When combat comes home

Ray Parrish (back to camera), of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, talks with Sonia Diaz at Governors State University during a training session for facilitators to help veterans.
(Art Vassy/SouthtownStar)

When combat comes home
Many veterans don't address psychological trauma they carry after returning home from battle, but there is help

March 16, 2008
By Michael Drakulich, Staff writer
For more than 30 years, Joe Kelbus has been making sure his camp is secure.

Since being discharged from the Army in 1968, the Vietnam veteran for years - and still at times now - gets up in the middle of the night to make sure all the doors in his Orland Park home are locked.

Sometimes he sits at the kitchen table at 3 a.m. staring out the window, making sure everything is safe. They are the same habits he learned in the 1st Cavalry Division during his two-year enlistment.

When Kelbus returned home from Vietnam, he couldn't shake the habits. It seemed a little strange to his wife, but not alarming. She wrote off his rather rigid behavior to just being stubborn.

Kelbus realized it wasn't just stubbornness or habit after he got together with several of his combat buddies a few years ago. When the group reminisced about their time in Vietnam, Kelbus couldn't recall many of the events they talked about even though he took part.

"I didn't remember. My buddies had to show me photos to prove to me that I was there," Kelbus said.

His buddies urged him to seek treatment, saying he had suppressed his memories. After doing so, Kelbus was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder with suppressed amnesia. The rigid behavior his wife thought was just stubbornness actually was a symptom.

Dan Casara stands in his memoribilia room. Casara is an Army vet who served in Iraq until September 2006 when his tank ran over an roadside bomb and his leg was injured. Casara took advantage of a new state program meant to diagnose and treat post-traumatic stress disorder. (Jason Han/ SouthtownStar)

New generation

Now there also is a new generation of war veterans needing assistance, such as Dan Casara, a University Park veteran severely injured during a bomb blast in Iraq.

In addition to other injuries, Casara was diagnosed with a rather severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder and a mild case of traumatic brain injury.

Doctors have become more familiar with psychological and brain disorders veterans may face when returning from combat. They have learned more about the consequences of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury since the Korean and Vietnam wars.

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