Collateral damage of Iraq war

Jack Jones Staff writer
(March 19, 2004) -

CANANDAIGUA - After a year spent dodging bombs, bullets and booby traps set by a relentless guerilla enemy that strikes without warning, Sgt. John Cooley and Sgt. Brandon Sipp were glad last month to get back home alive from Iraq.

Cooley, 21, a native of Manchester, Ontario County, and Sipp, 21, a native of Canandaigua, say they're haunted by memories of the dangers and of comrades who didn't survive. But unlike veterans of Vietnam and other wars, today's soldiers say they receive comprehensive mental health and readjustment counseling to help them through a grim rite of passage from the terrors of the battlefield to the reassuring comforts of home and family. Before coming home, "we had to go to classes on reintroduction to civilian society, and they gave us a lot of information on how to react to certain situations - and a lot of stuff about not overdoing it with alcohol," said Sipp, who fought with the Army's elite Rangers. Cooley, Sipp and other Iraq veterans say the counseling was important after duty in a war zone. Operation Iraqi Freedom, which began one year ago today, "pretty much started out with a 34-hour, 90-mile gun battle with no sleep," said Marine 1st Sgt. Lewis DuSett, 43, of Adams Basin near Spencerport. "Just a constant shoot, roll, move and push so fast our supply lines couldn't keep up with us. After a while, it's just like you're numb." Nor were they able to let their guard down and rest after declaring victory over Iraqi military forces. Even in the relative safety of U.S. military compounds, the soldiers describe narrow escapes from random attacks and booby traps - as innocent looking as a 12-ounce Coke can - that maimed or killed several of their comrades. All three combat veterans say that since returning home they find themselves constantly on guard. "When I go to the mall or someplace, the first thing I do is check everybody out and look for the quickest way out," said Cooley, who fought with the 82nd Airborne. "Every place I go now, I keep looking around, watching who goes in and out to check everybody out. ... We all have bad dreams about what happened there." The soldiers say their counseling included how to handle depression and anxieties without turning to drugs and alcohol, classes in suicide prevention and in how to cope with changes they might find within their families and communities as a result of their absences from home. Vietnam veteran and mental health counselor James Robinson said the transition from battlefield warrior to community and family is at best an awkward one. "It's like being on a record that's playing at the wrong speed - or putting a warped disc in a CD player," Robinson said. Like the soldiers in Iraq, Korean War veterans Bob Dardano and Richard Snyder returned abruptly from war to a world that required them to readjust.

"If you're in combat, you're bound to see things that distress you," said Snyder, 71, also a retired Rochester police officer who served as a forward observer with the infantry in Korea. "I did see some awful stuff over there. But, hell, I was 21 years old and everybody treated me good when I came home."

Snyder, who came home from the battlefield in an era when soldiers received few or no mental health services, advises young combat veterans to get involved fully with their families, jobs and communities and not concentrate on what they saw or found themselves having to do to stay alive in combat. "And don't go bragging about what you did in the service," Snyder said. Dardano, 76, of Rochester, also readjusted readily to civilian life after serving with the Navy in both World War II and Korea. He recalls being cheered at a parade in honor of veterans in his native Utica. "I remember coming home as a joyous time," Dardano said. "My father and my older brother also were in the war, and about two dozen of my uncles and relatives. We were all happy because we had nobody killed. But people seemed a lot different then. They welcomed you home. It wasn't like it was for the guys who served in Vietnam - and hopefully it won't be like Vietnam for our veterans this time." Vietnam combat veteran Mike Doran said the transition back to civilian life was harder for him and many others who served during the decadelong war in Southeast Asia. Like the soldiers in Iraq, soldiers in Vietnam were under fire day and night from an often-unseen enemy that included women, children and suicide attackers. "It took me a long time to readjust - if I have," said Doran, 60, a former mayor of Naples, Ontario County, who served with the 11th Armored Cavalry. "The worst thing was that when I came home, everything seemed changed and out of place." Doran said he received no counseling about potential psychological disturbances that could result from the trauma of combat. He said he was unprepared for the hostility of anti-war protesters, for the nightmares, battlefield flashbacks, depression and anxieties. And for years, he said, he suffered in silence. After reading a newspaper column about post-traumatic stress disorder in 1988 - 21 years after returning from Vietnam - Doran went to the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Canandaigua and entered a PTSD counseling program. Because Iraq, like Vietnam, has turned into a guerrilla war, Doran advises young veterans to be aware of the symptoms and treatment of combat-related disturbances. About a half-dozen Iraq war veterans from Finger Lakes region already have sought counseling at the Canandaigua veterans hospital and a V.A. outpatient clinic in Rochester after returning home.

"They're beginning to trickle in," said Dr. Paul Decancq, V.A. lead psychologist and PTSD Clinic director. The problems being reported by Iraq veterans are like "the Vietnam kind of trauma in that there's no safe place for them," said Decancq. "In World War II, guys could be moved to a safe place, a rear area where no fighting was going on. But in Vietnam or for a soldier serving now in Baghdad, there just is no safe place. The enemy doesn't wear a uniform and it's difficult to know where the threat is - so the threat becomes everywhere and everybody. Because of that kind of heightened stress, the guys returning say they're just on guard all the time. Even after they're home, they're still anxious and nervous." As a result, veterans struggling with the aftermath of battlefield trauma "want to be alone, want to isolate," Decancq said. Doran advises young veterans not to delay seeking help if the anxieties become unmanageable. "The important thing is to seek out help as soon as you realize you're having a problem, especially if drugs and alcohol are involved," Doran said. "You've suffered enough by going through, what you went through and help is there. There's no need to suffer any longer."

JJONES@DemocratandChronicle.com

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