After the Shooting Has Stopped

Of all the thousands of attacks against American troops in Iraq, none was larger than the one last spring against a 26-truck convoy hauling an emergency supply of fuel to Baghdad International Airport.

Hundreds of insurgents lay in ambush for the convoy and then attacked along a two-kilometer front. For most of the Americans, it was their first taste of combat. It was over in about an hour but for some of the survivors, the aftershocks of combat are still wreaking havoc long after the shooting has stopped. Correspondent David Martin reports.

"I knew my foot was broken. It felt like it was broken. But I didn't, I didn't know why or what had happened," says Walsh. "Everything was just happening so fast and my heart was pounding so hard, I couldn't hear anything; just hearing my heart. So I was just -- I was scared."

It was the largest ambush of the war, and when it was over, two American soldiers and six civilian drivers were dead.

"They attacked our convoy," says driver Thomas Hammill, who was captured but later managed to escape. Another driver, Cpl. Keith Matthew Maupin, is still missing.

Maupin was taken hostage and the insurgents later released a video purporting to show his execution, although he is still officially listed as captured. Those facts are chilling enough, but facts and still photos of bullet-riddled tankers don't begin to tell the story.

To understand the impact this one ambush had on the 35 Americans who survived it, you need to listen to a badly-shaken Spc. Jacob Brown, as he recorded this poor quality home video immediately afterwards: "It was pretty bad . . . My driver got hit in the leg . . . There's three people we don't know about. Six people got medivaced. We know one guy burnt to death."

Walsh was one of the 11 wounded. While he was being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, doctors made another diagnosis: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

"I'd only heard about PTSD with Vietnam vets, and I thought that I was too young to get it," says Walsh. "I didn't think that I would be old enough to have it. … They said I had an extreme case of PTSD."

Some of the symptoms included irritability and impatience. And Walsh said he loses his temper a lot: "I don't know why, but I do. Just can't put up with anything anymore."

According to Dr. Robert Ursano, the government's leading expert on PTSD, it's more widespread than you might think. "PTSD, in many ways, may be the common cold of psychiatry, that perhaps everyone, over a lifetime, has been exposed to a life-threatening event of some kind, motor vehicle accident or hurricane, a tornado," says Ursano.

"But do you find people who just don't want to admit that they have PTSD?" asks Martin.

"Individuals with mental disorders frequently are frightened about talking about the problems that they have, frequently feel like they need to hide them," says Ursano.

Does every soldier who's been in combat get some degree of PTSD?

"Everyone exposed to a life-threatening event will change in some way," says Ursano. "And for some, we may see chronic unremitting disorders."

Within days of the ambush, Walsh wrote a detailed account of what happened. But when you ask him about it now, there are things he either can't remember or doesn't like to talk about. Why?

"I spent the last 10 months in therapy trying to forget about the attack," says Walsh.

But if Walsh's memories of that day are accurate, you can understand why he doesn't want to talk about it. "There were two little kids on a bridge, one was probably about 7, the other was 10 and they both had weapons," says Walsh. "One of 'em was holding his weapon upside down which I had never, I mean, he was holding it by the clip, a banana clip upside down, and the other kept firing off rounds at the truck. I fired over their heads and they turned around and took off running . . . And later on I seen 'em again . . . and I fired and I hit one of 'em. I hit the younger one."

Where did he hit him? "I was aiming for his chest. I believe I got him in the throat, which I wasn't even trying to," says Walsh. "The 7-year-old wasn't even firing his weapon. The one I actually got wasn't even firing."

A year after the ambush, Walsh was still in therapy at Walter Reed and he had a new girlfriend, Gail Koster.

Is it hard having a relationship with somebody who has PTSD?

"Sometimes," says Koster. "Just being able to figure out when it's a good day versus a bad day."

There was one very bad day last October. "He was just drunker than I'd ever seen him. I just never seen him that drunk. I have no idea what I said but something I said just triggered something and he knocked my feet out from under me," says Koster. "He had me in a chokehold and he was just on the ground just telling me, 'You're gonna get me in trouble, you're gonna get me in trouble.'"

Walsh is either unwilling or unable to explain why he snapped. "I really don't know what happened," he says. "I know we got in an argument, big argument down there. I really don't know. I couldn't tell ya. I can only tell you what I heard.""If they hadn't pulled you off her, you would have choked her to death," says Martin.

"I probably, most likely would have," says Walsh.

Psychiatrists insist heavy drinking is not technically a symptom of PTSD and neither is violence. But with PTSD, whatever problems you had before the traumatic event will still be there after. Whatever diagnosis you put on Walsh's violent outburst, it was a particularly bitter twist to one man's efforts to ease the recovery of wounded soldiers coming home from Iraq.

Hal Koster hosts wounded veterans and their families at his steakhouse in downtown Washington every Friday night. It was at one of these dinners that Walsh attacked Gail. Hal Koster is Gail's father.

"I don't like people beating up my daughter," says Hal Koster. "I know a lotta guys with PTSD and they don't beat up people. They don't beat up wives and spouses and girlfriends and stuff like that . . .. Jarob's the only person I know that's ever done that, and that's why I don't think that's totally PTSD."

Koster knows about the stress of combat. He served two tours as a crew chief on a helicopter gunship in Vietnam and came home with his own case of PTSD.

"Do you see yourself or some of your buddies from your war in these kids?" asks Martin.

"Things haven't really changed. You go to combat, you have these feelings and these emotions and, when you step back and you get a few years older, you think, 'Well, no matter what the Army taught us, that was still a human being that we killed,'" says Hal Koster. "And you gotta think about that, long and hard."

The problem is most soldiers are dealing with it on their own. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that one in six soldiers who have seen combat in Iraq is suffering from PTSD, and up to 80 percent of them are not getting the treatment they need.

"If you go to get psychological help, you get a check in your little book that says you had some problem," says Hal Koster. "So a lotta times what happens is the guys try to deal with it themselves and that's not a good thing."

Are they afraid of being labeled "a head case?"

"Oh yeah. Don't have any use for 'head cases,'" says Hal Koster. "You know, it's the guys that have had physical injuries, don't have any real respect for the guys that are just 'head cases.'"

"The guys that have physical injuries think the guys that had, that are 'head cases' just what, are sissies? Just can't deal with it?" asks Martin.

"Yeah. Yeah. It's the same thing that's been there for year and years and years. There's always been that, that stigma," says Hal Koster.

Walsh does have a physical injury, but to him being shot in the foot doesn't seem heroic. "Getting hurt in that attack, I mean, just my foot is the only thing that stopped me from going back. It's a shame. It's something I was ashamed of," he says. "It feels like I ran away. I mean, it feels like I got hurt and then that was my chance to get away and that's what I did. It's not what happened but that's what it feels like."

When you look at Walsh, with all his problems, and consider that he almost killed his girlfriend, Gail, you might have the same question that Martin asked: "How do you go back to a guy after something like that?"

"I kind of explained, I kind of said, 'You know, I don't want you drinking anymore. I do want you to get the help that you need to deal with your issues,'" says Gail Koster.

"So you think maybe that was a turning point for him in facing his PTSD?" asks Martin.

"To some extent," says Gail Koster. "He said to me that he didn't, he didn't want to lose me, so he was gonna do what it would take to, keep me, to make me happy."

Then, a week after she said that, there was another fight. "He came in. He was just completely upset, just angry beyond angry and just vented," says Gail Koster. "Yelled, screamed, threw things. Broke things. … Most things were thrown at me. I have bumps and bruises on my head. I can feel them every time I brush my hair – or my eye. My lip was busted up. My nose. Bruises. Just sore and bruises all over."

"This is one very personal story which you're sharing with us," says Martin. "Why are you sharing it with us? Most people would tell us to butt out."

"I don't know. Part of me wants to tell you guys to butt out," says Gail Koster. "Don't make him look bad. He's not bad. I guess I'm still trying to get him help."

"You think there are a lotta people out there going through some of the same things that you're going through with him?" asks Martin.

"Uh-huh," says Gail Koster. "Maybe not to an extreme of getting beaten up, but yeah."

Last month, Walsh turned himself in to police on charges of second-degree assault. His trial is scheduled for June.