World War II Ghosts Come Back to Haunt Veterans 50 Years Later : Battle: This generation isn’t immune from post-traumatic stress disorder after all. Symptoms include nightmares, flashbacks, crying.

In his nightmares, Dom sees the face of the first man he killed.

It is the face of a young German soldier. Blond hair, fair skin, eyes filled with surprise. In the dream, as in life, Dom steps forward, raises his rifle and slashes the bayonet across the young German’s throat.

Just as he had been taught.

Now, a half-century later, only one of them can rest in peace. Dom, 72, is tortured with guilt, as are a surprising number of World War II veterans who have been diagnosed in recent years as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I still see myself not going into heaven--going to hell for killing,” he said. “I still get all these nightmares. That’s what it’s all about for me.”

Until recently, post-traumatic stress disorder was associated almost exclusively with Vietnam War veterans. To the extent that World War II veterans even thought about it, it was often to draw a distinction between themselves and the Vietnam vets.

But now psychologists are finding that the stress disorder is ambushing many World War II veterans just as they begin to settle into retirement and the peace of advancing age.

In the last year, especially, as television and newspapers have marked the 50th anniversary of the war’s climactic events, many World War II veterans have found their way to Veterans’ Affairs hospitals with complaints of sleeplessness, nightmares, flashbacks, crying spells and other symptoms that VA psychologists recognize from their work with Vietnam veterans.

“Some of it is painfully emotional, about experiences they haven’t told another soul about since World War II,” said Dr. Kenneth Reinhard, a psychologist at the FDR Veterans’ Affairs Hospital in Montrose. “I’m kind of astonished that it’s happening to them now.”

The FDR Hospital perches on a high bluff overlooking the Hudson River about 30 miles north of New York City. Men, and some women, wander its serene, well-tended grounds trying to regain some semblance of the calm that battle stole from them.

Reinhard, a bearded 42-year-old whose father fought at Guadalcanal, has long held group therapy sessions here for Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Last year, not long after the 50th anniversary of D-Day, he began a weekly session for World War II veterans and another that mixed veterans of World War II and Korea.

Some in the World War II group, including Dom (who asked that his last name not be used), have been suffering from post-traumatic stress since the war, but were able to keep it more or less in check until retirement.

Others, such as Dr. Bill Klink, a retired dentist from Middletown, N.Y., were seemingly unscathed by the war--until some event popped an emotional cork and allowed long-forgotten memories to bubble out and overwhelm them.

Psychologists theorize that many World War II veterans successfully held their trauma at bay by throwing themselves into their careers and families and, to some extent, simply denying they had a problem.

“Some of that helped,” said Dr. Paula Schnurr, a researcher at the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in White River Junction, Vt. For some World War II veterans, she said, “grinning and bearing” proved to be an effective form of therapy--at least for a while.

Once they retired, though, they had more time to think about their combat experiences. Traumatic events, such as the deaths of spouses or close friends, sometimes triggered wartime trauma.

And in the last year, 50th anniversary hoopla sometimes pushed veterans over the edge.

Klink, who survived two years of intense combat as a light machine-gunner in Europe, had given little thought to the war since it ended in 1945--had, in fact, quite intentionally avoided thinking or talking about it.

“When I was raising a family and working hard, it never fazed me. Evidently, it built up in my head and it was hidden,” he said.

Klink, 72, refers to his long-suppressed trauma as his “stress cup.” Early in 1994, it began to overflow.

“I started to get reactions when I’d hear anyone talk about the war. Uncontrollable crying spells. And I thought I was the only one that had this. So I wrote to a veterans’ magazine asking, ‘Is there anyone else out there that has these strange situations?’ Because I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t figure out why I was doing this. It was very embarrassing.

“So I got a multitude of answers back from veterans. And they were in the same boat: They couldn’t talk about their battle experiences either. And they told me I should seek help, which I was a little reluctant to do.”

Then, in June, 1994, Klink was watching a television documentary about D-Day when he suddenly began having flashbacks of combat.

“I had the worst breakdown I’d ever had,” he said, his voice trembling. “All by myself. And then I did know I had to seek help.”

Klink’s realization was the first step toward recovery. And under Reinhard’s care, he is getting better--now he can talk for more than a few seconds about his problems without breaking down. Until very recently, he could only write about them; Reinhard would then read his words aloud.

But one problem with World War II veterans, psychologists say, is that they come from a generation of men who are generally reluctant to admit to emotional or mental distress.

“World War II men . . . just aren’t psychologically minded,” observed Dr. Pat Sutker, a psychologist for the VA in New Orleans.

“The Marines at Iwo Jima didn’t say, ‘Man, am I depressed!’ They might have said a lot of other things, but they probably didn’t say that.”

Reinhard refers to the “John Wayne image” of the World War II generation:

“You’re a hero, you’re strong, you don’t have to have those feelings. You just flick that tear away and you keep moving on. You stand tall, you walk tall, and you just do what you gotta do.”

That works fine in wartime, he said. But “later on you pay such a price for that, because it’s so hard to hold back human emotions at that level in normality.”

There are no reliable data on how many World War II veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or even how many have sought help for their problems.

One survey reported that approximately half the combat veterans of World War II who were of retirement age had experienced a recurrence of nightmares and flashbacks.

Two psychologists from North Carolina, Dr. Elizabeth Clipp of the VA and Dr. Glen Elder Jr. of the University of North Carolina, reviewed the available data recently and wrote:

“Our review of the psychiatric literature . . . leads us to conclude that the disorder is widespread among aging veterans of WWII, that symptoms may be quite serious in later life, and that a substantial number of its victims are currently undiagnosed because of an unwillingness to admit war-related problems or misdiagnosed as having anxiety, alcoholism, depression or chronic physical conditions.”

All these are conditions that apply to one or more members of Reinhard’s group.

Dale Deen, for instance, drank for years while he struggled with intense guilt over his role in the friendly fire deaths of a U.S. submarine crew.

Vincent LoGiudice, another member of the group, slid into depression after his retirement. He was plagued with nightmares in which he saw, over and over, two buddies slaughtered by a German 88-millimeter gun.

Dom, who is retired from a career as a New York City police officer, has yet to expunge his guilt or end his nightmares.

Shortly after his return from the war, he went to see his parish priest. In the confession booth, he told his story. He had sinned; he had killed another man. The priest told him, “Say three Hail Marys and three Our Fathers.”

Dom prayed, but if it helped his eternal soul, it did little for his transitory conscience. In his dreams, he literally dangled between heaven and hell.

Not long ago, Reinhard suggested that Dom try going to a priest again.

Dom went to a church near the VA hospital and explained his predicament to the priest.

“He says to me, he says, ‘Look . . . I would feel more bad if you didn’t have this compassion, if you just didn’t give a damn.’ . . . He tried to get me out of this guilt complex I’ve got for doing these things.”

The guilt isn’t gone, Dom says. But the priest got him thinking. “He said, ‘You didn’t do it out of meanness. You didn’t kill just because you wanted to kill.’ . . . So it made a little sense.”