You can see it in their eyes.

I met this lady at the bar last night. Young...in her twenties...short, dark hair, cute in an unassuming way. I casually asked how she was doing. She looked me dead in eyes and said she returned from Iraq last week.


Ooops.


You see that alot around here. Fort Lewis is about a hundred yards away. But here sitting next to me was an Iraq war vet who also informed me she was a combat medic. I took a double take and, yes, the sadness was there, the withdrawal, the vacant stare.


Her sixteen ounce beer (and the five or six beers which followed) took on new meaning.