Returning veterans face new challenges

Fresh from a year in Iraq, Staff Sgt. Daniel Garcia and his fellow soldiers went to Boze Elementary School in Tacoma on Thursday to meet students who were their pen pals.

Garcia’s unit was among dozens of Fort Lewis troops that have fanned out all week to meet the more than 40 requests for soldiers to appear at Veterans Day events.

“It’s great. There’s definitely a lot of warmth,” said Garcia, 33.

“People around town, at restaurants, they’ll say thank you for everything. It feels really good to hear that.”

There’s a deeper level, though, than cheering kids, balloons and yellow ribbons. Veterans of the urban guerrilla war in Iraq have to cope with difficult things they saw and did in combat.

It’s hard to rejoin a family that’s been getting along for a year without them.

Guardsmen and reservists rejoin co-workers and bosses who have no idea what they’ve been through.

“They told us it might take us five to six months before we can actually say we’re back in reality,” said Garcia, a Stryker brigade soldier who’s been home about a month. “Sometimes I just have to take a breath, tell myself you’re back in the world, you’re not in the war anymore. … I try to take it one day at a time.”

A statewide social service network now aims to help them do it. Formed to tackle child abuse, domestic violence and other social service issues, the Washington Family Policy Council is turning its attention to the needs of Washington’s new veterans and their families.

Officials are spreading the word through counseling offices, schools, law enforcement, the clergy and other avenues about the readjustment challenges that returning war veterans face.

“Regardless of our opinions about this war, people go overseas, they risk their lives and they come back,” said Laura Porter, the council’s staff director. “It’s my duty to create an environment that is supportive of their health, their safety, their parenting skills.”

The council is circulating its 11-page report, “Welcome Home! How to Make a Difference in the Lives of Returning War Zone Veterans.” Earlier this month it held a symposium in Vancouver for 100 or social workers from across the state.

The message: Skills that service members used to survive their tours in Iraq and Afghanistan are different than the ones they need to get along back home.

Friends, neighbors and community groups that understand the differences can do a lot to help the returning veterans make a successful transition.

Officials at the state Department of Veterans Affairs say Washington is now home to more than 9,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. But that number is surely low, considering well over 10,000 active-duty soldiers from Fort Lewis have been to war, as have more than 3,500 Washington National Guardsmen.

Whatever the number, social service providers and others around the state need to understand the readjustment issues, Porter and others said.

Officials say they’re compiling anecdotal evidence: divorces, cases of domestic violence, children of Iraq war veterans having problems in school, alcohol abuse, erratic driving, reckless behavior.

They said a number of young veterans have died crashing the fast new motorcycles they bought with the tax-free money they earned while deployed.

Soldiers vouch for the part about the driving. In Iraq they don’t stop for red lights, they drive down the middle of the highway to avoid bombs at the roadside, and they switch lanes at overpasses to avoid insurgents who might drop a grenade on them. Every other vehicle is a potential suicide bomber.

Driving on the local freeways triggers stressful memories.

“So the question is, when somebody cuts you off, do you honk the horn and raise the middle finger?” asked James Munroe, a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinical director in Boston who spoke at this month’s symposium. “It’s something to think about.”

Experts said people – school counselors or police, for instance – need to learn how to ask questions. But not stupid questions: Did you kill anybody? Did you abuse any prisoners?

“People do ask these questions,” Munroe said. “And veterans need to figure out what they’re going to tell people.”

But he and others said when the right questions are asked, and a veteran is ready to talk, friends, counselors and others need to be prepared to listen.

It’s a delicate balance.

Counselors at the University of Washington Tacoma thought it would be a good idea to form a support group for the many students there with loved ones deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Although many such students were seeing counselors one-on-one, the group idea went nowhere, said Carol Wood, clinical manager at the UW Tacoma student counseling center.

She attributes that partly to the fact the school is a commuter campus – students come in, go to class and go home. But she said students also told her another reason.

“People are trying their darnedest to hold it all together. They’ve got kids to raise, responsibilities. They’ve got to be the strong ones,” she said. “There are many who think that talking about how afraid you are doesn’t make you the strong one.”

Officials said one of the biggest challenges they continue to face is fear of stigmatization. Veterans – especially those still on active-duty – don’t seek help because they’re afraid of what a mental health label might do to their careers.

Treatment professionals across the country are trying to tone down the mental health associations. Munroe said veterans might be reluctant to talk to a counselor at a mental health clinic; they’ll go if it’s in family practice.

Munroe said the country goes through a cycle after every war, where people forget about what it does to the men and women who fought it, and their families.

“We have a great chance to do something very different this time around,” he said.

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune Published: November 11th, 2005 02:30 AM Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921