Women Face Emotional Wounds of War

Army veteran Alicia Flores, 23, who served in Iraq, poses near her South Side Chicago home Nov. 1, 2006. Flores had nightmares and sleepless nights months after returning from Iraq. She now has signed up with Army Reserve and is considering a military career. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green) (M. Spencer Green - AP)

But the impact on her psyche was greater. When Urban, now 31, returned from active duty to suburban Chicago last year, she didn't want to socialize with friends, regarding it as a waste of time and money.

"I'd think, 'There are troops in Iraq and they're giving up so much and people are partying and not even thinking about that,' " she says. "I still feel like that sometimes. ... They worry about what Paris Hilton is wearing. But every day, people are dying, young troops."

Then there were those who annoyed her by asking if she'd killed anyone. "Why would you want to know that? It's such a personal question," she says. "I believe in God and whatever I did in Iraq, I will answer for later."

She was frustrated, too, that no one was rushing to hire her.

"People would say, 'Oh, you're a veteran, you've done two tours, you're golden. Everybody will want you.' " It didn't happen. "That," she says, "added to my depression."

The death of a beloved cousin sent her into a tailspin; one day she found it difficult to breathe, and she checked herself into a hospital for exhaustion and stress.

More than a year later, Urban says she's much better. She's in college, studying for a master's degree in accounting, working as a detention officer at a police department and thinking about an FBI career.

"When you're busy," she says, "you don't have a lot of time to sit around and think about things."

Urban's bumpy road back isn't unusual.

Some women veterans _ including those without psychological problems _ say it takes time to decompress and switch gears from hard-nosed soldier to nurturing mother.

Darcie Greuel, a VA nurse in Milwaukee, spent nearly a year at the 452nd Combat Support Hospital in Afghanistan, then rejoined her husband and their three children.

"I was trying to get back into being a wife and a mother," she says. "But it was 'Wow, they survived without me.' ... I really didn't know where my place was. I had to be really careful. I didn't want my husband to think I was not appreciative of what he did. I didn't want to come back and say, 'It's all going to be my way.' "