This week Radio Boston is going on location. We broadcast from Athol’s Memorial Town Hall. 

Residents from the town of Orange participate in the tolling of the town bell for 4,000 seconds to commemorate Americans killed in Iraq.

We’re talking with veterans from north central Massachusetts about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and what they think now that they’re home.

Listen to the full show:

Walk across the Boston Common to the Park Street Station or to downtown crossing and it’s easy to think of homeless people as drunks or drug addicts or mentally unstable.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmNr7UHK92E[/youtube]

Up in Salisbury, we found homeless people who go to the local elementary school.

This week on Radio Boston we’re finding out to our sorrow and concern that there’s a large and growing number of people who don’t fit that stereotype at all…

This Friday, David Boeri talks with the Boston Globe’s Charles Sennott who has been following the Marines’ 1st Battalion, 25th Regiment from the field in Iraq to their homecoming in Massachusetts. 

Photo Credits:  Bill Greene, Boston Globe

I’ve been staggered this week by stories of veterans and PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

An Army Advisory Team reports that 20 percent of soldiers in Iraq are showing acute stress, anxiety and depression, 30 percent in the case of those with more experience of combat.

When I asked one veteran what it was like to come back home from war, he answered “you don’t come back.”