Disabled Mississippi war veteran faces battle at home
(By – Clay Chandler, The Clarion-Ledger)
Joey Bryan can’t sleep. He can’t drive a car. He can barely ride in one. Crowds are out of the question. That’s not all.
“I can’t be out in the open, because I feel vulnerable,” Bryan said. “I feel like somebody’s watching me. I can’t mow the grass. I can’t do household chores. I can’t take out the trash, because the stench retriggers the dead smell.”
The “dead smell” is a flashback to rotting corpses strewn along the battlefields of Iraq, where Bryan did two tours as a member of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division. During his first tour, in 2003, the tank in which Bryan was riding was squared up by a rocket-propelled grenade. Read more…