The Fog After the War

The Marines went silent. Young dropped the Maxim magazine he was reading and started to cry. One of his best friends was gone, and so was their fantasy. Part of him knew that the stories they told each other were all just a dream, a way to get through the hell of Iraq. In truth, from the time he got there he thought the more likely outcome was that he would die.

It was sometime after Fallujah, as his war was winding down, that Young realized he was going to make it home. It was a happy revelation but also something of a surprise. He wasn't really prepared for civilian life, especially without Ziolkowski.

They were supposed to be doing this together.

Together, Yet Alone

Right after he got out of the Corps last May, he headed to Ocean City. It was senior week, and a bunch of his high school friends from Catonsville were celebrating their college graduation.

For five days, he partied, hung out on the beach and partied some more, thrilled to be free. The recent grads treated Young, who started a goatee to go along with his military crew cut, as if he were one of them. Yet for all they had in common, he couldn't help but feel different. Among them, he was a celebrity -- the Marine who had been in Iraq. They bought him drinks and toasted him. But there was no way they could understand the war -- and he wasn't about to try to explain it.

"People would try to talk to me, but I wouldn't go into detail," he said.

Even after four years in the Marines and combat in Fallujah, it seemed as if he were younger than them. They were done with college and moving on. He was just about to start school again. It felt as if he had been passed by.

"Everyone tells me all the time, 'Oh, your life experience beats ours like crazy,' " he said. "And I guess they have a point. . . . I feel like I'm starting over from high school."

When senior week was over, he carried on the way he said he would. He moved into the house he was supposed to share with Ziolkowski, went to bartending school and started inquiring about classes for the spring semester.

The Towson University course catalogue was intriguing but also daunting. What to study? Religion? History? Education? He was glad he had decided to wait until the spring to enroll. There was no way he could have gone to school in September, just a few months after getting home.

Still, he had to do something productive. He tried getting a bartending job, but even with his training, nine pubs he checked out said no. Finally, one bar owner said his brawn would make him a good bouncer.

It wasn't great, but it got him out of the house and put a little money in his pocket. Those were the only virtues of his other job: patrolling movie theaters, looking for people using video recorders.