For Ky. war hero, wounds are invisible

'Incredible courage'
In a recommendation for Pullen’s medal, her company commander wrote: “Tremendous dedication and focus. Credited with saving the life of a team leader that day. Incredible courage.”

Pullen served seven more months in Iraq, learning to cope in a world where the threat of death was a daily fact of life.

“You get up in the morning, you say your prayers and you hope to God that you come back that night,” she says in her soft lilt. “You kind of get numb ... which was my way of coping. You just kind of shut everything off and become a robot. Emotions get you nowhere. They get you in trouble. ... It’s hard to come back and be normal.”

When she returned home last fall to Edmonton, Ky., her mother, stepfather and uncle — all Desert Storm veterans — praised her as a hero. Pullen doesn’t buy it.

“You got to do what you got to do,” she says. “I didn’t have a choice in the matter. If you see an accident on the road, you’re going to stop and make sure everything is OK. ... It’s my job.”

But Pullen also says the emotional strain of doing her job began wearing on her while she still was in Iraq. She had nightmares that zombies and Iraqis were coming after her.

She noticed her own dramatic personality transformation — from easygoing to “this huge, flaming ball of anger.” She says she tries to rein in her emotions around her three younger sisters and two younger brothers. “It’s hard for me to explain to them, ’It’s not your fault I’m mad,”’ she says. “They try to understand.”

Her father does, too. “He says just forget it,” she explains. “I say, ‘Dad, you can’t forget it. You just have to learn to live with it.’ ... He doesn’t want this to haunt me and hold me back the rest of my life — being just 22 years old.”

Reminders at home of life abroad
Pullen says even now, she doesn’t go out alone. When she’s on the road, familiar sights like overpasses can be frightening because they remind her of where the enemy lurked.

Pullen leans heavily on her husband. They’ve been sweethearts since they met at an after-school program at age 15.

“God bless my husband, he tries,” she says. “I know it puts him through hell.” There are days, she says, when she calls him at work and says: “’I need you here. Come home.’ I am just bursting out in tears for no reason. ... I need that lifeline.”

Daniel says he had his own anxiety attacks when his wife was in Iraq. When she called, he says, “You always had the worry — this may be the last time I ever talk to her. What should I say?”

Pullen has been seeing a psychiatrist twice a month. At each visit, the doctor talks to her, then turns to Daniel. “How is she doing?’ the doctor asks.

“He can pick up on things I don’t notice,” Ashley Pullen says.

Daniel says sometimes the smallest gestures in the morning — a goofy grin or a silence — indicate whether it’ll be a good or bad day for his wife.

The two are preparing for the birth of their first child — a son — who is due this month.

Meanwhile, Pullen stays close to home with family, far from the world that caused her so much emotional turmoil.

“I don’t watch the news,” she says. “I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to see it. I don’t even like the word Iraq.”

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