War Without End

In Central New York a small Army is mobilizing with a serious mission—to take in the wave of veterans coming home from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whenever it is that Johnny comes marching home, an array of kind hearts and beefed-up programs are mobilizing to greet them. And still, many wonder if it will ever be enough. Local volunteers are assisting agencies from federal, state and county governments to meet a mission that many feel we have failed in the wake of previous wars, most notably Vietnam: to care for those who were sent off to fight. 

The library at the Vet Center on 716 E. Washington St. sits just off the waiting room where soldiers from battles going back as far as Pearl Harbor await their appointments. It looks like a tiny museum of war memorabilia. A helmet worn by a lieutenant in Iraq when he was wounded by an improvised explosive device (IED) sits on a shelf in a glass-enclosed case next to an Afghan flag, a Hershey’s chocolate desert bar and numerous battlefield medallions. Below it is a photo of a GI from World War II with singer Martha Raye, gas masks from Operation Desert Storm, K rations, Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) and the famous deck of cards with pictures of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. 

This is a place vets come to find comfort, share some moments of nostalgia or pride. Then they walk down the hall to group or personal sessions with therapists who help them cope with the memories those items embody.

Pat Chase is the director of the Syracuse Vet Center. She began an interview in her tidy office with an apology: She has to cut our meeting short because a veteran in trouble is on his way in. “He’s somebody we’ve been trying to find for a few days, and he just called in. Right now I see six, seven, maybe eight people a day,” says Chase. 

In addition to attending her therapy sessions, many vets call each day just to check in, report how their day is going, and let her know how they are dealing with things. She sets up medical and psychological appointments, works them into group sessions, meets with family members and travels throughout New York state to tell vets what services are available to them. Counseling at the Vet Center is free and is open to all combat veterans with an honorable discharge.

“Jon and I watch each other’s back” (from top): Justin Slidall (right) and his friend Jonathan Madonna share war stories they would never tell others; a support group at the Syracuse Vet Center, led by Pat Chase (seated at right) allows men to discuss the unimaginable and process the horrors of war; Gordy Lane provides no-nonsense help to veterans who may be in trouble; the annual Watch Fire observance that takes place near Memorial Day is organized by local veterans.  Michael Davis photos.

GI Joes

Chase, 63, holds a master’s degree in social work. She is one of four counselors at the Vet Center, which was one of dozens created in 1979 by an act of Congress to deal with the needs of those who served in Vietnam. Substance abuse and run-ins with the law were rampant among Vietnam vets, and many of them never felt comfortable turning to the Veterans Administration. Her center is caring for about 200 vets at the moment. She has been handling cases of vets from the Pennsylvania border to the Canadian line. Even though two new centers are coming on line in Watertown and Binghamton, she expects to be seeing more of “my guys” as time goes on.

“It’s an alternative to behavioral health,” says Chase, referring to the mental health services offered at the VA Medical Center barely a mile away. “The original idea for the Vet Center was a storefront. There was lots of peer-to-peer counseling.” Even today the people Chase and her colleagues see most are Vietnam vets, and at least half the staff members are veterans. They are all trained to deal with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Now, says Chase, many Vietnam veterans are knocking on her door again, as the twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq reopen old wounds. As a team leader for the past 13 years, she once envisioned working herself out of a job, but not any longer. “When this war started,” she says, “the Vietnam vets started coming in again. The trauma they experienced was re-triggered.”

The Syracuse Vet Center is one of 232 such centers in the country. Approximately 20 new centers will open this year, including the ones in Binghamton and Watertown. There is very little paperwork, and the center does not share its information with the military or the VA. “The only paperwork here is the DD214, your discharge form,” Chase explains. “We’ll see someone as soon as they come in.”

One of the people they see is Jonathan Madonna, an Army sergeant from Jordan, N.Y., who had a vertebra in his lower back shattered and his left leg and neck broken when a 300-pound IED blew up under his patrol vehicle near Fallujah in 2007. Madonna recalls groping through the wreckage of the truck where he found two of his three crewmates and a hole in the back of the truck where a fourth man had been seated. He jumped from the truck and crumpled onto the ground, his left leg useless and throbbing. Sixty yards away he saw a green flare and, half-crawling and half-walking, made his way toward his injured buddy, the soldier who had been blown out of the vehicle, and managed to carry him back to the truck.

Madonna was stabilized at a field hospital, airlifted to Germany, then spent three months at Walter Reed Medical Center before coming home. He remembers telling doctors in Germany to just put him in a cast and send him back to Iraq. He pretty soon realized that wasn’t going to happen. 

He says the service at Walter Reed was the best medical care he’s ever gotten. The only evidence he saw of the scandal that erupted two years ago when The Washington Post uncovered filthy conditions for patients was this: “They came through and put 60-inch flat screen TVs up for us.”

While he was at Walter Reed doctors diagnosed a mild form of traumatic brain injury. “When that shock wave from an IED gets into that vehicle it has nowhere to go but into your soft tissue—and your brain,” says Madonna, 24. A counselor in the hospital helped him work through the stress of coming home. It took weeks before he could even sit in the lobby of the hospital. “I hate crowds,” says Madonna. “Whenever there’s more people than I can keep an eye on, I get nervous.”

At Walter Reed he had a recurring nightmare: He is groping around the truck again and again, panicked, unable to find the fourth crew member. Night after night, as his body adjusted to being back in the United States, his mind would travel back to Iraq. By day he would be irritable, and he had difficulties with concentration. Doctors told him this was a result of the brain injury, and it would go away. 

“It’s not PTSD,” says Madonna. “That’s something you can’t get over.”

“PTSD is a chronic disorder,” explains Chase. “We are hoping that by early intervention we can make a difference. The Vietnam vets kept it all inside. New vets are being encouraged to share. We tell them it’s normal. We provide an environment where it’s safe to let the feelings out.” 

In some ways the Vet Center is a reflection of an evolving understanding of what it means to be male. While the center is open to all vets, 90 percent of those who come through the doors are men.

As far as wars they served in, it’s pretty even. “It’s almost 50-50 now,” says Chase, “between new vets from Iraq and Afghanistan, and old vets. World War II vets maybe went to the American Legion and drank if they had issues. They bottled it up. We’ve made some progress in allowing men to be more vulnerable. They may say to me, ‘I don’t like to cry,’ but they will tell their sons that it’s OK.”

Horror Stories

Gordy Lane is a retired detective with the Syracuse Police Department. He served in the Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War, and has been an advocate for veterans since longer than he can remember. Now he reaches out to vets from the most recent conflicts. Wearing his Marine cap, leather jacket and blue jeans as he pulls up on his motorcycle, he looks the part of the rebel he claims to be. Lane has little patience with bureaucracies, but has been able over the course of 25 years as a member of Vietnam Veterans of America to get the ear of the VA on a number of issues.

He’s a big fan of the Vet Center. “Everyone thinks that if you have to talk about something that you’re nuts. But if you get drunk in a bar so you can talk to someone, that’s perfectly acceptable,” he explains. 

Lane offers as succinct an assessment of PTSD as you will ever hear. “Where else can you go where you pop out of a foxhole, blow someone’s brains out, drop back down and the guys slap you on the back and say, ‘Great job!’? It’s hard to come back and realize that things are different here at home.”

Madonna goes to the Vet Center with Rachel, his girlfriend of five years, who is a student at SUNY Fredonia. Chase says the Vet Center now does a lot of relationship counseling. “A lot of the reservists have families, and many have had multiple deployments. If the husband is away and the wife spends 12 or 15 months handling everything at home, it can be a difficult adjustment when they come back. We try to help the family understand that what their loved one is going through is normal.”

Madonna struggles to explain the issue: “My biggest problem is that after being gone for two years I can’t talk to her about anything without getting into a fight. I get agitated real easy. Life doesn’t move fast enough to make me happy. My girlfriend tried to explain to me one day how she had it tougher than I did when I was away. I had to tell myself, ‘OK, breathe. Don’t say what you’re thinkin’ right now.’”

Madonna knows where the problem originates: He doesn’t want to talk to Rachel about what went on over there. “I tried to shield her from a lot of it. It’s not going to make her life any better, and it would only worry her more. She wanted me to talk about what was going on so she could feel more a part of it. I didn’t want that. I wanted to picture her back here, happy and safe, everything perfect.”

In February 2007 things came to a head in Iraq when a 550-pound IED burst and split the vehicle in front of him in two. They were traveling in a convoy of Marine and Army units. “We had just been with these guys, giving them shit like you do when you’re in the Army. And then they were dead.” 

That night, after cleaning the blood of three Marines from his shirt, he chatted with Rachel on the Internet, and could not concentrate on her story of a friend’s romance breaking up. She was upset that he didn’t seem to be listening. All he could think of was the face of a dying Marine as he held pressure to his neck and tried to keep him alive until the helicopter arrived. The Marine looked up at him and said, “It’s going to be OK.” Madonna has never forgotten that moment. And he’s never told Rachel about it.

But he has told Justin Slidall, his best friend, who understands him. He traveled to Walter Reed several times to visit Madonna while he was hospitalized. The two call each other all the time, get together several times a week, and are now in the process of jointly purchasing a two-family house. 

Slidall, a town of Clay police officer, has been deployed twice since joining the Army in 2003. He spent six months in Iraq before coming home earlier this year on leave. Having survived Iraq, he is now out of action due to a freak bowling accident which badly broke his right pinky finger. Sitting in a doughnut shop talking about his family life, his job and his buddies back in Iraq, he seems the picture of calm, a man on top of the world.

But there are moments, he says, when it all comes back. Slidall’s unit, the 680th Engineering Company, was given the task of clearing roads. That meant that he cruised Iraqi streets and highways in heavily armored vehicles trying to detect the hidden enemy known as IEDs, the Iraqi insurgency’s greatest success and the U.S. military’s worst nightmare. Much has been written about the tragedy of the traumatic brain injuries caused when IEDs go off, but Slidall, 26, speaks to the invisible injury that occurs when they do not. His vehicle was never hit, but he still carries hidden scars, the accumulated tension of knowing that if he missed something, one of his buddies could get killed.

His loyalty is intense, even to the point of wishing he could be back in Iraq with them today. When Slidall visited Madonna during Jonathan’s recovery at Walter Reed, he took his friend out for meals and drove him around town. They shared the bond that characterizes outsiders left behind by their own culture.

“Driving is really hard,” says Slidall. He recalls a night not too long after he came back when a car making a left turn was momentarily coming at him. In that instant he was back in Iraq, where civilian vehicles move out of the way, where you never stop at a red light, and where a car moving toward you gets a warning shot first, then you open fire. 

Another night he was sitting home and a thunderstorm moved in. “It was raining, lightning flashed and I just froze, waiting for the sound and the shock wave.”

Madonna tells stories of his mother driving him around Washington, D.C., and going over a manhole. “I wanted to get in the back seat of that car and cry like a baby,” he says. “You just don’t go over a manhole in Iraq {where urban guerrillas frequently use them to hide IEDs}.” You also don’t worry about speed limits, and Madonna has had to learn the hard way that police officers in Central New York do indeed pay attention to how fast vehicles are going.

Matter Over Mind

“What we are trying to do is to stop the fuse before it gets lit,” says Lane, referring to veterans blowing their top. To that end he has convened meetings of local lawyers, police departments, the Vet Center, the district attorney’s office, judges and others to try to work out ways to help vets who are finding themselves on the wrong side of the law. 

“You have this scenario: Somebody is flipping out, and he doesn’t tell law enforcement that he’s a vet,” Lane explains. “What we want to do is to help law enforcement understand these guys, and handle things accordingly. They might be able to hand him over to the VA Police. We want the cops to be able to call a vet 24 hours a day to help. Say you have a person who might be barricaded, an attempted suicide. You get someone there who knows how a vet thinks.”

He is determined that the veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan not be treated the way he and his brothers were when they came home after Vietnam. “A vet won’t back down,” Lane continues, “and neither will law enforcement. A lot of people don’t understand. They think, hey, you’re not in a war zone, so no problem.”

So far, City Court Judge William Walsh hasn’t seen Iraq veterans in his courtroom. “I still see some Vietnam vets now and then, and I’ll move heaven and earth for those guys,” says Walsh, himself a veteran and a reservist. In Buffalo, Judge Robert Russell has set up a special court to deal with veterans returning home who are getting in trouble with the law. Thus far the courts in Syracuse do not ask those who come through the door if they are veterans. 

One local man who had trouble making the adjustment back home was Matthew Campbell, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. In June 2007 he walked into the Cicero Police Department brandishing what appeared to be a weapon. Two officers bravely held their fire as he advanced on them, and after a brief standoff, he surrendered. Campbell was eventually released on bail and later turned over to the Army.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Matthew Doran has been in the Naval Reserve for 10 years. He could not comment on Campbell’s case but applauded the efforts of Lane and others to make law enforcement more aware of the veterans in our midst. “Part of the piece,” says Doran, “is to help the police understand the issues facing veterans. Frequently someone getting arrested is at a low point. It can be a cry for help. We try to respond to some of the unique issues affecting vets.”

When Campbell approached the Cicero police station, his actions were dubbed an attempted “suicide by cop.” Suicide, unfortunately, is all too common among veterans, although no one knows how common. Many suicides are not reported as such, and no one keeps statistics on which known suicides were veterans.

This much is known. The VA runs a Web site called Seamless Transition Home, at www.seamlesstransition.va.gov, designed to help vets make the connections they need to resume their family life, their careers or their education, and to help them get the benefits they are entitled to. The pop-up on the Web page is for a suicide prevention hotline.

Last year CBS News ran a report about suicide among veterans. Their analysis of data collected from 45 states indicated that a staggering 120 veterans of all ages are taking their lives each week. Among veterans ages 20 to 24, those most likely to have served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq, the suicide rate was as much as four times as high as that for the general population. Three-quarters of veterans who take their own life are not under the care of the VA. 

“From what we hear, the No. 1 killer of returned Iraq vets is the motorcycle,” says Madonna. “Crotch rockets, going 120 miles an hour. It’s suicide, whatever you call it. Guys get on those things and just keep going.”

With the Vet Center, the New York State Office for Veterans, Lane’s irregulars and the services offered by the Veterans Administration, veterans do have a number of options when the road home becomes rockier than they thought. Still the final line of defense is the one they learned to rely on back in theater: their buddies.

“Jon and I watch each other’s backs,” says Slidall, “whenever we go out.” Like those who came before them, this generation of veterans thinks that nobody quite understands them. “It’s the things that keep you alive over there that make you feel weird here,” says Slidall. “People back here just don’t realize what’s going on right over there.”

The army of helpers hopes that he and others may come to believe that they really do want to understand.

Pat Chase, director of the Syracuse Vet Center: “A lot of the reservists have families, and many have had multiple deployments. If the husband is away and the wife spends 12 or 15 months handling everything at home, it can be a difficult adjustment when they come back.”

Help for Vets

While Congress debates a new GI Bill for Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, those lucky enough to reside in New York can take advantage of a generous new bill passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. David Paterson. Returning veterans are now provided with college assistance up to the full amount of State University of New York tuition for as many as four years. This includes anyone who served in a combat zone as far back as 1961.

If you are a veteran and you live in New York, the Division of Veterans Affairs can help you get the services you need. Contact Sue Doan at New York State Division of Veterans Affairs, 333 E. Washington St.; 428-4046. 

Other services for returning veterans can be obtained by calling any of the following organizations or agencies:

• Syracuse Vet Center. 716 E. Washington St. 478-7127


• Watertown Vet Center. 210 Court St. 782-0217.


• Vietnam Veterans of America. Gordy Lane, 638-2827.


• Support Troops. A network of local mental health professionals trained and experienced in dealing with PTSD offering free counseling. 200-0531.


• Syracuse Veterans Administration Medical Center. 425-4400; suicide prevention hotline, (800) 273-TALK