Volunteer service, camaraderie back home help veterans cope

Sal Martella was an infantry Marine during the bloodiest phase of the Vietnam War, a year that opened with the Tet Offensive in January 1968 and saw more than 16,500 American troops -- including several of Martella's friends -- killed by that New Year's Eve.

For decades after he survived the grim grind of war -- the deadly chaos of mortar attacks, the alternation between the boredom and bedlam of jungle patrols, the desperate struggle to save wounded comrades -- Martella felt empty, a proud Marine back home from a deadly and unpopular war.

But the retired Elmont truck driver and veterans like him often find that they can fill these empty feelings through service to other veterans.

"When I first got home, I didn't talk about the war, I didn't register with the VA, I didn't even let anyone know I had been in uniform," Martella, 68, said Saturday over the thump-thump of his 1,700-cc Harley Electra Glide motorcycle.

Martella founded a local chapter of the American Legion motorcycle club, and regularly buddies up with fellow American Legion members to talk about their military service at Elmont schools. Some veterans chauffeur fellow veterans to doctor's appointments. Others help staff food pantries or take part in veteran "stand down" fairs, where advocates distribute food and used clothing or offer information on veteran-related services.

Martella said that after returning from Vietnam in 1969, he struggled to readjust to civilian life among fellow Americans who knew precious little about the lonely life of a soldier. He said he now fills his life by trying to help more recent war veterans who are in danger of feeling as empty as he once did.

"You struggle with a lot of things you've seen there, which I still do today," he said. "I wouldn't even admit being in the service for 10 years."

"But getting involved with other veterans, you can talk about it with people who know what you've gone through," Martella said moments before easing into formation with several other motorcycle-riding veterans who took part in Saturday's Veterans Day parade in Westbury.

"You're not so strange because they went through the same what you did," he said, nodding to the others. "And one thing that has helped me tremendously now, other than my wife and my children, is that I go with them to high schools and talk about it."

Health care advocates say finding connections with other former soldiers is one of the best ways veterans can learn to cope with feelings of fear, frustration, anger and hopelessness that often follow men and women returning from war.

Juan Serrano, director of the Office of Military and Veterans Liaison Services at the North Shore-LIJ Health System, said mental health workers there strongly encourage patients with military backgrounds to share their feelings with other veterans.

"We chewed the same dirt, we sweat the same sweat, we bled the same blood," said Serrano, a former Army staff sergeant whose combat wounds incurred in 2004 in Iraq eventually ended his military career. "So the idea of peer-to-peer is a great part of the healing process. It has paid huge dividends."

That was true for Patrick Donohue, 34, of Islip.

He spent a year as an infantry soldier in chaotic Kandahar, Afghanistan, during a troop surge that began in 2010, an experience that left him psychologically spent by the time he left the service two years later. A member of his group of roughly 80 soldiers was killed while he was there. And his sergeant was gravely injured when he stepped on a mine.

Once back home in 2012, the death of a cousin, a fellow veteran who also struggled with war-related psychological issues, left Donohue feeling even further isolated. Donohue said he battled substance abuse, struggled in relationships and felt out of place in a Long Island suburb that has virtually no military community.

"I was a mess," Donohue said. "I was completely out of control. I'm lucky to be alive."

But while having Thanksgiving dinner with his mother two years ago, the two talked of reaching out to help other veterans as a way of giving Donohue a sense of purpose.

Within hours, he had begun to build a website that eventually evolved into Project9Line.org, an organization that offers classes in writing, music and comedy to help veterans heal troubled emotions by channeling them into the arts.

Tuesday night, Project9Line was scheduled to host a writers workshop at LIU Post in Brookville to encourage veterans to put their feelings into words. It plans to host a dinner fundraiser Thursday in Bethpage. And for the past two years, the organization has been staging a music event called VetStock in which musician veterans are encouraged to perform songs they have written live on an outdoor stage in Bay Shore.

Ronnie Oldenburg, 36, whose ZeroFive band performed there this year and last, said being able to express the frustrations he endured after being among the first Americans in Iraq in 2003, and returning to an America unprepared to deal with the psychological injuries Iraq veterans were suffering from, has helped him adjust.

"I wouldn't have done it without him," the Locust Valley resident said of Donohue. "It gives me an outlet."