Though Dave Johnson has left Iraq and the military and returned to normal things like Hawaiian vacations with the family, he often revisits the war in his mind. (Photo courtesy of Dave Johnson)

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He's a businessman now. He has leisure time. He reads his law books, looks for a house to buy. He sleeps on clean sheets, and takes Hawaiian cruises with his family.

But a part of Dave Johnson is still in Iraq.

A couple of times a week, he wakes up there — "in the middle of a giant explosion," he said, like the one on his second tour that took out his patrol base, killed one colleague, maimed another and injured a dozen more.

The former sergeant, who enlisted after getting a law degree to do his duty for his country — then was stop-lossed for 18 months — revisits the battleground in his waking life, too.

Every now and then, he says, he'll have a flashback — "a very, very vivid memory" — of one among six or so events during his first Iraq tour.

A certain suicide bombing in a market, for instance.

"It was the last one I ever went to. We were the first responders," Johnson, 30, said. "I felt the concussion. The blast wasn't as big so there were much larger body parts, an arm here, a leg …

"It was me and Capt. [Matt] Lee and a member of the British Parliament. The entire market burned to the ground," he said.

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Or he remembers the time he was trapped in a vehicle at the bottom of a canal. The water rushed in and rose above his mouth as the center console pinned him in place. "I was pretty sure at that moment I was about to drown," he said.

But the river wasn't deep enough to drown him.

"I realized, ‘The water's not rising. Holy shit! I made it!'"

The memories creep in without warning, he said, and the acute flashback, including increased pulse and perspiration rate and a pounding heart, lasts about 30 seconds. Johnson's twin brother, who spends a lot of time with him teaching him the family roofing business, can tell when it happens.

"He says, ‘You're twitching again, dude.' "

So Johnson wasn't surprised to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The nightmares, the residual feelings of terror, the loss of sleep — all of it "affects you all day," he said. And to have a flashback in the courtroom would not be good, he said.

Still, he takes it pretty much in stride, waiting for the anxiety to diminish over time to where — he hopes — it will be barely noticeable, or even entirely absent.

"I don't think this is going to affect my life forever," he said. "For the most part, I think it does go away."

Johnson is unusual only in the straightforward, detailed way he discusses his experience.

Experts estimate that fully 20 percent of Iraq-deployed troops have developed PTSD and that nearly all show some post-combat anxiety. Yet despite a Defense Department effort to remove the stigma surrounding such psychological impacts of combat, many soldiers are still hesitant to admit they may be having problems and seek help.

Several of his comrades-in-arms, including Johnson's best friend in Company B, Capt. Chris Holmes, said they had suffered no post-combat stress, although those close to them had a different view. "I think most guys are not going to want to acknowledge it," Johnson said.

Johnson is an unusual guy, though, in other ways. He is significantly more educated than most troops, his politics are Libertarian and he thought for himself in an institution that works relentlessly to subsume the individual for the benefit of the team.

He was always against the Iraq war — he had hoped to serve in Afghanistan — and he still is, despite the sacrifices he and his friends made there. Johnson was by all accounts a major player in Company B, devising, among other things, the amnesty plan that brought in and paid off former insurgents. Yet when his deployment ended, he said he viewed himself and his fellow soldiers as not so much heroic warriors but "victims of crime."

Johnson followed orders and he got along well with other soldiers, even as he cast a critical eye on the Army's rank structure, rigidity and macho culture that can mistake brutality for toughness.

And while he wanted to do his part for his country, he'd signed up for one enlistment, and he was furious when the Army refused to release him, keeping him an extra 18 months on stop-loss. He recently received a check reimbursing him for those 18 months, he said. It was for $1,800.

Now Johnson spends his days learning the family roofing business from his brother. He's looking for a starter house. Evenings he reads up on civil law so he can assist with the firm's legal work.

Life is good, he said.

"Being home is great. Just being out of the Army," he said. "If I'm five minutes late, I'm not going to get an Article 15. You were always threatened in the Army," he said.

Yet as glad as he is to be out, he has few regrets about having been a grunt.

"Riding in a helo, staying up for 50-some hours straight, carrying a machine gun … I wouldn't have traded it for the world."