Local vets find support in a new kind of bunker

Published 11:03 pm Friday, August 29, 2008

SULTAN — It’s called “the bunker.”

It’s where weary, soul-wounded veterans come to get away, to find brothers and to do something they once found difficult.

To laugh.

Together they salve the wounds of war.

On Tuesday, four Vietnam veterans — Karl Gustafson, Frank Clark, John Goodwin and Rick Miller — were huddled inside the bunker in Sultan. They were seated on comfortable, upholstered chairs for a meeting of the Sultan Outpost of Pointman International Ministries.

The nondenominational ministry for veterans was started in 1984 by Seattle police officer and Vietnam veteran Bill Land­reth, who died in 1986. Chuck Dean, an author and Vietnam veteran, took on the day-to-day operations of the ministry after Landreth’s death.

Today, Dana Morgan serves as president. Pointman has hundreds of bunkers and outposts led by Christian veterans in countries around the world. It publishes a newsletter, provides information for wives and families of veterans on topics such as post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide. It hosts a Web site and holds support group meetings for veterans. Members make hospital and hospice visits and help with projects in their communities for veterans and their families.

Gustafson, Sultan’s outpost leader, served in the Air Force in the 3rd Fighter Wing as an F-100 mechanic in Vietnam. He has been involved in Pointman since 1986. He started the Sultan outpost with his wife, April, in 2006.

Goodwin, a former Seabee, started the meeting with a joke about a $10 dog. The men laughed.

Since their time in Vietnam, years have passed when laughter hasn’t come easy.

These are men whose brotherhood is linked to the things they saw during war, and had to do, while in their teens.

On Tuesday, the men talked about what haunts them, how you can see war scars in a brother’s eyes from the jungles, mountains, frozen fields and violent seas of the world’s battlefields.

“Brothers can relate. We know the sorrow, the heartache, the loneliness,” said Clark. He saw combat in Vietnam.

Even though the four men have found the bunker, the war has never really ended for them. For years, they’ve struggled with depression, anger and PTSD, they said.

The men in the bunker talk of the days when they turned to drugs and alcohol, fast cars, motorcycles or high-adrenaline jobs. They worked on the Bering Sea or in prisons, hiding their war wounds and finding new dangers to revive the feelings they experienced during war. Each had several wives.

“The suicide rate is outrageous. There’s a lot of divorce. And being married before you go to war can cause the most problems,” said Miller, who served with the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. Miller said he spent his 21st birthday in battle and smoked his first marijuana in a foxhole in Vietnam. That wreaked havoc in his life for years until he found Narcotics Anonymous, a drug abuse support group, and God. After a couple of failed relationships, Miller said he’s vowed to remain single.

“Even to this day, I tell my guys, don’t sneak up on me,” said Miller. “One time, when my son was 12, he woke me up and I had him up against a wall with a KA-BAR (knife). That’s when you know you need help.”

Those situations and the problems they cause are what makes ministries like Pointman so important, said Gustafson.

“If the guys don’t change, come to the Lord, it can affect generations,” he said.

Some veterans haven’t found the bunker yet. If you know where to look, some can be found living along the Skyko­mish River near Sultan. It isn’t much different from how they lived while on combat patrols, Clark said.

“You’ll find more combat vets up here, a lot of them,” he said. “They want to be isolated. Those are the needy vets.”

Gustafson, Clark, Goodwin and Miller aren’t so needy anymore. Now, when they go to appointments at the veterans hospital in Seattle, they talk to other vets. They visit the vets at the river. They visit others in hospice care.

“Since I’ve been a born-again Christian, my life has turned around,” Clark said. “I’m not out there with an AK-47 or a baseball bat anymore.”

“I still go to Narc-Anon,” said Miller, who said he grew up going to church. “That’s where you find a higher power, that’s where I found God. Now, I wake up and I have a mocha and I ask, ‘What is your will for me today, God?’”

Reporter Leita Hermanson Crossfield: 425-339-3449 or lcrossfield@heraldnet.com.