Vets Find Stress Hard To Shake

Vets Find Stress Hard To Shake

The death and violence of Iraq still haunts some of the soldiers who served there.

“I don’t sleep. That’s been the main thing,” said Sgt. Russell Davis, a member of the Purvis detachment of the 890th Engineer Battalion, which returned from the deadly Sunni triangle in March.

Davis has also felt abnormally irritable, a normal reaction to the mental and physical stress he…

“I stayed on convoys,” said Davis, whose civilian job is fleet maintenance for the city of Hattiesburg. “We worked a lot of long hours over there and then you had to pull guard duty.”

Treatment is available for these normal reactions to combat, said Tanya Griego, a counselor at the Vet Center in Biloxi, who spoke to the Purvis unit last Saturday.

More than 1,000 U.S. troops have died in the war on Iraq. Military medical officers estimate that one in six veterans will suffer symptoms of combat stress. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, more than 225,000 Guard members have been activated for full-time duty.

Nearly 40 percent of the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are National Guardsmen.

The human cost of the $150 billion war on Iraq could become astronomical. Already, a small group of Iraq veterans have come for confidential counseling at the Vet Center, which treats about 30 Vietnam-era veterans.

“They are having a lot of family problems,” she said.

Combat stress reactions can surface after many years, said Griego, a former Air Force officer with a master’s degree in social work. Compounding the stress reaction is an unwillingness to seek treatment, since many of the troops fear the stigma of mental illness.

“As time goes on, if you have any of these symptoms, it gets worse,” said Griego.

A leader of the Purvis unit said that 60 to 65 percent of the National Guardsmen show signs of combat stress.

“A lot of them have made statements that they just don’t feel like they fit in anymore,” said Staff Sgt. John M. Hankins, who has been with the unit for 25 years.

“The same amount have trouble being in crowded places, such as restaurants.”

Hankins said many of them have bouts of anger and a few report nightmares. Several of their wives have called asking for help.

Hankins estimates that 90 percent saw violence that affected them. Most of them were rocked by frequent mortar attacks on their camps or went on convoys that were hit by improvised explosive devices, the roadside booby traps now used by insurgents.

“That got to a lot of them,” said Hankins, who had a neck surgery just before deployment and did not go to Iraq.

A 25-year veteran of the unit, Hankins is keenly aware of personality changes among his friends in the unit, who served in Iraq.

“The ones I didn’t grow up with, I raised,” he said. “All of them changed.”

Their families are worried and the soldiers are struggling to return to normal.

“For some of them it will take a long, hard time to get back to the world they left,” said Hankins. “Mentally, they will never get back to that world.”