Bringing the war home

"I didn't come in to the relationship issue free myself," Pamela Foster says, adding that she thinks all potential couples look for a "clicking of the neuroses."

"Jack will tell you up front who he is and what he does," she goes on about her husband of 25 years. "But there's a huge difference between hearing a list and living with those symptoms."

Jack Jones, now 67, is a Vietnam veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Pamela Foster is an author, speaker and blogger who wants to help wives, parents, brothers, sisters and friends learn how to co-exist successfully with someone like him.

Together with her friend Linda Bertalotto, also the wife of a combat veteran -- or "wounded warrior," as they often refer to their husbands and men like them -- Foster has started a support group and wants to talk to anyone who wants to hear her, as she did July 12 at a workshop sponsored by the Veterans Administration Consumer Council. "Have mouth, will travel," she jokes.

"The majority of men like (Bertalotto's husband) Jim are quiet. They don't want attention drawn to them," Bertalotto says. "But we're trying to get the word out as to what PTSD is," Foster adds.

"They can't just 'get over it,'" Bertalotto says firmly, although for much of their marriage she had thought Jim could, with her help. "Vets with PTSD are masters of covering up. They think they're crazy, so they don't want anybody to know. They don't want that stigma."

Jim and Linda

Jim Bertalotto was in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969 as a crew chief for the Bell UH1H Huey helicopters and a door gunner who flew 50 missions without getting shot. He left the service in April of 1969 and met Linda in May. They were married that September.

"It took me five years to realize something was wrong," she says.

After their second child was born, "he quit going to church and to social events. He had anger issues out of the blue," she remembers. He started sleep walking, "checking all the windows for enemies," and his wife blocked the children's doors to protect them.

"Specifically, he was checking security," she says, "and I thought, 'This has got to have something to do with the war.'"

Post-traumatic stress disorder "wasn't even recognized then," she says, "and we just dealt day to day. "

They'd been married 27 years before Jim went to the Veterans Administration -- and she followed him, finding classes and support for her as the wife of a wounded warrior.

"He wants his family members to understand why he's paranoid and keeps to himself so much," she says of her husband. "When he is out of his comfort zone, he's always on alert and scanning for danger. He is more comfortable whenever he 'isolates.' He wants them to know it's not them."

"It took me going to therapy myself to understand it."

Jack and Pam

Jack Jones was a Marine who went into Vietnam with a unit of 244 men. Two of them came home. His ticket to the United States was stepping on a landmine, and "he still deals daily with the physical wounds that are the result," Pamela Foster says. "But by far, his most challenging issue is PTSD. He told me about PTSD and what I could expect on the first date."

"He called the restaurant and reserved a table in the corner," she writes in her book, "My Life With a Wounded Warrior." "Once we were seated, he calmly, reasonably explained to me that he needed a table with a chair where he could sit with his back to the wall.

"You expecting someone to come through the door with guns blazing?" she says she asked him, teasing.

"Yes," he said. "Always."

On their first camping trip, Jack set up the tent -- then took Pam to sleep in sleeping bags at the edge of the woods, far away from the cozy camp fire.

"The tent's a diversion," she remembers him telling her. "They'll come to the tent, thinking we're inside."

"Who?" she asked him.

"Whoever."

"He was my hero," Foster says. "He still is."

"The most important thing I'd like people to know is that PTSD is a natural reaction to an unnatural event," Jones says. "Rape, abuse, accidents, war -- all these thing can bring about PTSD. Its degree is determined by the intensity and duration of the trauma. PTSD can be used as an excuse for anything, but that's all it is -- an excuse. While it cannot be cured, there are coping tools that a person can learn in order to deal with the symptoms."

Common Ground

Among generalities about combat veterans, the women agree on several:

• The veterans expect rejection.

• They seek an adrenaline rush. Bertalotto says she thinks the constant flood of adrenaline in combat "creates a leaky faucette they can't turn off." Foster says her husband wants to do things as widely varied as cage diving with great whites to moving every few years without a plan, just to get that rush.

• The symptoms of PTSD aren't symptoms in combat. They're the reactions that keep soldiers alive.

• The coping mechanisms are "mind prosthetics," just like a veteran who lost a leg needs a prosthetic to walk.

• There is a fine line between supporting a wounded warrior and enabling him.

• The women who love them are "nurturers who believe at some level they can cure them."

• And the only way to survive as one of those women is to change your attitude and your approach to the veteran.

"Some would say PTSD is no laughing matter," Foster writes in her book. "To these serious souls, let me just say that I have found only two choices in dealing with the daily challenges of living with a wounded warrior -- laugh or cry. Since crying makes my face puffy, I am toward laughter."

Sharing Help

Over the past 16 years, Bertalotto says, she has "been very active with the VA Mental Health Consumer Council," acting as a contact person between veterans and the Veterans Administration. She has also continued to attend counseling, much as the wife of an alcoholic might attend Al-Anon.

But, Foster says, a lot of people close to veterans cannot receive the services available to wives.

"When I go to book fairs, I meet lots of mothers, girlfriends, fathers, sisters who had no idea what to do," she says. "Our hope was that creating a workshop for the community would answer that need."

And, she adds, she and Bertalotto want to pave the way for veterans coming home from the Middle East now.

"They shouldn't have to suffer for 25 years before somebody recognizes the problem.

"My goal is always to take people inside the skin of the veteran," Foster says. "They're incredible people you want with you, beside you. I would not be the person I am now without Jack."

"I would do it all again," Bertalotto agrees. "He's that great a guy."