Allen doesn't want to talk about what happened.
He spends the nights when he cannot sleep looking at the pictures and video footage he took in Iraq. There's the one of a buddy waving as he passed Petty's truck on an Iraqi highway. There are images of burning limbs, bleeding bodies, dead civilians, dead soldiers, rubble. Allen stares at each photo.
He recalled a hand-printed sign that someone had put up near the lounge where the civilian contractors hung out in Kuwait. He wrote it down because it spoke to him. He fetched it from a scrapbook.
Allen Petty, who spent four months in Iraq as a driver for KBR, with his daughter Katy, 10 months, back home in Burnet, Tex., in October. Petty hoped to earn enough for a house but said the pay was less than he had expected.
(Photos Michael Stravato For The Washington Post)
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It read: "I got no medals, patches or awards. You tell your story so loved ones can hear. I've been cautioned to keep quiet my job to fear. No one knows us; we're just hurting, bleeding and dying. We're just contractors."
'So Disappointed'
Days after he returned from Iraq, Allen said, he felt a tingling in his chest. He struggled to breathe. Sylvia took him to the hospital, where he was kept for a week while doctors ran a battery of tests. They said he had a heart abnormality that was probably there before he went to Iraq but had gone undetected.
Now, even if he wanted to go back, he could not, Allen said, sounding somewhat relieved.
Sylvia said she is angry with KBR.
"This was KBR," she said. "This was the big time. I'm just so disappointed no one took responsibility for the little guy."
"No," Allen interrupted. "It's not really KBR. The military calls the shots. KBR is the military's customer."
One of the girls banged a chair, and Allen jumped. He pulled the baby to his chest.
"I forget what she looks like, and then I see her, and she's beautiful," he said. "She has these curls. It amazes me."
He looked off.
"My mind wanders," he said. "I'm here, but I'm not."
