From Serving in Iraq To Living on the Streets

The Army has increased the number of mental health professionals in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a pilot program where primary care physicians at Army bases screen patients for PTSD and other disorders is expanding. The military has also started following up on service members three to six months after they return from war to check on their overall physical and mental health.

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In Iraq, Chesley's unit provided convoy security, which meant the Army specialist was out on the roads exposed, always wondering when the next roadside bomb would explode.

He became hardened, he said, prepared to die: "It was kind of like you embrace death to stay alive. If you were going to die, you were going to die."

When he got home in March 2005, he struggled to adapt from the first day. He was excited to be home, and he knew his family was waiting, but as he got off the plane he felt dizzy.

Once gregarious and engaging, Chesley was withdrawn and sullen. This was not the young man who was a star athlete and an honors student, whose walls were adorned with plaques and certificates, whose principal, Robert Tomback, recently remembered him as "bright, quite charming and enormously popular."

Chesley started drinking heavily, he said, "putting coffee in my vodka just to get going in the morning." Drinking led to drugs and that led to trouble.

He stole about $600 from his mother. He was arrested twice for DUI, once after he hit a police car, the other after he flipped the truck with the windows he tinted so no one could see him drinking and smoking pot as he drove. He ended up floating between family members' homes.

He tried to resume his studies at West Virginia University, but he couldn't regain his old life.

Finally, his stepfather brought him to a VA Hospital in Baltimore, and Chesley was diagnosed with PTSD and bipolar disorder. Later, he enrolled in MCVET, the nonprofit shelter that provides drug and alcohol counseling and other services.

Sitting across from Holmes at the counseling session, Chesley was a model of contrition and promise. He vowed to take his medicine, to talk to someone if he felt rage creeping up, to "work on being respectful even if I'm angry."

Holmes finally let him go but worried.

"He's still got a lot of anger from the war," Holmes said after Chesley left. "He's on thin ice. He's on real thin ice."

A few weeks later, Chesley left the program, and its director of student services said he didn't know what happened to him.

Chesley's stepfather, Bennie Price, said he recently enrolled in a veterans program in West Virginia after "hitting rock bottom again."

Reached by phone last night, Chesley admitted he had slipped. "But I know I need help," he vowed. "And I want to succeed."