As the holiday spirit has permeated every last nook and cranny of the North End and seemingly the world, this isn’t the same season it’s been in years past.

Just beneath the happy-spirited velour an unrelenting wistfulness, a somber remembrance and a lonesome longing go quietly unspoken in valiant attempts to keep the season light. But when moms and dads, sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews can’t be home for the holidays, something’s wrong.

As the national media trumpets the rapidly increasing body count in Iraq as nearing the 3,000 milestone with more than 25,000 injured, it’s easy to concentrate on those servicemen and women. What those numbers don’t show are the thousands who have returned home apparently unscathed by the hardships of combat.

Yet it is those, who carry deep-seated pain and gutwrenching memories, who need extra compassion and understanding during the holidays.

Yes, they’re glad to be home, but until all of their brothers-in-arms climb aboard that last homebound C-140 for a one-way trip to the good old U.S. of A, their minds are never far away from the sights and sounds of combat.

They can think of at least a dozen of their buddies, who ought to be home for the holidays to see their newborn son or daughter or marry their high school sweetheart. Instead their buddies were on patrol celebrating Christmas Day with a rifle and a ruck instead of a stocking and a dance around the tree.

They do their best to laugh and crack a grin in the merriment of the ongoing festivities, but deep down they’re not the same and probably never will be.

They just came back from a war and while the reception isn’t as shameful as the one endured by Vietnam veterans, it’s not the grand celebration World War II vets received.

Fellow veterans understand better than those who haven’t served there are some things these brave men and women will carry to their graves in silence, but country singer Darryl Worley has found a way to put in terms, most everyone can understand in his song, “I Just Came Back (From a War).”

“I said, ‘I just came back from a place where they hated me and everything I stand for;

A land where our brothers are dying for others who don’t even care any more.

If I’m not exactly the same good old boy that you ran around with before, I just came back from a war.”

So as you and yours enjoy the rightful festiveness of the season, raise a glass to those who often go unnoticed as they carry on without a single word of complaint. They may have all their limbs, but they’ve been wounded as well.