you don't come back

the same man or woman..............





Theater of War
An Ex-Marine Brings Iraq Stateside at MetroStage


It's been a very bad week for the Marines in Iraq, and playwright Sean Huze is taking it personally. "Twenty-one Marines killed in the past 48 hours," he says, his voice rising in anger. "I wonder when we've had enough -- when we as a society will hold this administration accountable for getting us into a war unnecessarily.".........

..........Huze, 30, lean and tattooed, sips from a can of Red Bull and drags on his cigarette outside MetroStage, the small theater in Alexandria where he is overseeing rehearsals for his first play, "The Sand Storm: Stories From the Front." You might be tempted to dismiss him as another antiwar Hollywood liberal -- he is, after all, an actor and playwright from Los Angeles -- except there's this: Until a few months ago, he was Marine Cpl. Huze, a veteran of combat in Iraq. He also was one of those gung-ho young patriots who marched into recruiting offices on Sept. 12, 2001, itching for payback.........

.........."You don't come back the same man," he says, lighting another Natural American Spirit cigarette on an ovenlike evening last week after news broke that 14 Marines had died in a massive roadside bombing in Anbar. "So in essence, no one returns from the war."............