You'd think from some of the veterans from Vietnam who had returned home and committed suicide or spiraled down to homelessness and drug/alcohol addiction would've given the military a serious heads up.Soldier in famous photo never defeated 'demons'
By ALLEN G. BREED and KEVIN MAURER, Associated Press Writers 2 hours, 39 minutes ago
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/military_the_enemy_within
PINEHURST, N.C. - Officers had been to the white ranch house at 560 W. Longleaf many times before over the past year to respond to a "barricade situation." Each had ended uneventfully, with Joseph Dwyer coming out or telling police in a calm voice through the window that he was OK.
But this time was different.
The Iraq War veteran had called a taxi service to take him to the emergency room. But when the driver arrived, Dwyer shouted that he was too weak to get up and open the door.
The officers asked Dwyer for permission to kick it in.
"Go ahead!" he yelled.
They found Dwyer lying on his back, his clothes soiled with urine and feces. Scattered on the floor around him were dozens of spent cans of Dust-Off, a refrigerant-based aerosol normally used to clean electrical equipment.
Dwyer told police Lt. Mike Wilson he'd been "huffing" the aerosol.
"Help me, please!" the former Army medic begged Wilson. "I'm dying. Help me. I can't breathe."
Unable to stand or even sit up, Dwyer was hoisted onto a stretcher. As paramedics prepared to load him into an ambulance, an officer noticed Dwyer's eyes had glassed over and were fixed.
A half hour later, he was dead.
When Dionne Knapp learned of her friend's June 28 death, her first reaction was to be angry at Dwyer. How could he leave his wife and daughter like this? Didn't he know he had friends who cared about him, who wanted to help?
Post traumatic stress disorder or operational exhaustion, or battle fatigue or simply shell shock has been a long standing problem with troops who return home from battle.
I'm sure that help is available to those who seek it... but how many do? How many are placed on a waiting list? How many are simply prescribed drugs and told to come back next month for another appointment?
Everywhere I drive around my city I see a lot of bumper-stickers in ribbon shapes saying "Support Our Troops" But I didn't realize that had a time limit... support them until they come home, then leave 'em be to get on with theirs (and our) lives.
Further those who tried to help him were rebuffed and he brought the war home.
Sounds familiar doesn't it? At least for those of us who remember veterans from Vietnam.But they soon noticed changes that were more than cosmetic.
At restaurants, Dwyer insisted on sitting with his back to the wall so no one could sneak up on him. He turned down invitations to the movies, saying the theaters were too crowded. He said the desert landscape around El Paso, and the dark-skinned Hispanic population, reminded him of Iraq.
Dwyer, raised Roman Catholic but never particularly religious before, now would spend lunchtime by himself, poring over his Bible.
When people would teasingly call him "war hero" and ask him to tell about his experiences, or about the famous photo, he would steer the conversation toward the others he'd served with. But Dwyer once confided that another image, also involving a child, disturbed him.
He was standing next to a soldier during a firefight when a boy rode up on a bicycle and stopped beside a weapon lying in the dirt. Under his breath, the soldier beside Dwyer whispered, "Don't pick it up, kid. Don't pick it up."
The boy reached for the weapon and was blasted off his bike.
What to do? How to go about it? How to get Washington to divert some of the funds for the war to go to more clinics and (qualified) therapists to help these soldiers when they come home to get it out of their system (ok, ok, war doesn't ever leave you) or to at least find a healthy way to cope with it all?
Yet another reason why help isn't accepted even when it's offered. "Oh no, I'm fine, thanks! Excuse me gotta get back to work, got a wife and kids to feed."After a three-hour standoff, Dwyer's eldest brother, Brian, also a police officer, managed to talk him down over the phone. Dwyer was admitted for psychiatric treatment.
In a telephone interview later that month from what he called the "nut hut" at Beaumont, Dwyer told Newsday that he'd lied on a post-deployment questionnaire that asked whether he'd been disturbed by what he'd seen and done in Iraq. The reason: A PTSD diagnosis could interfere with his plans to seek a police job. Besides, he'd been conditioned to see it as a sign of weakness.
"I'm a soldier," he said. "I suck it up. That's our job."
Dwyer told the newspaper that he'd blown off counseling before but was committed to embracing his treatment this time. He said he hoped to become an envoy to others who avoided treatment for fear of damaging their careers.
"There's a lot of soldiers suffering in silence," he said.
In January 2006, Joseph and Matina Dwyer moved back to North Carolina, away from the place that reminded him so much of the battlefield. But his shadow enemy followed him here.
"There's a lot of soldiers suffering in silence". Including this one and he slipped through the cracks before he could get the help he really needed.
I hope this will be a wake up call for those in Washington.