Really, both of them have received large helpings of mercy already. In Bible times, they would have been executed.

How do you describe getting the call that horrible day from a Army Officer, telling me that my husband had been hit by a enemy fire. And then how do I talk about his homecoming -- about meeting his very very hushed up medevac flight, ''scared to death,'' and first taking in the sight of his [Thank God] mildly scar-ridden face, his weak body and those tubes coming out of everywhere. I can remember smiling as hard as I could at him just in case he was awake before stepping out of his line of vision as the medics transferred him to a stretcher and letting myself weep. A deep broken grief of my actions and results of it. I felt damned and that he was paying for it..

So every day for hour after hour I sat in his room reading one of his favorite poems or short stories like “The Man from Snowy River”. I can remember reading poems and letters over & over. I’m sure all the nurses thought I was a mad women not accepting the inevitable. But I had done this, It was my fault. All my fault. I was going to drag him back to me no matter what.
I started making wild demanding begging deals with God, damning Him, cursing Him, begging Him. I had broken my sacred vows said before God and this was his judgment..
Meanwhile my H said he heard far in the background, he said he could hear the low rumble of waves rolling onto a shore. We were miles from the sea. Isn’t that strange.
The hours became days, the days became weeks and he mended, slowly at first. Blood loss and shock mainly were what the doctors were concerned about. The wounds themselves actually hadn’t hit anything too much at all – comparatively – if you disregard muscle and flesh.

The news from Aunt Rita is that his case of post-traumatic stress disorder most likely stems from the combination of these events and continuing warfare for the last 5 years. Researchers believe that the condition is not always connected to a specific incident and can, in fact, be spawned by repeated exposure to fear or by bearing witness to something violent or traumatic or by experiencing moral uncertainty connected to these things. And while many soldier's manage to hold it together during a deployment, the repression of emotion over time can lead to a ‘different’ homecoming. So imagine 5 years of it.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is considered controllable but not curable, and often it will flare up years after the original trauma.
The potential for violence is just one of a list of concerns both the military and veterans' groups have for returning soldiers. Combat veterans have been linked to higher incidences of drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, depression and worse.
It may be impossible, however, to fully counteract the shock of going from a 24-hour state of generalized fear-apprehension-paranoia, sustained for a number of years through wartime, to evenings at home on the couch, asked to fulfill the requirements of love and tenderness needed to sustain a family.

So where does that leave me or us? SOMEWHERE in between finding our way through a minefield of PTSD and my Affair. Don’t think I don’t get frightened. I do. For us and for him and for me. So I joke about being bounced off the wall when you wake your H without thinking to keep some balance, so I don’t cry.

At home, the awkwardness rarely seemed to lift. When his nightmares drove him to sleep on the couch, I lay awake in the bedroom. ''I kept wondering, Is he sleeping there because he rests better, or is it because he doesn't want to be beside me?''
Well of course he didn’t. Stupid ******, Stupid question.
And while six months after his return our relationship had stabilized somewhat, I was still adjusting to what the war has done to my husband. Even as I kept busy going to work by day and mothering our older teens in the evenings, I couldn't help feeling ''left out,'' since he seemed to prefer the company of other soldiers to my own. Of course I had lost his trust on top of everything else.
I know there's a lot of things he can't talk to me about, that he can talk to his friends about But I'm sitting there thinking, Why can't he talk to me?
Because I cheated on him you stupid cow.!! Trust issues again.

I have become better at living with the distance between us. At first, I had thoughts of holding his hand, of wanting to be close with him, but stuff like that's changed, too.
Its just a quiet resignation of the reality.
He had fleeting thoughts or rather confusion of the future back then, not sure if he could or would be able to continue in the Army let alone the SAS. He said repeatedly “But what kind of job could I do? I don’t know anything else,'' or “What the fu*k business is it of yours you Sl*t”
The truth is as he said so many times ''My body's here, but my mind is there,'' He wasn’t happy until he went back. Like a drug. I didn’t believe that before you know, that men can be addicted to the ‘rush’ of war. How sad.

I never pictured my life this way. Never imagined the Army would be calling me up one day to tell me he was hurt. Never dreaming the Army would ring me up and ask me to hand out advice as some kind of ‘expert’ wife. Me. Adulteress failure. Yet someone from the Army’s DCO caseworkers area wanted me to call another wife whose husband had come home injured. So now I sigh and dial the number. I don't know what I can say to make them feel better. I say much what I have read the US 'expert wives' say ''If he doesn't want to talk, don't take it to heart.''

At home my H sits looking to at the hills before us. If it seems as if he might be moving on, I have only to ask, What're you thinking about?
“You” or '' Mazar-I-Sharif,'' he'll say. And then the silence falls again.
Such is life.

The Princess was a very creditable Mary. She performed just about flawlessly, but with the demure and self-satisfied air of one who knows they are far superior to everyone else, and also one who is the star, while the previous year's Mary, the Diva, was only a lowly back-row angel.