Yearning to Be Whole Again

"It was probably one of the best things I've seen happen in a long time," said Mullen. "I don't think anyone [in the unit] had the volume of issues she had."

Nishimura's children bounded off a plane the morning after Christmas.

"I hugged Mommy first!" she recalled her daughter exclaiming.

Nishimura, in tears, felt the worst was behind them.

Shaken and Nervous

On a bright day in January, Nishimura walked her children to church, glad to be back to her old life, to be thinking about Sunday school and loose teeth and untied shoes and homework.

But the experience of war did not easily fade. She had been based in Tikrit, amid mortars that shook the earth, near roads where bombs were often hidden.

Now she found herself seized by sudden tears, insomnia and nightmares.

In one dream, she saw herself doing a military crawl, with her middle child on her back, as bombs exploded around them.

In another, she hunted everywhere for her children, but they were gone. "Either I'm separated and I can't find them," she said, "or I am with them and we are in danger. "

She eventually saw a counselor, who told her she had post-traumatic stress disorder and gave her medication .

The stress of war came on top of the stress of life.

Her closest friends lived far away. There were new schools, new neighbors. Her job paid well and she still got child support, but it was hard to make ends meet. Over time, her family settled in: her sons joining baseball teams, her daughter signing up for gymnastics. The family bought one pet bird and rescued another. "I feel like it's finally coming together," she said one spring morning.

Then her oldest son cried at the sight of her packing a suitcase for a short business trip. And after a veterans celebration at school, he refused to open his books.

Finally, she said he told her: "I don't want you to go again."

Experts say that emotional fallout for children can come and go after war. "Kids, at some level, must feel a sense of abandonment," said Mintz, the Houston professor.

Recently, Nishimura switched military jobs, becoming a chaplain's assistant. She wants to make the military a career, although she could be redeployed. "I tell [the children] that if God needs Mommy to go . . . then Mommy's going to have to go again and they're going to have to let me."

Last week, Nishimura, in uniform, gave a presentation about Iraq to her sons' Cub Scout pack. The boys were about to make care packages for U.S. troops, and she wanted to let them know about life as a soldier.

"I carried my M-16 wherever I went," she told them.

T.J. listened wide-eyed.

"I had to go one whole year without seeing my kids," she let them know. "How would you feel if you went one whole year without seeing your Mommy and Daddy?"

"Lonely," volunteered one scout.

"I would go crazy," another said emphatically.

T.J. spoke up without reluctance.

"I cried a lot," he told them.

His mother was surprised by his admission, then glad.

When the boys went on to making cards for the troops, T.J. said he was reminded of all the letters he had sent her in Iraq. His own message to the war zone was simple. It read, "Come back safely!"