A WAR STILL WAGED : AT VET CENTER IN ANAHEIM AND ACROSS THE COUNTRY, TROUBLED SUVIVORS OF VIETNAM REPLAY THEIR MEMORIES AND WORK THROUGH LINGERING TRAUMA

The Vet Center in Anaheim is a nondescript storefront in a mini-shopping plaza on Harbor Boulevard.

It’s here, less than a mile from the Magic Kingdom, that the Vietnam War is regularly played out by veterans who served their time in a place they called hell.

Seated in a circle of padded blue chairs, they share their war stories in weekly group counseling sessions. They’re middle-aged now, far removed from the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam. But their memories are not the type that dim with time, and what they did and saw in Vietnam continues to affect their lives.

“All my friends died over there,” said Steve Bird, 49, of Cypress, a newcomer to the Tuesday night group. He served with the 1st Infantry Division in 1966. Now a jeweler, he has run a post-Vietnam gamut of drugs and alcohol, flashbacks and depression. “I survived. I think about that. I see their faces. I see how they died. . . . It’s very hard to talk about it.”

Similar emotions are unleashed in Vet Centers in West Los Angeles, East L.A. and South Central. There are 22 Vet Centers in California--202 nationwide, including those in Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Two more centers are on the drawing board.

Fifteen years after the first congressionally mandated Vet Centers opened to help Vietnam veterans with readjustment problems, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Readjustment Counseling Service remains firmly entrenched.

“One might expect this to go away. I’m sure the Congress expected that, but it didn’t,” said Robert Fahnestock, deputy manager of Readjustment Counseling Service’s Pacific western region.

Indeed, two decades after the fall of Saigon ended the Vietnam War, the emotional aftershocks continue to reverberate for a minority of the estimated 3.1 million men and 7,200 women who served in the Southeast Asian war zone.

The vast majority of Vietnam veterans came home and, for better or worse, got on with their lives: college, jobs, families. They put Vietnam behind them--slipped back into the civilian mode. Adjusted.

But, according to the congressionally mandated National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study completed in 1988, 15% of male Vietnam theater veterans (about 479,000) and 8.5% of the female theater veterans (about 610) were suffering from full-blown cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Another 11% of the men and nearly 8% of the women were experiencing partial PTSD symptoms.

(Thirty-one percent of Vietnam-era veterans, according to recent Department of Veterans Affairs statistics, have been treated for psychiatric and neurological diseases, which include post-traumatic stress disorder.)

Not surprisingly, studies of Vietnam veterans show that the more exposure to combat they had, the more likely they are to have PTSD.

Symptoms include persistent and intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and feelings and fantasies of their traumatic experiences in Vietnam. Other symptoms are social isolation and feelings of alienation and increased arousal--difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating, an exaggerated startle response and extreme alertness and watchfulness.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is considered the most severe form of the natural reaction to an overwhelmingly traumatic life event: such as Bird having his foot blown off by a grenade tossed into the armored personnel carrier he and two others were riding in. He shoved the grenade under a seat and held it with his foot.

Or 47-year-old Redondo Beach veteran Les Hudelson watching a flying shard of shrapnel from a booby trap “slice off the head of the guy in front of me and put his brain on me.”

As Vietnam veteran Rick Thomas, a readjustment counseling therapist at the Vet Center in San Diego, put it: “The experience of war is probably the greatest trauma of living.”

Hudelson is typical of Vietnam vets who have had the trauma of the war come back to haunt them.

An industrial designer who served with the 25th Infantry Division, he thought he had put Vietnam behind him more than two decades ago.

“I filled my life with other things, so it never entered my mind; I didn’t have time for it,” he said.

Unaware of Vietnam’s Impact

But his wife left him in 1984 after less than four years of marriage, saying she never felt loved and that he never showed emotion. “I quit feeling in Vietnam; I turned off,” he said.

When stress over major recession-related financial losses finally turned him angry and belligerent, a friend gently pointed out that he had serious emotional problems. “At that point in my life,” he acknowledged, “I was a basket case.”

And when he lost virtually everything, he said, thoughts of Vietnam returned. “I started feeling guilt--I had survivor’s guilt, guilt I killed people that were innocent, guilt that I didn’t stay over there and guilt for just everything I did. I felt like I was being punished for Vietnam. I know I wasn’t directly, but that’s what I felt like.”

It wasn’t until he broke down crying one day while hearing a helicopter overhead--an audible reminder of the war--that he finally reached the point where he told himself, “I can’t go on like this.”

He went to the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach, where he was told he was a serious candidate for post-traumatic stress disorder and was referred to the Vet Center in Anaheim. That was three years ago.

“I wasn’t even aware of the impact Vietnam had on my life,” said Hudelson, who continues to attend weekly group counseling sessions.

With post-traumatic stress disorder, veterans counselors say, the key word is “post.”

“The effects of being exposed to a trauma can occur any time after 30 days up to a lifetime,” said Fahnestock, himself a Vietnam vet. “Many times, people who haven’t been in before come in now--and they have grown children and they’re relatively successful as a rule--and all this stuff has been asleep, but something may happen in their life that triggers these memories of the event, or they’re exposed to reminders of the trauma.”

The 1986 Vietnam War movie “Platoon,” for example, caused emotional wounds to reopen for a large number of vets, as did the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saigon a year earlier.

“Another big event was our involvement in the Gulf War,” said Fahnestock. “Our numbers just shot up during that.”

The point, said Al Batres, national director of the Readjustment Counseling Service, “is that post-traumatic stress disorder is no longer seen as an acute reaction a short time later, but the onset can be years later. And once you have it, it tends to have long-term effects. It’s not as easy to get rid of as we once thought.”

In the 1970s, he said, VA hospitals began treating a high number of World War II and Korean War veterans for what was then called delayed stress. “Another population that has hit the press recently is Holocaust survivors,” he said. “A good number demonstrate post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Dr. Mark Zetin, a Garden Grove psychiatrist who has treated several Vietnam veterans with PTSD, said, “It’s very similar to growing up with an alcoholic or abusive parent or growing up with childhood sexual abuse--those things stay with a person the rest of their life.”

A complicating factor is that many people with post-traumatic stress disorder have problems with substance abuse, especially alcoholism, and with depression, Zetin said, adding that substance abuse--an attempt to numb the painful feelings and to deal with the insomnia--only prolongs PTSD.

“They Paid Their Bill Long Ago.”

Although the storefront Vet Centers were created for Vietnam-era veterans who tended to shun the large, bureaucratic settings of VA hospitals, the Vet Centers’ clientele has been allowed to expand in recent years to include veterans of the Persian Gulf, Panama, Grenada, Lebanon and Somalia, in addition to female veterans who were sexually harassed or traumatized during their military service.

But the vast majority of clients remain Vietnam War veterans. Nationwide, Vet Center counselors saw 91,972 veterans in 1994, 68% of them Vietnam vets and 60% of those with PTSD.

The average age of Vietnam veterans seeking counseling at the Vet Centers is now 47, and midlife makes them particularly vulnerable.

“The midlife crisis that most all men undergo is made more difficult by their life experience, which includes combat or includes military service,” said Fahnestock. “So that process which is traumatic for any man becomes doubly traumatic for people who have a history of trauma, because while making sense of their life, they somehow have to integrate the experienceof something that was horrible in the extreme.”

Vet Center counselors say, however, that any current life stress--the loss of a job, a divorce, the death of a parent--carries the potential to disrupt the veteran’s life and cause war-related issues to surface.

Said Thomas of the San Diego Vet Center: “I think you find that once they begin treatment they begin to realize many of the (PTSD) symptoms existed over the last 20-something years and they either didn’t recognize them or avoided them or denied them.”

Vet Centers, with counselors who are master’s degree-level social workers and other mental health professionals, offer individual and group counseling sessions for PTSD and Vietnam-related issues. Counseling and support for the families is also provided, as are referrals to drug and alcohol treatment programs. Some centers also offer employment counselors and referrals to homeless programs.

The government-funded services are free for veterans. As Robert Key, director of the Anaheim Vet Center, said, “I tell them they paid their bill a long time ago.”

A Tendency to Put Vietnam Behind Us

The Vet Center in Anaheim offers three two-hour group counseling sessions a week. The talk spans pre-military experience, the war, coming home and current issues such as how they’re getting along with their wives, children and bosses, and what’s working and not working for them.

Key, a licensed marriage, family and child counselor, said many veterans have no trouble telling their war stories. In many cases, they’ve told them dozens of times. But they often recite them with no facial expressions, he said, and it often takes six months before “the emotions bubble to the surface.”

Many Vietnam veterans view the Vet Center as a sanctuary, a place where they feel comfortable talking about the war with those who share common experiences. As one troubled member of the Tuesday night group, a Dana Point businessman, said, “This has become an oasis for me.”

Some have tried other group therapy but quit because they were the only member who is a combat veteran. “Coming here, it’s different,” said one vet. “You feel comfortable coming here. I feel I can trust the people in this room.”

“It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Jim Surwillo of Whittier, who served as an assault helicopter crew chief in the Americal Division. He spent six months at the Anaheim Vet Center in 1983 after problems with the IRS spurred a nightmare in which he dressed up in a black ninja outfit, stole an M-60 machine-gun--his “weapon of choice”--from a National Guard armory and went to the IRS office in Santa Ana, where he blew everyone away “just like in a Sam Peckinpah movie.”

Recalled Surwillo: “I just woke up in a cold sweat. It scared the heck out of me. When that dream hit me, I immediately knew I had to do something.” He called the Anaheim Vet Center the next day.

“From that point on, my life changed tremendously. It brought things into perspective and changed my life,” said Surwillo, 44, director of maintenance at Whittier College. He returned to the Vet Center a year ago when he began having stress-induced Vietnam flashbacks and thought, “I ought to go back and do some maintenance on my attitude.”

Batres, the national director, said the Readjustment Counseling Service program “has been through ups and downs” over the years, with the Department of Veterans Affairs “saying we need to do away with this program or put it in the (department-run) medical centers, which is the same as doing away with it.”

“It’s very much like being a Vietnam veteran,” Batres added. “People have tried to forget about us and put (the program) away. Even though we are busy, there has been a tendency to ‘put Vietnam behind us.’ ”

But, he said, “I still believe we have a lot of Vietnam veterans out there who are disconnected and having problems, and as long as we do, we need to provide care for them.”

To Live Satisfying Lives

Therapists say they can teach Vietnam veterans techniques to help manage the symptoms of PTSD. “We really find vets are helped considerably by treatment,” said Susan Houston, a clinical psychologist at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach.

But the veteran has to be a full partner in his treatment, she said. “He needs to come in for treatment consistently, and he needs to practice the techniques he’s taught.”

The veteran “is always going to remember what he experienced in the war and with appropriate emotions: If he lost friends in the war, he’ll be sad,” she said. The aim “is not to forget, but to help them let go and live satisfying lives.”

But for many Vietnam War veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, the light at the end of the tunnel seems nowhere in sight.

Anthony Vitiello of Laguna Niguel, who earned a Bronze Star for valor and a Purple Heart with the 25th Infantry Division, lost his girlfriend when he returned home to New York in 1968. She told him he just wasn’t the same person.

“Something happened to me, something was lost,” said Vitiello, whose life spun out of control after coming home: drug and alcohol abuse, anger, depression, a series of jobs lost. It was all because, he said, he no longer trusted people.

And, through the years, he thought of Vietnam.

“I ate Vietnam every day,” he said. “When I sobered up (six years ago), it was all coming out of me, heavy duty.”

His most persistent memory is of a nighttime action 60 miles north of Saigon that became known as the Battle of Good Friday.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he recalled. “They just kept coming and coming and coming.” By sunrise, the ground was littered with the bodies of 50 Americans and 426 members of a North Vietnamese regiment.

At 48, Vitiello is a painting contractor with a supportive wife of 15 years and a young son. But he still has intrusive thoughts of Vietnam, mood swings, insomnia and chronic depression. Some days he wakes up so depressed he stays in his house, doing what he calls “my isolation.”

Vitiello sees a private therapist and receives medication for PTSD symptoms from a psychiatrist who recommended he go to the Vet Center in Anaheim. He’s been going since December. But despite a sense of camaraderie and feeling he can “trust” those in his group, he said going to the Vet Center has not yet helped.

As he told his fellow vets at the Tuesday night counseling session: “We all had the same common denominator (of being in Vietnam), but the only difference is the level of pain we’re all going through. How long is it going to last? When does it go away? You know, I stopped the drugs, I stopped the alcohol--when do you stop paying penance and move on?”

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Among Veterans, Vietnam Era Looms Large

From August,1964,to May,1975--about 8 million Americans served in the armed forces. Vietnam-era vets comprise the single biggest group of U.S. vets, and the largest group lives in California: War Era Persian Gulf: 6% Vietnam: 38% Korea: 21% World War II: 35% World War I: (Less than 1%) Where They Live (five largest concentrations) California: 945,000 Texas: 584,000 Florida: 480,000 New York: 416,000 Pennsylvania: 376,000

Demographic Profile

Nationwide, Vietnam-era vets are primarily white and under 50, with at least some exposure to college. The breakdown: Ethnicity White*: 87% Black*: 10% All others: 3% *Includes Latinos Age 49 and younger: 71% 50 to 64: 26% 65 and older: 3% Median Age Men 47.4 Women 44.9 Education (men only, age 35 to 49) No high school: 1% 1 to 3 years high school: 4% 4 years high school: 34% 1 to 3 years college: 36% 4 years or more college: 25%

Work and Income

As of September, 1993, the most recent information available, most Vietnam-era vets had household incomes in the $20,000-to-$49,999 range; 85% were employed, 4% unemployed and 11% not in the labor force. Here’s a look at their incomes and what they were doing: Income Less than $20,000: 28% $20,000 to 49,999: 55% $50,000 to 99,999: 14% $100,000 and more: 3% Occupation (men only) Managerial, professional: 29% Technical sales, support: 21% Service: 8% Precision production, craft: 22% Operators, fabricators, laborers: 17% Farming, forestry, fishing: 3%

War’s Aftermath

A higher percentage of Vietnam- and Persian Gulf-era veterans have been treated for psychiatric and neurological diseases--including post-traumatic stress disorder--than vets of either World War II or Korea: Persian Gulf: 31% Vietnam: 31% Korea: 23% World War II: 18%

In Orange County

The nearly 75,000 Vietnam-era veterans who live in Orange County comprise the largest war-era group. They are mostly white and upscale--about a third have at least a bachelor’s degree, a household income of more than $50,000 and a job in the managerial or professional ranks. War era Post-Vietnam: 12% Vietnam: 31% Korea: 18% World War II: 26% Other: 13%* * Includes World War I and period between Vietnam and Persian Gulf Ethnicity White: 85% Latino: 8% Black: 3% Asian: 3% Other: 1% Age 30-39: 23% 40-49: 64% 50-64: 11% 65 and older: 2% Education Less than high school: 5% High school grad/GED: 17% Some college: 45% Bachelor’s degree: 21% Advanced degree: 12% Household Income Less than $20,000: 17% $20,000 to $49,999: 51% $50,000 to $99,999: 25% $100,000 and more: 7% Occupation Managerial, professional: 36% Technical sales, support: 24% Precision production, craft: 18% Service: 7% Operators, fabricators, laborers: 10% Other: 5%

* Sources: Veterans Affairs, National Center for Veteran Analysis & Statistics, 1990 U.S. Census.

* Researched by CAROLINE LEMKE/Los Angeles Times