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thedrifter
03-05-08, 06:59 AM
Healing the hidden scars

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer
Retired veterans share their post-traumatic stress stories with returning troops

CAMP PENDLETON -- In combat, the older former warrior told the young Marines, "funny things happen."

Weeks, months and even years after combat, he continued, those "funny things" can re-emerge as haunting nightmares, jittery paranoia or the root of any number of abhorrent and self-destructive behaviors.

"You cannot take a normal person and put them in that environment without it affecting them," the speaker, David Pelkey, told about 25 Camp Pendleton Marines who recently returned from Iraq.

Pelkey, a Mira Mesa resident and a Vietnam veteran who served in the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, is the national director of American Combat Veterans of War, a nonprofit group founded seven years ago by Carlsbad resident Bill Rider, also a Vietnam veteran.

"We try to use ourselves as an example of what not to do in terms of denying the fact that you have been impacted by the war," Rider said about the program.

While theirs is not the only program about post-traumatic stress, Rider said that American Combat Veterans of War is unique in providing firsthand advice from other veterans to the troops.

"We're here because we care about you, damn it, and there's something you don't understand that we do," said retired Marine Col. Al Slater, a Navy Cross recipient who also spoke to the returning troops. "We don't want your generation to go through the hell we did."

Post-traumatic stress, classified by the military as a distinct, diagnosable disorder, has been linked to substance abuse, alcoholism, domestic abuse, sleep disorders, suicide and other self-destructive behavior.

The Marine Corps diagnosed 5,174 cases of post-traumatic stress between the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and April 2007, according to statistics provided by the service to the North County Times.

During Tuesday's gathering, five veterans shared their battle stories, both physical and mental, as part a series of required debriefings that returning troops must attend in their first week back from a combat zone.

The talk, colored with stories about firefights, helicopter crashes and lost buddies, may have been the most riveting of the debriefings. But more than just hearing chilling war stories, the troops received practical advice about how to identify signs of stress.

"When I came back from my first tour, I had similar experiences," said 1st Lt. Jake Cusack, 25, who had just returned from working on a border transition team in Iraq. "You'd hear a loud noise, and think it's an IED (improvised explosive devise)."

Cusack said it was meaningful to him to see former Marines helping today's younger troops. Also impressed was Master Sgt. Ernie Lonza, 43, who had just returned from Tikrit in Iraq's Anbar province where 11,000 locally based troops are serving this year.

"I'm humbled by listening to them," Lonza said.

Lonza, who is stationed at the Marine Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, said it was more meaningful to hear from veterans with firsthand experience. The lectures left him alert to signs that may indicate stress in his own life.

"My wife has already told me I'm having trouble with my sleep patterns," he said. "I can't sleep like I used to."

With his hands sometimes clinched in fists as he retold his war stories, Slater told the troops about seeing an American tank roll backward and kill wounded troops on the ground. He also spoke of losing 50 Marines under his command and shooting a sniper point-blank in the face and chest with a pistol.

"Usually the stuff that bothers you most hits you later," he said.

But Slater never wanted to bother his family about the emotional troubles that plagued him, so he said he kept it inside.

Decades later, he looked back and saw much of his behavior -- compulsive gambling, volunteering for more combat duty -- came from an addiction to action. Even at 68, he said he sometimes finds himself longing to be with troops in Iraq engaged in a firefight.

Tim Jordan, a retired Marine master gunnery sergeant from Santee, also emphasized the therapeutic benefit of talking about problems with like-minded people.

Jordan invited everybody at the talk, and veterans everywhere, to stop by the Safe Warrior Outreach Program, which he conducts at 7 p.m. Thursdays at 2111 Geneva St. in Oceanside. Combat veterans are welcome to meet and talk with other veterans and Jordan, who is earning a master's degree in psychology with a focus on post-combat stress.

"Anyone can get it," Jordan said. "You can look around and see there's no threat here, but all of a sudden you might hear something or smell something, and your nervous system lights up like a Christmas tree."

American Combat Veterans of War can be reached at (760) 552-7501 or (760) 763-6938.

-- Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.

Ellie