up in abandoned buildings.

Once again, I shipped off cards and Care packages stuffed with food.  And once again, I checked in with another mother, to see how she was doing, offer encouragement and prayer.  We combat moms have each others' backs.

His mom, Charlotte, though, is a military wife.  She's pretty tough.  We all are, now.

Even as the Anbar was calming down for the Marines, though, the Diyala, where Troy was, was heating up--mainly because it is mixed Sunni-Shiite, with a great deal of cross-violence as well as attacks on American troops.

And Troy, like all the Mills men before him, is a hands-on soldier.  Not for him a desk, anyway.  He went out with his guys every day, seeking out weapons caches and so on.  But he also had responsibilities, not just to his men, but to try and settle disagreements between tribes and warlords and neighborhoods, and to offer help and what services he could.  He had to be a soldier AND a diplomat.

He said, when he came home, that he felt bad for the Iraqis, because they didn't have the option of "going home" to creature comforts, but would have to endure grinding poverty for years to come.

But as with the Marines, there were ambushes and IEDs, and those Strykers aren't invincible.

I haven't yet had a chance to talk to Troy--he's up in Washington state--so I don't know if he lost any men.  I do know that he re-enlisted.  His father, after all, retired at the rank of Brigadier General in the army Special Forces, and his twin brother, Travis, is active-duty with the Special Forces.  (He's been deployed in the past to Afghanistan, and to hot spots all over the world.  Like Troy, Travis re-enlisted, and recently, assumed a company command of his own.)

I am so proud of all our young Mills men, who have each acquited themselves with courage, honor, grace, and dignity.

Although you hear of a few bad apples who make the news with "war crimes," you must never forget that for every bad soldier or Marine, there are literally thousands who, like my son and nephews, didn't just do their jobs with honor, but also did everything they could to help the Iraqi civilians who crossed their paths.

Most people don't realize that, when a suicide bomb goes off in Iraq, as it does dozens of times a day, the injured people receive care, many times, by American military doctors and hospitals, free.  Children are often flown to the States, surgery is performed, and they are flown home. 

There are many acts of kindness that take place every day between American troops and the Iraqi people.  Polls have shown mixed emotions among the populace.  Most want us to leave, but also, most are afraid.  They know that the Americans do protect them, as best they can.  I want this war to end more than anything, but even I know that.

And I have yet to speak to an American soldier or Marine who has not said that he felt badly for the Iraqi people.  For instance, when searching a home, if the women and children are frightened and crying, they feel bad about that.  They don't want to hurt people if they don't have to.  And if they can help, they're glad to do it.

Don't believe everything you see in the movies about the American warrior.  They are fierce fighters when they have to be, no doubt about it, but they are also our mother's sons, and nine-tenths of them never lose their kind souls.

Our family has been blessed beyond measure that each one of our young men has returned from war safe, in one piece, and of relatively sound mind.

I won't kid you.  It hasn't been easy for my son and my nephew Mike.  They both have nightmares, headaches, bouts of depression and anxiety and other problems related to the horrors they have witnessed and the physical demands on their bodies, but they have not shown any serious emotional difficulties. 

This has to do in large part, I think, because my husband and his brother, the boys' Uncle Travis (not to be confused with the younger, who was named for him), both saw some serious combat in Vietnam.  My husband, Kent, brought home a Bronze Star for valor, and Travis, who was also special forces, was shot up and left for dead by Viet Cong in his second deployment.

But these men have gone on to live productive, active, and successful lives.  Around the Mills dinner table at big family gatherings, war stories fly, and they are always presented as funny no matter how harrowing.

One typical exchange:  My daughter, Jessica, asking her Uncle Travis, "Why do you have two Purple Hearts?"  And Travis, grinning, wisecracking, "Because I kept gettin' up and he kept shootin'!"

So these boys have grown up seeing that, no matter how bad it might have been in war, you can survive and thrive and get past it.

As my husband explained to Dustin, "You don't get rid of your demons.  You just learn to cage them up."

Returning from their own war, these young men have also had an invaluable group of family mentors, should they need to talk to anyone, and I thank God for that, too.

The hardest part, I think, for Dustin and Mike has been reassimilating into a society in which the war is, for the most part, forgotten.

Here is one typical exchange Dustin had with one well-meaning redneck:

Redneck:  "A helicopter ride would be soooo cool!"

Dustin:  "Aw, it's not so great."

Redneck:  "You've ridden on one?"

"Yeah."

"When?  On a tour or something?"

"No.  I was in the military."

"Which branch?"

"Marines."

"Oh.  Did you go to war?"

"I was in Fallujah."

"Is that in Eye-Rack?"

"Yes."

"Didja kill anybody?"

(No comment.)

"Aw man, those ragheads oughta be glad I didn't go over there by God!  I'd'a killed 'em ALL, man!"

(Silence.)


Job interviews can go either way.  Even if Dustin tries to downplay his military service, he has to put it on a resume to explain four years out of the workforce.  He has discovered that even the most well-meaning Human Resources directors are alarmingly ignorant about the war.  Many do not know that Fallujah is in Iraq, much like the redneck.  Many are dismissive, one or two even hostile.

One said, "I don't give a damn what you did in the war.  It's not going to make a damn bit of difference here."

The problem with that is that Dustin had not mentioned the war; just that he'd been in the service.  He never did figure out the man's problem, nor did he take the job.

Right now, he's watching the new G.I. Bill pingpong its way through Congress.  If it passes, he may go back to school.  (He has a degree in Psychology from Texas A&M.) 

Mike has tried going back to school a couple of times; it hasn't worked out.  Most likely, I expect, it has to do with the fact that, in college, he is surrounded by children, when at 23, he is a hundred years old.  They're both looking for a fit in life, and their older vet family members tell them not to worry, that it takes about a year or so to adjust to being out of the military and away from war.

The big difference between Dustin and Mike and their older vet family members, though, is that this is the first time in history that these boys have to worry about being yanked out of civilian life and suddenly sent BACK to war.  And that bears heavily on their minds.

But for now, at the Mills house, we celebrate another joyous reunion, and we thank God, with all our hearts.

And we cry happy tears.