War Takes a Late Casualty

The Boston Herald

He wasn't raised to kill. Marine Lance Corp. Jeff Lucey grew up in Belchertown with his mother, father and two sisters. He was a Cub Scout. He played Whiffle ball and team sports. He had lots of friends but only one girl. He had a great life.

He enlisted in the Marine Reserves in 1999. Then 9/11 happened. On Jan. 14, 2003 his unit was activated. He left college and was in Kuwait on his 22nd birthday. But he was back in the states by July 15, thin but alive, the answer to his parents' prayers. They didn't know he was in trouble until Christmas Eve.

“His sister came home and Jeff was very drunk and emotional and crying,'' his father said Monday night. ``He took off the dog tags he always wore and he said, `Your brother's a murderer.”

The dog tags were from two Iraqi soldiers he said he had killed.

His drinking got worse. He wasn't sleeping. ``He was having hallucinations. He saw faceless old people in alleyways and foxes' heads following him and hands touching him. We pleaded for him to go to the VA for help. But he said he'd be perceived as weak.’'

He started seeing a private therapist instead.

At school, someone dropped books and he dropped to his knees. He stopped attending classes. In May he began to talk about the things he had experienced. ``Being a truck driver, he was told you don't stop for anyone. You run them over. They were called bumps in the road. There was a small boy shot in the head. He had a little American flag clutched in his hand. He was in the middle of the street. Jeff stopped the truck and moved the dead boy out of the line of fire and he took the flag.’' They took their tormented son to a VA hospital, where he was involuntarily committed. He was drunk. He was angry. Four days later the VA discharged him.

He totaled the car and was drunk at his sister's graduation. His family took him back to the VA. “They said he wasn't bad enough. What we didn't know then is that he had told them he wanted to harm himself. And he gave them three different ways he might do it.’'

On June 22 a counselor was scheduled to come from the Vet Center but got lost and never arrived.

When Kevin Lucey pulled into the driveway around 6:45 he saw the TV on. But his 23-year-old son was in the cellar hanging from a hose, pictures of his parents, sisters, grandparents, his girlfriend and his platoon in a semi-circle next to him.

“I held him. I remembered him being a little kid in my lap. He was so cold. It sounds foolish but I started to rub him to make him warm.''

They buried Jeff with the U.S. flag he took from the boy he was unable to forget.

“It's not like he was killed in Iraq but his death began there and ended in our cellar,'' his sister said.

The family talks so that other families with sons and daughters coming home from war will know more than they knew. ``Jeff used to say to all of us, `You can never understand.' He was exposed to things he had never been exposed to in his life. And his humanity got chewed up. Just be on the