National Guardsmen Face Hard Time Getting Help to Heal

National Guard Members Face Challenges In Seeking Help For PTSD 
NPR
APRIL 22, 2015

Darryl Davidson, who served in Iraq with the National Guard, started having symptoms of PTSD 18 months after he left active duty. Getting treatment took several more months. Officials acknowledge guard members have less support than active forces. Julysa Sosa for NPR

NPR — along with seven public radio stations around the country — is chronicling the lives of America's troops where they live. We're calling the project "Back at Base."

This is the last of four reports this week about the National Guard. It was December 2007 and Darryl Davidson was driving down a busy San Antonio street when something flew off the truck in front of him. He thinks it might have been a car battery, but he still isn't sure. "I was in some sort of flashback.

I was there for probably 20 or 30 minutes," he says. In that moment, Davidson imagined an IED — like the homemade bombs he saw in Iraq — and his survival instinct kicked in.

"So I swerved over four lanes of traffic and crunched my truck. Well, I didn't crunch the truck, but I busted a tire on the curb and ended up in a field."

Then he took cover. When the police arrived, he told them to take cover, too.

"You know, as far as I could tell, we were under fire. I just kept telling officers they need to get down.

They needed to take cover. You know, we're under fire. And I guess one of the officers was a vet and understood what was going on and kind of talked me down," Davidson says.
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