A Family's Anguish

Thoughts Of The War Every Day

(AP)  Marcy Kozakiewicz was at work when a colleague hurried down the hallway, thrust a newspaper in front of her and pointed to the front-page photo.

There Kozakiewicz saw her 23-year-old son, Sgt. Ken Kozakiewicz, who had been wounded the day before in the Gulf War. In an instant, the emotions tumbled together: joy and pain, relief and sorrow.

The photo published around the world showed the young soldier sitting in a helicopter, crying, his left arm in a sling. Next to him sat another soldier, his head and eyes wrapped in white gauze. Next to them lay a bulging fatigue-green body bag.

"I just started crying," Marcy Kozakiewicz recalls.

The photo gave some of the answers she hadn't been able to get when the uniformed men came to her door the night before: How badly was Ken hurt? Where was he?

She felt such relief at seeing her son's relatively good physical condition - yet such anguish over his emotional pain.

"I wanted to see him. I wanted to comfort him as soon as possible," she says.

For Kozakiewicz and for the families of the thousands of other soldiers sent to the Persian Gulf, those days and weeks a decade ago were tumultuous. Some families suffered even worse pain: more than 100 Americans were killed in the war.

The picture was taken just after Ken Kozakiewicz was given the dog tags of a fellow tank crewman from the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division who was killed when the unit was struck by mortar fire in the Euphrates Valley. The force of the explosion had broken Kozakiewicz's left hand.

Even 10 years later, tears still come when Marcy Kozakiewicz remembers her emotions the day she learned her son was hurt; emotions that were heightened because just hours before, the family had erupted in celebration as President Bush announced a cease-fire.

Then came the knock at the door.

"We're sorry to inform you, but your son, Ken, has been shot," one of the uniformed men said.

"I nearly fell to the floor. In fact, they had to pick me up," Kozakiewicz recalls.

The following day, her wounded son's picture appeared in newspapers around the globe.

"People from all over the world called me up, Kozakiewicz says. "People from Guam, Hawaii, New Zealand. They were all inquiring, 'How's your son?' and I would say 'Your prayers would help.'"

In fact, Kozakiewicz had to wait nearly three weeks to hear from her son, who had been treated in Saudi Arabia and then flown to a hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany, where he was finally able to call home.

Ten years later, both mother and son say they still think of the war every day. For the former soldier, all it may take is a change in the weather, an ache in his left hand.

"There are little things that trigger it off, " he says. "Just flashbacks."

With five years in the Army, he once had planned for a long military career. That changed abruptly.

"I saw too much," he says. "I saw more than anybdy should ever see."

After setting aside plans to become a state trooper, Kozakiewicz, 33, works for Home Depot. Since the war, he has been married and divorced.

The thoughts sneak up on his mother day and night.

"I think of Ken having to go over there and the days, weeks and months of him just being there," she says. "I prayed every day, not only for him, but for the rest of his company, that they would be safe. And I still think of the time they came and told me that he was hurt."

Now 56, she blames the war for a decline in her health. While unable to explain the connection, she has problems walking that several operations have not helped.

But she was strong when Ken stepped off the plane April 11, a purple heart pinned to his chest, after his long journey home.

"When I ran up to him, I couldn't let go. I could not let go," she says. "I just hung on."

Ken's 21-year-old sister, Lynette, and 19-year-old brother, John, were there, too. His father, Daniel Kozakiewicz, had a limousine waiting and carried a large American flag.

With his hand in a cast for three months and three more months of physical therapy ahead, Kozakiewicz faced the biggest obstacle in dealing with the death of two soldiers from his company.

Life, he says, will never be the same.

"Nothing could really come back to normalcy after a war like that, seeing what I saw," he says. "Nothing's normal any more."