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VIETNAM AND IRAQ WAR EXPERIENCES WEIGH ON

FATHER AND SON -- "My dad, sometimes I think

he's my guardian angel."

 

 

Story here... http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/
stories.nsf/washington/story/481A65A7
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Story below:

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Vietnam, Iraq war experiences weigh on father, son

By Ron Harris
POST-DISPATCH WASHINGTON BUREAU

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — As others celebrated Aaron Chesley's return from Iraq at the Baltimore airport, Bennie Price gazed intently at his stepson.

"I knew he was going to be different, but I wanted to see how much," said Price, 58, recalling that day two years ago.

Chesley, 26, was in the West Virginia National Guard and a college student just two semesters shy of a degree in criminal justice when he returned after 15 months in Iraq. He remembers Price's stare.

"He looked at me almost like he was looking into my soul," Chesley said.

In his scrutiny of Chesley, Price was looking for a hint of something he had seen in himself more than 30 years ago, when he returned from a year's service in the Vietnam War.

To his dismay, he found it — the look of post-traumatic stress disorder, an ailment Price still struggles with.

And, as Price feared, the man he regards as his own son, a former high school honors student and star athlete, would confront the same pains — feelings of isolation, anger, fear and uncertainty, with flashbacks, nightmares and screams in his sleep.

Like Price, Chesley would fight, be arrested, sink into alcohol and drug abuse, and eventually become homeless. Even now, he still has nightmares, twitches violently in his sleep, awakens in cold sweats and seethes with anger at times.

And Price grieves as most fathers would.

"I don't want him to go through the pain I went through," he said.

All these years later, Price still takes medication for his mental illness. He attends counseling sessions to grapple with scars left by the Vietnam War.

"Certain sounds still bother me, like helicopters or loud noises," he said. "The smell of grass reminds me of the monsoons, and sometimes I can smell blood."

The father's story

After being drafted in 1969 about a year out of a Baltimore high school, Price was shipped off to Quang Tri Province, the site of some of the war's fiercest battles. He said three of his friends had died in the war before he was drafted. In Vietnam, he watched more people die.

To numb the pain of war, he said he began snorting heroin. He said he tried to quit before he returned home after his 12 months in Vietnam. "But when I got back, everybody in the neighborhood was doing heroin," he said. "You couldn't get away from it."

He left the military, and the symptoms of his post-traumatic stress disorder persisted.

He fought constantly. He couldn't hold a job. He robbed people. And he did it all through the haze of drugs and alcohol.

Price said he rejoined the Army with the hopes of getting away from drugs but was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio not far from the Mexican border. Drugs were readily available. His addiction continued, concluding with an honorable discharge from the military.

At one point, Price found himself in the psychiatric ward of a VA hospital in San Antonio. He became homeless, sleeping on the city's park benches. Then he moved back to Baltimore, angry as ever.

"I was crazy," he said.

His parents kicked him out of the house, and for a while, he was homeless again.

In 1976, Price said, he began pulling his life together. He checked himself into a drug treatment program, where he also received mental health counseling. In 1979, he got a job in Baltimore's public works department.

In 1982, he started dating Georgie Morrissette, who was already pregnant. A few months later, she gave birth to a baby, whom she named Aaron Chesley. Shortly after that, she and Price married. By then, the infant had stolen Price's heart.

"I tried to overcome my life because I wanted Aaron to be somebody," said Price, who was recently ruled 100 percent disabled because of post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes.

The son's story

According to those who know him, Chesley did become "somebody."

At Catonville High School just outside Baltimore, he was student body president, a member of the National Honor Society and the Hispanic National Honor Society, the editor of the school's poetry magazine and a star athlete in football and track.

After high school, he heard that in certain states, National Guard members received full tuition to state colleges and universities. So, he enrolled at West Virginia University.

Everything was going well in 2003, until he was called to active duty later that year. He served in Nasariyah, Iraq, as a machine gunner.

When Chesley returned home, the signs that he had changed were everywhere, Price said.

"He wouldn't talk, and Aaron was always talking," he said. "He would get upset about things that didn't mean nothing. He would stay in his room."

Before Iraq, Chesley said, he never drank or did drugs. After Iraq, he did both with a vengeance, hitting rock bottom with crack.

He was arrested and charged with DUI after he blacked out and ran into a police car. Another time, he tried to commit suicide with a case of beer and a speeding SUV, he said. He flipped the truck four times but came away virtually unscathed.

Anger also consumed Chesley. He was arrested for assault and disturbing the peace, once charged with hitting a Baltimore police officer.

He sank to his lowest when he began choking Price after becoming angry over a game of pool, Chesley said.

He, too, wound up homeless until he was admitted to the first of three facilities run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Price said that, despite everything, he will never turn his back on Chesley.

"He's my son," he said.

Now a handsome young man with a broad smile and rippling muscles, Chesley is trying to piece his life together in the psychiatric ward of the VA hospital in Martinsburg.

He's upbeat and optimistic he will overcome his problems. He plans to finish up at West Virginia University and play halfback for the football team.

If Chesley does fully recover, he said, it will largely be because of the special bond between him and Price.

"My dad, sometimes I think he's my guardian angel."

rharris@post-dispatch.com  | 202-298-6880

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Larry Scott  --