Ever since the war with Iraq broke out, Vietnam veteran Warren Halle has been experiencing more migraines and anger. His anxiety attacks are more frequent and he has slipped into a deeper depression.

The constant images of action on the battlefield in Iraq and its aftermath has intensified the symptoms of Halle's post traumatic stress disorder, which is a result of what he experienced in Vietnam.

"I was able to watch the war until they had POWs (prisoners of war)," Halle said. "They were showing footage and the camera scanned over and there were dead bodies in the background. I moved sharply out of the room and I had words that can't be repeated. I was wringing wet."

Bismarck Veteran Affairs Center clinical coordinator Jerry Feist said that with the war in Iraq, he has been inundated with old and new patients seeking help for these intensified symptoms of PTSD.

People who have experienced life-threatening or traumatic events tuck away feelings from the experience, which surface years later in the form of anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares and increased anger. That is often accompanied by depression. A smell, sound or visual can take them back to that event.

"They go through a daily reliving of their past experience," said Benn Hayes, Medcenter One psychiatrist. "It's like they are back to when it was happening."

Feist said he has veterans who clean their guns and keep them loaded so as to be prepared. One patient began having vivid nightmares when the war started.

"He jumped on his wife in the middle of the night and was in attack mode and she had to wake him up or he would have hurt her," Feist said. "They (the vets) are so hypervigilant right now."

For Vietnam veteran Tony Rothacker, the war with Iraq has brought more anxiousness and depression.

"You feel like something is going to happen," Rothacker said. "You are drawn in so many different ways. You feel hopelessness and you won't know where you are or what's going on. It doesn't go away."

Everywhere Rothacker turns there is something on the war, which has caused him to go out less and avoid conversations with people. He also can't watch television.

"I was driving when they first bombed Baghdad," Rothacker said. "There was nothing else on. You could hear them dropping the bombs. I felt anxiety and fear. I could almost smell the gunpowder, debris and other smells of destruction. It took me back to a place I didn't want to go."

Rothacker was in Vietnam for a year and served in the 1st Air Cavalry and Infantry. He was fresh out of high school when he signed up to go.

"My life changed completely," Rothacker said. "Before I went over there people who knew me saw me as an easy-going person. When I got back I couldn't get close to people. My feelings were burnt out and gone. You are emotionally dead inside."

It was more than 25 years after Rothacker returned from Vietnam when he realized something was wrong with him. Within a few days of his divorce becoming final, Rothacker lost his job. Six months later, he had double-bypass surgery.

"I became depressed and the bottom fell out of my life," Rothacker said. "The things I buried when I went to Vietnam were frozen and they thawed out and came back to the surface."

Rothacker now deals with flashbacks, depression and anxiety attacks because of PTSD. It is something that will never go away.

"In the spring, the smell of fresh dirt or vegetation will bring things back for an instant," Rothacker said. "Hearing guns go off or cars backfiring puts me in another world. Until you realize it's OK, for that split second, you wonder where your weapon is or where the nearest shelter is. There is no worse feeling than the feeling of not having protection."

For Halle it is the intense feeling of guilt that never leaves.

"I was a door gunner and I was out to do stuff and there was another door gunner behind me," recalled Halle, who was 21 at the time. "A shot was fired and I saw the bullet go past me and hit him. It killed him. You never get over the guilt of watching people die. You live with it for the rest of your life."

When Halle was in Vietnam, he didn't allow himself to get close to anyone because of that. To this day, he doesn't let people into his life.

"I have lived in Bismarck for five years and I have one friend. And I still don't completely trust him," Halle said. "You don't get close to anyone over there and you don't here. When I was over there I told my soldiers, 'I don't want to know your name or about your family. I just want to know if you can do your job. If someone dies because of you I will kill you.'"

After coming back from the war, Halle drank to make the pain stop and would become verbally and physically violent. That rage increased after he had a major back surgery. After that, he was put in contact with Feist and realized there was something wrong.

"When you are born you have these God-given things that are embedded in you," Halle said. "I don't have one of those things. It just isn't there and I don't know what it is. I just know I am missing it."

Now with the war, Halle has his good days and his bad days, which are more frequent than the good days. He can't tolerate watching or hearing about the war, but can't escape it.

"You turn on the radio or the television in the morning and it's on there and there goes your whole day," Halle said. "I will sit down and get real quiet and I don't want to be talked to or touched. I imagine myself out in the country with a breeze, sitting in a recliner with birds chirping around me. It shuts the whole world off."

Halle said he could deal with the war better if he was there fighting because he could act out the emotions he goes through while saving a young person from having to experience war.

"I already have no emotion and I could pick up the gun and do what has to be done," Halle said. "If I could go over there and stop one young person from going over there and being screwed up for the rest of their lives I would. Right now, taking a life is becoming easy for them. That's the way they are going to be when they come back. They will come back as old men in young bodies."

Coming back was different for Halle and Rothacker than it is for soldiers today. PTSD didn't exist and soldiers went straight from being in the war to being back home.

"They drum it into you and get you into a killing and self-preservation mode to the point where the enemy wasn't real anymore," Rothacker said. "The training is so intense. You are over there and it hardens you. Then all of a sudden your time is up and you come home. This mode you are in is supposed to come to a halt but you can't turn your mind off of it. They didn't deprogram us."

For veteran Leamon Ratterree, leaving the service was different. He served in Central America for 25 years and was involved in the Panama invasion. In 1995, he decided it wasn't fun anymore and retired. Instead of just coming home, he had to go through a program to help him make the transition.

Although he went through the program, he still suffers from PTSD.

"Suddenly it hits you later in life," Ratterree said. "The memories and emotions will come back and bite you. I get panic attacks where my pulse starts racing and I have the sensation something bad will happen. Sometimes it comes without any explanation."

For these veterans and the men and women fighting in Iraq, the experience of war is everlasting, the veterans said. They carry it with them day to day.

"It's incredible what they have been through," Feist said. "It gets to be too much and they shut off. They are not trying to be that way. It's something that's in them. They went over there and lost part of themselves and now they are trying to piece it back together."

(Reach reporter Sheena Dooley at 250-8225 or sheenadooley@ndonline.com.)