Some Iraq vets coming home with emotional scars that are difficult to heal.
By Cindy Stauffer
Updated Feb 19, 2007 15:58
Everyone stood and applauded Harman, who had been injured by a roadside bomb while serving in Iraq.
She left the building.
“I couldn’t handle it,” says the 30-year-old veteran, who lives outside of Mount Joy. “I couldn’t stand the crowd.”
Donald Woodward also could not handle things after he returned home from combat in Iraq.
Woodward took his own life last month on one of his favorite hiking trails, in Martic Township.
The 23-year-old veteran left behind a note in which he tried to explain what had happened to him.
“He said life had come at him too fast,” says his mother, Lori, of Manor Township. “He wasn’t ready. He had experienced so much. He said he didn’t want to be depressed and lonely anymore.”
Iraq War veterans are returning home with some heavy baggage, which is causing adjustment problems for them and their families.
Local veterans groups and medical centers are offering assistance to the growing number of soldiers who need help.
But not everyone seeks that help, and some say they know they are dealing with what will be a lifetime of adjustment to their wartime trauma.
“I didn’t know if I was happy or sad,” says Harman, who was awarded the Purple Heart for her service. “I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.”
Says Woodward’s mom, “These guys and girls have seen things none of us can imagine.”
Wartime baggage
A recent national study showed that between 15 percent and 17 percent of returning Army or Marine veterans suffered from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, a form of chronic stress that follows exposure to a traumatic event such as warfare.
Daniel Tooth sees it in the Iraq War veterans coming into the county Veterans’ Affairs office, which he directs.
“At least one in three of combat veterans have something going on,” he says, such as sleeping problems or problems with letting down their guard.
Tooth thinks the problems are related to the severity and uncertainty of the war in Iraq, where many injuries have been caused by IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, often left on roadsides.
The national study, led by Dr. Charles W. Hoge at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, confirms that veterans are being exposed to some major trauma while overseas.
About 90 percent of the veterans said they had been attacked or ambushed, and almost 90 percent had known someone who was seriously injured or killed. Also, 50 percent to 60 percent reported handling or recovering human remains.
A smaller percentage, between 9 percent and 14 percent, said they had been wounded or somehow injured themselves. Those veterans were more likely to have PTSD, which causes flashbacks, sleeping problems, hypervigilance, irritability and feelings of detachment, the study showed.
Both Harman and Woodward exhibited some PTSD symptoms, and Harman was formally diagnosed as having the disorder after she came home.
The end of normal
Harman, a New Castle native, has lived in Lancaster County about seven years. She works full time as a federal prison corrections officer and is attending school full time at Elizabethtown College, where she is pursuing a degree in business administration.
A staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserves, she served in Iraq for a year, coming home in April 2004.
Based in northern Iraq, her unit was a transportation company, “one of the deadliest jobs in the Army right now,” she says.
“You can encounter roadside bombs, you can encounter direct fire, you can encounter just about everything,” she says. “You are just dealing with lots of people in the public. You have to drive through small towns, sometimes you are out in the open. It’s always dangerous.”
Harman was a passenger in a truck that was hit by an IED. Her flak jacket protected her chest but not her right arm, which was hit with multiple shrapnel wounds.
She ended up having two surgeries and undergoing physical therapy. But after a recuperation period in the States, during which she demonstrated she could fire a gun again, the Army shipped her back to Iraq.
“You’re sad because you’re leaving your family and going back into hell,” she recalls. “You’re happy you’re going back to your team, the people you started with. It’s so many mixed emotions, you don’t know which end is up.”
She finished out her duty and returned home, where she was glad to have a “normal” environment. But she soon realized her life was anything but normal.
She took a vacation but found herself looking into every car, to see what was inside. She became unnerved at social gatherings or in crowds. She was defensive and angry with her family.
“People were saying, ‘You’re so mean. Why are you so mean?’ ” she says. “I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ ”
’Through hell and back’
Both Harman and Woodward sought help at the Lebanon VA Medical Center.
The center sees about 500 Iraq War veterans for medical issues, says Carol Sonnen, a social worker there. About 30 percent of those seek help for adjustment problems.
“These adjustment reactions are normal,” Sonnen says. “It’s expected that anyone coming back from that type of situation would have some adjustment issues. You can’t be on guard 24/7 for a whole year and come back and everything is normal, because it’s not.”
Often veterans don’t seek help right away when they return home, Sonnen says.
In fact, the Walter Reed study showed that some don’t seek help at all, even though they know they have a problem.
While three-quarters or more of veterans acknowledged they were having problems after they returned home, only 30 percent to 40 percent actually sought help from a mental health professional within the past year.
Sonnen says veterans simply may not realize they are having difficulties at first.
“When people first come home, they get busy going back to work, getting back with their family, doing chores around the house that haven’t been done — their mind is occupied,” Sonnen says. “A couple months later, when things start slowing down, that’s often when those traumatic incidents might resurface.”
The VA offers assistance that includes individual and group therapy as well as inpatient programs for those with more severe PTSD.
Initially, the VA placed Iraq veterans in support groups with Vietnam veterans, but began separating the two about six months ago. It also recently added groups just for female veterans and for veterans’ wives.
In group, veterans talk about how Iraq pervades their everyday life, such as when they snap at their spouse when asked what they want for dinner.
“Back in Iraq, you didn’t care what you had for dinner, it was all about safety and survival,” Sonnen says. “They’re still feeling that, even though they can’t identify it.”
Sonnen believes treatment for returning veterans has improved greatly since the Vietnam War. Counselors now know how to recognize and try to treat PTSD. And while veterans don’t always want to get help, they are still more likely to seek it than their counterparts were 30 years ago.
Harman began seeing a counselor and attending support groups about eight months after she got home.
She was among those who initially attended a support group that included Vietnam veterans, which she found very helpful.
“I got to talk with the guys, and they already had been through so much of it,” she says. “They could help me and deal with me. They all took me under their wing. They said, ‘C’mon baby girl, we can make it through this.’ ”
She adds, “Some of these guys had been through hell and back a couple of times. It’s like, wow, you know you’re not the only one.”
Veterans learn from each other, Harman says, such as what to do when they get nervous in a crowd. She’s also forced herself to stop being so vigilant.
And she stays busy with her full-time job and school schedule.
“I literally make myself so exhausted that I have to sleep,” she says. “It doesn’t allow my mind to wander.”
“I’m better,” she says. “Going up there, and realizing I have a problem, and taking the right steps to correct it, it really helped.”
PTSD never goes away. But Harman says she’s not resentful.
“What can I do?” she asks. “All I can do is maintain and work on myself and get better.”
One soldier’s struggle
Woodward struggled when he returned home from Iraq as well, say his mother and his wife, Tiera.
The 2000 Penn Manor graduate served five months with the Army in Iraq in 2003. During that time, he shot at a tank, killing three Iraqis. His lieutenant also was killed while he was there.
When he returned home from the war, he was quiet and very withdrawn. His father, Jeffrey, an Army veteran himself, noticed it immediately and tried to reach out to him.
So did other family members, but no one could reach Woodward, who retreated behind yes or no answers, the two women say.
Woodward enrolled at Millersville University, studying biology, but dropped out after a semester. He then had a series of jobs, doing security and installing heating and air conditioning.
He had trouble sleeping, was sullen and moody, his family says, and resisted suggestions that he get counseling.
“There was no way he was going,” says his wife, a Pequea resident who met her husband in high school. “He was pushing everyone away.”
He and his wife separated in 2005 but had periods in which they reconciled and tried to work things out. But Woodward seemed to be on a downward spiral, not caring about his appearance and staying out late with friends.
Last summer, his family turned for help to the Lebanon VA, which said the family needed to get him to the medical center. Woodward again refused to go.
Just before Thanksgiving, he lit his truck on fire and got inside. His wife found him in time and stopped him from killing himself.
Woodward finally admitted he needed help and scheduled an appointment with the VA. He was put on antidepressant medication and was scheduled for counseling, a month later.
Then he went off his medication, which his family did not know about at the time.
But to his family, he seemed to be doing better.
“A lot of the old Donald was coming back,” his mom says.
A group of Maryland students found his body March 3 on the hiking trail, where he had shot himself. His family found two notes, and some of his belongings he had laid out on a table at his apartment in preparation for his death.
His family wishes that the VA had been more on top of Woodward and his struggles.
They think the medical center has been overwhelmed with the large number of veterans who need help. They would like to see the center expand its services, offer evening counseling sessions and keep families involved in treatment.
After Woodward died, his family found journals in which the soldier wrote about his experiences in Iraq.
“He never got over what he saw,” his mother says.
Woodward had a large tattoo inscribed on one of his legs as a tribute to his fallen lieutenant. The tattoo also included the serenity prayer, which he had posted in his house, in his truck and included in one of his suicide notes.
It reads, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
“Courage to change the things I can;
“And wisdom to know the difference.”
