Benjamin Soto is trying to forget about Iraq. For 18 days. He's put down his M-4 assault rifle, shaken the desert sand from his body and is back at home in Granite Bay, sleeping in his childhood bed without the sounds of bombs and gunfire in the night.
On Friday, Soto's vacation from war will be over, and he will go back to the life of a 19-year-old Army sniper who has witnessed death, prayed for survival and lost count of how many bullets have whizzed past his helmet and ripped through the ground near his feet.
"Eighteen days might seem like a long time to be home, but it's really just long enough to start adjusting to your old life before you have to go back again," says Soto, who joined the military while still in high school. "It's just long enough to get a taste of what I'm missing."
The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan represent the first time in history in which American troops are regularly returning home to the United States on leave. Soto is just one of the 185,000 military men and women fighting the "war on terror" who are allowed to go home at least once during their tours that last seven to 15 months, according to Pentagon press officer Les Melnyk.
Troops in previous conflicts got brief periods of "R&R," he says, but because leaves were short and flying across the world was more difficult, they almost always took trips close to the battlefield and rarely went home.
For veterans of modern war, the brief trips back to the States are rife with emotion.
"It's not easy to just go back to being a son or a friend or a husband after coming home from war," says Barbara Romberg, a psychologist who founded Give an Hour, a national nonprofit group of mental health specialists who volunteer their time to military veterans and their families.
"It can be a time of reconnecting and recharging and support, but it can also be stressful. It's like a kid coming back from college, only the feelings and emotions are exaggerated and intensified with scary stuff around the edges."
Soto, who joined the military when he was 17, deployed to Iraq late last year along with his Marine brother Joshua, a rifleman with a wife and young daughter. The Bee featured the Soto family in a story in January.
"Those were the hardest weeks of our lives," Teresa Soto said of the time she and her husband, Mark, said goodbye to their sons. "We know that our boys will be changed when they come back, based on the things they have seen and done."
Benjamin Soto, whose duties include scouting for insurgents under cover of darkness, had never shot a gun before he joined the military. On the battlefield, he has fired on the enemy. He has had many brushes with death. He lives with the knowledge that he or a member of his unit could be maimed or killed at any time.
He has had trouble pushing those thoughts from his mind while back in Granite Bay. "It's hard to get out of the war mentality," says Soto, who is tall and lean, with intense, dark eyes. "Back there, I'm on guard 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I'm always holding a weapon. I'm never relaxed."
After his first joyous day home with his mother and father, Soto went to bed and had nightmares of war. For days, he flinched at every loud noise. At every turn, his instincts told him to grab his rifle.
At home, the freedom to kick back with friends, take long, hot showers and fuel himself with food other than Army chow and freeze-dried meals was jarring at first. "It was a strange adjustment," he says.
Everyone is curious about his life on the battlefield, Soto says, "but I mostly don't want to talk about it or think about it right now. I just want to be in my routine here and forget about Iraq."
But the stories inevitably seep out. Yes, he's had to shoot someone, he says. He's been involved in firefights. He's had to hold Iraqi civilians at gunpoint when he and his unit needed their homes for shelter during certain missions. At least 40 times, he says, he has taken enemy fire. Sometimes, he says, it feels as though he is a character in a video game.
Call the Bee's Cynthia Hubert, (916) 321-1082.
