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It was during his first deployment in Iraq that Marine Cpl. David Tracy, 23, of Peekskill earned his Purple Heart."I was up top behind the gun when we stopped at a checkpoint and a roadside bomb exploded on the other side of the barrier," said Tracy, an infantryman who served as a machine gunner in Baghdad and Fallujah.

Legislation introduced recently by Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, would lift the burden of proof from veterans who served in combat zones and have a diagnosis of PTSD, allowing them to receive disability benefits without having to prove that a specific incident caused the disorder.In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone, more than 100,000 veterans have been found to have PTSD, but only 42,000 have been granted service-connected disability for their condition, said Hall, chairman of the Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs.The disability claims backlog at the VA tops 800,000. A large percentage of that number are Vietnam veterans seeking compensation for PTSD, Hall said.

Antonette Zeiss, deputy chief of the VA's Mental Health Services, said members of the current generation of veterans are being encouraged to come in sooner so they can get treatment, even if they are not eligible for benefits. State-of-the-art treatment should now be available without delays, she said.But PTSD is not the whole story, said Zeiss, a clinical psychologist. There are 442,862 veterans enrolled with the VA who have a diagnosis of PTSD out of a total 1,662,375 with some mental-health diagnosis, she said.Continuing conflicts mean those numbers will grow. Up to 17 percent of veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD, major depression or other mental-health problems, Dr. Joseph T. English told Congress last year. He is chairman of psychiatry at New York Medical College in Valhalla, which is affiliated with the VA hospitals at Montrose and Castle Point.

Advocates for veterans report an increase in the number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans facing charges such as domestic violence, firearms violations, breach of peace and drunken driving.A Connecticut lawmaker says the court system should be able to identify troubled veterans and refer them to mental health specialists, the same way family courts and drug courts work."Our troubled veterans may not need to be locked up if their combat experience has led to psychological wounds," said Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, a New Haven Democrat who has introduced legislation to create a separate criminal docket for veterans.This mirrors actions elsewhere in the country. Some states are setting up veterans' courts or enacting laws to deal with veteran offenders. In 2008, Buffalo, N.Y., created the first Veterans Treatment Court after a judge noticed that hundreds of veterans were showing up in his courtroom facing minor charges. California and Minnesotahavepassed legislation to allow nonviolent veterans to forgo jail time if they can prove that their combat experience played a role in the criminal behavior.Looney said he introduced his bill after hearing stories about returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in Connecticut and across the nation ending up in jail. Connecticut also is using a $2 million grant from the federal Center for Mental Health Services to devise a program that will keep veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder out of jail.

Reluctant To Report SymptomsPeople with experience in overseas conflicts, or who work with those who have recently returned, often refer to one overriding symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder in recent veterans."Anger is a really big problem," said Jay White, an Iraq veteran and counselor at the Hartford Vet Center in Rocky Hill. It's one aftermath of the "high-octane environment" veterans experience in war, he said.According to the Connecticut Department of Veterans Affairs, 16,500 state residents have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That number includes soldiers in the Connecticut Guard, the reserves and active duty personnel. The high number of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder presents a large challenge for the criminal justice system. And given that President Barack Obama last week authorized an additional 17,000 troops to go to Afghanistan this year, the number of people who could eventually experience PTSD is likely to increase.PTSD, triggered by an event or events so extreme that they cause trauma, can shatter a soldier's sense of safety and trust and cause a constellation of reactions, in addition to anger.

Tom Berger, former chairman of the PTSD committee of the Maryland-based Vietnam Veterans of America, said post-traumatic stress can easily manifest itself in criminal behavior. "It interferes with your thinking process. You have high anxiety. You do strange things like taking U-turns, or carrying loaded weapons in your car," said Berger, who has worked to change the criminal justice system for veterans. James Campbell's experience may typify that of many veterans. The 28-year-old Middletown resident now works as a veterans' employment representative for the state Department of Veterans Affairs. He said he returned home in a hyper-vigilant, ready-for-battle state of mind. Road rage and driving drunk were problems."When I got back, I felt I was indestructible, especially when I was drinking. I didn't care whether I would get into a car and drive drunk," he said. Berger said jail diversion programs should include treatment and recovery and a mentoring component. He said some Vietnam veterans incarcerated when they returned home from war remain in jail. Jim Tackett, director of veterans' services for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said the state's jail diversion program will work closely with mental health officials, the veterans administration and the criminal justice system to identify veterans who need help. "Some veterans who commit minor crimes that are the direct result of traumatic wartime experiences need treatment, not incarceration," Tackett said.

The few veterans courts in the nation are modeled on drug courts that allow defendants to avoid prison in exchange for strict monitoring. Most are only a couple of months old and it is difficult to track their effectiveness, but the results from the first court, which opened in Buffalo, N.Y., in January 2008, are striking. Of the more than 100 veterans who have passed through that court, only two had to be returned to the traditional criminal court system because they could not shake narcotics or criminal behavior, said Judge Robert Russell - a far lower rate of recidivism than in drug courts. "It's the right thing to do for those who have made a number of sacrifices for us," Russell said. "If they've been damaged and injured in the course of their service . . . and we can help them become stable, we must." There are no comprehensive statistics on how often veterans get in trouble with the law, and the majority never become entangled with the legal system. But psychiatrists and law enforcement officials agree that the traumas of combat can lead to addiction and criminality. Studies have shown that as many as half of the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer post-traumatic stress and other disorders, and mental health is the second-most-treated ailment for returning veterans in the Department of Veterans Affairs system.

Since Russell's court started, veterans courts have opened in Orange and Santa Clara counties in California; Tulsa; and Anchorage, Alaska. Pittsburgh, southern Wisconsin, Phoenix and Colorado Springs, Colo., are opening or considering new courts this year. Some in Congress have proposed a federal program to help spread veterans courts across the country. Most veterans courts admit only nonviolent felony offenders, though some include violent crimes. Defendants are required to plead guilty to their crimes. In exchange for a suspended sentence that can include prison time, they must consent to regular court visits, counseling and random drug testing. Should they waver from the straight and narrow, their sentences go into effect. Orange County, Calif., Superior Court Judge Wendy Lindley started her veterans court in November after a young Iraq war veteran on her docket died of a drug overdose. "It was horrible," she said. As in most of the nation's nascent veterans courts, many of the defendants in Lindley's court fought in the Vietnam or Persian Gulf wars. But she has seen a few Iraq war veterans, all of whom had clean histories before joining the military but started getting into trouble after they returned.

Tucker received a medical discharge from the Army last year and he now is Officer Chris Tucker of the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department. "You still get to serve your community and your country in other ways," he said. At age 26, he is a veteran of three combat tours. The patrol skills he learned on the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah and Sadr City come in handy as he drives his police cruiser around the neighborhoods of his Savannah precinct.

As the war hits the six-year mark, Tucker is part of a history -- and a legacy -- still being written as the military tries to better understand the depth of the damage to those exposed repeatedly to the violence. "I still have the nightmares and wake up and find myself downstairs and I don't know how I got there," Tucker said. "I still see and dream the same things. ... Faces. Kids' faces. People that you have engaged or you have had contact with. ... You see your colleagues blown up. Things like that." He left the Army with a sour taste. He was sent back for his third tour despite the nightmares, depression, major hearing loss and painful injuries to his back and both feet. Then, the Army decided to give him a medical discharge for his back issues even though Tucker believes he could have recovered with rehabilitation. But he tries not to dwell on his frustration. "I try to distance myself from it as much as I can, because for me, the more I think about it, the more I reflect on what happened and what we did, the more I think the dreams and the nightmares actually come back."

Police Cpl. Randy Powell is 50 years old and became a grandfather just last week. Watch Tucker and Powell tell their stories » Powell served nearly 20 years ago in the Persian Gulf War, then in 1992 took an early retirement package when the Army was downsizing after the war. The deal required him to stay on what the military calls the IRR -- the Individual Ready Reserve -- but even as troops were sent to Afghanistan after 9/11 and then to Iraq for repeat combat tours, Powell heard nothing. Then last year, nearly 15 years after leaving the military, he was told to report to a local Reserve center. Another request came in January of this year. Both times, after some perfunctory paperwork, Powell was sent home. But when he returned home from work one day last month, an overnight letter from the Army had arrived with orders that he was being activated for an Iraq deployment. First, starting next month, he'll have refresher training on radar systems at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.