Steadfast yet broken

On Memorial Day 2004, Sergeant Greg Dowd stood in his crisp green Army National Guard dress uniform in Dedham's Oakdale Square, as his hometown unveiled its new veterans' monument.

He had been back from Iraq less than a year, and he was a proud and honored guest at the ceremony. He was doing a job he enjoyed, working long days at the Guard's Milford headquarters, transporting and equipping his fellow soldiers. He had a wife and three stepchildren he loved.

He was also using crack.

Injured when insurgents hit his convoy just outside Baghdad, Dowd was sent home after six months in August 2003. He couldn't get the images from his time there out of his head. Sleep eluded him. And when it didn't, he yelled and flailed through vivid nightmares.

Now 37, Dowd can't go into detail about the things he saw in Iraq: "You're in combat, you know, things happen. They go the way they go. People need to survive. It's either you or them and you're in a crowd of civilians and one is a bad guy. . . . You're exposed to things you don't see or experience, especially when it comes to other soldiers, when something happens to them."

He says another soldier urged him to try crack at Fort Drum in New York, which they both passed through on the way home. He says it made life back here less jarring, and held off the nightmares.

"Over there, you're always on alert, always go, go, go. You go outside the wire, and you could be dead any second. Just realizing you survived, it was better than any drug could ever make you feel. It was way too slow here, and I'd get aggravated. Cocaine kept me level."

Until it didn't.

Dowd worried that his escalating drug use was putting fellow soldiers at risk, so he quit his job in September 2005. Then he had nothing to do but think about Iraq, and get high to keep from thinking about Iraq.

His wife was using, too. They broke up. His stepmother asked him to leave her house.

In the fall of 2006, Dowd got into an argument with a man he says was a dealer in Brighton.

He was charged with assault and battery and attempted murder. Convicted on the first charge, he spent a year at Suffolk County Jail.

That turned out to be a gift. Dowd got clean. Other inmates showed respect for his military service.

He helped out a few jailed veterans. He found religion.

"It got me back to who I was," he says.

But not all the way back.

Dowd now lives in a room not much bigger than his Nashua Street cell, in a rooming house run by the Roxbury-based Veterans Benefits Clearinghouse, an outfit that for 30 years has served troubled veterans hardly anybody else wants to go near.

Sometimes workers there have to bash on his door because he still shouts and thrashes in his sleep. He tears up, and his voice quavers when he talks about Iraq. He has chronic back pain and walks slowly, leaning heavily on his cane.

On probation after his jail sentence, Dowd wants to work again. But he's a former crack addict with a record.

"People think you're some scumbag off the street who'll steal everything from them," he says. "Right off the rip, everybody's really questioning. They look down on you."

He knows few people can fathom his descent.

"I had a good job, a wife, kids," he says. "People wonder, 'How did all of that happen?' And you can't really explain it, unless you've been there."

This Memorial Day will find hundreds of Iraq war veterans in crisp dress uniforms saluting flags in cities and towns across the state. They will all look steady and sure.

They will all look like they have good jobs, wives, kids, and nights free of torment.

But some of them will be broken.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail is abraham@globe.com