(AP) NEW YORK As a member of the National Guard, Nadine Beckford patrolled New York train stations after Sept. 11 with a 9mm pistol, then served a treacherous year in Iraq.

Now, six months after returning, Beckford lives in a homeless shelter.

“I’m just an ordinary person who served. I’m not embarrassed about my homelessness, because the circumstances that created it were not my fault,” said Beckford, 30, who was a military-supply specialist at a base in Iraq that was a sitting duck for around-the-clock attacks, “where hell was your home.”

Thousands of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a new nightmare — the risk of homelessness. The government estimates that several hundred vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are homeless on any given night around the country, although the exact number is unknown.
wcbstv.com

What a brutal and heartless place this is.

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