FORT HARRISON -- When Chris Dana was 5 years old, his mother called him into the yard to see a caterpillar she'd found on the sidewalk.

The boy came running out, excited, and accidentally squashed the colorful bug.

"He stepped on it, not knowing what I wanted to show him," said Lisa Kuntz, Dana's mother. "He didn't like to hurt things. He was such a sensitive kid."

Kuntz tells the story with a smile, though she keeps a tissue close at hand. The smile is for the memories. The tissue is for the tears.

The boy who cared so much about the life of a bug took his own life in March. He placed a gun to his head on a Sunday evening, 16 months after returning from Iraq. He was buried with military honors days later.

Dana, who was 23, may have been the first Montana veteran of the Iraq war to succumb to post-combat stress. His descent into depression, isolation and suicide took months to achieve, and only seconds to end.

How a soldier who was remembered by his grade-school teacher as caring and accepting, and by his life-long friend as giving and self-aware, could change so drastically so fast speaks to the nature of war and the struggle many combat veterans face when they return home.

Some say the lucky ones are those who receive physical wounds in battle. The mental wounds lie deeply hidden and the stigma that comes with revealing them often keeps many veterans quiet for fear of being ostracized by their peers, or society at large.

Lt. Col. T.J. Hull, who commanded the 163rd Infantry Battalion in Iraq, called it the implied military culture, where injury or illness is often seen as weakness. Some veterans deny they're having problems while others are afraid to reach out, thinking the nightmares, depression, anger and apathy will eventually go away.

"At times, that implied culture may discourage a soldier from getting help," Hull said. "But we all have some kind of issues at some point. If you see somebody killed or their arms blown off, it's going to be an issue. Let's treat it like any other injury."

What is the injury, and why is it so hard to identify? Why does combat change one soldier so drastically but leave another seemly unscathed? How does war affect the psyche?

"We're dealing with some unique factors in this war," said Dr. Rosa Merino, chief of psychiatric services for the Montana VA. "This is a whole new situation. A lot of these kids haven't had successes in their life yet. That's part of the problem -- you take young kids and ask them to jump forward in their life experience."

Merino, who practiced in the psych rehab unit at Duke University, has worked with combat veterans for nearly two decades. She's treated patients from World War I, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, and now Iraq.

Sitting in a white lab coat early one morning at the mental health clinic at the VA hospital in Helena, Merino described PTSD as a state of mind that follows an extremely stressful event, or a series of events that fill a soldier with intense fear and feelings of helplessness.

Soldiers with PTSD are more likely to experience depression, addiction, and panic. If left untreated, the affliction becomes chronic and resistant to therapy. The more frequent the combat -- the more intense the battle -- the greater the risk that PTSD may result.

Merino said an estimated 18 percent of Iraq war veterans are at risk of getting PTSD, compared to 11 percent of veterans who served in Afghanistan. Since 2005, the VA system has seen a 30 percent increase nationwide in PTSD diagnosis.

"No one comes back from war unchanged," Merino said. "To survive, you disassociate mentally."

Merino talks about state of mind and the overlapping "wise mind" with the "emotional mind." While the mind may be an abstract concept, the affects of war upon it are both real and observable.

In battle, she said, the wise mind separates from the emotional mind. It helps the soldier cope with the hazards and brutality of combat. Getting back to a pre-war state of mind, however, isn't always easy.

From a soldier's perspective, war happens in a microcosm. On the battlefield, necessities are as basic as food, water and sleep. Little things mean a lot -- a letter from home or a hot cup of coffee. Stress is as present as one's shadow.

During the war, Kuntz rarely heard from her son. When she did, his conversations and letters were vague.

"Just dropping you a letter to say all is well," Dana wrote his mother in January 2005. "Don't try to worry so much. It will give you early wrinkles. Besides, I haven't even been shot at yet, so things are looking up."

Kuntz sent Dana cameras, but he wasn't interested in taking photos. He started smoking -- all the guys were doing it. His outfit wouldn't let him drive (he was lousy at it, they joked), so they put him behind the .50 cal. mounted upon the roof of the Humvee.

Dana was manning the gun when the flash of rocket propelled grenade raced in his direction. One of his sergeants saw it and pushed him down in the nick of time.

On another patrol, the squad came under fire from a group of insurgents positioned in the tree line. Dana opened fire, sweeping the target with the .50 cal. The firefight was fast and furious.

"He said there was nothing left of them (insurgents)," said Dana's father, Gary. "He didn't go into details. I didn't want the details."

Once in Iraq, the 163rd Infantry Battalion -- 700 soldiers from Montana -- was separated into different groups. Troop E, comprised of 100 men including Dana, was placed under the command of Idaho's 116th Infantry Brigade.

"They contributed to the stability of the Kirkuk area," said Hull. "They assisted with the training of the Iraqi army, the Iraqi police, and patrolled. They had some direct action and conducted raids. They were operators as opposed to supporters."

War forces a soldier to act and react in a way contrary to his nature. It leaves some addicted to the adrenaline of combat, making it hard for them to let it go when the action ends. In Dana's own words, it's kill or be killed. Nothing is gray. It's all black and white.

"There's the issue of being on a very high level of awareness -- being awake for 19 or 20 hours a day with your head constantly in the game," said Hull. "When do you withdraw from that?"

Dana returned from Iraq in 2005. He returned to a normal civilian life. He got his old job back at Target. He bought a car and a cell phone.

By all accounts, he seemed to have left the war behind. When the family gathered on Thanksgiving Day in 2005, Dana, newly home, happily joined them. He hadn't said much about the war.

"I was upstairs cooking that day," Kuntz remembered. "He was downstairs with his laptop open, showing some pretty atrocious videos of the things that had happened over there."

Interested, Kuntz asked her son, "Did you ever have to kill anyone?"

"Yes," he told her.

"How did that make you feel?"

"If you don't kill them," he said, "they'll kill you."

His mood began to change in 2006. When summer rolled around, Dana stopped returning his family's phone calls. He was always tired, even after sleeping all day. It wasn't long before he quit his job at Target, saying he had plenty of money to get him by.

Something was different. Something, his father said, was missing.

"There's a look in people's eyes," Gary said. "There was something back there and it was bothering him. He just wasn't expressing it."

A bleak joke in the movie "Full Metal Jacket" referred to that empty look as the "1,000 yard stare." Terms like shell shock and combat fatigue were used in past wars, long before PTSD was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which didn't occur until 1980.

Merino, who never saw Dana, sees it more as disengagement. It's that state of mind where rationality separates from emotion, then fails to reunite when the soldier comes home.

"It's been known for years that soldiers coming back from battle often did so with some form of psychological distress," Merino said. "When you look into the mirror, you look fine, but yet you're different."

Different -- that's how Dana was beginning to behave. Kuntz invited him over for Thanksgiving, just like she had the year before. This time, Dana wasn't as willing.

Dana told his mother that he'd already made plans with his father. He then told his father he'd already made plans with his mother. As it turned out, he stayed home and spent the holiday alone.

"Then I asked him about Christmas," Kuntz said. "He said he didn't want to be around family. He'd never snapped but that day he did. He just yelled, 'Why don't you people just leave me alone!?' "

Kuntz didn't give up. She called to invite Dana out to lunch. He didn't pick up and he didn't call back. He stopped attending the family's Sunday morning breakfasts. He wasn't working, though he said he had money. That, too, was a lie. They found his checkbook after his death. He was $700 in debt.

For their own peace of mind, Dana's parents have tried to piece together his last day. He smoked his last cigarette and threw the package in the trash. He didn't renew his car insurance. He cleaned out his Pontiac and his trailer. He was a Pepsi junkie, but his Pepsi was gone.

"I think he decided it was time -- time to move on," Kuntz said. "I think that's the hardest thing, wondering what was going through his mind when he pulled the trigger. I just can't deal with that."

Some veterans have described the west wing of the VA hospital -- home to the mental health clinic -- as the loneliest walk they've ever taken. Dana never made it this far, though other vets, those on the brink of self-destruction, know it well.

Down here, Merino stresses the word recovery. She describes it as a deeply personal and unique process of changing one's values, feelings, goals or skills. It's a way of living a satisfying and hopeful life, even with limitations caused by post-combat feelings.

"Recovery to me is hope -- it's about integration," she said. "They struggle making the transition from one life to another. They want to get back into the community to where they feel like they have a purpose and value."

'My kid is still in combat'

By MARTIN J. KIDSTON - IR Features Writer

Ken Rosenbaum keeps a small frame shop in the Helena Valley. The Vietnam veteran, who struggled with PTSD after the war, had three sons go to Iraq.

One of them came home a much different man.

"He came home all messed up," Rosenbaum said of his youngest son. "My kid is still in combat, there's no doubt about it."

Rosenbaum doesn't beat around the bush, nor is he a stranger to war. He flew helicopters in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in 1970 as a member of the Army.

What gets him choked up aren't his memories of dangerous flights. What has stayed with him all these years are the bodies -- dead soldiers he flew in to retrieve.

Rosenbaum's own struggles with PTSD helped him see the symptoms in his youngest son. When the soldier returned from Iraq, his problems soon began.

His son got a DUI and was charged with domestic assault on his girlfriend. Charges for aggravated assault stemming from a nasty bar fight followed. He drank too much, and released his anger in volatile bursts.

"He couldn't talk about anything other than the war," Rosenbaum said. "He went crazy out here a couple of times. He doesn't trust anybody, especially women."

The soldier, 24, was finally committed to a clinic in Sheridan, Wyo., that specializes in treating veterans with post-combat stress.

"He was exposed to an awful lot," Rosenbaum said. "You can't just go killing people without something happening to you."

The men they said goodbye to changed in Iraq

By MARTIN J. KIDSTON - IR Features Writer

Quoting from a book she's reading on the issue, Chris Evans described PTSD as a normal response to an abnormal circumstance.

Her husband experienced that abnormal circumstance as a soldier in Iraq. Now that he's home, Evans and other wives are working to make sure their husbands get the help they need.

"We were told in the reunion training that we should wait a little while and let them adjust," Evans said. "So we sort of hung out and dealt with the issues as they happened."

Evans began observing some initial anger problems in her husband. She noted his troubles getting to sleep, or staying asleep. There were nightmares, too.

Yet Evans followed the advice and stood back, thinking things might change. When they didn't, she approached her husband, recalling what he told her before he left for Iraq -- that if she observed any problems, to let him know.

"I left it up to him to go get help," Evans said. "He was pretty proactive about it. We had good communication."

Evans said the counseling her husband has received is helping. It helps having a place to go and someone else to talk to. The wives have established something similar.

"A lot of the wives and I still get together," she said. "When it's just the wives, we'll all kind of compare notes to see if we're experiencing the same thing."

Most of them are, Evans said. The men who they said goodbye to in 2004 changed in Iraq. Some couples have gotten divorced over problems related to the war. Evans knows of three off hand.

"The last 18 months have been just as hard as the deployment," Evans said. "It's that roller coaster. As they work back into life, you keep running into things that have changed."

To learn more

Military veterans interested in learning more about PTSD and how to get help, call the psychiatric office at the VA Hospital at Fort Harrison at 447-7596, or toll free at 877-468-8387 ext. 7596.

Martin Kidston can be reached

at 447-4086, or at mkidston@helenair.com