Coping with the many wounds of war
Twenty-one-year-old Eddy Delmonte sat in a downtown Buffalo coffee house as he shared his Iraq war experiences.
His hands pitched upward together to visually recreate a plume of rising black smoke as he explained that before you hear an improvised explosive device explode, you see it.
The speed of light beats the speed of sound.
"You actually see the blast first, then you hear and feel the booooooooooom on your chest."
Embedded in Delmonte's injured brain are many close calls he had with death while serving 12 months in the war zone back in 2005.
He went there halfway into his 18th year and returned an old man with back injuries, memory problems and nightmares.
"Those blasts are terrifying. I'd rather be shot at all day long. At least you know where the enemy is. With an IED, you're riding down the road wondering where it's going to happen."
That plays hard on the nerves.
Now, thousands of miles from the war, the Hamburg resident still hears loud and clear the voices of two battle buddies disoriented inside a Bradley Fighting Vehicle that tipped off a narrow bridge into a canal of raw sewage somewhere in the Sunni Triangle, a.k.a. the Triangle of Death.
Delmonte managed to escape the vehicle as it started filling with sewage and silt, but crawled back inside when he heard two other infantry soldiers screaming "I can't breathe," "I'm dying," and "There's no air."
What spiked their fear, said Delmonte, was the roar and the fumes of the 33-ton Bradley's engine, which hadn't shut off. He guided them to safety.
But even though they lived, Delmonte says he still hears their voices and it doesn't matter if it's night or day.
But, he wants to quiet them.
And he wants to do it by helping other veterans.
So as part of his unofficial therapy for post-traumatic stress, Delmonte is starting a veterans' advocacy group called Iraq Veterans United to lobby for better treatment of returning combat veterans, whether it be with medical care or disability benefits.
Anyone interested in helping or in need of help can reach Delmonte by e-mail at iraqveteransunited@yahoo.com.
Sipping his coffee at the downtown shop, Delmonte says, "This is my passion, to help other vets."
… Lou Michel
