By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

AUGUSTA – The veterans of Iraq need not spend their adult lives like so many soldiers of Vietnam: angry, drunk or mistrustful.

They can ask for help.

“Don’t wait for 30 years, please,” said Tom Hrichek, one of several Vietnam veterans Saturday who pleaded with America’s newest veterans to seek counseling, find someone to talk with and begin healing from the war’s emotional wounds.

The comments came about midway through a day-long symposium in Augusta on post-traumatic stress disorder. Among attendees were veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the current fights in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The discussion varied from a nationally recognized expert’s clinical analysis to impromptu discussion by soldiers themselves.

Tony Brown of Old Orchard Beach also counseled new vets to seek help.

“I was 19 years old in 1966, but I turned 46 overnight,” said Brown, who served three tours in Vietnam. “I earned two Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Service Cross and was nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor. But when I came home to the states, I was lost.”

He spent 20 years as a police officer in Texas, but he never felt at home, he said.

“I still haven’t found where I am supposed to be,” he said. “I’m almost 60. I’m running out of time.”

That feeling of disconnectedness is common for combat veterans, said Dr. Glenn Schiraldi, a University of Maryland psychologist who has authored an inch-thick textbook on the issue, titled “The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Source Book: A Guide to Healing, Recovery and Growth.”

“I call it a shattering of the soul,'” Schiraldi said. “The therapeutic goal is to put the pieces back together.”

The disorder, whether caused by war trauma or caused by a catastrophic event such as a rape or an assault, can leave a person emotionally numb, depressed, scared or suicidal.

At some basic level, fractures form between some combat veterans and humanity, said Bruce Letsch, a psychologist who has worked with many veterans.

Letsch respects the clinical information, but, like many counselors, shies away from the wholly clinical approach.

“We can’t lose sight of the human context,” he said. Each case is unique and personal.

Sometimes the biggest help can come from listening to a soldier, he said.

About 125 people attended the conference, sponsored by several groups including Veterans for Peace, Catholic Charities Maine, Pax Christi and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

Hrichek and Letsch hoped the gathering would encourage veterans to get help

“It’s never too late,” Letsch said.

Hrichek said he is being helped by counseling, but he has his regrets.

When he left Vietnam, he was warned against seeking help. His leaders told him it might delay his discharge for as long as a year, he said.

Decades passed before he finally saw a counselor.

“It took a judge to order me to go,” said Hrichek, who spent much of his young adulthood getting into trouble. He got angry too easily. There were lots of arrests.

If he was a new veteran today, with the counseling that so many soldiers receive, he might have finished college and reached his goal: to become a paleoanthropologist, he said.

“I might have reached my dream,” Hrichek said.