OAKLAND — Before Jonathon Lee was deployed to Iraq, his U.S. Army drill instructor had a message for him and his fellow trainees: "Some of you are going to Iraq, some of you to Afghanistan, and some of you are going to die."
Lee spent three years in the Army, including a one-year stint in Iraq, where he had four brushes with death. On different days he was close enough to two high-powered rockets and two roadside bombs that they would have killed him if they had exploded. He didn't die, but he nearly lost his sanity and the life he knew after returning home to the Napa Valley.
Lee had post-traumatic stress disorder, something 230,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans sought treatment for at Veterans Affairs health care facilities between 2002 and 2008, according to information published in the "Journal of Traumatic Stress." The anxiety disorder can occur after a person has been through a traumatic event.
"I didn't really start having major symptoms until a year after I returned," said Lee, 42.
On this Memorial Day weekend, he is celebrating the help he got through Swords to Plowshares, a nonprofit with offices in Oakland and San Francisco, that gave him housing, food, medical treatment and a way to rebuild his life. He has been living in transitional housing on San Francisco's Treasure Island for nine months and next month will move to his own apartment in Oakland or Emeryville, he said.
