At Ease

It was all in his eyes.

There was the discomfort of reliving the past, followed by the glow when he talked about the place that gave him his future.

For five years in a row, 47-year-old Bill Robinson has come to the green canvas tents at Stand Down, a name in military life that means a reprieve from battle.

“This place gave me the help that I needed when I needed it,” Robinson said Friday, the first day of the weekend event.

The temporary military-style homeless shelter, set up on the athletic field at Ventura Community College, offers veterans like Robinson a haven and a chance to try to clear court records, find housing and get help for substance abuse.

More than 125 veterans from around the county arrived Friday, looking forward to a warm meal, a hot shower and fresh clothes.

Robinson was just 21 years old and had never been away from home when he went to Vietnam in 1972.

During his yearlong tour of duty with the U.S. Air Force, his job was to make sure the perimeter of his base camp was secure and to place the remains of dead soldiers into body bags.

“You just did it, and you had to shut off your care for human beings, your fear,” Robinson said.

Like many veterans, Robinson returned with the post-traumatic stress disorder that left him unable to escape the past.

For years, he inoculated his fear with the bottle.

He drifted in and out of jobs until he finally couldn’t keep one any more.

In years past, Robinson looked at the three-day Stand Down as just a break from his life in the streets of Ventura County.

But last year, his 13 years of homelessness had finally spun him down to an incomprehensible low, he said.

“I wanted to die,” he said. “I got to the point that no matter how many drugs I did, it didn’t quell the pain. I either had to find something to cure me or I would die.”

The one stalwart figure in Robinson’s life was at the Stand Down camp.

Mike “Top” McKelroy, a retired Marine master sergeant with a paternal streak and the same standard-issue buzz-cut he has had all his life, had been rooting for Robinson for years.

“I always thought of myself as rotten and mean, but one day Top put his arm around me and said, ‘You’re great,’ ” Robinson said.

That moment stayed with Robinson, and the 54-year-old McKelroy became a father figure, replacing the dad Robinson lost at 9.

“This is the first time a lot of these people have had choices in their lives,” McKelroy said of the program.

The tents McKelroy patrols resemble a M.A.S.H. unit set up to help the down-and-out instead of the sick and dying.

His soft touch is evident in the way he pats his men on the back and guides them to where they need to go.

But McKelroy can be gruff when he needs to.

“Make sure you get your butt up there,” McKelroy says to a towering rough-hewn character who had some court papers crunched in his hand.

It was last year that Robinson decided he was willing to give up the chemicals he had used as crutches for years.

Now, clean and sober for a year, he works alongside his mentor as a volunteer.

And he plans to be back next year.

“The only person that understands veterans’ problems is another vet,” he said. “They’ve done what you’ve done and come out of the same hole you’ve come out of.”