Oregon Public Broadcasting

Thousands of Oregon servicemen and women have rotated through Iraq and Afghanistan since the year 2001. Some are coming home with symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and related problems.

This fall, we’re following one family buckling under the strain of long and repeated deployments: Brian and Laural Miller and their five children.

April Baer has the second story in our series, Portrait of a Military Family.

About one in five veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD or depression. That estimate comes from studies funded by the military. The battleground where veterans fight these conditions  may look different than you’d expect.

Laural and Brian Miller

Brian Miller: “Did you have a good day at school?”

Brian Miller spent a total of 22 months in Iraq during his last five years in the Army.  He ran convoys, and did other kinds of dangerous logistical work.

It’s half a world  away from the Eugene schoolyard where he picks up his sons each day. But in some ways, he’s inhabiting both worlds at once.

Brian Miller: “Some things -- it sneaks up on me, like I’ll hear something and kind of jerk. There’s other times where it doesn’t seem to bother me.”

Brian’s three deployments have left him grappling with what most of us consider to be pretty basic tasks. His wife Laural sees his struggle manifest in different ways.

Laural Miller: “I notice he knows where the exits are everyplace he goes. We went to a parents’ night at Roosevelt. They had found seating for us on the other side of the room. And he’s looking around and looking around. He had to go stand by the door.”

Some displays are not  as low-key. Brian struggles with short-term memory loss. I even noticed it when I’d call him to talk about visiting him for interviews.  Doctors think it's possible he may have Traumatic Brain Injury, but nothing’s confirmed yet. He’s definitely suffering from depression, and shows some symptoms consistent with PTSD.

Brian Miller   “A loud noise in a small room kind of drives me crazy.”

Dealing with triggers would be hard enough under the best of circumstances. But the Millers have five kids, and they’ve been homeless since summer, sleeping in a 24-foot travel trailer.

Brian Miller: “Sometimes in our trailer, you know five kids, they start making noise, it drives me up the wall.”

Brian Miller

Brian says one of his biggest post-war challenges is keeping his cool around the kids.  On a recent school holiday, Laural was doing some volunteer work, which left Brian to wrangle four of his kids, Bronte, Braden, Lathan, and Laran, ages six  through thirteen. 

Brian Miller:  “We are going to the Eugene YMCA.”

It’s a better alternative than hanging around at the local homeless  shelter. The Y has basketball, racquetball and showers—very important for a family living in a travel trailer—and best of all, a pool.

While the kids splash around, Brian talks about why a combat zone is not necessarily good training for parenthood.

Brian Miller: “I’m used to being able to deal with certain people a certain way. I can’t deal with my kids that way .”

When he was a staff sergeant, moving convoys around Iraq, yelling was an acceptable, even effective way for Brian to get what he  needed. It’s not such a good tactic when he needs to coax seven-year old Lathan   out of the pool.

Brian Miller:  “Cmon, Laran, Lathan, let’s go…. Lathan. It’s time now.  If you’re in the car, you get to go along with me....”

Today he’s under control, but Brian says he’s startled at how quickly he can fly off the handle. He loves his kids, but he constantly questions his abilities as a parent.

Brian Miller: “At times I enjoy it very much, at other times it’s very hard. There’s times I’d just rather walk away from it all, because I’m hurting the kids more than I’m trying to help them.”

Brian’s problems have also kept him from working steadily since he retired from the Army at the end of 2007. He has years of logistics experience. But he’s not ready to return to situations that bring back missions through Iraqi streets, where every roadside box or paper pile might hide an IED. 

Dean Ehly runs a Veterans Administration program for service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He declined to discuss Brian’s case specifically. But he did say he sees  many veterans coming home unprepared for civilian life.

Dean Ehly: “In the military it’s a very structured environment, and so many things are provided to you, and you don’t have to decide what you wear, you don’t decide what time you’re going to be there, you don’t decide what you’re going to eat for lunch. The decisions soldiers make are much fewer, but maybe more important.”

Ehly says if you want to understand returning veterans, you need need to see the world as combat veterans do -- the  finger snap that sounds like a stray bullet. The tailgater in the rear view mirror that triggers a long-buried combat memory.

There may be more help available for Brian Miller. He’s having tests done that may qualify him for a higher disability payment. But that’s a process that takes months. In the meantime, this family of seven is sticking it out in their travel trailer, on an Army pension of about $1400 a month.

Next week we wrap up our Portrait of a Military Family. We'll hear how in some ways the war has been the glue holding the  Millers together.