FARMINGTON — Anthony Torres was looking forward to life as a civilian. The 26-year-old Marine spent seven months atop a Humvee manning an anti-tank missile in wartorn Iraq, and he was anxious to be home.
When he returned, however, he found a life so chaotic it rivaled his experiences overseas. Torres served in a security convoy during the 2004 U.S. assault on Fallujah, and he relives some of that terror every day.
A smell, a sound or a simple argument can send Torres back to Iraq.
"During my third week of the assault, the engineers assigned to clean up all the dead people hadn't come through yet," he said. "I remember that smell. It's like barbecuing with diesel."
A similar odor permeates the local oil fields, Torres said, and a whiff of that rewinds the clock.
"It sets me off and brings back memories," he said. "I have to logically figure out what's causing the smell and bring myself back to reality. There's not something dead out there, and I'm not back in Iraq."
Torres left Iraq in April of 2005, then served a second tour of duty in Africa, returning home in April of 2007. He moved to Flora Vista last June, and four days later was arrested for drunken driving. A second drinking binge six months later earned him 45 days in jail and cost him his highway traffic control job.
It was in jail that Torres was diagnosed with Posttraumatic
"Combat PTSD is trauma that involves the morals of killing and watching others being killed," said Robert Udero, readjustment counseling therapist at the Farmington Vet Center. "It's about forgetting all those sayings like thou shalt not kill' and thinking about killing, about enemies, about death, about duty to your country."
The diagnosis explained what Torres was feeling, he said, but his reactions to the stress also cost him dignity.
"Most people my age don't like to admit to it, or we don't think we have it," he said. "I didn't realize those problems were there. I just end up getting drunk, and I drink until I can't drink anymore."
Trauma and memory
Torres didn't watch a close friend die or experience a life-threatening injury while serving in the military. He didn't have to choose between killing a 9-year-old suicide bomber or being killed.
But he came close, and those defining moments still haunt him.
Adrenaline pumps through Torres' body when the flashbacks begin, he said. He's agitated because the ending is always wrong.
"At one point, my buddy got out of the Humvee to check out a wall," he said. "A couple rounds went right in front of him. When I think about it, instead of the rounds going by him and missing him, they go right into his chest."
Another flashback ends with Torres watching a buddy walk into a building seconds before the building explodes.
A third flashback reminds him of a group of school children in Fallujah who threw rocks at the soldiers in Torres' convoy. When a rock nearly hit Torres, he picked it up and threw it back, an action that almost led to combat, he said.
When Torres thinks of the incident, however, it doesn't always end peacefully. The stress of the moment makes his imagination run wild.
"It was pretty nerve wracking because I didn't want to put a round into a kid," he said. "I'm having flashbacks, but they're about things happening worse than they actually did."
For Torres, who always had one finger on the trigger of a heavy machine gun, the constant vigilance required on the battlefield is hard to shake, even at home. He's constantly alert, suspicious of people and often aggressive.
Torres probably is operating in a state of hyperarousal, said Diane Castillo, trauma clinic coordinator at the Albuquerque Veterans Affairs Hospital. Hyperarousal is one of 17 symptoms used to define Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
"Hyperarousal means they're being watching or on guard," Castillo said. "In public, they're sitting with their backs to the wall so they can see the door. They're going home at night and locking all the doors, then they keep checking the locks. They're on guard all the time without a real threat."
A disorder diagnosis also is met if a veteran continually re-experiences the trauma in the form of nightmares or flashbacks, and a shutting down or numbing of emotions. Some people with the disorder experience a sense of a shortened future, Castillo said.
"They're living day-to-day," she said. "They're not making plans for the future. They're not actively planning suicide, but they're not thinking ahead."
The stigma
From the inside, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is both exhausting and terrifying, Castillo said. From the outside, however, combat veterans can appear weak, ill or dangerous.
Torres drowned his constant anger and fear with alcohol, he said, but few people who have not experienced trauma will understand that.
"Right away peoples' dispositions change when they find out I have a DWI," he said. "It's like judging a book by its cover. They don't know what's going on inside."
Appearing weak or ill is an image Iraq veteran Rick Brannan combats every day. Brannan, 55, was deployed with a Navy customs team to Operation Iraqi Freedom in June of 2005. There he provided armed escorts to troops headed home. Brannan also was assigned the task of inspecting coffins for contraband, a memory that still grieves him.
"I had a job to do, but that's not who I am," he said. "Knowing that the military trained you to be that way doesn't make you feel any better."
Brannan began getting violent headaches near the end of his tour, and he went home last March, 10 days before the rest of his unit.
"The stress of being responsible for the troops was very intense," he said. "The average person doesn't have any idea what it feels like. We picked up troops that were in combat three hours before, and we looked at those stares, those blank faces."
Brannan retired from the military last June after serving for 22 years. He was diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder shortly after returning from Iraq.
The headaches still plague him, eating up 30 days of sick leave during the last two years, he said. Nightmares prevent him from sleeping more than a couple of hours per night, and heavy traffic — even in Farmington — makes him nervous.
Brannan, who teaches wood shop at a junior high school, also notices more subtle changes.
"I'm not the same person," he said. "I just want to crawl into a hole sometimes. I used to love being in the middle of my students, but now I have to stand by the wall because I'm afraid of people behind me."
The thing that worries Brannan most, however, is how others perceive the condition.
"Everyone attaches a stigma," he said. "They say I'm OK, but they're thinking I'm not OK, that I'm just barely functioning, that I'm crazy. And that's how they treat me."
The negative images of veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder can be a real threat, said Robert Udero of the Farmington Vet Center. Veterans sometimes are seen as weak or ill, a view that can cost the veteran his job or credibility.
"People attach the stigma of a mental illness," he said. "People think that we're weak or sick or crazy."
That's the image one Farmington public official is battling. The official, who returned from Iraq in 2004 and asked that his name be withheld, said his credibility rides on his appearance of being unscathed by the war.
"As soldiers, no one wants to give the impression that they're weak," he said. "They don't want someone to use it against them or think they're biased or incompetent because they have PTSD."
The changing culture
Few people who experience combat are unscathed, Udero said. He estimates 25 million United States veterans have the condition, including thousands of local veterans, but every soldier involved in combat will have some of the symptoms.
"Even those who didn't make it into the war but saw friends shipped off and never coming back may have some symptoms," he said. "They have secondary PTSD from the guilt for not having gone."
Psychologists have studied the effects of war since soldiers returned from World War I with shell shock, Udero said. However, the condition and its treatments still are evolving.
Vietnam veterans were especially at risk for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder because of their reception when they returned home, Udero said. They were not welcomed home, but were blamed for a war that was highly political in nature.
"The brunt of society's displeasure lay with the veterans themselves," he said. "There were a lot of ill feelings, then there was no support when the underlying symptoms arose."
More Iraq veterans may be returning with the disorder than their predecessors in earlier wars, Udero said. About 15 percent of Vietnam veterans have it, while as many as 40 percent of Iraq veterans will develop the condition.
A heightened susceptibility to the disorder may be caused by an increase in suicide bombers, a tendency for soldiers to take terrorist attacks personally, and by an increasing number of soldiers who serve multiple tours of duty.
"The anxiety of the wars is a little bit different," Udero said. "With guys going back to Iraq for second, third or fourth terms, that is demanding on someone's psyche and emotions."
Studies have found that veterans with a history of other traumas also are more susceptible to developing the disorder, Castillo said. Further, studies suggest women and minorities who serve in the military are more likely to develop the condition.
"What we're finding is that the more trauma you have, the more likely you are to have PTSD," she said. "And the more support you have once you get home, the less likely you are to have PTSD."
Coming Tuesday: The search for solutions.
Alysa Landry: alandry@daily-times.com
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