New Generation of Homeless Vets Emerges

New Generation of Homeless Vets Emerges
by Erin McClam

LEEDS, Mass. - Peter Mohan traces the path from the Iraqi battlefield to this lifeless conference room, where he sits in a kilt and a Camp Kill Yourself T-shirt and calmly describes how he became a sad cliche: a homeless veteran.


There was a happy homecoming, but then an accident - car crash, broken collarbone. And then a move east, close to his wife’s new job but away from his best friends.

And then self-destruction: He would gun his motorcycle to 100 mph and try to stand on the seat. He would wait for his wife to leave in the morning, draw the blinds and open up whatever bottle of booze was closest.

He would pull out his gun, a .45-caliber, semiautomatic pistol. He would lovingly clean it, or just look at it and put it away. Sometimes place it in his mouth.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” his wife, Anna, told him one day. “You can’t be here anymore.”

Peter Mohan never did find a steady job after he left Iraq. He lost his wife - a judge granted their divorce this fall - and he lost his friends and he lost his home, and now he is here, in a shelter.

He is 28 years old. “People come back from war different,” he offers by way of a summary.

This is not a new story in America: A young veteran back from war whose struggle to rejoin society has failed, at least for the moment, fighting demons and left homeless.

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/21/6510/

Northampton, MA.

I see homeless veterans on the streets in the small town where I live.

I've given money and clothes and "clean-up kits" to some of them, when I can.

I always at least say hello when I have nothing to give.

I think I may even have given this Peter one of them if it's who I think it is. He was a great guy to talk to.

It's cold as hell here and this is such a national disgrace.

363 days until fuckhead leaves town.

I will visit them all again on that day and really pass out the party balloons. It will be cold again then. I hope there are less of them, but I expect there will be more.