Returning Troops Learning to Readjust

Sgt. Doug Dare, 27, can’t help but reach for his rifle and gas mask when he wakes up these days with his wife, Chris, in their Camp Pendleton home.

During his first few days back at the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, Staff Sgt. Kevin Coleman, 29, found himself barking orders at his wife, Sharon, and their two children.

Lance Cpl. Steve Barrett just squeezed his eyes shut in reply to a friend who asked if he had witnessed mass death such as the Iraqi bodies shown on television.

After seven months of dusty boredom and male bonding punctuated by occasional terror, the world is suddenly all yellow ribbons and green grass, diapers and dishes, and unbidden memories from the Persian Gulf.

Despite--or in some cases because of--the glamour and glory of a victory, troops trickling back home are facing what base psychologists and Vietnam veterans predict may be a host of readjustment symptoms. They might borrow their buddies’ impressive combat stories, toss and turn at night, jump at unusual sounds or snap unpredictably at their family.

For some, it’s a minor matter of relearning phone numbers, where to put the dishes, or deciding among a dizzying array of choices on a menu. For others, suddenly trading in a war zone for suburbia can be more troubling.

“These youngsters were poised and ready for six months,” said San Clemente organizational psychologist and Vietnam veteran Michael Anthony. While Anthony estimates that only 3% of the troops in the Gulf saw action, all were under pressure anticipating action. “Whether you go through it or perceive it, the results are the same,” he said. “Tremendous stress.”

Said Michele Mares of Anaheim, who is engaged to a Marine not yet back from the Gulf, “You don’t know what they will come back like, if they’ll be jumpy or irritable.”

Mares spent an afternoon with Barrett, her fiance’s friend, and noticed that he was unusually intrigued by television, particularly commercials. She remembered having seen close-ups of Iraqi bodies on CNN. “I almost threw up. I asked him, ‘You didn’t see anything like that did you?’ He just closed his eyes and they teared up. That pretty much answered it.

“I almost started to cry. I said, ‘I’m really sorry to ask a stupid question like that.’ He said, ‘That’s OK, it really is.’ ”

Like most returning soldiers, Barrett was proud, laughing and happy to be home. On the surface, Mares said, “it’s like nothing ever happened.”

But undeniably, something has happened.

Sometime in the month following their homecomings, squadrons of the 52,000 Orange County area troops that went to the Mideast will be gathered together for “debriefing” at the El Toro, Tustin and Camp Pendleton Marine bases. Along with reminders about manners that occasionally get lost in combat, the troops will be advised on “pitfalls” to anticipate as they return to their families and normal routines, said Maj. John L. Sayre, director of the Family Service Center at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

“These guys may be returning to a wife who’s fairly independent and is used to doing things on her own by now,” Sayre said. “The man, who’s the victor, he’s macho, and he hasn’t had to think about anyone but himself and the guy in the foxhole next to himself.”

Psychologists and financial advisers will talk about everything from payroll and tax-law changes to the emotional red flags to watch for.

While this is standard practice upon return from any deployment--Marines typically do six-month tours in the Western Pacific during their enlistment--the Gulf debriefings will require more extensive work because the soldiers have “been in harm’s way,” Sayre said.

Seminars are already being offered to wives and family members on how to cope with their returning Marine, or with their own stress.

The Marine family support handbook calls “return adjustment” the fourth stage of separation for wives, following protest, despair and detachment.

“Return adjustment,” it says in official-sounding psychological language, “is accompanied by awareness of the noises in the house again as you prepare to hand over your role of protector to your returning husband. Many wives experience an almost incredible emotional and physical frenzy, getting every inch of the house and themselves ready for his arrival. He arrives exhausted from the final days away, eager to be home. His first days of unwinding bring long conversations which are attempts to catch up.

“Finally, he spends lots of time sleeping.”

Some wives and girlfriends are used to reunions following routine deployments in which their loved ones are gone for months. One girlfriend of an El Toro Marine summed it up from her point of view: “It’s always weird.”

Before leaving last August, Kevin Coleman and his wife, Sharon, divided household chores 50-50. While he was away, Sharon Coleman did everything. “It’s difficult trying to ease your way back in,” Kevin Coleman said.

As a weapons repair supervisor in the Gulf, he said, “You take orders and you pass orders on. I was saying, ‘Hon, you do the dishes, you do this and that. The kids just looked at me.”’

Sharon Coleman told him, “ ‘Hon, you talk to us like we were troops.’ ”

So far, Kevin Coleman, who normally loves to go out dancing, has just wanted to stay home. “I go out there, I feel insecure,” he said. “People acting callous, there’s no discipline. In the grocery store, they bump into you and look at you like you’re crazy.”

Stationed in Bahrain, Coleman said he and a group of five buddies became very close during the tension and tedium of the past seven months. “In 12 1/2 years with the Marines, I’ve never seen that type of togetherness,” he said. “You eat with them. You sleep with them. You never get away.”

It’s typical of combat camaraderie, an intense bonding heightened by shared danger and victory, said Anthony, who is a spokesman for Vietnam Vets Reunited. The bonding (“something that transcends all sense of friendship”) may seem stronger even than that of family. War buddies can feel depressed and confused when they have to separate, he said.

At the airfield reunions, some soldiers were seen drifting back to their chums after a quick hug from their wives and girlfriends.

Vietnam veterans, in hopes of providing the postwar support they were denied, are offering a postwar information hot line, (714) 493-4167, and will hold a seminar for veterans and dependents at 7:30 p.m. March 26 at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall in Costa Mesa.

Veterans will tell how their Vietnam experiences helped identify post traumatic stress disorder, how to tell whether a Gulf vet is suffering from the disorder, what can be done and where to turn for help.

Anthony said he expects many returning veterans to express regret that they were unable to participate in combat. The worst reply a well-meaning friend can offer is, “Don’t worry, you’re lucky,” he said. “This is what they trained hard for and didn’t get to do.” Simple empathy is better, he advised.

Returning as heroes in a popular war, some who actually played a noncombat role will be tempted to make up their own wonderful stories in order to garner glory for themselves. “We saw it in Vietnam,” said Tim Stanton, family advocacy representative on the El Toro Marine base. “When you lie often enough, your lie becomes reality.”

Billy Alvarado, for one, is grappling now with this hero business.

Stationed in Bahrain, he was with “the gear at the rear,” still potentially threatened by Scud missile attacks but far from the front lines.

“People treat you as a hero and it’s hard,” Alvarado said, taking a long drag on a cigarette, “because I didn’t do very much different than I’ve been doing for 15 years” in the Marine Corps. “They assume that you went over there personally and kicked some butt and they get upset when you tell them” a different story.

“Some World War II vet saw my name in the paper and called me up to say, ‘I just want to say congratulations and thank you.’ I mean, it’s not me but the American people who are heroes in all this.”