Sunday JULY 6, 2008 :: Last modified: Saturday, July 5, 2008 9:41 PM MDT

A war that won't let go
By KRISTY GRAY
Star-Tribune staff writer

PINE BLUFFS -- It should have been a fairy-tale homecoming for Marine Cpl. Jay Thurin.

And for a time, it was.

Thurin, 23, returned to Pine Bluffs in March 2006 to grateful friends and relatives who shook his hand and thanked him for his service. Newspapers featured the stories of his two Purple Hearts. Pine Bluffs Elementary School invited him to speak to wide-eyed kids who wanted to know everything about being a Marine in Iraq. He found a good job in a field he loved -- farming.

On July 27, 2006, he married Ashley Knaub, a girl he'd met in 4-H. Then came baby MaKenna, a beautiful daughter born on March 31 this year.

On the outside, Thurin looks strong, healthy and every bit like a young man building a life for his family. His right arm -- nearly ripped apart by shrapnel from an anti-tank mine bomb near Fallujah -- is healing after five surgeries and two years of physical therapy.

But inside -- and in the nightmares -- Thurin is still fighting the war. And he struggles to find his footing in a world that seems to be crumbling around him.

"You see enough things that people don't need to see in a lifetime. You think of the stuff you did over there that nobody should be forced to do," Thurin said.

"I have my good days and my bad days. It's been a big change coming out."

Now, three weeks shy of his two-year wedding anniversary, Thurin and his family live with Thurin's mother, Carla Thurin. Thurin quit his job when his boss thought he was spending too much time at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Cheyenne, 40 miles away.

Ashley Thurin sleeps on the couch. While dreaming of Iraq, her husband has punched her in the nose and choked her neck. Thurin doesn't remember any of it when he wakes up.

"He's more moody than he used to be. He's not as patient or nice," said Ashley Thurin, who is trying to adjust to the man who came back to her from Iraq.

"It's going to take a while. Jay and I have our moments, and it's really difficult to remember all that he's been through. I have to become more patient myself."

Growing up, Thurin was a push-the-envelope country boy. If someone was going to jump, he was going to jump a little farther.

He lived near his grandfather's ranch in Bushnell, Neb., but went to school in Pine Bluffs. In seventh grade, his family moved there after the state said all out-of-state students would have to pay tuition. He participated in wrestling, basketball and football, making the all-conference football team as a senior.

But his mother was most proud of his compassion, she said. A bit obnoxious with his friends, in school he took the special-needs kids under his wing.

After graduation from Pine Bluffs High School in 2003, Thurin followed his grandfather to the U.S. Marines. He couldn't wait to go to Iraq.

"I signed up for the infantry for a reason, and it wasn't to sit at a desk. I kind of looked at it that if I wanted to be on a boat, I'd have joined the Navy. If I wanted to fly an airplane, I'd have joined the Air Force. If I wanted to fight a war, I'd join the Marines -- just like my grandpa did in Korea."

Of war, Thurin fought his share.

He earned his first Purple Heart on Jan. 21, 2006, when a bomb exploded about five feet from his Humvee. His unit, the 1st Tank Battalion T.O.W. Platoon, was on security patrol looking for roadside bombs. The blast was strong enough to knock him unconscious. He remembers feeling the heat and debris hitting his face, but nothing else for a minute or more after. When he came to, a medic pulled a piece of shrapnel from above his eye, taped up the wound and sent him back to his patrol. (Another piece of shrapnel is still lodged in his skull.)

His second Purple Heart came just three weeks later, on Valentine's Day.

The people who plant roadside bombs try to keep them hidden, Thurin said. But a Marine who has spent any time in Iraq starts to recognize the signs: civilians gathering where they don't usually gather, or gathering places inexplicably abandoned. Something lying on the road that wasn't there before. Somebody standing with a cell phone, seeming to watch the Americans a tad too intently.

Thurin was the gunner of the Humvee, perched high to look out for signs of trouble. His roommate and war confidant, Lance Cpl. Mike Probst, was the driver.

The Humvee rolled over a pressure plate, a type of roadside bomb containing nearly five mortar rounds. The force threw Thurin 100 feet. Shrapnel lodged in his legs, ripped through his Kevlar sleeves and sheared off a portion of the bone in his upper right arm.

Probst was probably already dead when Thurin ran to the twisted remains of the Humvee. But Thurin thought he saw Probst's eyes moving. He held his friend, told him everything would be OK and yelled for help.

"We lived together. We trained together. We worked out together, and we were in the same vehicle," Thurin said later. "When you spend that much time with someone, you talk about things you don't talk about with anyone else.

"He took the bulk of the blast. I just got what was left. He died for me."

In that moment, Thurin didn't notice his own injuries until he tried to use his arm. It wouldn't work and was dripping blood. Soon after, he passed out.

Recovery started right away. He underwent five surgeries (four to repair the arm, one to make it look pretty) in a string of hospitals in Iraq, Germany and California. For a while, he endured rehab for once a week at the Cheyenne VA Medical Center.

He wanted to stay in the Marines and go back to Iraq. But his injury meant he would likely be reassigned to a desk job, and that's not why he wanted to be a Marine.

So he became Jay Thurin the civilian. And he started a new fight.

In the Marines, Thurin rose quickly through the ranks. He became section leader and was in charge of the lives of 23 men by the time he left.

At work, he was the low man on the totem pole. He missed the efficiency and the order of the Corps.

"He came home expecting it all to happen right away. He wants people around him to do things quicker, faster and better," his mother said.

Doctors in Cheyenne told him he would have to wait and see how the damaged nerves in his arm healed. He might never get feeling or control back to his pinky and ring finger. Or, they might come back suddenly. That's just the way it is with nerve injuries.

Some days his arm doesn't hurt at all. Some days he needs help opening a pop bottle.

But even as the bandages on his arm and hand came off, doctors were noticing other injuries invisible to everyone else: immobilizing headaches, hearing loss, blurred vision, nightmares. Just two months ago, Thurin was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, a condition caused by close-range explosions.

Thurin now goes to the VA hospital four or five times a month. He sees a doctor for his eyes, a doctor for his ears, a doctor to look at his arm, and at least two different psychologists. There are other doctors to read his CT scans and evaluate his disability compensation.

A coordinator tries to set up all his appointments on the same day, to cut down his number of trips, but if he has to miss one appointment, it could throw off his entire schedule.

It makes it hard to find a job.

"It scares me, really bad, the financial situation. I've only done farming and ranching and being a Marine in the infantry," Thurin said.

"Most bosses, and I don't blame them, don't want to hire someone who's going to be gone so much to the VA."

If he had it his way, Thurin would work the last remaining 1,920 acres of his great-grandfather's homestead in Bushnell. He has a few cattle, but not enough to make a living. In farming and ranching, it takes at least two years to see a return on the start-up investment. With a wife and new daughter, Thurin doesn't yet have that kind of time.

So, for now, he and his family will stay with his mom. He's driving truck for his uncle's company and is working hard to handle his memory loss. Little by little, he's rebuilding his civilian life.

Being a Marine was easy. Learning to be a father, a husband and a working Joe all over again, that takes work. Often, it's the people back at home who forget that.

A serviceman's homecoming is a big deal, especially in small towns. Whole communities turn out to wave banners and flags. People pat him on the back and tell him how much they appreciate all he's done.

For a while, anyway.

Then, people go back to their lives and expect the soldier to go back to his.

"I think a lot of people respect what these young men and women have done. And I really appreciate the people who came out for Jay," Carla Thurin said.

"But day to day, the friends and community just expect them to pick up where they left off and to not have any baggage when they come home. I think that's my biggest disappointment.

"I just think it's a long process. I think anybody who has been put into that position is going to have a lot of things to get through that the rest of us aren't going to understand."

For 10 days after MaKenna was born, Thurin didn't sleep. He stood watch over her crib for fear something would happen to her, his mother said.

That paranoia is part of the Thurin who came back from Iraq. Carla Thurin notices other changes, too. Her son is angrier, is not as committed to his faith as he used to be, and is less compassionate toward other people. That, more than anything, disappoints Carla.

Looking at Thurin, you wouldn't know he'd fought a war. On the outside, his bandages are gone, his right arm looks like any other arm, and it's stronger than it has been in two years.

But on the inside, and on sleepless nights standing guard over his daughter's crib, Thurin is fighting to let go of a war that won't let go of him.

Ellie