Veterans find hidden wounds hard to heal

Veterans find hidden wounds hard to heal
Former soldiers prepare to celebrate Veterans Day by sharing stories
3:52 PM, Nov. 4, 2011
Written by
Nancy De Gennaro

MURFREESBORO — At 11 a.m. Friday, a special Veterans Day commemoration ceremony will be held at the Rutherford County Courthouse. No matter what war soldiers served in, nobody came back the same — whether they endured physical or emotional scars, or didn't even make it home at all.

Physical wounds are almost always dealt with, as those injuries are more visible. But all too often, mental and emotional pain does the most damage, and many times it remains a hidden wound.

In the past 40 years, Vietnam veteran Byron Adams of Murfreesboro has awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of his own voice screaming.

"The nightmares are bad, and you've got three types. Things that happened, those things that didn't happen, and those things you're not sure about whether they happened," said Adams, now a disabled vet who served in the 3/8th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division, United States Army, in 1968-69.
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The invisibly wounded

By MARK ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Saturday, November 5, 2011

Veterans slipping away as a group session ends can't dodge motherly snares of guilt that counselor Marlene Sorenson scatters near the door.

Everyone must stay to help organize the banquet, she yells to diminishing ranks outside the Lincoln Veterans Administration auditorium.

The banquet, a Veterans Day fundraiser at the Strategic Air & Space Museum, will try to resurrect Promise House, a halfway house for homeless and mostly addicted veterans.

Those skipping out, Sorenson confides later, "are the ones I worry about."

The courts sent some of them here tonight, and others still wander that shadowy valley between addiction and recovery.

Sorenson would will them across the divide to join those who've made Promise House their priority.

The house closed in April after the Veterans Administration chose to fund different programs, but its alums and supporters didn't surrender.

Promise House, they say, worked by having veterans help veterans, turning military skills against problems that military service may have helped create. With troops coming home every day with rattled brains or fragile psyches, they can only expect the need will grow.
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