deadly as a guy coming straight at Lewis fired off a rocket-propelled grenade. He explains, “The blast throws me toward the river. Trying to shake it off, I grab my weapon. I’m trying to fire back. I’m crawling toward the river. I go to stand up and fall back down. Like, ‘What the f---?’ My leg’s all mangled.” He was medevaced to Al Asad Air Base and then took a Black Hawk to Basra. From there, he was transported to Ramstein, Germany, and finally, Bethesda, Maryland. He wanted a little Motrin and to go back to “his men,” but they told him he was going home. “I felt like I failed them, you know? Because nobody could take care of my men like me,” Lewis says. “They’re my boys. We hung out. We partied. We kicked it. We shared everything. I wanted to go back.” That’s the hardest part of returning to civilian life. “I think about it all the time,” he says. “But you know ... you can replay it as many times as you like in your mind. The result’s the same.” Lewis is blunt about his routine after leaving the military: “hanging out, drinking, and chasing women.” He finally went back to work at the fire department, but even working triple shifts couldn’t fill the void left by having to do something other than what he saw as his purpose in life. He sought help from the Department of Veterans Affairs and got lost in the system. Lewis says, “I started snapping at people and flipping out over nothing, but that’s not me. I was looking for help.”
It all came to a head one evening outside a bar when he was approached by two men and a woman looking for trouble. They pummeled Lewis pretty badly, but he fought back with a knife. “People got hurt,” is all he says. The price? Thirty months in prison. “I felt like I failed them, you know? Because nobody could take care of my men like me,” Lewis says. “They’re my boys. We hung out. We partied. We kicked it. We shared everything. I wanted to go back.”
But he turned his life around. He gets treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder, has a job he loves at a contracting company, and takes care of his twin boys. He talks to Cleveland at least twice a week and is working toward his degree in electrical engineering. Lewis earned a Bronze Star, and Cleveland a Purple Heart. The lesson they want people to remember is simple: American freedom is paid for a thousand different ways. © Creators Syndicate, Inc. Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner . She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between.
American Consequences
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