Local group reaches out to help vets from The Meadville Tribune on Vimeo.

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: Group helps returning veterans facing tough times (originally published in The Meadville Tribune Wednesday, February 18, 2009)

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Not since the Vietnam War have there been as many Crawford Countians serving on active duty than there are now.

Thirty-six years ago Phil Davis learned that a war isn’t over just because you come home.

Today he’s on a mission to ensure that others don’t have to struggle through this hard lesson yet again.

Drafted into Vietnam right after graduating from Meadville Area Senior High School in 1970, Davis served two combat tours with the Army Air Calvary before stepping on a punji stick.

The wound became infected and eventually gangrene set in. He was sent back to the states, and after three months in the hospital he was back on the streets of Meadville.

“I came home alone” to a nation with a faltering economy and a public largely tired and ashamed of the war, Davis recalled.

“Things had changed while I was gone and the guys I used to hang out with weren’t around anymore,” he said. “I wandered around looking for a job. I got into drinking and I hated everybody because they didn’t understand (what it was like to have served in Vietnam). And I didn’t talk to anybody because I didn’t trust anyone,” he said. “You wouldn’t have liked me back then.”

Isolated, angry and confused, Davis was several steps down a path that claimed so many lives even after the guns fell silent.