Some returning soldiers face new battles at home

It is a season of homecomings between now and the end of the year as the Iraq War ends and many soldiers will return home, some with wounds – internal and external.

One in five soldiers suffers from some form of emotional trauma.

Alfonso Molina is one of them.

Molina enlisted in the army at 20 and was in the 82nd Airborne.  He still can't talk to civilians about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.  Everything he saw and did keeps returning in flashbacks, night sweats and night terrors.

“When you come back, everything comes at you,” he said. “Everyone wants to see you, all your loved ones want to be near you. They want to ask you questions, you don't want to answer questions. You're not the same when you come back.”

Molina said when he was overseas he had a singular purpose -- keep himself and his friends alive and defeat the enemy.

When he returned, he felt lost, he said.

Overwhelmed by what seemed like trivial details of living, he hopped jobs, drank too much, drove too fast and lost his driver's license.

It took him three years after returning, seeing one of his friends he met while serving struggle too, to figure out he wasn't crazy and seek help from Veterans Affairs.

“It finally clicked in, I'm going to hurt somebody or myself,” he said.

Molina now spends his time at the Palo Alto VA helping other returning soldiers not struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder as long as he did and encourgae them to tell their families to be patient.

Yet, he said seeing all the badly injured veterans there keeps the wounds festering and his survivor's guilt never heals.

“I don't know if it's going to go away or what,” he said. “Who teaches you to live when you return? No one.”

Former Staff Sgt. June Moss's husband was a soldier, too. They had two children.

“We both went to war together and when we returned we weren't the same,” she said.

They dealt with their war trauma differently and divorced.

Moss gainedf weight, lost her house, her car, her army career on a medical discharge. Originally diagnosed with depression, she said because she was a woman, but that diagnosis was later changed to PTSD.

She even attempted suicide

Now, she said she’s thankful the suicide attempt forced her to go to the VA to get help for the war still raging in her head.

“I know exactly how somebody else feels who's coming home, I been there, lived it,” she said. “I'm still living it.”

Moss now receives to weekly counseling.

Together, Moss and Molina help other returning troops with invisible wounds win the war at home.

Half of combat veterans who need mental health care don't ask for it. At the Palo Alto VA, Anna Coulter works in outreach and she searches for those soldiers.

“We want to take care of them because they've done so much for their country,” Coulter said.