Oregon Public Broadcasting

For thousands of young men and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the price exacted by war is obvious.

Anyone can see the evidence left by scars, burns and amputated limbs. But other wounds are invisible.

April Baer profiles  one young Army veteran whose life is in pieces after a harrowing tour of duty.

Some guys you look at, and you can just tell they were in the military.

But if you walked past John Blaufus on the street or ran into him in a coffee house, you might never guess this tattooed, shaggy-haired 26-year-old witnessed some of the worst the war had to offer.

But to understand John Blaufus, you first need to know about the coffee.

John Blaufus: "I love Stumptown Coffee -- it’s my favorite coffee. I actually used to get Stumptown coffee sent to me in Iraq.  I had a French press I would bring in the Hummer or the Stryker. I’d have one hand on my rifle and one hand with a  cup of coffee."

Anne Blaufus:   “John and coffee are like peas and carrots.”

This is John's mom, Anne Blaufus.

Coffee even helped her keep tabs on him while he in Iraq, with the Fifth Infantry Regiment Stryker Brigade.  On days when he wasn’t able to call, he’d use a debit card she’d sent to buy a coffee. That way she could check the account and know he was alright. 

Anne says her son's thoughtfulness was part of the reason she had to send so much coffee.

Anne Blaufus:  “John, you know he was constantly giving everything away -- that is John!   If he thought you needed it, John just put it forward.”

The coffee helped with a lot of things, the 4 a.m. missions, the uncertainty of what lay behind each door in a house-to-house search.

And Blaufus says what the coffee couldn’t fix, his staff sergeant could.

John Blaufus:  "When I got to Ft Lewis, my duty station, I met Staff Sgt Julian Melo.   He was just really like a father to me. We really relied on each other."

Norma Melo: "He just was the sweetest, sweetest young man, truly felt like he was an adopted son.” 

This is  Sgt Melo's wife, Norma Melo.

Norma Melo: "I remember my husband coming home and saying, 'He’s going to be OK, I just need to make sure that I keep him under my wing', and I just started laughing and thought, ‘You could keep him under your wing 'til he’s an old man, you’d still feel the same way’.”

The men's bond became especially important as they moved with their Stryker Brigade through increasingly dangerous areas, from Baghdad, through the Second Invasion of Fallujah, into  Mosul. 

On December 21st, 2004, a suicide bomber struck the base where Blaufus was assigned, killing twenty-three men, including Julian Melo.

John Blaufus    "I looked over, there was a huge cloud coming out of the dining hall facility. People were coming out just bloodied and running for dear life, pulling up semi trucks, throwing bodies in there, driving bodies to the hospital. All of  a sudden they started bombing our hospital."

Bluafus didn’t learn of his friend's death until hours later. The captain of his company, Justin Uhler says there was no time to grieve.

Justin Uhler: “John was very shaken. Very, very shaken. And of course you don’t really have a choice. Things have to keep going.”

John Blaufus: "I would put on Julian’s jacket and go on missions, manning the guns. Took the offense from that point on. From before I was trying to survive, at that point I was trying to kill."

The war became an endless cycle of missions, house-to-house searches, supply work -- anything to avoid thinking too much about what was happening. He stuck it out for nine months after the Mosul bombing.

Again, Captain Justin Uhler.

Justin Uhler  “My impression of John -- he was doing alright -- not great, not wonderful, just doing alright.”  

Anne Blaufus:  "I don’t think it was a real change until after he was discharged."

Blaufus' mom, Anne is a trauma nurse who’s worked in disaster areas. She knew he would have problems coming home. But even she wasn’t fully prepared.

Anne Blaufus   "When he first got  home he’d sleep on the floor in the living room. The he moved to the couch. When he did sleep, he’d sleepwalk. He’d get up, run outside, run into the street, thinking he was in Iraq. He still does that."

Constant exposure to bombs took some of his hearing, and may have injured his brain. Joint  and back trouble have left this former high school basketball star unable to go for a long walk.

Anne Blaufus  “He was totally and completely like an old man.”

Blaufus has serious trouble focusing. Anne has to remind him constantly about his medical appointments. When he’s driving, tailgaters rattle his nerves. Left on his own, he can go long stretches without eating or showering.

Anne says he’s still the same kind and generous man, but crippled by periods of deep depression. 

In the year after his return, Blaufus repeatedly enrolled in college classes, then dropped out. He got married four months after coming home, to a woman who shortly left him. Looking back, he says the war changed everything.

John Blaufus:  "I understood I could die any day. So I was constantly doing stuff a 24-year-old shouldn't be doing. I bought a house I didn’t even look at the house before I bought it.  When my marriage ended, the need for everything ended along with it."

That house has now fallen into foreclosure.

Blaufus has been hospitalized twice since he got back for acute Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The list of things he can’t do is long: sleep, eat in front of other people, hold down a full-time job.    He even had to  re-learn his favorite thing -- playing the guitar.

John Blaufus   "Before I left, for the war, I was able to play, and it was more natural for me. But when I got home I found it wasn’t so natural for me anymore”

But he’s sticking with it.

Every day is an effort  -- from practicing guitar, to getting dressed and going to see his friends.

Norma Melo, the wife of  Blaufus' slain staff sergeant, used to see to him a lot after he got back. She says he sometimes checks in by email, but hasn’t visited as much lately. She sees his grief, and says she doesn’t blame him.

Norma Melo  "I think John is very typical of what is happening to our soldiers that are getting out. They want so much to continue in a life they had before the war, but the war has tainted what that life is.”

John Blaufus recently checked himself in to a  PTSD clinic in Seattle. He's back home now, bracing himself for the 4th anniversary of the Mosul bombing, just two weeks away.

Online:

More info about the December 21st attack at Mosul that killed Julian Melo, and twenty-two others from CNN.