An Enduring Veteran-to-Veteran Effort

Now in its eleventh year, the Veterans Initiative Task Force (VITF) began with far more questions than answers, the most compelling an unasked one that hung in the air at the first meeting between veterans who had clear memories of being mortal enemies in the not-so-distant past. On one side of the table, a VVA delegation had come bearing artifacts from the war that they hoped would help the Vietnamese locate some of their estimated 300,000 missing; on the other side of the table were Vietnamese veterans of the “American War,” those VVA hoped to engage in the effort to answer questions about America’s missing.

“We were former enemies meeting one another, large numbers of veterans on both sides of the table, asking questions,” VVA President Tom Corey said of that first meeting in 1994. “The biggest question was: ‘Where do we go from here?’”

The VITF had asked the membership to donate materials—documents, photographs, battlefield souvenirs —that might lead to the recovery of missing Vietnamese. It was hoped that such a gesture would lead to better cooperation in the American effort to recover its missing. Corey and VITF Chair Bob Maras believe that the long and cooperative relationship built over the years between VVA, the Vietnamese, and the U. S. detachment in Hanoi conducting recovery operations played a crucial role in the discovery of the remains of twelve Marines at Ngok Tavak.

At the heart of the VITF philosophy is the belief that a soldier-to-soldier encounter would be more productive than anything governments might do.

“Government-to-government wasn’t really working,” Maras said. “We thought warrior-to-warrior would be a better way to build a bridge. The soldier-to-soldier bond has been incredibly positive. If someone had told me ten years ago that I’d be shaking hands with someone who was once shooting at me, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

The early trips made by VITF delegations were marked by apprehension. Corey said that with each successive trip the tension eased.

“Everyone watched us to see if it would be a one-time thing,” Corey said. “They weren’t excited to see us coming on that first trip. Those first meetings were tense on both sides of the table. There were still a lot of issues left over from the war. But they saw we returned with more positive information and they started opening up more. They wanted to see if the same people would be coming back and that’s an important thing. It built continuity and trust. We brought stuff back in good faith and directed the Vietnamese to sites and those sites were productive.”

In the sixteen trips made to Vietnam, VITF delegations have delivered information to the Vietnamese Veterans Association on 8,694 Vietnamese KIAs; 1,086 Vietnamese prisoners, and two Vietnamese MIAs.

To underscore the importance of cooperation, Maras pointed to a report from the American detachment in Hanoi.

“A few years ago a Vietnamese man got one of our flyers and asked JTF [Joint Task Force/Full Accounting in Hanoi] if it was a good thing,” Maras said. “JTF said it was. The Vietnamese man said he knew where an American pilot was buried. His plane had crashed behind the man’s house and, out of respect, he buried the pilot. The JTF sent out a team, dug down a few feet, hit corrugated tin, pulled it back and there was the pilot, still in his flight suit, dog tags, everything else. That showed that the Vietnamese were willing to work with us as long as we were willing to work with them.”

Maras and Corey emphasized the importance of continuity in dealing with the Vietnamese, saying that the relationships built up over the years provided a sense of confidence that has proven to be productive for both sides.

“With the Vietnamese, the message carries on down through the country,” Corey said. “‘The Vietnam Veterans of America are here, and they’ve come back with more information.’ As we go to different provinces, they turn over information to us and we do the same for them.”

Maras said information given to the Vietnamese recently led to the discovery of a gravesite holding the remains of 50 to 60 Vietnamese in Dong Ha Province. He said the relationship that led to such cooperative efforts played a critical role in the recovery of the Marines’ remains at Ngok Tavak.

“The Veterans Initiative played a crucial role in Ngok Tavak because they [JTF] had gone to the site several times and weren’t able to find the exact position of the remains. We kept pursuing the issue and we kept saying, ‘They’re here, they’re here, and we have to keep looking.’ They kept at it and we kept going at it and they finally found the Marines.”

Corey said such efforts need to continue.

“In the words of JPAC, it will go on as long as the Veterans Initiative returns and keeps doing what we’re doing providing information,” he said. “We’re the ones who are getting the Vietnamese to come forward. It’s veterans who can do this. Ngok Tavak wasn’t something we were going to let go of. It was a closed issue, but it was the persistence of the Veterans Initiative and others in VVA that made things happen. I think the Veterans Initiative is here as long as we continue to contribute to the fullest possible accounting. As long as we can to that, we will continue moving forward with this relationship with the country of Vietnam and JPAC.”

Training Workshop Features Role-Playing To Teach Principles, Techniques of Advocacy

Two dozen VVA members from across the country journeyed to VVA national headquarters in Silver Spring in October to participate in a first-ever advocacy training workshop. Some, like Missouri State Council president Alan Gibson and Jeff White, his counterpart from Pennsylvania, were veterans coming to seek some pointers and glean some insights that might make them more effective advocates. The vast majority, though, were news: they hoped this two-and-a-half-day session would be an opportunity to learn from those who advocate for veterans on behalf of VVA.

They didn't return home disappointed.

The workshop, the brainchild of VVA president Tom Corey and Rick Weidman, Director of Government Relations, was not conceived as a theoretical exercise based on hypothetical situations. It was designed to provide hands-on experience. Two key points were stressed: Successful advocacy is based on ongoing relationships of mutual interest. And success in advocacy requires active follow-up; it doesn't happen because you've made a single, sincere pilgrimage to a senator's office in Washington or a representative's district office back home to make the case for health care funding or concurrent receipt or testing veterans for hepatitis C.

"If our partners go back home with these two concepts firmly embedded in their minds, they'll have learned what it takes many advocates years to comprehend," said Weidman.

Eddie Gleason of the Department of Government Relations took the lead in preparing an individual book for each participant containing a wealth of information about federal and state offices and programs. It described the process most bills undergo to become law.

Modules on the processes of government were led or addressed by Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans; Len Sistek, Democratic Staff Director for Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs; Jim Holley, Staff Director for the Democrats on the Committee; and Pat Ryan, Jim's Republican counterpart. A section on media relations was choreographed by VVA's national Communications staff, led by Mokie Porter.

A key facet of the workshop was role-playing: VVA staffers ad-libbed skits on winning friends and influencing legislators. Participants, in turn, were given roles and asked to role-play as well. They also received real hands-on experience by calling, setting up appointments, and visiting offices of their state's elected officials. At the end of each day, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire to gauge their reactions to the day's events.

Was this a valuable learning tool? Participants felt so. Among the testimonials anonymously offered were these: "It has taught me how to prepare for a meeting with a legislator," one wrote. Echoed another: "I can personally be more effective in promoting issues of value to veterans, and I can lead others in the same direction." And another: "No doubt about it. I feel more comfortable approaching legislators. Also, I feel more informed. And I have more tools to work with in accomplishing my task."

Based on the responses to the questionnaire, the Government Relations staff also learned some things: how to improve on its initial effort. These lessons will be incorporated into the next advocacy workshop, which will be held in March in conjunction with the spring Board meeting. An announcement will be made as soon as the dates are finalized.

"We Look Out For Each Other" Tony Catapano and Veterans Over the Horizon

Tony Catapano calls it a two-headed snake: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on one side, the addictions - alcohol and drugs - on the other, feeding off one another, bringing grief to everyone who comes close, destroying marriages, driving away children, making you feel unique, alone, knowing you are the only one who believes it is normal to sleep an hour or two every night, knowing it is normal to lose your temper at the smallest perceived slight and go into a rage.

"It's always right there for me," he says, speaking of the sense of purpose he awakes to each morning - staying sober and combating the PTSD.

Before 1997, Catapano didn't know what PTSD was. He said he was an alcoholic and a drug addict with four failed marriages behind him and estranged children who would have nothing to do with him. He was 19 years old when he went to Vietnam with the Marine Corps. He is 55 now, the president of VVA Chapter 272 in Greeneville, N.C., and a founding member of Veterans Over the Horizon, a "band of brothers" who first met in a church in Centerport, N.Y., in the spring of 1998.

"Six guys sitting around talking back then, and right now on an average Tuesday night, there's between 40 and 50 people," he said. "There has to be well over 100 members in the group total. When I moved to North Carolina, I cried. When I go up there to visit, it feels like I'm coming home."

In March 1997, Catapano said he had a "complete breakdown." He spent 30 days in the Northport, N.Y., VA psychiatric unit. Then for three months he was member of an outpatient PTSD therapy group that met once a week. Everyone in the group thought they needed more. Once a week, with only a few minutes for each man in the structured setting, wasn't sufficient.

There were other problems, too, roadblocks that prevented them from speaking openly. At Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, they felt uncomfortable in the presence of those who weren't Vietnam veterans. The non-veterans didn't speak their language, hadn't touched their experiences. Catapano said the veterans couldn't tell them about the nightmares. If they talked about flashbacks, they might first have to define the term.

Six of them went to a church in Northport and asked the priest about renting a classroom. It cost $25 a month. They asked for PTSD outpatient clinician Jack Maloney's blessing. He gave it and continues to refer men to the group.

"They couldn't address special issues related to the trauma and how it related to substance abuse at AA and NA meetings," said Maloney, who now works at the Manhattan Vet Center. "I felt they needed some place off campus where they could talk about PTSD and substance abuse at the same time. AA has meetings for lawyers, dentists - specialized meetings such as that. Here in New York City, they have special AA meetings for actors where they talk about specific issues related to their careers. So our guys started Veterans Over the Horizon. Everybody could talk.
Everybody was reading from the same menu. They needed that."

Catapano said with no therapist in the group, the talk was more relaxed. No one would be taking notes; nothing would go into a file.

"You weren't going to be psychoanalyzed," Catapano said. "It freed up your mind. You could say anything you wanted to say in the Tuesday night group. Any subject was open. The new guys usually sit around quietly for the first week or two until their butts are on fire and they have something to say."

Over time, a closeness grew. The group was small, the same faces week in and week out. Almost all of them had been in the in-house PTSD unit at the VA hospital. They lived together. They shared both childhood stories and Vietnam stories.

"It was the same feeling we got in Vietnam," Catapano said. "You become family. People drift in and drift out, but if somebody doesn't show up for a couple of weeks, someone will get on the phone and call him. They'll go his house looking for him. We look out for each other. It's what you felt in Vietnam. It's that closeness of the guy next to you in the squad. We can look at each other and tell when something's wrong."

Catapano said that since he has been in recovery, he has walked three daughters down the wedding aisle. Before that, they wouldn't talk to him. He had lost his family, as many of them do.

He is married again, too.

"I decided to fight for this one," he said. "We've been together for 13 years. She's my rock. She watches me like a hawk. Time in these programs is worn like a badge. If you stay awhile, the wounds can heal. The wounds you have caused can heal. After awhile, you pick up the phone and apologize to your daughter. Sometimes they call back, sometimes they don't. It's not unusual to hear someone say, 'I talked to my son today for the first time in 20 years.' When someone gets up and says something like that, the applause is deafening. It's like a warm breeze blowing through the room."

When Catapano moved to North Carolina, he asked permission to use the chapter's building to set up a Veterans Over the Horizon meeting. Meeting on Monday nights, the group is small, though growing, with a therapist in Greeneville recommending that clients join.

Catapano sees the meeting as an extension of the chapter's already established programs to aid veterans in need.

"We have a relief program where guys can bring in their light bills, car payments, whatever," he said. "We have a committee that analyzes these things and can write checks to veterans. We have a food pantry set up. That's what Veterans Over the Horizon is all about. It's what we have to do to heal ourselves. We can't count on the VA; we can't count on the government to give us anything. We have to help each other."

He would like to see the program go nationwide in every chapter. He believes its importance cannot be overstated.

"Being on the receiving end of that kind of care and compassion is like falling in love for the first time," he said. "It's the only way I can describe it."



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Waiting for the Call: The September Eleventh Disaster

It smelled the same as war. It looked the same as war. Grant Coates, the vice president of VVA’s New York State Council, thought the memory of it might have been one of the good things he brought back from Vietnam. "Been there, done that," he thought.

He knew the physics of war's destruction, recognized its immutable laws. He'd been in combat with the Army Rangers. He'd been a tracker, working with a Labrador retriever to find the

enemy when contact broke off. He built a civilian career as a police officer and worked K-9 there, too. Now he was retired and working part-time for the Delaware County, New York, sheriff, himself a Vietnam veteran who was in-country about the same time Coates was.

Coates had been around death and violence all his adult life. The professions he chose made it unavoidable. When the call came on September 11, instinct and experience fell into place, and he knew another mission had come. He knew what to expect and how to prepare. He knew it would be nasty. He knew there would be the smell of death in the air.

He'd been there and done that, 32 years ago in another war.

But the World Trade Center had to be assessed on a heretofore unknown scale. A mountain of rubble, 1.2 million tons of it, thick steel beams twisted like pretzels, thousands of dead and missing, a range of destruction that dwarfed those who approached it.

"When you're talking about something of this magnitude, I don't think they have a think tank to consider all the logistics," he said.

The first night, as they walked toward Ground Zero, the civilians on the sidewalks watching them go by checkpoints looked like zombies. Two blocks away, he saw the pile of rubble where the two great buildings once stood.

"You could see the cranes with these gigantic claws taking the rubble out," he said. "I have a picture of three workers walking past a claw, and this claw, you could probably put around a dump truck. But from where we were, the claws looked like Tonka toys on a beach. Unless you were up close, and you could see the size of the claw and the size of the pile the claw was working on, you didn't get the perspective of how big the pile was."

He had been working a private security job for United Way on September 11 and had just checked into a motel when television news showed the black smoke billowing from the first tower.

Coates grew up in Manhattan, on the West Side. He looked at the burning building, and the first thing he thought of was the World War II bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building long ago. He wondered how something like that could happen with today's aviation equipment.

Then the second plane came.

"I knew right away we'd be going," he said. "They were going to need our help."

A message went out from New York State Emergency Services to the sheriff's office, the message Coates anticipated after he saw the second plane explode inside the World Trade Center tower. The sheriff turned over the operation's planning to Coates.

He made calls, interviewed prospective team members, and in four hours had assembled an eleven-man squad, many of them part-timers who took time from their regular jobs to go.

His wife, Kaye, was on the phone, too. In two hours, they had rounded up $4,500 in equipment. A clothing company sold T-shirts at cost with no labor for the printing that would identify them as sheriff's deputies. A drug manufacturing company gave $4,000 in supplies, masks, and other equipment. Kaye's co-workers made cookies for the deputies to share onboard the ship on which they would be bivouacked.

"One of the ladies who made apple brownies lost her son in the Beirut Marine barracks attack," Kaye wrote to The VVA Veteran editor Mokie Porter. "He was her only son. She said `God bless them for helping.’ Another lady I work with, her 10-year-old son is having a tough time. She said he built a tower from building blocks the other day and then flew a plane around it. He kept trying to figure out how it happened. When she asked him to help her make the cookies, he wanted to help the deputies find the people. Pretty special stuff."

The Delaware deputies had not been summoned to search for survivors. Recovery had replaced rescue as the mission. They looked instead for evidence, combing the great mass of rubble brought to the Staten Island landfill. They worked in a cold rain, sifting the pile for the airplanes' black boxes and other aircraft parts; looking for body parts, personal effects, firefighter's hats, police shields, IDs, credit cards--anything identifiable.

"Two areas, football fields, surrounded by generator lights," Coates said. "Each item was logged in."

Everywhere they went, the outpouring of aid from civilians amazed them. Cops had much experience with abuse and little with pats on the back. Crowds were always trouble--until September 11, when they became something different.

"A complete 180," he said. "We train for the worst; we don't train mentally for people being nice. The care that total strangers gave us, it's not something we're used to in law enforcement."

People sent soap, food, toiletries, toothpaste, clothes, boots, shower sandals, gloves, helmets, batteries, and miner's lights for the helmets. They sent so much the workers on the ground couldn't hand it out fast enough. "Everybody was standing up to help somebody else," Coates said.

Everywhere they went, it never changed--thanks for the help, God bless you--and especially so at the Jesuit retreat where they stayed and met Father Ryan, who gave them not only food and shelter but healthy doses of wit.

"It was like out of M*A*S*H," Coates said. "The first time I saw him, he was wearing a t-shirt and he had a cigar in his mouth. He'd pop up at all hours of the night just to see if we were okay. He'd say, 'Don't forget the kitchen is always open. No locks on the doors. If you see something you want, take it.’ He had a salad bar and said, `Now that will always be full of ice and it will have juices and water and beer and carafes of wine, and every now and then I'll come out with a non-denominational bottle of scotch for you.’"

Then it was back into the streets--a gray, haunted landscape filled with aching backs, skinned knuckles, and exhausted men and women on a mission.

"We were walking to a Salvation Army feeding point about 7:30 one night," he said. "We noticed everything was dead silent. Nobody was talking. The reason was because about a hundred search-and-rescue people were coming down the street with their dogs, heading into Ground Zero. They were all volunteers."

A gray, moonscape dust covered everything. The slightest breeze blew it off the ledges of tall buildings, the small airborne particles sucked into lungs and irritated eyes. The city made an all-out effort to clean it up, sending out street sweepers, watering the streets, sending out crews with brooms and shovels to do the job by hand.

"It was like sand in your eyes," Coates said. "You could feel it on your face. Everything was covered with this pumice dust from the stones and bricks and concrete that had been vaporized. It was like being on a beach on a windy day. You kept getting sandblasted. There were lots of eye abrasion problems."

At the landfill, they called the pile "The Hill," 300,000 tons of rubble by the third week of October, The New York Times reported. By October 21, The Times said, 1,766 body parts and about 1,600 personal items that might lead to identifications had been found.

Grant Coates said he never could shake the feeling that they were missing something, a small piece of evidence, a personal item that would bring some sense of closure to the family of a loved one missing.

Underscoring it all was a sense of simply not being able to do enough. "At Ground Zero, everyone was doing everything they could, but you still have this feeling of helplessness," he said. "With millions of tons of mountain, you just can't get into the middle of it. There was a lot frustration. But we're ready to go back. I have two teams ready to go. We're just waiting on the call."
Robert Cortez

By Jim Belshaw

The conference room doors blew open. The rush of wind hit the officers in the meeting room and the concussion made their ears pop. Col. Robert Cortez instantly knew what it was. He had

heard such sounds before. He was a Vietnam veteran. He knew the concussions, the rush of wind, the smoke and fire. The Pentagon had been hit. It was under attack. He was certain of it.

The New Mexico Army officer had reported for work on September 10, the first day of his two-week summer camp with the Undersecretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs at the Pentagon. On September 11, he was moved to a different office, down one of the corridors of the Pentagon’s famed labyrinth.

He had heard such sounds before. He was a Vietnam veteran. He knew the concussions, the rush of wind, the smoke and fire. The Pentagon had been hit.

The move might have saved his life. It put him a little farther away from the point of impact when the airliner slammed into the building.

He had been in a meeting for about an hour when word came of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The meeting broke up temporarily so the officers could find out what had

happened in Manhattan.

Five minutes after they reconvened, the Pentagon’s corridors exploded into fire and smoke, "There were people hollering and screaming and crying and we said, `Don’t panic,’ ‘‘ Cortez said. "I was thinking there were 23,000 people in the Pentagon and I just hoped we could get them out safely without any panic. We needed to get people organized. I like to think of it as organized chaos."

Cortez accounted for the attendees at the meeting and then evacuated the building. As he headed toward a bus stop outside, an Army medic called out to him for help with a patient.

"An Army officer, Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell, had been severely burned," Cortez said. "I ran over to the medic and helped as best I could. The medic already had him on a gurney and had begun IVs. But there were no ambulances."

Knowing the Army officer probably would die without medical attention, they went to an Arlington police officer and told him they needed to find a way to get the injured man to a hospital. They stopped a firefighter and told him. No ambulance came.

Finally, they flagged down a civilian SUV, a Ford Expedition. They loaded the burned officer into it. A motorcycle police officer offered to escort them, but didn’t want to leave the area completely because she thought she would be needed at the crash site.

A Navy sailor came by on a motorcycle and offered to escort the SUV. Later, the sailor would admit that he was new to Washington, had no idea where the hospital was, but somehow managed to get the SUV there anyway, running over sidewalks, medians and going against traffic on the way.

"When you’re trained, you just react," Cortez said. "You don’t realize how ingrained it is. It's that instinct kicking in and people doing what's needed to be done."

When he went back to the Pentagon the next day, he said he was broken-hearted at the sight, the center of defense in the United States, still burning, an ugly scar slashed through it.

"I was moved to tears," he said.

Two days later, he watched media reports from inside the Pentagon and realized how close to death he’d come.

"It really hit me," he said. "I came that close to getting killed."

Later, he was moved to another location and unit. He met Capt. Calvin Wineland. The two men spoke of the attacks. Cortez told Wineland about the injured officer and the SUV and the

sailor escort to the hospital.

"Wineland said, 'Hey, that was me! I was driving the Expedition,’ "Cortez said.

The injured officer is out of intensive care now but still in the hospital. Cortez wants to meet him but will hold off until the Army officer recovers more fully.

"I didn’t know him," he said. "We were only helping an injured comrade. I’d like to meet him."

Cortez said the Pentagon is a different place now, security being uppermost in the minds of everyone in the building. Vehicles, packages, letters, everything is scrutinized with a heightened awareness.

More than that, Cortez senses a deeper change.

"We’re focused, we’re determined," he said. "This is our home territory. They’re not going to get away with this."
Mary Miller

By Jim Belshaw

"There was a lot of disbelief," Mary Miller said. "You live in Shanksville or Johnstown, and you think you live in a rural area where it’s safe. You don’t think about terrorists in your back yard."

Yet there they were on September 11, flying above her, banking toward the Johnstown Airport, wings unsteady, the Boeing 757-200 coming in at an odd angle, then turning awkwardly, headed for Shanksville ten miles away, where the airliner would slam into an old strip mine, killing everyone aboard.

Miller, the Vice President of Associates of tnam Veterans of America, had been at a meeting at a Marine Corps hangar at the Johnstown Airport. A board member for the Vietnam Veterans Leadership/Veterans Community Initiative, she was involved in the planning of a fund-raiser banquet.

Shortly after the meeting began, the participants were told an airplane had struck the World Trade Center in New York. They turned on the television. They watched a second plane hit the World Trade Center.

"We were astounded," she said. "Then the next thing we knew a loudspeaker in the hangar announced that the Pentagon had been hit."

Orders came to clear all vehicles out of the parking lot.

"Before we could even move, we were then told to evacuate the building immediately because an unidentified jet was on its way to Johnstown Airport at less than 6,000 feet and not responding to the air control tower," she said.

She went outside to her car. United Flight 93 came into view, low, headed toward the airport.

"It was wobbling," she said. "It wasn’t flying slow and steady. The wings weren’t stable the way you’d expect. And I thought, ‘What is going on up there?’ "

Later, she learned with the rest of the nation that the passengers on United Flight 93 had chosen to fight the hijackers. Speculation on the intended target of the terrorists centered on Camp David, the White House, or the Capitol. The passengers brought the jet down in Shanksville, ten miles from where Mary Miller stood.

"There were a lot of brave people on that plane," she said. "My heart goes out to their families. There are so many thoughts that go through your head. It’s unbelievable that this could be happening in the United States. The World Trade Center, the Pentagon--heaven only knows what would have happened if the passengers hadn’t brought it down."

She thinks people are calming down now, trying to return to their lives as best they can. She is also certain that a fundamental change has come, too.

"You had the Oklahoma City bombing, the USS Cole, now the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," she said. "I think we blind ourselves sometimes, but I don’t think we’ll be complacent anymore. I heard someone the other day talking about the draft coming back and a gentleman said it’s already here. Everybody in the United States has been drafted. He’s right. We are."

A New War: Dennis Andras in the Hurricane's Aftermath

VVA member Dennis Andras found it strange that a hurricane in Louisiana should send him back to roots he put down in Vietnam. But the hurricane’s aftermath felt like war. He found himself fighting for survival. The hurricane’s destruction surpassed anything he’d seen in Vietnam. It felt like war and it looked like war. So the 57-year-old businessman found himself thinking like the 19-year-old “shake ’n’ bake” infantry NCO who went to Vietnam in 1969.

The 33-year-old family business, Deltone Electric, had been passed on to him when his father died. He’s worked in it for twenty years. It serviced the marine and oilfield industries along the Gulf Coast. The hurricane did not destroy the business but battered it badly, leaving behind a trail of devastation that left his employees homeless and in desperate need.

He housed 23 of them and their families in a hotel, vowing to keep them there as long as the money held out. The DAV chapter in Gonzales, La., rented its hall to him for only $300, saying him he could use it as his business headquarters for as long as he needed. VVA members from Texas loaded up supplies and headed to Louisiana, where Dennis Andras had gone to war.

“You’re going to love this,” he said. “I’m using training I had in the military to set up forward observation bases. I was able to draw on my skills in the military to keep things going, and I’m amazed at how well I can remember what I used to do.”

He moved his company 150 miles. He moved half his equipment the same distance. He moved his personnel out, housed them, re-established his office, re-established his lines of communication, and got people back out in the field. He lives in a “fifth-wheel” RV. He calls it his “mobile command center.”

“Everything I learned in the Army, everything I learned in Vietnam, I’m putting to use,” he said. “And it’s working. Mentally, this is a war. I’m fighting a war right now. I’m back in Vietnam. I’m in my element. That’s what’s strange. It’s like I used to say back then: I can shoot, move, and communicate.”

There is tension in his voice when he speaks. The words rush out as if in competition for a limited amount of oxygen that the lungs insist on rationing.

“One wrong decision, one wrong move, and 80 people [his employees and their families] are worse off than they are now,” he said. “If I mess up, they’re on the street. I gotta take care of my people. I can’t let them get on the street. That’s all I’m trying to do, you know? All I want to do is take care of my people.”

Three of his employees are missing. He doesn’t know where they are or if they’re safe. “One of the best marine electricians you’ll ever see” calls from Mississippi. His house has been destroyed. He needs money and asks for a loan. Andras tells him to get to Louisiana and he’ll put him to work, but he can’t afford to loan him any money. Another young man calls from a shelter and says he can’t make it to work because his wife is pregnant and he won’t leave her. A 22-year veteran employee has to be told three times how to do his job because he goes through the day in a daze, like so many people in the Gulf Coast do now, disconnected from the reality they once knew.

After the hurricane hit, Andras told his employees that the lives they all knew were over. He said: “Let me explain something to y’all. The life we had does not exist anymore. We all have to start from scratch.”

He reminisces on the “very nice existence” he used to have, a time when everything he needed was at his disposal—telephones, computers, offices, suppliers. Anything he needed, all he had to do was pick up the phone.

That was the old life, the one that doesn’t exist anymore.

An old friend, a Marine veteran of Vietnam, is feared dead somewhere in the wreck of his shrimp boat. Andras figures he ignored the storm warnings. He’d ridden out other hurricanes on his shrimp boats, and he probably tried to ride this one out as well. He was that kind of man.

“Three Purple Hearts, PTSD. If he rode out this storm, he’s dead,” Dennis said. “I haven’t heard anything from him. He’s a very close friend. When I first met him, he didn’t want to talk to anybody. He was very hostile. I got him to get 70 percent disability on PTSD. Whenever he saw my truck somewhere, he’d stop to talk and talk and talk because I was somebody he could talk to, somebody he could relate to. He’d always talk to my wife. I think he’s gone. It’s just . . . the whole thing.”

It’s morning when he speaks of these things and he apologizes for “getting emotional.” Mornings for him are tough.

The people who worked for him lost everything but the clothes they wore the day the storm hit. His son, Scott, a staff sergeant in the Louisiana National Guard, came home from Iraq a few days after the storm. He lost everything he owned. Another son at home lost everything. Dennis Andras counts himself fortunate. His home was damaged, but it survived.

“My day is trying to solve problems all day long, thinking you have them solved, only to find out there’s a hundred more waiting for you,” he said. “That’s my day. My stomach’s always in knots.”

Later in the day in another conversation, his voice changes, the morning’s tension and exhaustion gone. It seems a pattern, he says. The mornings are always hard, but if he can get some things done in the course of a day—if he can take a few steps back toward approaching normalcy—the day looks different.

“If I can accomplish the goals I set in the morning, by the end of the day everything changes,” he said. “If I can last three more weeks, that’s all I need and I’ll have won the battle. Call me then and I’ll let you know if I won.”