Mending the scars of war

Paul Hughes sees post-traumatic stress disorder not as a disease but a distinction deserving of respect.

"If you go to war, see people killed, villages burning, you are going to have some form of PTSD," he said. "But I see it as a badge of honor, not a sickness. You deserve to be a little weird."

In trying to take the stigma out of the disorder, Hughes, 61, and his wife, Louise, moved from Alabama to Yuba City in August to start Operation RECON. The ongoing support group for veterans is structured with curriculum to address issues stemming from physical, emotional and mental trauma related to tours of duty.

The first of the bi-weekly meetings kicked off last week and are held at 7 p.m. every Monday and Thursday at Calvary Christian Center's community library. Thirteen people attended the first meeting to share stories and confront stress lingering from years in Vietnam, the first Gulf War and Afghanistan.

Amid visions of soldiers dying in explosions and men running off ships after receiving "Dear John" letters, mostly what Michael Beargeon has left is anger.

Much of his pain stems from the most vivid and traumatic memory he has of his five years in Vietnam. When he volunteered to unload coffins returning home to the United States, a dog tag flipped over as one passed by and he looked down to see his brother's name.

"That's how I learned," Beargeon said, of his brother's death. "I was mostly just angry. I'm still angry. I just keep it bottled up inside."

Nearly 40 years later, he's finally talking about the experience for the first time.

"The hurt, the anger, the frustrations," Beargeon said. "You try to go seek help and all you find is it is like trying to bring a brick wall down."

Through Operation RECON, he's hoping to find answers to questions he has pondered for so long and find some peace.

"No matter what my problem is, you can look around and there is someone here who has it worse," he said. "They understand and they've been there and they are going through the same anger I am."

The men sit around an oval table and joke about tattoos before the meeting starts. But once the session begins, the subject matter gets heavy quickly as they share emotions no one else in the world gets to see them express.

"You're so glad because you are with someone you don't have to put up a facade with. You don't have to be nice," Hughes said. "They understand you have the right to be a little off center."

Survivor's guilt is the biggest problem veterans have, Hughes said. And as a fellow Vietnam veteran, he should know.

For years he blamed himself for the death of his friend and fellow soldier, who was killed right before his eyes in a blast that also blinded Hughes in one eye and damaged his leg.

When Hughes returned home in 1979, he battled with serious anger issues and ended up in a motorcycle gang and engaging in a lot of drug activity. He started realizing something might be wrong when TV shows and movies about the war would bring him to tears.

His breaking point was at a VA hospital in Nashville, Tenn., when, surrounded by men hooked up to IVs and being ignored, he realized veterans were not getting treated the way they deserved.

"We're just not going to let what happened to us happen to new guys coming home," Hughes said.

His Operation RECON manual is based off 35 years of addressing his own PTSD and lots of research.

"I'm not afraid of trying to help anybody," he said. "I nearly got killed so many times I'm not afraid of anything."

Hughes' personal experience, in addition to expertise and education, is a crucial component to successfully connecting with those who have PTSD, said Yuba City Police Chief Rob Landon.

"He's been there before," he said. "In law enforcement and military, they want to talk to somebody that's been through what they've been through."

Anyone involved with public safety stands to benefit from addressing the trauma they witness and the stress the job places upon them, Landon said. He hopes people use the service.

"You come back to your family, your family life and you've just been in some traumatic incident — it doesn't go away," he said. "There are snapshots that come back to you."

Smells, sounds and sensations can all be triggers.

Hughes has only had two flashbacks, but one happened years ago when he was on a ministry trip. The repetitious motion of packing books into his suitcase was akin to packing grenades on his ammunition belt before patrol.

"All of a sudden, you are just back there," he said.

And for every person that has PTSD, it affects nine people around them, Hughes said.

"So if you go home and go off because of something you've seen that day, it's going to affect a whole circle," he said. "When you look at it that way, that's a whole nation on edge."

Nation is the final component of the curriculum of Operation RECON, in addition to recognition, education, communication and opportunity.

Hughes' vision is to eventually open the program to anyone to might have faced a trauma during public service, be it police, firefighters or other emergency responders.

Allen R. Bates, 62, still suffers from nightmares nearly four decades after his tour in Vietnam ended. The sounds of a helicopter, big trucks and fireworks, or the smell of diesel burning, brings the war flooding back, he said.

Not a day goes by that he doesn't think of Vietnam, he said.

"Going to a support group, I realized I wasn't the lone ranger," Bates said. "It doesn't matter if you was a mailman or a guy working the truck, he has the same stress problems as a guy out in the jungle getting shot at. They are all heroes."

To say his PTSD has gotten better would be a lie, he said. Bates knows it will never go away but he wishes he had a different answer to tell younger veterans, some of whom are in Operation RECON.

He joined the support group not just for himself but to help other veterans, too.

"It's really good to see these young guys so I can share what I have learned along the way with them," Bates said. "Maybe we can help them and their wives."

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ashley Gebb at 749-4724 or agebb@appealdemocrat.com.