Battle scars: Three South Florida veterans fight for their lives

Battle scars: Three South Florida veterans fight for their lives

Stories by Mike Clary
South Florida Sun-Sentinel



Their scars may not be visible. But each came home wounded. For Iraq war veterans Jeremy Polston, Wanda Rios-Figueroa and Terrence McGriff, the anger, insomnia and anxiety that dogged them when they returned to South Florida were just the start of the problems.

They could not connect with friends and family. Accustomed to facing death, the day-to-day concerns of the civilian world seemed trivial. They fought off panic in crowds, startled at loud noises, had dreams too vivid to forget, too horrible to describe.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is one of the most common, most debilitating injuries of war. With the conflict in Iraq now in its sixth year, about 1.6 million U.S. troops — including about 6,000 South Floridians — have tasted orange fog sand storms, inhaled the rank mixture of heat and death, learned to sleep through the fear.

And then they come back to the world.

"We are seeing a flood of patients," said psychiatrist Daniella David, director of the Miami VA Medical Center's PTSD program. There is a six-month backlog of those waiting to get into the program's 16-bed residential treatment facility.

In May, the Pentagon released figures showing the number of Iraq war veterans diagnosed with PTSD jumped 50 percent in 2007. According to an independent study from the Rand Corp., nearly one in every five soldiers and Marines who have served in Iraq report symptoms.

Jeremy Polston, 33, Lantana

"On missions, we always thought, 'We're going to die tonight,'" Polston said. In 2003, on the first Father's Day after his son was born, he almost did.

Sent to Ramadi with the Florida National Guard's 124th Infantry Regiment in 2003, he conducted house-to-house searches, dodged rocket attacks and worried that a roadside bomb blast was around the corner.

The one that led to Polston being awarded the Purple Heart came after an Iraqi truck driver stopped at a checkpoint but suddenly hit the gas. Polston opened fire with his M16, and the vehicle exploded. He took shrapnel to the right thigh.

When he recovered from his injuries and returned to duty: "I was frightened. But I had to suck it up," said Polston, a Tennessee native who was a Marine before joining the National Guard.

He concentrated on returning home to his infant son. He thought about God.

"After being hit, I was mentally more aggressive. When I stepped out of the gates, I felt like a hired assassin. James Bond, Rambo.

"I felt like a bad ass," he said. "And at times I was."

Back home in 2004, Polston struggled. Crowds made him nervous. He broke down and cried for no apparent reason and spent hours at his insurance company job sitting in the dark.

He was charged with battery after a fight in a West Palm Beach bar.

"He was isolated, a little lost," ex-wife Jacqueline Walls said. "There was a sadness in his eyes."

The couple divorced last year after six years of marriage.

Eventually Polston realized he had PTSD. He began seeing a counselor and took classes to control his anger.

He started a business advising veterans and their survivors on government benefits.

He converted to Judaism.

Most important, Polston said, he discovered the joy of being a father. "If not for him, I might have done something to myself," he said, referring to Jackson, now 5. "I always thought, 'Who wants to look up to me?' He does."

Wanda Rios-Figueroa, 53, Fort Lauderdale

When she came back from Iraq, Rios-Figueroa said she was like a firecracker: "I was always going off on people."

When a friend she was staying with kicked her out, she checked herself into the VA Medical Center in West Palm Beach and ended up in the 90-day residential PTSD treatment program in Miami. She graduated from the program in April.

"I had nightmares, I felt suicidal," said Rios-Figueroa. "I just didn't understand what was going on with me."

Born in Puerto Rico, Rios-Figueroa spent 11 years in the Army, got out and joined the National Guard in Texas in 1995. Called up in 2004, she was sent to Iraq and assigned to provide security for supply convoys. She survived countless roadside bombings and rocket attacks.

"You learn to become like a robot," she said. "You grow numb to the threats."

Back home in 2005, Rios-Figueroa said she was so angry and alienated even her family did not recognize her. "Wanda, you're different," a sister told her during a vacation.

"I felt guilty about things that happened over there," she said, "and I just felt I needed to be there, to try to help."

So she signed on with KBR Inc., the former Halliburton subsidiary, and returned to Iraq for two more years. When she returned to Florida from Mosul in December 2007, she felt even more estranged.

Rios-Figueroa says the treatment program may have saved her.

"She is highly motivated," VA psychiatrist Daniella David said. "She is beginning the rest of her life."

Now living with a sister, Rios-Figueroa is job-hunting and looking forward to another family vacation where her father, sisters and brother will see a Wanda under control.

"I will never be able to tell them about what happened over there," she said. "And I will never be the old Wanda again. But I think I can be happy."

Terrence McGriff, 24, Lauderdale Lakes

His mother died of AIDS when he was 11. He had no relationship with his father. His only brother is doing life in prison.

So when the Marine Corps recruiter found the soft-spoken theater student at Dillard High School in 2002, McGriff was ready for something different.

Just eight months after graduation, the slight, soft-spoken Broward County native who had never been on an airplane before found himself racing across the desert in a Humvee, through oil fields raining fireballs of petroleum, triggering round after round from his M16 into the Iraq night.

He did seven months in 2003, returned stateside and was ordered back to the war the following year.

He was assigned to mortuary detail, where he bagged the bodies of fallen comrades and the charred remains of four civilian contractors dragged through the streets of Fallujah in March 2004.

When he sought psychiatric help, he was placed on two weeks of suicide watch and his weapons were taken away.

"After that, I didn't want to talk to anybody else," he said. "I begged to get my weapons back. It was embarrassing. It really hurt me."

In early 2006, McGriff volunteered for a third seven-month tour for the extra $600 a month in combat pay he needed to help out a dying uncle.

McGriff now studies film at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. After school, he works a night shift for Fed Ex unloading trucks.

He is haunted by nightmares of the things he saw and did. "I hear a plane at night and I think I'm back in Iraq, and the plane is bringing in more angels" — military-speak for bodies.

Since returning home, the grandmother who raised McGriff, Annie Garland, said she has never heard him speak of the war. "He's very quiet," she said.

McGriff takes medication, goes to counseling, and struggles to stay positive.

"I try to clear my mind of the military and lead a normal life. But it's hard. I'm just trying to find myself. I remember laughing so much. I was happy. Now it's like gray clouds all over.

"I ask the doctor for a pill that will take all this stuff out of my head. He says, 'There's no pill; it takes time.'

"And I say, 'Eight months after high school I was in Iraq. You didn't give me time for all this you threw at me.'

"I hope speaking out will help [other veterans] lost like me. I'm halfway there, but a mile away."



Staff Researcher Barbara Hijek contributed to this report.

Mike Clary can be reached at mwclary@sun-sentinel.com or at 305-810-5007.

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