Too few bear war's burden

When I called Stacy Bannerman this week, she was weeping and had trouble talking.

When I saw her last week, she started to cry then, too. This week it was because she was just off the phone with the mother of a soldier back from Iraq. A soldier who couldn't deal with "re-entry" into a society that pretends our war isn't happening.

The mother had called to say the soldier — the son — had killed himself.

Last week the tears welled up when I asked Bannerman what the war cost her.

She lost her marriage.

Her husband is a Washington National Guardsman who spent 12 months in Iraq as a mortar platoon sergeant. He saw heavy combat. Five in his unit were killed.

According to Bannerman, her husband once called from Iraq despondent because he had ordered some mortar rounds fired that, by accident, killed two Iraqi children.

When he came home, in 2005, "he brought the war with him," she says. He was edgy, distant. He found he missed the adrenaline rush. Later he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

It was too hard, reuniting military with civilian, says Bannerman, who lives in Kent. The couple separated late last year.

"He survived it; he came home. So we're the fortunate ones," she says. "But the war got us anyway."

Bannerman tells most of this sad story much better than I can in her 2006 book, "When the War Came Home." I recap it here for two reasons.

The first is a question it raises. Are we ever going to step up and acknowledge the people — the families — who have suffered this war? To embrace them in any way?

Right now it seems like they don't exist. They come home, they try to blend back into a civilian world that either is depressed that Iraq is such a quagmire or angry the troops were sent in the first place.

It's too big a burden. This war is unlike any other in how the sacrifice has been divvied up. Five percent of Americans — 1.5 million troops and their relatives — are living and dying it. The rest of us were asked to go shopping. Bannerman puts it bluntly: "America isn't at war. The military is. The military and its families are going it alone."

The other reason to tell you about Bannerman is that she's doing something about it.

She fought the war from the start, denouncing it for Military Families Speak Out. More than four years in, her marriage broken, she nearly gave up.

"Part of me wants to run from all this," she said. "I decided to stand with it instead."

She hit on the idea of building a veterans sanctuary, in North Bend. It's to be a place run by vets where vets and their families can go for post-combat counseling. To learn about war trauma. To get advice. Or just to hang out.

She has some big backers, such as Congressman Adam Smith. But she needs help — money, volunteers, architects, a Web designer. Check it out online, at sanctuaryvf.org, or call 253-517-3300.

Practically everyone, from the gung-ho hawks to the pacifist doves, likes to say they "support the troops."

Here's a way to show it.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.