ALTAMONT — By the time Paul Bullman had his high school diploma in 1966, the men in his life were military men. His brothers and his father had already joined, and he followed.

Anthony Walker, who is 52, was still a child growing up in Brooklyn at the time, where he saw his friends consumed by the streets, some of them killed. Their role models were drug dealers, he said, but his cousin was in the military.

“I looked at him more as a big brother than as a cousin, and I wanted to follow him,” Walker said. “My mother really didn’t want it.”

 At 17, Walker begged her to sign his papers so he could enlist in 1979.

Before they were drinking age, Bullman and Walker were both in conflicts overseas that they speak about in general terms. Walker fought in Iran, and Bullman was in the Dominican Republic and in Bosnia in 1967 and ’68, which he declined to talk about except describing them only as “hostile areas.”

“I’ve seen quite a bit,” he said. “It’s a PTSD thing.” The two men, who live in housing in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for struggling veterans, didn’t need a formal diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to understand its link to substance abuse. They live in the Gordon H. Mansfield Veterans Community, a well-groomed complex where veterans who make progress in their treatment programs, managed by an organization called Soldier On, can live in and own limited-equity shares in the apartments.

A motorcycle ride organized by the Helderberg Post of the American Legion in Altamont raised almost $16,000 last Saturday for a similar community Soldier On has proposed for Albany County.

“My children are both grown, but my wife died in 1997 and that started me on a downhill spiral,” Bullman said of how he ended up in the community. “I got into drinking and I got into drugs and I became homeless since 1997, right up till 2008. I know what it’s like to sleep in abandoned houses. I know what it’s like to sleep in missions.”

Bullman, 65, learned skills to be a mechanic while working after his deployment fixing vehicles at Fort Hood in Texas. After working five years in the military, he made his career as a mechanic for Glastron Boats, enjoying, he said, the level of detail it involved.

Bullman hasn’t discussed his situation with his children.

“They know I’m OK and I’m at a good place; that’s the only thing I’ve told them,” said Bullman.

He attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and has a mentor. Part of the solution, he said, is he no longer spends time around people who are drinking.

“It’s a brothership between vets,” Bullman said of the focus of the community in Pittsfield. “I can sit down and talk to another vet better than I can sit down and talk to somebody on the outside.”

“Civilians don’t understand, no matter how eloquent you expound to a civilian,” Walker said. “They’ll never understand what a veteran is, unless you are veteran.”

Walker was attracted to the Marines when he first saw their dress blues, “still the coolest uniform in the military.” But at basic training he found little camaraderie.

“Even though I grew up in the ’60s, I went through some things racially I didn’t think would be as concentrated as it was in the military,” said Walker, who is an African-American. He said he was regularly called racial slurs by white peers and superiors. They didn’t address him by name, calling him “captain” or “boss.”

“I was a boy who wanted to be a man and then became a man and realized I could never be a boy again,” said Walker.

He went into field radio operations, working in reconnaissance as a forward observer during tensions between the United States and Iran in 1979. He was at times deployed in Iran to observe enemy movements, weapons, and troops.

“It’s never been a like or dislike thing,” Walker said of his work in the military. “It’s just about doing what I have to do to stay alive.”

After his discharge from the Marines, Walker lived with his mother in Brooklyn and eventually started using and selling any drugs he could get. He said he worked factory jobs around New York City,

“It’s not the matter of my having a job, the job didn’t have enough economic stability to provide for my family, so I did what I had to do to make sure they had enough that they ate,” he said.

Walker stopped dealing drugs, he said, when he found Jesus Christ and internal prayer.

“I don’t believe in religions,” said Walker. “What I have is spirituality.”

Sober for eight years, Walker said, he returned to alcohol when he was laid off from his job as a supervisor. His customer-service firm, which represented a law office, was down sized. His relationship crumbled and his savings dried up. In meetings he attended with other veterans, Walker met a man who had been treated at the Soldier On community in Pittsfield.

Walker is on a committee that helps connect services with veterans in need. He acts as a liaison between management and the veterans under treatment.

“The people who are here so far have been fair,” said Walker of Soldier On treatment programs in Pittsfield. “They haven’t been condescending toward the veterans, no matter how difficult a veteran can be.”

Soldier On is looking to replicate its model in Pittsfield in the former Ann-Lee nursing home. The site is near property maintained by the Shaker Historical Society and scheduled by the county legislature in July for environmental review.

As veterans who were helped by Soldier On’s facilities and housing programs spoke during the public comment period of the legislature’s July meeting, the organization’s founder, John “Jack” Downing, told the room that he has dedicated his life to helping veterans struggling with homelessness and substance abuse.

The legislature’s gallery was overflowing with veterans demonstrating in support of the project in July. That evening garnered media attention for the closed-door meetings held by the Democratic majority, during which the gallery sang “God Bless America” for the legislators to hear.

A similar crowd of veterans and supporters ate dinner as hard rock bands played behind the Altamont post of the American Legion this weekend and a long line, including Bullman, Walker, and Richard Ginman, another veteran from the Pittsfield community, waited to be served food.

The riders had taken 140 motorcycles on a poker run throughout Saturday, starting with breakfast at the Voorheesville firehouse and visiting taverns in the Hilltowns and Cobleskill before returning to Altamont.

Returning soldiers battle stress, addictions, and homelessness

Veterans make up a disproportionate number of homeless people in America. The most recent federal census data says about 10 percent of adults in the United States are veterans, yet the Housing and Urban Development point-in-time surveys show veterans make up 15 percent of America's homeless.

According to the 2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, more than 135,000 Americans who served in the armed forces were homeless in a shelter at some point between October 2007 and September 2008; on any one given night, about 107,000 veterans are homeless.

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs says that in 2009 its treatment programs for the homeless served 92,625 veterans and that it has expanded its residential care program to bring the most vulnerable homeless veterans off the streets into residential care programs. In 2009, it placed 2,252 veterans in contract housing, an increase of 21 percent from the year before.

A 2007 study by James McGuire at the UCLA School of Public Health, found that 79 percent of those leaving VA facilities were housed one year after discharge.

A disproportionate number of veterans also have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder symptoms and substance abuse problems. According to Veterans Affairs, more than two of 10 veterans with PTSD also have Substance Use Disorder, which comes from overusing alcohol, drugs, or smoking too much. Almost one in three veterans seeking treatment for SUD also has PTSD. The number of veterans who smoke is almost double for those with PTSD — at about six out of 10 — over those without a PTSD diagnosis — three out of 10.

In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about one in 10 returning soldiers seen by Veterans Affairs has a problem with alcohol or other drugs.

Veterans Affairs offers treatments that include cognitive behavior treatments, psychological treatments, behavioral couples therapy, and medications.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer