Mike Fitzgerald

BELLEVILLE, Ill. -- Forget what they say about time healing all wounds.

It was April 24, 1951. Heath's company was trapped on a hill, defending it from communist attackers.

Fallen Marines covered the hillside, and stretchers were scarce. So Heath and his comrades used an old tarp to carry away the soldier's body, he said.

"But in order to put him in there, I had to pick his intestines up off the ground and put them on him," said Heath, a retired steel mill supervisor. "So his intestines were just laying open."

Neither can Heath forget the last Marine he saw die five months later.

That was Sept. 15, 1951. Promoted by then to platoon leader, Heath was fighting to survive on an outpost nicknamed "Starvation Hill." He had taken cover in a foxhole when Chinese mortar shells began raining down on his unit.

"And a young 18-year-old boy in my platoon had the left side of his head blown off," Heath said, his voice quavering. "I'll never get over it, you know."

Heath is one of hundreds of thousands of aged veterans seeking help for the nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety they have battled for decades. They are spurred by a growing public awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder wrought by tens of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking help.

And experts predict millions more World War II, Korea and Vietnam veterans will join them.

The implications for the Department of Veterans Affairs are staggering: There are 6 million World War II veterans, 4.1 million Korean War veterans and 8.1 million Vietnam-era veterans.

Vietnam veterans already receive 92 percent of the agency's PTSD care, VA figures show. The percentage of male Vietnam veterans age 65 and older is projected to increase from 26 percent of the male veteran population in 1990 to more than 40 percent by 2017, the VA estimates.

In addition to seeking VA help, these aging veterans are filing claims for disability payments for their PTSD and other injuries suffered in war.

World War II veteran Stanley Gibson, 84, of St. Louis, served in the Army's 99th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge during WWII.

A light machine-gunner, Gibson spent two weeks -- from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 4, 1945 -- eluding capture behind enemy lines after German tanks overwhelmed his unit.

Three years ago, Gibson, who grew up on a Southern Illinois farm, received a 100 percent disability rating from the VA -- 60 percent for frostbite on his feet, 30 percent for PTSD and 10 percent for his age.

But the $2,500 VA check he gets each month doesn't erase Gibson's troubling memories of the two German soldiers he shot dead at close range with a .45-caliber pistol when they discovered him hiding in a Belgian farm shed.

Nor does it erase memories of another German soldier Gibson shot and killed as the soldier ran away.

"I think about it quite a bit. You don't shoot a guy in the back," Gibson said. "But when you get in combat, you throw the book away."

Until a few years ago, when he began receiving treatment for PTSD, Gibson dreaded going to bed.

"I didn't like to sleep because sleep would be dreams," Gibson said. "And it's a wonder Vyrlene [his wife] would still be alive because I would have these nightmares. I mean real bad dreams about the war."

Overall, the influx of so many older veterans into the VA system is a positive trend for society, said Paula Schnurr, a psychologist and deputy executive director of the VA's National Center for PTSD in White River Junction, Vt.

"What it means is that people who deserve our help, at least some of them, are finally getting it," she said.

Schnurr began studying PTSD among World War II and Korean War veterans nearly two decades ago.

"Time heals most wounds if you look at the data, meaning that most people who get traumatized won't develop PTSD," she said. "However, all kinds of time are not equivalent."

That is especially true for the veterans who adopted a workaholic lifestyle and decided to get on with their lives once they came home, Schnurr said.

"It helped them cope," she said.

For older combat veterans, PTSD becomes a problem when one or a combination of "stressors" occur: retirement, the death of a spouse, serious illness, even attendance at a military reunion, Schnurr said.

"It's the right combination of elements lining up together," she said.

Dr. Robert Anderson, director of the PTSD clinic for older veterans at Jefferson Barracks VA Hospital in St. Louis County, Mo., cautioned against anyone expecting a quick or permanent fix.

"These are the things that we deal with in life, and there are limits to what we can do," said Anderson, a psychiatrist who has worked with Vietnam veterans since 1972.

The problem for many older veterans is their realization of all they lost to war. "You lost buddies. You lost your youth," Anderson said. "You lost the perspective you had before."

Today, many Vietnam veterans are coming forward for the first time to seek treatment because they realized their lives aren't working, Anderson said.

"If you're 30 you think, 'OK, I still have a lot of time and I can fix this,' " Anderson said. "If you're 45, you start to look back and say, 'It isn't getting fixed.' "

Nothing seemed to be working for Robert Hawkins, of St. Louis, until he showed up at the Jefferson Barracks clinic several years ago.

Hawkins, 64, served in a U.S. Navy Riverine squadron in 1970. Stationed aboard a heavily armed gunboat, Hawkins took part in combat patrols up and down Vietnam's treacherous waterways.

His memories of combat and the deaths of his friends haunted him ever since he returned home, stoking an explosive rage.

"I didn't understand it because I thought, 'There's nothing wrong with me. I have a good job. I have a family. There are guys much worse off than me,' " he said.

It came to a head one morning at the mortgage company he once operated in St. Louis when he tried to make some phone calls but couldn't. He has since closed the mortgage company and is on disability.

"Because I had intrusive thoughts and flashbacks all day, I couldn't pick up the hand holding a phone to make a call," he said.

After several years in the therapy group Anderson runs, Hawkins said he now understands his rage "comes from pain and unresolved anger at the pain and the loss."

"So by addressing those issues and grieving those issues, a funny thing happens: That anger goes away," he said.