By Wade Coggeshall
Frank Parks, a veteran of the Vietnam War, has never forgotten what it was like when he returned home from that.
“It wasn’t pretty,” the commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6128 in Brownsburg said. “Our government turned against us, our own peers turned against us, the public turned against us. The perception was we were all a bunch of losers, drug addicts, drunks. That’s not true at all. They said we couldn’t assimilate ourselves to society, but we did.”
Even worse, the mistakes made during that tumultuous period in our country’s history appear to be repeating themselves. Just as with Vietnam, the suicide rate among veterans returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is increasing.
“The myth is still going on, and the same thing is going to happen to our returning vets now,” Parks said.
With Robert Luenebrink, a VFW service officer, he’s started The Path Home. It’s a free service with the slogan “Veterans Helping Veterans.” That could be in the form of assistance in navigating the government labyrinth to ensure he or she receives all the benefits they’re entitled to, to simply listening to them and “let them know we’re there for them and there are programs that can help them,” Parks said.
The two have gone around to county police and fire agencies to let them know of The Path Home’s existence.
“Sometimes police and firefighters are the first to respond to these kinds of things — guys having trouble with their families or threatening suicide, stuff like that,” Hendricks County Sheriff Dave Galloway said.
Himself a Vietnam vet, Galloway remembers guys like that getting in trouble with the law when he worked in Boone County. Many couldn’t find jobs and saw their marriages crumble.
“It helped that I knew how things were for them,” Galloway said.
Luenebrink, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, notes that in the military, soldiers are assisted every step of the way: supplies, intelligence, even a chaplain.
“When you get home from the military, the first thing you notice is that it’s quiet — there’s no gunfire,” Luenebrink said. “That’s a fearful thing for a veteran because when you hear the sound of our weapons in the distance, you know you’re not alone. You get out here and don’t hear that, you realize you’re alone. You also don’t have those support elements.”
Plus, veterans often don’t communicate well with civilians because “they’re trained differently, which is required to do their job.”
There’s generally not much time to adjust either.
“I was out of the jungle and home in a week — no transition,” Parks said. “I’m watching TV and seeing my guys battling somewhere I just left. That’s hard to take because you know what they’re going through and you want to help but can’t.”
Galloway’s father was a World War II veteran who was severely wounded in bloody combat in the South Pacific.
“He wouldn’t talk about (the experience),” Galloway said. “He kept that bottled up for years.”
It wasn’t until he met another vet who had been in the same battle that he finally opened up.
“That’s what he needed to do — get it off his chest,” Galloway said. “But he always said no one would believe what he saw unless they were there.”
Parks admits he’s still adjusting to civilian life.
“It always stays with you,” he said. “You have to learn how to deal with it. It’s not something you can let eat you up, and a lot of guys do.”
For more information on The Path Home, call 528-1628 or 852-3200, or visit the website at www.thepathhome.net.
wade.coggeshall@flyergroup.com
