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Death of a Marine
By BOB HERBERT
Jeffrey Lucey was 18 when he signed up for the
Marine Reserves in December 1999.
His parents, Kevin and Joyce Lucey of Belchertown,
Mass., were not happy.
They had hoped their son would go to college.
Jeffrey himself was ambivalent.
"The recruiter was a very smooth talker and very,
very persistent," Ms. Lucey told me in a call
from Orlando, Fla., where she was on vacation
with her husband and their two grown daughters
last week. The conversation was difficult. Ms.
Lucey would talk for a while, and then her husband
would get on the phone.
"We see him everywhere," Ms. Lucey said. "Every
little dark-haired boy you see, it looks like Jeff.
If we see a parent reprimanding a child, it's
like you want to go up and say, 'Oh, don't do that,
because you don't know how long you're going
to have him.' "
The war in Iraq began four years ago today. Fans
at sporting events around the U.S. greeted the war
and its early "shock and awe" bombing campaign
with chants of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"
Jeffrey Lucey, who turned 22 the day before the
war began, had a different perspective. He had no
illusions about the glory or glamour of warfare.
His unit had been activated and he was part of the
first wave of troops to head into the combat
zone.
A diary entry noted the explosion of a Scud missile
near his unit: "The noise was just short of blowing
out your eardrums. Everyone's heart truly skipped
a beat. ... Nerves are on edge."
By the time he came home, Jeffrey Lucey was a
mess. He had gruesome stories to tell. They could not
all be verified, but there was no doubt that
this once-healthy young man had been shattered by his experiences.
He had nightmares.
He drank furiously.
He withdrew from his friends.
He wrecked his parents' car.
He began to hallucinate.
In a moment of deep despair on the Christmas Eve
after his return from Iraq, Jeffrey hurled his dogtags
at his sister Debra and cried out, "Don't you
know your brother's a murderer?"
Jeffrey exhibited all the signs of deep depression
and post-traumatic stress disorder. Wars do that to people.
They rip apart the mind and the soul in the same
way that bullets and bombs mutilate the body. The war in
Iraq is inflicting a much greater emotional toll
on U.S. troops than most Americans realize.
The Luceys tried desperately to get help for Jeffrey,
but neither the military nor the Veterans Administration
is equipped to cope with the war's mounting emotional
and psychological casualties.
On the evening of June 22, 2004, Kevin Lucey came
home and called out to Jeffrey. There was no answer.
He noticed that the door leading to the basement
was open and that the light in the basement was on.
He did not see the two notes that Jeffrey had
left on the first floor for his parents:
"It's 4:35 p.m. and I am near completing my death."
"Dad, please don't look. Mom, just call the police - Love, Jeff."
The first thing Mr. Lucey saw as he walked down
to the basement was that Jeff had set up an arrangement
of photos. There was a picture of his platoon,
and photos of his sisters, Debra and Kelly, his parents,
the family dog and himself.
"Then I could see, through the corner of my eye,
Jeff," said Mr. Lucey. "And he was, I thought, standing there.
Then I noticed the hose around his neck."
The Luceys hope that in talking about their family's
tragedy they will bring more attention to the awful struggle
faced by so many troops suffering from post-traumatic
stress disorder and other emotional illnesses.
"We hear of so many suicides," said Mr. Lucey.
Ms. Lucey added, "We thought that if we told other
people about Jeffrey they might see their loved ones
mirrored in him, and maybe they would be more
aggressive, or do something different than we did.
We didn't feel we had the knowledge we needed
and we lost our child."
The Luceys are more than just concerned and grief-stricken.
They're angry. They've joined an antiwar
organization, Military Families Speak Out, and
they want the war in Iraq brought to an end. "That's the
only way to prevent further Jeffreys from happening,"
Ms. Lucey said.
Mr. Lucey made no effort to hide his bitterness
over the government's failure to address many of the critical
needs of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
His voice quivered as he said, "When we hear anybody
in the administration get up and say that they
support the troops, it sickens us."
If your have the password, the original is at
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19herbert.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=login