Gulf War vet aids returning troops

By Jerry Cornfield

For the Enterprise

A national effort to assist soldiers returning from Iraq find normalcy in their daily lives is being led by a Persian Gulf War veteran from Bothell.

Julie Mock said the effect of stress encountered upon coming home is greater than politicians acknowledge, because the conditions of the Iraq war are “much worse” than she experienced.

“It’s darn hard coming back. You’re living out of a duffel bag in the sand one day, and you’ll be at a Wal-Mart the next,” Mock said. “People can relate to the effects of combat, but when the American government says suck it up and move on, the psyche can’t heal that quickly.”

Mock is national secretary for the National Gulf War Resource Center, a clearinghouse of information on personal services for soldiers and their families. She’s been with the center for 18 months.

She’s already teamed with a chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. In May, NAMI-Eastside in King County will begin a support group for Iraq and Gulf War vets and their families. There will be no charge to participate.

“This is being pro-active,” said Mike Rynas of NAMI-Eastside. “If someone has post-traumatic stress disorder or another serious issue, when they get back into the daily life we expect they are going to have problems. We want to help them take care of themselves.”

Mock, a 37-year-old mother of two, was a dental hygienist in the Army. She worked in a hospital 30 kilometers from the Iraqi border, treating soldiers and prisoners of war. Her husband, Erich, also a Gulf War vet, is a lieutenant colonel in the reserves who was stationed at Fort Lewis earlier during the Iraq war.

“I suffered chemical exposures and have had a lot of health problems,” she said.

For the first five years after the Gulf War ended in 1991, she said it felt as if she and other veterans were ignored by national leaders. Only recently, as thousands of vets have come down with illnesses said to be Gulf War-related – including multiple sclerosis, lupus and other auto immune diseases – did the government respond.

Repeating that kind of history would be a disaster, she said.

Concern about the health of returning soldiers is spreading as the military undertakes its largest-ever movement of troops into and out of a war zone, with 130,000 expected to come home and 110,000 to replace them.

Meanwhile, the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder issued an Iraq war clinician’s guide to assist doctors, psychologists, counselors and other health professionals deal with soldiers. Leaders of state and federal agencies are working to coordinate what they provide.

“We want to make sure we’ve learned from the past,” Lee said.

“The Department of Defense, federal (Veterans Affairs) and Washington National Guard have done a good job of putting together support programs that consider not only the men and women who are deployed, but their families as well,” he said.

“While there is a system for dealing with smaller numbers of returning troops, we’re going to be dealing with over three thousand returning National Guard soldiers.”

Joe Hitt, civilian spokesman for Fort Lewis, said he’s not aware of large numbers of soldiers suffering transition difficulties since returning from Iraq. Roughly 6,000 soldiers have returned, most after spending a year in Iraq.

“The Army has programs,” he said. “Family members are counseled here before the soldiers return. Soldiers get counseling in the theater before they return home.”

Mock said it may appear that all is well, but problems often surface after a time. That’s when the military lacks an effective response, she added.

She said she approached the state Department of Veterans Affairs because its leaders can develop transition assistance that can be replicated elsewhere. Those efforts will be on the agenda of her group’s conference April 30 in Arlington, Va.

“We hope this is the seed. We hope this is the beginning,” she said.

Jerry Cornfield is a reporter for The Herald in Everett.