THE DRIVER

Dameon Harrington fidgets in an easy chair in his in-laws' living room, in West Warwick.

He says that since he came back from Iraq, he doesn't sleep. Three, four hours a night is often the best he can manage.

"It's just poof -- I'm up," he explains, as his wife, Tegan, listens. "I get up. I eat something. Go to the bathroom. Lie back down. Go to sleep. Wake up again. It's constant."

Sometimes he can't help waking his wife, who will scold him about snacking in the middle of the night. "They say," she says, "it's the worst time to eat."

Harrington is seeking a medical discharge from the National Guard.

"It's one [health problem] after another," he says, including hearing damage and posttraumatic stress. "I went to the PTSD clinic. I have PTSD and all kinds of stuff.

"I have no memory anymore. I have a Palm Pilot and I write everything down on the calendar. It's the only way to remember stuff. I've talked to doctors and they say it's a common problem."

Harrington is 24. He went to Tollgate High School, Class of 1999, and is working now as a welder at Electric Boat. Tegan is 25. She went to West Warwick High School. They met as teenagers, on the job at McDonald's on Bald Hill Road, and dated eight years before they married last September.

Harrington joined the National Guard in 2001, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, because it seemed the right time to become an adult. He learned Feb. 7, 2003, that his unit was heading overseas. Two days later, Dameon and Tegan got engaged.

"Ever since the explosion, he says he lost his luck," his wife says. "He used to say he had a horseshoe up his butt, but in the explosion it fell out."