Coming back home from war is a gift. What many soldiers brought back with them is anything but.
"I found myself locked up in my room just sleeping," said Lance Cpl. Jason Wesley. "It took me over a year just to talk to someone. I mean just to openly talk.""I often wished that one out of a thousand rounds that went by me, that it would have hit me," added former MP David Fonseca. "I wished I wouldn't have come back."
Fonseca and Wesley, both from Elizabethtown, are two of a growing number of Kentuckiana combat veterans who are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, after serving in the Iraq war.
Symptoms of PTSD range from depression to anxiety in crowds, hyper vigilance, and flashbacks.
"You can see your own friends being shot right there in front of you," Wesley said, "and yet you can't do anything about it."
Wesley, a Marine, is haunted by the memory of Platoon Sgt. Jospeh Mesnusa, shot in the head during an ambush.
"He shouldn't have died," Wesley said.
Menusa was sitting in the same spot Wesley had manned just a week earlier.
"Makes me feel like that should have been me," Wesley said.
Yet, the scene that Wesley relives most was an Iraqi's death. "He just didn't have to die. I was just trying to break up a fight."
A fight over food, between two locals. One tried to stab the other, and Wesley jumped in the way.
"The knife hit my Kevlar armor. It didn't hurt me but without thinking I pulled my knife out, and I put it through his throat," Wesley recounted. "It's just one of those things, I just can't let it go. I took an innocent life."
Fonseca, a 12-year Army veteran, thought experience would shield him from PTSD. "I thought I could handle it," Fonseca told us.
He was wrong.
"I can hear the gunfire from the battle fights, I can hear the mortar rounds coming, I can hear the kids," Fonseca said. "Civillians. Iraqi civilian people screaming and hollering."
Fonseca turned to alcohol.
"It helped temporarily to forget the noises I hear every day and the things that just flash through my mind and I see on a daily basis."
But the booze turned on him, and Fonseca ended up homeless. And suicidal.
"I was at a friend's, and decided to pick up a .357 and put it to my head," he said.
Before Fonseca ended his nightmare, with a nightmare, a friend got him to the hospital.
"I told them what I wanted to do, that I didn't want to live anymore, because of the things I had done over there."
Now both men are finding ways to cope, with the help of doctors at the Louisville VA Hospital.
"Coming forward and actually asking for help is many times the hardest thing these service men and women will ever do," said Dr. Karen Grantz, Coordinator of the newly formed Post Traumatic Clinical Team.
Military officials predict up to 30 percent of returning soldiers will require psychiatric services, a number not seen since the Vietnam War.
But President Bush is only proposing a 1.5 percent budget increase for veterans health care this year, down from a 10 percent increase in previous years.
However, local administrators say maintaining PTSD services will be a priority.
"I think that we are going to have enough resources, that we are going to be able to provide the services," said Vicki Zaborowski, Louisville's Health Care Resource Coordinator for Returning Combat Veterans.
They are services that mean the difference between life and death for Fonseca, now also seeking treatment for alcoholism.
"Yeah I have hope," Fonseca said. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't have hope."
Meanwhile, Wesley now has another vision filling his head: his 3-week-old daughter Hannah Marie.
"She weighed nine pounds, one ounce, and was 22 inches long," the proud father remembered.
Hannah Marie may be a little girl, but she's also a huge shield from Wesley's tragic memories.
But even new beginnings aren't enough to erase the memories of war. "No, they'll never go away," Wesley admitted. "Unless you can totally erase my mind, they'll never go away."
The military is taking steps to reduce or avoid the psychological wounds of war, now screening soldiers for psychological problems before deployment. And for the first time, there are now combat stress specialists in the war zone.
Meanwhile, hospital officials say only 20 percent of combat veterans admit to PTSD symptoms.
Many more need treatment, but wont ask for it.
By Eric Flack ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky.
Online Reporter: Eric Flack
Online Producer: Michael Dever
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