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A LONG TIME TO CONFRONT AN OLD DEMON -- World
War II
vet on PTSD: "It's not like Tom Brokaw would
have
you believe. It's not all peaches and cream."
For more on PTSD, use the VA Watchdog search
engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/ses
search.php?q=ptsd&op=and
Story here...
http://www.projo.
com/news/bobkerr/sunco09_
09-09-07_8D71QLO.31e0d19.html
Story below:
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A long time to confront an old demon
by Bob Kerr
It was all there, says Michael Gold, the whole life-draining package of
postwar problems — divorce, alcoholism, crime, domestic abuse.
“It was terrible for a lot of returning vets,” says Gold. “It’s not like
Tom Brokaw would have you believe. It’s not all peaches and cream.”
It’s sure not all peaches and cream when Gold, who is 86, heads out on
Wednesday mornings to confront the posttraumatic stress disorder that
afflicted him decades before it was even given a name. With other
veterans of his war, and a moderator from the war still in progress, he
talks about nightmares and irrational rages and all the things that were
there 60 years ago but kept under wraps for fear of a man seeming a
little bit off.
“We stuck it under the carpet, didn’t deal with it,” says Gold.
Last Wednesday, in his PTSD group at the Providence VA Medical Center,
he met another doctor who said that he had begun thinking about the war
after 50 years, cried uncontrollably and had to give up his medical
practice.
PTSD is often seen as a Vietnam war phenomena that has moved on to
plague a large percentage of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. But it has
been around as long as people have been going to war and killing each
other. It just took until the late 1970s before it was given a name, and
people dealing with all kinds of elusive, war-bred demons at least had a
label to put on their miseries — and the possibility of meaningful
treatment.
Gold, an obstetrician who lives in Barrington, was diagnosed about 10
years ago in Rutland, Vt., where he was running a clinic for
underprivileged women. He was diagnosed after too many years.
“It was difficult for my first wife, and it still is for my second,” he
says.
His wife Linda sometimes refers to his “PTSD moments,” those sudden
temper tantrums often prompted by some very minor irritation.
Gold was born in Newport, grew up in Ossining, N.Y., and enlisted
shortly after his 21st birthday in 1942. He was an aviation cadet and
graduated as a navigator in July 1943. He flew his first mission over
Germany in a B-17 Flying Fortress in November 1943. On his fourth
mission, his plane was shot down. He jumped.
“I was drifting down. It was fairly pleasant. It was a sunny day. The
ground was moving up.”
He landed in a plowed field. A farmer pointed a gun at him. He was a
prisoner of war for 16 months. After the Battle of the Bulge, he was
moved to a “ghetto” barracks within the prison compound with other
Jewish prisoners. The camp was liberated by Russian troops who he found
much more fearsome than the Germans.
He took some time — went absent without leave, actually — to see Paris
and a little more of Europe. After six weeks, a British military
policeman stopped him and told him it was time to go home. So he did.
Then he went to Cornell and Columbia and the University of Rochester’s
medical school on the way to getting his medical degree. He had a career
and raised a family and never stopped having those “PTSD moments.” He
was a medical man who went half a century before going for his cure.
He says that group of World War II veterans he meets with on Wednesdays
does more for him than any doctor ever could.
“They know what you’ve been through.”
They don’t talk religion and they don’t talk politics. But anything else
is fair game, including problems at home and those horrible nightmares
and anger that won’t go away. They talk about the war in Iraq. They
don’t like it. They think it is a case of lessons left unlearned.
But Michael Gold does more than just talk about it. He takes his
experience and sense of history and ends up in places such as the steps
of Providence City Hall to add his voice to others protesting the war.
It seems that all those years of dealing with his war have prepared him
to deal with the current one in ways few people can.
“I never liked Bush to begin with. I was very antiwar very quickly. Most
of my friends feel the same way.”
So he goes to meetings and speaks out. He says he feels an obligation.
He thinks historically. He points out that the framers of the
Constitution had seen the country through the worst war it has ever had
in terms of the percentage of people lost. They knew how terrible war
was, and they assigned the power to declare war to the Senate — those
“more seasoned, wiser heads.”
But all that wise and thoughtful precedent has been scrapped this time
out. Gold offers his own wise and thoughtful response.
Such as:
“Every time a man dies there it’s a death in vain.”
And:
“If it’s chaos now or chaos later, I’m for chaos now. Let’s get out and
let them sort it out.”
You can argue with him. You can say he’s all wrong. But it’s very, very
hard to question his credentials.
bkerr@projo.com
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Larry Scott --
