SPECIAL REPORT: Combat that never ends ...
By Alysa Landry The Daily Times
Article Launched: 03/30/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT
FARMINGTON — John Collard bit down on the cold steel barrel of a pistol. He was alone in his bedroom that day in 1991, alone except for the haunting string of memories that had become his closest companions during the previous two decades — since he returned from Vietnam.
Numb, Collard willed himself to pull the trigger. He still was deliberating when his daughter found him and called 911. "The doctors didn't really know what was going on," he said. "They didn't understand. Neither did I." The incident came 23 years after Collard joined the Army at age 20 and went to Vietnam as a combat medic. He spent 13 months covered in blood.
By 1991, he already had spent more than two decades trying to forget it, and he'd had enough. Collard slept one hour per night for 23 years. When he did sleep, he was haunted by a recurring nightmare. In the dream, Collard is back at the medic table, up to his elbows in blood.
"I was exposed to injury, death, blood, lots of body parts," he said. "I wake up at night and I am covered in blood, and my clothes are covered in blood. It is so real, I can see it."
Collard, 60, was injured in Vietnam and retired from the military at age 21. He went to college to pursue a career in medicine. He married and raised three children. And five years ago at age 55 — more than a decade after he considered ending his life — Collard was diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
He's one of an estimated 25 million United States soldiers who didn't leave the war on the battlefield.
Veterans who suffer from the disorder often experience nightmares, flashbacks and exaggerated startle responses, which is the phenomenon that sends veterans scrambling for shelter during fireworks displays or other unexpected explosions.
The reactions are part of a "short circuit" in the brain, said Dawn Snuggerud, trauma specialist at Presbyterian Medical Services. The brain is aware of the stimulus, but it fails to place it in proper context.
"They find themselves acting, but they don't have a clue why," she said. "The trauma is pulling them back to the past and they're problem solving as if they are in the middle of it all over again."
Collard has found himself crouched beneath cars or under beds on more than one occasion. Helicopters trigger this reaction; so do firecrackers. The Fourth of July, he said, feels like an air raid.
"You may be in your office or home, but in your mind you are sitting in a combat zone," he said. "People are setting off firecrackers, but in your head, there are rifles going off and people screaming for a medic."
The diagnosis
Thousands of combat veterans are diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder every year, but the diagnosis is not new. World War I veterans had shell shock; during World War II the symptoms were part of battle fatigue. The condition also is called war neurosis or combat stress.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is simply the latest term used to describe the psychological and physical symptoms experienced by as many as 40 percent of all combat veterans.
Anyone who has experienced or witnessed trauma is at risk for
developing the disorder, said Robert Udero, readjustment counseling therapist at the Farmington Vet Center. The diagnosis refers to a series of symptoms that persist after the traumatic incident and cause significant disruption of normal activity.
Because combat veterans often experience intense horror and helplessness on the battle field, they are especially susceptible to the disorder, said Udero, a Vietnam veteran who was 17 when he enlisted in the Marines.
"Going to war changes your morality," he said. "You're faced with the enemy, and you have no choice but to kill them or be killed. You stop thinking of them as human beings and start looking at them as an enemy. It hits you in the heart, in the stomach, in the head when you go through those changes."
Dealing with the reality of war almost always translates into problems when a soldier tries to readjust to civilian life, Udero said.
The symptoms often are worsened when a soldier has come face to face with death, he said, either by witnessing death or by causing it. In its most severe form, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder can lead to alcohol abuse, homelessness or criminal behavior. Even in the mildest cases, however, it still causes problems with communication, relationships and feelings of self-worth.
The symptoms of the disorder are manageable, but the condition is not curable, Udero said. In most cases, the symptoms only worsen with time.
"It doesn't go away by trying to forget about it. It doesn't go away with time. It gets diluted a little bit, but it pops up in relationships, it pops up in work, it pops up in dreams," he said. "I guess they were right: War is hell. Emotionally, mentally and physically, war is hell."
Living with it
Collard struggled with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder for nearly four decades before seeking help. By then, his 36-year marriage had ended and the symptoms made it nearly impossible for him to work, he said.
Instead of dimming with time, Collard's nightmares and flashbacks became more vivid, taking him back to Vietnam in graphic detail. His senses are magnified during the flashbacks, and he actually experiences the traumatic incidents just as he did the first time, he said.
"The dreams, the actual reliving of the experiences, those were horrendous," he said. "What was going on in my head was just totally unbelievable."
One flashback rewinds the clock to a day in 1969 when Collard tried to retrieve a soldier from a burning Army personnel carrier. The incident still haunts him, he said, and the sound of a helicopter or the smell of fire can send him back in time.
"When I got the door open, the carrier was totally engulfed in flames," he said. "I reached in and grabbed a hand and when I pulled on that hand, all the meat come off in my hand."
When a person senses danger, the brain reacts in one of three ways, Snuggerud said. It instructs the body to fight, flee or freeze. Reactions are the same whether the danger actually exists, and can translate into intense anger or violent confrontations. On the battlefield, fighting or fleeing is expected, she said, but the same reactions in a domestic situation are not
appropriate.
"A person's whole life is influenced by this," Snuggerud said. "The brain will push the trauma away, but those reactions are still triggered, just like they were in war."
Flashbacks, anger and other disorder symptoms turned day-to-day living into a chore, Collard said. Constantly aware of his surroundings, he was unable to sit in a public place unless he had his back to the wall, ensuring that no one could sneak up on him.
Trust eluded him, making relationships difficult and communication nearly impossible.
"When I was younger and stronger, I could push this stuff back. But as I got older, it just kept coming forward," he said. "I couldn't function as a person. I didn't care about my life. I didn't care if I lived or died. In fact, I would have preferred to be dead because I wouldn't have to deal with it day in and day out, and night in and night out."
The isolation
Suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder can make intimate relationships especially difficult, Vietnam veteran Claude Coberly said. Coberly, 60, turned 22 in Vietnam, where he served in the Marines with a battalion aide station. He returned home one month shy of completing his tour, armed with a doctor's note stating he was a danger to himself.
"I spent the first six months in Vietnam with a metallic taste in my mouth," he said. "I woke up one morning and realized it didn't make a difference anymore."
Coberly re-enlisted in the military and began self-medicating with alcohol. Six months after leaving Vietnam, he awoke to the sound of tree stumps being blasted from a field near the military base in Kansas City, Mo.
"It was a Saturday," he said. "With the first one that went off, I came out of bed and I hit the doorway just as my wife was coming in. I hit her and threw her down the hall. I mean, I just snapped."
The marriage dissolved, Coberly said. His next two marriages also ended when his anger and depression interfered with communication. The Aztec resident is married to his fourth wife, but relationships haven't gotten any easier.
"What you do is you push people away," he said. "At one time you used to make friends, and some of those friends were killed. So now you don't want to make friends. Now you don't want a commitment because (people) have been taken away from you."
Domestic violence is not an uncommon scenario among combat veterans, Udero said. Veterans also are associated with deviant behaviors like alcoholism, drug use and homelessness. The real culprit, however, is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, he said.
With it "comes a propensity to withdraw from family or society and internalize feelings," he said. "You see homeless vets out on the streets all the time, begging for money or hiding."
Soldiers returning home from war with its symptoms often deny the problem, Udero said, but anger and rage eventually will arise.
The symptoms were immediate for Coberly, who returned from Vietnam in 1970, but spent an additional seven years in the military. He spent the whole seven years feeling angry and depressed, haunted by his decision to join the military instead of moving to Canada.
"No one knew what PTSD was. No one wanted to listen, no one wanted to understand," he said. "You pretty much have to have the intestinal fortitude to say the hell with it' and pull your boots on in the morning and make a living for yourself and for your family, and do it no matter how you feel."
Coberly took a job in 1977 as a police officer, a career that eventually brought him to Aztec, where he works now in the oil field.
He was diagnosed with the disorder last January after battling its effects for 37 years. The diagnosis made him cry.
"A lot of us tried to work through this on our own, and it doesn't work," he said. "As a matter of fact, most of us tried it, and it doesn't work. We all grew up with that macho thing, that men don't cry.
"Yeah, men do cry.
"They need to."
Alysa Landry: alandry@daily-times.com
