The Nevada Sagebrush

John Newman was riding in the back of a Humvee manning a .50-caliber machine gun in April 2004 as his convoy drove through the streets of Tikrit, a small insurgent-filled town in northwest Iraq.The four Army vehicles drove past a grade school when an insurgent fired a rocket-propelled grenade. It missed the convoy, but exploded near the school.

Newman remembers pages of notebooks fluttering in the air and blood-soaked hair ribbons in the street. Twelve Iraqi children were dead in a flash of violence and all the American soldiers could do was keep driving.

A year and a half later in the fall of 2005, Newman was trying to pass a calculus class at Truckee Meadows Community College while coping with the aftereffects of war.

“Six months prior my worry was life or death and then I was sitting in a classroom surrounded by people in a very safe environment where the people around me had spent the last 18 years with completely different thoughts and focuses,”said Newman, now a 31-year-old environmental sciences major at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Like many fellow veterans at UNR, Newman saw combat first-hand and is still dealing with the challenges of readjusting to civilian life on a college campus.

UNR is home to 163 active duty veterans, many of whom have served one or more tours in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some return scarred, physically or mentally – 25 veterans at UNR receive disability from the VA.

Newman is one of many who suffer from the effects post-traumatic stress disorder. Other combat veterans, like 22-year-old health Brian Murillo, a health ecology major, experience smoother transitions back into civilian life.

The veterans at UNR are among the waves of soldiers expected to fill college classrooms across the county as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue. The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $2.76 billion in education benefits to veterans last year.

Even though he hasn’t been diagnosed with any anxiety disorder like PTSD, every time Murillo enters a room on campus he said he immediately scans the room for potential threats and possible escape routes.

“When I walk into a room I want to know where I can get out if something were to happen, if something were to hit or come under fire,”Murillo said.

Thuy Boardman, a clinical psychologist at the VA hospital in Reno, said soldiers are trained to scan crowds every 10 to 15 seconds, looking for potential threats. It’s a skill they use in battle to stay alive, but it becomes a burden once the veteran is back home.

“A lot of these veterans don’t want to be in crowded places so going back to school is a major issue,”said Boardman, who helps returning soldiers readjust to civilian life.

“It’s a lot of silent suffering,”she said.

About one in five veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan develop post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the VA.

Like many veterans, it took Newman nearly a year to seek medical attention for the anxiety he was experiencing after returning from Iraq in February 2005.

“I just wanted to come back and be me, be John,”Newman said. “I didn’t want to be the person who did those things over there. I wanted to be able to sleep through the nights and just carry on with my life.”

For the past year, Newman has served as the outreach coordinator for the Vet Center, a VA-affiliated counseling service for veterans returning from combat.

He checks in on veterans, making sure they go to class or find employment. His goal is to spread the word that most veterans experience the same feelings after they return from war.

“You feel pretty alien, you feel apart, you feel safe in isolating,”Newman said. “You don’t share your experiences with anybody and you don’t want to expose yourself to put yourself at risk for people asking stupid questions.”

The most offensive question: “So, have you killed anybody?”Newman said.

“That’s an insult that can throw a veteran into a tailspin,”he said. “You know there are images that go with that stuff. There are feelings and emotions.”

Bill Baines, a humanities professor at TMCC and a Vietnam veteran, said professors could place unneeded stress on veterans during class, especially if they elicit memories of warfare for the veteran.

“Understand that when [professors] say’ this is a horrible war, terrible war, this war is evil,’ “he said, “what they’re saying in translation to the vet, ‘your wounds and the wounds of your brothers and deaths of your brothers are meaningless.”

Johann Sprenger, UNR’s veteran’s service coordinator, said he is usually the first contact many veterans have at the university after leaving the military and starting class.

“They don’t know where to begin, they feel totally out of place like a fish out of water,”Sprenger said.

Murillo joined the Army in 2003 as an 18-year-old high school graduate from Yerington, Nev. He came home in July.

“Now I can make decisions like it’s nothing,”he said. “I’ve been shot at and blown up a couple times. School’s a piece of cake.”

But life as a soldier was very different than the lives of his friends back home.

He lists all the close calls he’s been through: a soldier next to him shot in the head, escaping a Humvee unscathed after an improvised explosive device destroyed his vehicle.

“I believe I have nine lives and I’ve used seven or eight of them,”he said.

Although their experiences differ, veterans returning home from war still share common bonds. Veteran share stories with veterans – if they feel comfortable they’ll open up to civilians, Newman said.

Like many veterans who have returned from war, Newman has departed from his clean-cut military image. His beard has grown back and his hair is longer. Still, it’s easy for veterans to pick each other out on campus, he said

Haircuts, posture or even an Army carabineer attached to a backpack are dead giveaways. For the combat stressed veterans, “it’s in their eyes,”Newman said.

“We’re out there,”he said.

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