The colonel's war against PTSD

The colonel's war against PTSD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Mark Davis
Published: November 9, 2013

ATLANTA — Saturday morning, rainy and gray and dismal in the way that only mid-August downtown downpours can be. The water runs down the sidewalk in silver rivulets, past a handful of guys seeking shelter under an overhang at the Salvation Army’s Red Shield shelter on Luckie Street.

“Eric Welsh? Col. Welsh?” one guy says in answer to a question. He points a thin finger at a locked door. His loose shirt flaps in the wind. “He’s in there. He’s always in there on Saturdays.”

“In there” is a room where 15 people sit in haphazard rows. They are thin and old and fat and young, 13 men and two women. They have this much in common: They served in the military; they are homeless; and they suffer, in varying degrees, from post traumatic stress disorder — PTSD.

And there is Welsh, retired colonel, U.S. Army, looking decidedly like a civilian in a worn Polo shirt and old cargo shorts, flip-flops flapping on the tiled floor. He is a walking contradiction: Maybe a man leaves the military, but it doesn’t leave him. Despite his weekend attire, Welsh looks as if he’s addressing the troops.

Actually, he is. For these people in this room on this rainy day are locked in a battle. If they cannot win this war against PTSD, Welsh warns, they are done, sunk, KIA.

Welsh — warrior, grandson of the most famous Marine of all time, single dad, Coca-Cola executive — fixes them with a stare. He does not blink.

“You are in a fight,” he says, “a fight for your lives.”

Welsh knows. Their battle is his.
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