For one Toby Keith fan in Houston, the singer's Sept. 8 concert wasn't just a night out, it was a huge homecoming surprise.

A video just now making the rounds shows Keith pulling a woman onstage (she's managed to keep her name out of the press). Keith tells her he'll play his hit "American Soldier" as a tribute to her husband, Major Pete Cruz, who was stationed in Afghanistan.

As the song ends, Keith and his band segue to "The Star Spangled Banner," at which point a man in fatigues comes on stage to give Keith a different guitar.

And surprise! The man giving Keith the guitar is the woman's husband back, and the entire audience gets to witness the couple's reunion.

Watch the above video to see how it all plays out (spoiler: go to just under the 3:00 mark for the big reveal).

What do you think of the reunion? Tell us on Facebook.

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explore.org

The Vancouver City Opera staged a workshop of "Fallujah," the first opera about the Iraq War, but the production still needs to find a theater home.

Can the stirring sounds of opera reach out to a young generation of veterans dealing with the pain of post-traumatic stress disorder? That's what Marine and Iraq War vet Christian Ellis and Iraqi American playwright Heather Raffo are hoping.

Along with composer Tobin Stokes, Ellis and Raffo worked to set Ellis' wartime experiences to music, creating "Fallujah," the first-ever opera written about the Iraq War.

But it wasn't easy for Raffo and Ellis to come together to work on the project. Ellis said that while it's hard for him to admit he held prejudice against those of Iraqi descent, those feelings were there.

"It took a lot for me to actually go meet (Raffo), and I'm glad I did," he told NBC News.

And Raffo, whose earlier one-woman play, "9 Parts of Desire" focuses on Iraqi women, had her own worries. After a lifetime of hearing stories from her father's family in Baghdad, she says she wasn't sure she was ready to "fully take on (the U.S. military's) story and to let it live in me as humanly as the Iraqi side."

That all changed within minutes of their meeting. "The moment I walked into (Raffo's) apartment ... she gave me a hug and (our connection) was like -- instant," Ellis said.

Raffo agrees. "I might have been most moved and surprised by the level of clarity, honesty, and ulimately vulnerability with which he spoke," she says. "I mean, Marines are really strong people, but I noticed how emotionally strong and fragile Christian is. He was an absolute open book."

He had some heavy stories to share. A former machine gunner, Ellis was in one of the first units to invade Fallujah in 2004, fighting in two of the bloodiest battles U.S. forces saw there. He's open about the four suicide attempts he made after his return home, and about the 33 friends he lost, some to battle, some to suicide. He's marked himself with intricate arm and chest tattoos that carry 33 drops of red to remember those friends, an idea inspired by the red "blood stripe" Marines wear on the trousers of their dress blues.

Ellis had created a written story outlining some of his experiences in Iraq, and with Raffo's help, the two set about turning that into an opera. "Fallujah" begins with a Marine named Phillip in the suicide ward of a VA hospital, trying to decide if he will allow his mother in to see him.

When the two met, Raffo had just given birth to her second child, so motherly emotions were flowing freely on many levels.

Chad Galloway / Opus 59 Films

Christian Ellis, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, and Heather Raffo, an Iraqi American playwright, collaborated on "Fallujah," but both admit they had prejudices before meeting.

"Pairing these kind of in-depth conversations with mother-son relationships while I had just given birth to a son was really part of our bonding and coming together," she said. "We were really relating as a mother with a young man."

A duet between two grieving mothers, one American, one Iraqi, is a central part of the production. Ellis is quick to point out that Phillip's mother in the opera is not based on his own mother, and mom Michelle Ellis says she understands.

"He told me, 'Mom, it's not you, it's a character that I've created'," Michelle Ellis said. "He has created a story, and I think that the power of it is real."

Michelle Ellis remembers her son's fascination with operatic music going way back, noting with a laugh that he would sing the famous "Figaro, Figaro" section of "The Barber of Seville" opera in the shower.

"He loved music ever since he was such a little kid," she said.  "He's got a real big heart, and I'm hoping that will come out in the opera."

explore.org

"Fallujah" flashes between a suicidal Marine's struggles in the present day, and his flashbacks to his experiences during the war.

From all accounts, it has. The opera doesn't shy away from the brutality of battle, flashing back between Phillip's present-day struggle and what Raffo calls "daymares," flashbacks to the war. In one scene, Phillip watches his best friend die, and another involves a horrible event involving a young Iraqi boy he's befriended. Both events are drawn from Ellis' own war experiences.

Ellis himself is still living with the traumas he experienced in the war. His transition home was difficult, and it took some time before a friend who worked with veterans helped him realize he was suffering from PTSD. Even now, suicidal thoughts still come and go. And he's struggling to find work in a world that he notes seems unfriendly to all unemployed people, but especially to veterans. He's sent out 200 resumes and received only two calls about work.

"It's hard to put on a resume, I've been a machine gunner, I've been an instructor, I've been a leader," he says. "I know how to manage people, but I really don't have the retail experience you seem to require."

City Opera Vancouver developed "Fallujah" with funds from Explore.org, which is part of the Annenberg Foundation. It's the rare opera that has almost the equivalent of a movie trailer -- clips from a May final workshop are available to watch online.

Artistic director Charles Barber said despite its military theme, the opera is accessible to all. "I've never been on a battlefield in my life," Barber said. "You don't have to have been there with an AK-47 to know what it means."

Composer Tobin Stokes worked to make each character's musical language fit his background and generation, even incorporating the sounds of an oud, a traditional Middle Eastern stringed instrument.

"We have something here that tells a story, yes, but it digs deeper and touches the heart of the problems war leaves behind, and I know it can start dialogues and healing," Stokes said. "I've seen it happening already."

But the opera has yet to find a company and theater willing to produce it. Raffo and Ellis would like to see "Fallujah" land in Washington, D.C., perhaps at the Kennedy Center.

Such a location, Raffo notes, would allow the opera to be seen by employees of the State Department, Pentagon and Iraqi Embassy, as well as regular members of the military and civilians.

"That makes for a conversation, and that is exactly what we want to happen," Raffo said.

Have you seen the returning vets in your life struggle to adjust to life after their wartime experiences? Tell us on Facebook.

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An army doctor works with a World War II veteran in the 1946 John Huston documentary "Let There Be Light."

"The guns are quiet now," is the first line in John Huston's 1946 short film, "Let There Be Light," which focuses on World War II veterans dealing with what we'd today call post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Quiet, perhaps. But the echoes of those guns were still ringing in the minds of many returning soldiers -- much as they still are with modern veterans.

Huston, himself a veteran and director of such films as "The Maltese Falcon" and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," filmed soldiers being treated at Long Island's Mason General Hospital for what at the time was called shellshock.

Some soldiers in the film suffered visible tics, shook uncontrollably, stuttered badly, and in worse cases, couldn't walk or talk due to their wartime experience. Others appeared fine externally, but were battling nightmares, memories of combat, and other issues.

One man breaks down simply while trying to tell a psychiatrist about a photograph of his sweetheart, another says that after seeing so many friends die, he made the assumption he was next.

The hour-long documentary, with brief narration by Huston's father, Oscar-winner Walter Huston, was a revelation for its time, for its unprecedented film techniques as well as its content.  It uses unscripted footage of doctors treating patients -- unheard of for such films at the time -- and is shot and lit like a major Hollywood movie. It also broke ground by showing both black and white soldiers freely mixing at the hospital, sharing both group therapy sessions and playing sports together.

National Archives

Both black and white soldiers are shown in integrated therapy groups, which may have been part of the reason the Army shelved the film for so long.

It's believed that a mix of those reasons was what led the Army to all but suppress the film until 1980, when it released a poorly edited version, with some dialogue completely inaudible.

"We don't know what combination it was that (the Army) didn't like," said Annette Melville, director of the National Film Preservation Foundation, which funded the film's restoration.

Not only was the film suppressed, but in 1947, the Army released "Shades of Gray," a film that's essentially a remake of Huston's work, even lifting dialogue from "Let There Be Light" and putting it into the mouths of actors -- all of them white.

A fully restored version of Huston's original film is available for free online viewing for three months on the National Film Preservation Foundation's website. And in a time when modern veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are dealing with similiar issues, many believe that the 65-year-old footage can still be relevant.

"If you listen to the dialogue, it could have been recorded yesterday," Melville told msnbc.com. She hopes that younger veterans will find something to relate to in the film, and says that that interested viewers can not only watch it online, but download the entire film and add it to their own websites, as the footage is in the public domain.

While mental-health issues involving veterans have been much in the news in recent years, Ron Honberg, director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told msnbc.com that seeing those issues dealt with in the setting of World War II is especially interesting, since society at the time wasn't open about such issues.

"I would say it's relevant (to modern veterans)," Honberg says. "The wartime experience is among the most horrendous experiences that people can go through. My dad, who fought in World War II, lost two of his friends right in front of him."

Honberg notes that although mental-health issues make the news more in 2012 than they did in the film's time, returning soldiers today still struggle with acceptance and treatment issues. And thanks to the different ways wars are fought today, brain injuries are just as much, if not more, of an issue as they were in the past.

"The injuries these days are different," Honberg said. "More soldiers are coming back with concussive injuries, and those are brain injuries."

Although the film is in black and white and is more than 60 years old, it may be more timely now than when it was released back in 1980.

"(In 1980) the film could look more old-fashioned both because of the rough, hand-held cinema verite styles then in fashion for documentaries and because the U.S. had no major wars from which soldiers were returning," said Scott Simmon, a film historian and chair of the English department at University of California, Davis, who wrote an essay about the preservation of the film. "Now the PTSD subject again looks, sadly enough, right up-to-date and documentaries have a wider range of acceptable styles — including such elegant ones as those in Huston’s film."

Film techniques aside, the message of the men and the demons they battle are as affecting today as they were in 1946.

"My own, no doubt hopeful sense is that — now that the film, and especially its sound, has been restored — direct emotions again come through from the psychologically wounded World War II soldiers," Simmon said. "There is something both heartbreaking and yet optimistic about the stories they tell and their recoveries."

Are the film's messages still relevant after 65 years? Tell us on Facebook.

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Mario Anzuoni / Reuters file

KISS, who will tour with Motley Crue this summer, has pledged to hire a veteran to work as a roadie.

KISS needs a roadie — and they want to hire a veteran to help out.

The band, who are touring with Motley Crue this summer, have been long-time supporters of the U.S. military, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Wounded Warrior Project. Watch their troop salute here. 

They're participating in Hiring our Heroes to give a job to a touring set carpenter who will travel with the band from July 14 through Sept. 25.

The lucky veteran who gets the gig will be part of the team that assembles the KISS stage set, helps run effects during the show and takes down the set afterwards. Applicants do not need to be a trained carpenter, but will work long hours. 

To apply for this job, send an email to hiringourheroes@uschamber.com with your resume and contact details.

More from Hiring our Heroes:
Young veterans share their skills, dreams
Capital One, Comcast pledge to hire vets
Comcast and NBC Universal will hire 1,000 veterans 
Hiring our Heroes 'unlocks the potential' of vets 
Jill Biden: Veterans will 'get the job done' 
Bloomberg: NYC is committed to hiring veterans 

For more on Hiring our Heroes, an initiative from NBC News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that aims to get veterans back into the workforce, click here. Learn more about job fairs for veterans here.