By Sam Hemingway

Jim McIntyre remembers what it was like when he was discharged from the Army in 1964 after serving as a special forces medic in Vietnam.

"I got on a plane in Saigon, had a stopover in Honolulu where we didn't even get off the plane, and landed in Oakland for a day of filling out paperwork," he said. "Then they flew me to Philadelphia and that was it. I was back on the street."

McIntyre, 67, of Essex Junction, a sergeant in the Army and later a chaplain with the Vermont Army National Guard, said nobody gave a thought at the time to the mental-health issues that combat veterans might face trying to re-enter society and get on with their lives.

"Some had good support systems in their families and some did not," he said. "Nothing was available for those who didn't."

The result: Many believe the number of Vietnam veterans who committed suicide in the years after their return home is greater than the 58,226 who died in combat.

McIntyre, now retired from the military, is out to make sure veterans returning from the battlefield in the Middle East get the help they need.

Today, he leads a team of 10 outreach workers — nearly all combat veterans themselves — on a mission to visit the homes of the estimated 1,600 Vermont soldiers who have served in combat in Iraq, Afghanistan and surrounding countries.

Their goal is to check in on how well those 1,600 Vermonters are re-adjusting to civilian life and, if it seems things aren't going so well, to assist them or their families in getting counseling or other kinds of help.

"Once people are contacted, that's just the beginning," McIntyre said. "We ask everybody to undergo a traumatic brain injury test at the Veterans Administration in White River Junction. If they've not been someplace where they were exposed to explosions, or been in a place where bullets were flying, then there's no need for it."

The civilian-run program helps veterans deal with depression, post-traumatic stress, substance abuse, even marital troubles caused by their combat exposure. Their spouses or children can get help if the impact of those wartime experiences extends to them, too,

The outreach effort has contacted 1,200 of the 1,600 Vermont veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. McIntyre said the team's goal is reach the remaining 400 by year's end.

"It's getting tougher now, because we're trying to get in touch with people who have left the service or have moved without telling anyone where they're going," he said.

The program, begun as a pilot project three years ago, has been stoutly supported by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. In September, the program won a $3.2 million appropriation that will extend its life at least through October.

It will not, however, be the program offered to returning National Guard veterans elsewhere around the country as Sanders, McIntyre and other Vermont Army National Guard officials had once hoped — at least for now.

Instead, those veterans will be offered help at the time of their deployment and upon their return by a Defense Department program called the Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Project.

"It's better than nothing," Dr. Andrew Pomerantz, chief of mental health and behavioral science at the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, said of the Yellow Ribbon program. "What it lacks is a real integrated outreach piece."

Pomerantz said he thinks the Vermont outreach program may eventually win more national backing once it can quantify its successes.

He said each day at least two new veterans with mental issues seek help through the VA center in White River Junction, sometimes because of the work done by McIntyre's outreach program.

Other times, Pomerantz said, it's simply because of what even a long-ago veteran read in the newspaper.

"We're getting a wide variety of people, even World War II veterans," Pomerantz said. "They see something on the front pages and it stirs things up from the past."