THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Homelessness Plagues Many U.S. Veterans


Monday February 28, 2005 5:16 PM

By VICKI SMITH

Associated Press Writer

FAIRMONT, W.Va. (AP) - Harleigh Marsh was tough enough to scrape ice from the frozen deck of a Navy aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic. Smart enough to strip and rebuild a cockpit. And responsible enough to maintain survival gear for pilots. So when he found himself homeless six years ago, he figured he could handle it.

Like many of the estimated 500,000 veterans who will become homeless at some point this year, Marsh had the ``Army of one'' mentality that the armed forces demand.

``When a squadron or something needs you, you don't ask questions. You never say no. You salute and you do the job,'' he says. ``And when you get out, you don't want people telling you what to do.''

Veterans account for nearly one-third of all homeless men in America, even though the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says they comprise only 13 percent of adult males in the general population. In West Virginia, where Marsh now struggles to rebuild his life, one in nine people is a veteran - the highest per capita rate in the nation in the 2000 census.

Marsh, 48 and single, has a job at a nursing home but earns too little for a place of his own. For months, he's lived at Scott Place, a shelter overlooking a town of about 20,000 - the town where he spent several years of his childhood and the closest thing to home.

Marsh doesn't mind the lack of privacy in the men's quarters, a third-floor maze connected by doorless doorways, or sharing a 14-by-14 space. ``In the Navy, we'd have nine to 12 people in a room this big,'' he says.

And his bathroom has both a shower and tub. ``The other guys just have showers,'' he says.

Pete Dougherty, the VA's director of homeless programs in Washington, says there are two kinds of homeless people: Some are short-timers, driven to the streets by pure economics. Others have psychiatric or substance abuse problems that contribute to chronic homelessness, meaning they are homeless for more than a year or four times within three years.

Veterans are twice as likely as other people to be chronically homeless.

``One reason for that is, I think, is that military service is a great place to learn to live in the harsh environment. They're much better prepared than non-veterans,'' Dougherty says. ``They seemingly have a higher tolerance and a certain degree of pride and toughness that they - more than the rest of us - can endure tough circumstances.''

Many who are now homeless were successful soldiers, sailors and Marines. ``They've not simply been incapable of getting along in society,'' Dougherty says.

The VA sees hundreds of thousands of veterans each year, and their skill levels and intelligence are, in Dougherty's words, ``sometimes amazing.''

``There is no IQ quotient on mental illness and substance abuse. A lot of very, very bright people have mental illness or substance abuse issues,'' he says. But homelessness can happen quickly for a person with no support system, ``and once you're down in that pit, it can be very, very difficult to get out.''

Marsh joined the Navy in 1975, working as an aviation structural mechanic on aircraft carriers and a Florida base for almost four years. He loved the military, particularly the travel. But when an officer told him to re-enlist because he'd be good at nothing else, Marsh heard a challenge.

When his tour ended in 1979, he tried college. For a few months.

``One day I just said, 'I'm going down to Louisiana,''' he recalls, smoking a cigarette as snow wafts onto the porch of the shelter. ``And I've been traveling ever since.''

He found work as a drywall hanger and a painter, traveling whenever the phone rang and renting rooms by the week. He tried to settle down in Milwaukee, where he fathered a child. But in February 1999, his relationship broke up and he fell apart.

The VA says about half the nation's homeless veterans have some form of mental illness, and nearly 70 percent struggle with alcohol and drugs. But Marsh won't say exactly what he did during his downward spiral.

Though he says he'd once made $1,000 a week, he suddenly found himself unable to hold a job. For years, he traveled between Wisconsin and West Virginia. His mother and stepfather bought him cigarettes and food, sometimes letting him crash on the couch.

Last year, he decided to settle in Fairmont, about 70 miles south of Pittsburgh. He went to the Union Mission, where a W-2 shows he made $874.94 on a drywall job. He tried to start a business, but when his tools and employees went missing, he checked into Scott Place.

``He was a totally different person then. He was totally noncompliant,'' says case worker Linda Ashby. Marsh ignored the rules, avoided the day staff ``and generally kept things in a turmoil.''

When he left, Ashby wasn't sorry to see him go. And when he returned months later, she was skeptical.

``But since then,'' she says, ``he has totally changed.''

Marsh admits he was difficult. Reeling from depression, he was also taking drugs for a tumor on his forehead, polyps in his nose and hepatitis C.

``They made me sick, tired, and I didn't want to be bothered,'' he says. ``Somebody said something or did anything, I'd snap at them a little bit.''

Marsh says veterans are difficult to reach, physically and emotionally. Many lack access to a newspaper, TV or computer. They have learned to do without.

``Some people want help. Some people don't. I was one who walked in the doors and really didn't want it,'' he says. ``Then, fortunately, I came to the realization that I wanted it. ... Now, I listen and learn.''

At Scott Place, he discovered a state program that would pay for classes to become a certified nurse's aide. When he graduated, Sister Mary Stephen hired him at St. Barbara's Memorial Nursing Home in the old coal mining village of Monongah, about 5 miles from Fairmont.

Marsh had no car and no home, but she took a chance. And not because anyone asked.

``It's what you're supposed to do,'' she says. ``They're our fellow men. No one should have to be told to do this.''

After taxes and child support, Marsh puts what's left of his pay in the bank. He plans to get a driver's license, find a used car and buy insurance. He's applied for federally subsidized housing, and friends at work are looking for an affordable efficiency apartment.

This fall, he plans to apply to nursing programs at West Virginia and Fairmont State universities. He wants to work and study full time, getting help from the nurses at St. Barbara's.

But he's reluctant to set deadlines.

``I don't want to set a time line now because it would be an unrealistic goal, and it might not be achievable,'' he says. ``And then I might not get it done by a certain date, and I'd get all depressed again.''

Though it doesn't reach everyone, the VA spends nearly $179 million a year on programs for the homeless.

``Our job is to get you to that place where you were accountable and responsible for what you did,'' Dougherty says. ``The truth of the matter is, when veterans come through these programs and they find that accountability and responsibility again, they're happy to do it and happy to be there. That's what they want.''

Marsh agrees. But he wants one thing more.

He hasn't seen a dentist since 1996. Many of his teeth have shattered and blackened, and a cracked back molar causes constant pain. He carries numbing gel in his pocket.

``Dental care is still my major need, and it's a major concern to every vet I've ever talked to, homeless or not,'' he says.

Though the VA offers drugs, X-rays and extractions, Marsh can't bear the thought of losing another tooth. But reconstruction, he says, could change his life.

``I could smile again.''

Posted 2/28/2005 2:08 AM




Trauma of Iraq war haunting thousands returning home
By William M. Welch, USA TODAY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. ?- Jeremy Harrison sees the warning signs in the Iraq war veterans who walk through his office door every day ?- flashbacks, inability to relax or relate, restless nights and more.
Jesus Bocanegra, 23, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, visits the South Texas War Memorial.
By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY

He recognizes them as symptoms of combat stress because he's trained to, as a counselor at the small storefront Vet Center here run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He recognizes them as well because he, too, has faced readjustment in the year since he returned from Iraq, where he served as a sergeant in an engineering company that helped capture Baghdad in 2003.

"Sometimes these sessions are helpful to me," Harrison says, taking a break from counseling some of the nation's newest combat veterans. "Because I deal with a lot of the same problems."

As the United States nears the two-year mark in its military presence in Iraq still fighting a violent insurgency, it is also coming to grips with one of the products of war at home: a new generation of veterans, some of them scarred in ways seen and unseen. While military hospitals mend the physical wounds, the VA is attempting to focus its massive health and benefits bureaucracy on the long-term needs of combat veterans after they leave military service. Some suffer from wounds of flesh and bone, others of emotions and psyche.

These injured and disabled men and women represent the most grievously wounded group of returning combat veterans since the Vietnam War, which officially ended in 1975. Of more than 5 million veterans treated at VA facilities last year, from counseling centers like this one to big hospitals, 48,733 were from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many of the most common wounds aren't seen until soldiers return home. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is an often-debilitating mental condition that can produce a range of unwanted emotional responses to the trauma of combat. It can emerge weeks, months or years later. If left untreated, it can severely affect the lives not only of veterans, but their families as well.

Of the 244,054 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan already discharged from service, 12,422 have been in VA counseling centers for readjustment problems and symptoms associated with PTSD. Comparisons to past wars are difficult because emotional problems were often ignored or written off as "combat fatigue" or "shell shock." PTSD wasn't even an official diagnosis, accepted by the medical profession, until after Vietnam.

There is greater recognition of the mental-health consequences of combat now, and much research has been done in the past 25 years. The VA has a program that attempts to address them and supports extensive research. Harrison is one of 50 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars hired by the VA as counselors for their fellow veterans.

'It takes you back there'

Post-traumatic stress was defined in 1980, partly based on the experiences of soldiers and victims of war. It produces a wide range of symptoms in men and women who have experienced a traumatic event that provoked intense fear, helplessness or horror. (Related story: Iraq injuries differ from past wars)

The events are sometimes re-experienced later through intrusive memories, nightmares, hallucinations or flashbacks, usually triggered by anything that symbolizes or resembles the trauma. Troubled sleep, irritability, anger, poor concentration, hypervigilance and exaggerated responses are often symptoms.

Individuals may feel depression, detachment or estrangement, guilt, intense anxiety and panic, and other negative emotions. They often feel they have little in common with civilian peers; issues that concern friends and family seem trivial after combat.

Harrison says they may even hit their partners during nightmares and never know it.

Many Iraq veterans have returned home to find the aftermath of combat presents them with new challenges:

• Jesus Bocanegra was an Army infantry scout for units that pursued Saddam Hussein in his hometown of Tikrit. After he returned home to McAllen, Texas, it took him six months to find a job.

He was diagnosed with PTSD and is waiting for the VA to process his disability claim. He goes to the local Vet Center but is unable to relate to the Vietnam-era counselors.

"I had real bad flashbacks. I couldn't control them," Bocanegra, 23, says. "I saw the murder of children, women. It was just horrible for anyone to experience."

Bocanegra recalls calling in Apache helicopter strikes on a house by the Tigris River where he had seen crates of enemy ammunition carried in. When the gunfire ended, there was silence.

But then children's cries and screams drifted from the destroyed home, he says. "I didn't know there were kids there," he says. "Those screams are the most horrible thing you can hear."

At home in the Rio Grande Valley, on the Mexico border, he says young people have no concept of what he's experienced. His readjustment has been difficult: His friends threw a homecoming party for him, and he got arrested for drunken driving on the way home.

"The Army is the gateway to get away from poverty here," Bocanegra says. "You go to the Army and expect to be better off, but the best job you can get (back home) is flipping burgers. ... What am I supposed to do now? How are you going to live?"

• Lt. Julian Goodrum, an Army reservist from Knoxville, Tenn., is being treated for PTSD with therapy and anti-anxiety drugs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He checked himself into a civilian psychiatric hospital after he was turned away from a military clinic, where he had sought attention for his mental problems at Fort Knox, Ky. He's facing a court-martial for being AWOL while in the civilian facility.

Goodrum, 34, was a transportation platoon leader in Iraq, running convoys of supplies from Kuwait into Iraq during the invasion. He returned to the USA in the summer of 2003 and experienced isolation, depression, an inability to sleep and racing thoughts.

"It just accumulated until it overwhelmed me. I was having a breakdown and trying to get assistance," he says. "The smell of diesel would trigger things for me. Loud noises, crowds, heavy traffic give me a hard time now. I have a lot of panic. ... You feel like you're choking."

• Sean Huze, a Marine corporal awaiting discharge at Camp Lejeune, N.C., doesn't have PTSD but says everyone who saw combat suffers from at least some combat stress. He says the unrelenting insurgent threat in Iraq gives no opportunity to relax, and combat numbs the senses and emotions.

"There is no 'front,' " Huze says. "You go back to the rear, at the Army base in Mosul, and you go in to get your chow, and the chow hall blows up."

Huze, 30, says the horror often isn't felt until later. "I saw a dead child, probably 3 or 4 years old, lying on the road in Nasiriyah," he says. "It moved me less than if I saw a dead dog at the time. I didn't care. Then you come back, if you are fortunate enough, and hold your own child, and you think of the dead child you didn't care about. ... You think about how little you cared at the time, and that hurts."

Smells bring back the horror. "A barbecue pit ?- throw a steak on the grill, and it smells a lot like searing flesh," he says. "You go to get your car worked on, and if anyone is welding, the smell of the burning metal is no different than burning caused by rounds fired at it. It takes you back there instantly."

• Allen Walsh, an Army reservist, came back to Tucson 45 pounds lighter and with an injured wrist. He was unable to get his old job back teaching at a truck-driving school. He started his own business instead, a mobile barbecue service. He's been waiting nearly a year on a disability claim with the VA.

Walsh, 36, spent much of the war in Kuwait, attached to a Marine unit providing force protection and chemical decontamination. He says he has experienced PTSD, which he attributes to the constant threat of attack and demand for instant life-or-death decisions.

"It seemed like every day you were always pointing your weapon at somebody. It's something I have to live with," he says.

At home, he found he couldn't sleep more than three or four hours a night. When the nightmares began, he started smoking cigarettes. He'd find himself shaking and quick-tempered.

"Any little noise and I'd jump out of bed and run around the house with a gun," he says. "I'd wake up at night with cold sweats."

'A safe environment'

A recent Defense Department study of combat troops returning from Iraq found that soldiers and Marines who need counseling the most are least likely to seek it because of the stigma of mental health care in the military.

By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY
Jesus Bocanegra is waiting for the VA to process his disability claim.

One in six troops questioned in the study admitted to symptoms of severe depression, PTSD or other problems. Of those, six in 10 felt their commanders would treat them differently and fellow troops would lose confidence if they acknowledged their problems.

A report this month by the Government Accountability Office said the VA "is a world leader in PTSD treatment." But it said the department "does not have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of new combat veterans while still providing for veterans of past wars." It said the department hasn't met its own goals for PTSD clinical care and education, even as it anticipates "greater numbers of veterans with PTSD seeking VA services."

Harrison, who was a school counselor and Army Reservist from Wheeling, W.Va., before being called to active duty in January 2003, thinks cases of PTSD may be even more common than the military's one-in-six estimate.

He is on the leading edge of the effort to help these veterans back home. Harrison and other counselors invite Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to stop in to talk. Often, that leads to counseling sessions and regular weekly group therapy. If appropriate, they refer the veterans to VA doctors for drug therapies such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications.

"First of all, I let them talk. I want to find out all their problems," he says. "Then I assure them they're not alone. It's OK."

Fifty counselors from the latest war is a small number, considering the VA operates 206 counseling centers across the country. Their strategy is to talk with veterans about readjustment before they have problems, or before small problems become big ones. The VA also has staff at 136 U.S. military bases now, including five people at Walter Reed, where many of the most grievously injured are sent.

The toughest part of helping veterans, Harrison says, is getting them to overcome fears of being stigmatized and to step into a Vet Center. "They think they can handle the situation themselves," he says.

Vet Centers provide help for broader issues of readjustment back to civilian life, including finding a job, alcohol and drug abuse counseling, sexual trauma counseling, spouse and family counseling, and mental or emotional problems that fall short of PTSD.

More than 80% of the staff are veterans, and 60% served in combat zones, says Al Batres, head of the VA's readjustment counseling service. "We're oriented toward peer counseling, and we provide a safe environment for soldiers who have been traumatized," he says.

"A Vietnam veteran myself, it would have been so great if we'd had this kind of outreach," says Johnny Bragg, director of the Vet Center where Harrison works. "If you can get with the guys who come back fresh ... and actually work with their trauma and issues, hopefully over the years you won't see the long-term PTSD."

In all cases, the veteran has to be the one who wants to talk before counselors can help. "Once they come through the door, they usually come back," Harrison says. "For them, this is the only chance to talk to somebody, because their families don't understand, their friends don't understand. That's the big thing. They can't talk to anyone. They can't relate to anyone."

Capt. David Rozelle, commander of a U.S. Army cavalry troop, lost his right foot when his Humvee ran over a mine in Hit, Iraq, in 2003.

Fitted with a prosthetic leg, he was swimming, running and skiing before a year was out. Soon he was even competing in triathlons. Restored to command of a cavalry troop, Rozelle will return to Iraq next month, becoming the first battlefield soldier to undergo an amputation and return to the same battlefield.

You can read more about him here.

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Yin and yang

With your logic I can prove that Nazi Germany was a democracy, McG.

old europe wrote:

With your logic I can prove that Nazi Germany was a democracy, McG.

What is my logic? You might get Dookiestix to believe it, but not too many others.

Revel writes

Quote:

There is a world of difference between when we began our country and the start of the new Iraq. We began our revolution ourselves, the Iraqi's had theirs thrust on them from outsiders.

Back to the drawing board for you my friend. We weren't just trying to unite factions with opposing goals from within the country--though there were many factions with opposing goals--but we were trying to unite 13 separate sovereign colonies, each with their own agenda, into a united whole. Add to that the outside countries who wanted a piece of that pie and a sizable number of colonists who wanted to reunited with England, and then you tell me Iraq will be tougher.

Yes, I posted an example. Did you follow the link? Did you read everything there? Did you understand that the pity party the libs want to have for returning soldiers is not wanted by them?