Jonathon Humphreys did not know what to expect when he walked into the Portland Veteran’s Affairs auditorium one Friday evening in October.

The 32-year-old was skeptical when he saw that the other veterans gathered in the room were mostly women and older than him – people who had fought in wars of a different generation, not the brothers and sisters who had battled with him in Iraq and Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001.

“I was very standoffish at first,” Humphreys said.

But at the end of the three-day film making bootcamp for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Humphreys walked out with connections he didn’t know were possible.

***

Six years ago, Humphreys was driving the third vehicle from the front of a slow-moving convoy going to Ghazni, Afghanistan. Then, with a low and trembling “voom” the first vehicle went 14 feet in the air and landed on its side.

The convoy had been clearing the road of improvised explosives but had apparently missed one, with an approximately 45-foot-wide crater in the road to prove it.

The soldiers in the first vehicle, called a ‘Buffalo,’ survived – the massive wheeled machines are specifically designed to withstand a massive blast from below. But that and other ear-splitting blasts and explosions left Humphreys with anxiety and paranoia that often tortured both his sleeping and his waking life after he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army and came home to Salem in 2014.

Once, Humphreys said he dreamt that the Taliban broke into his backyard and killed Bentley, his pit bull-German shepherd mix. If anyone came up behind him and said something innocuous, like ‘Hey,’ he would jump and reflexively look for his weapon, then panic realizing he didn’t have one. He would spend some nights crying for no apparent reason.

Jonathon Humphreys, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, partnered up with other veterans to make a film that he hopes will inspire others to get the help they need.Courtesy of the Patton Veterans

Counseling didn’t really seem like an option, even though he had been diagnosed with PTSD and already had received three months of therapy while stationed in New York after his last tour in Afghanistan. He was in one piece after his three deployments -- one in Iraq and two in Afghanistan -- unlike the many others who came back either missing limbs or dead.

“I didn’t really have the confidence,” he said. “I really didn’t feel like I deserved it.”

The hurt Humphreys was trying to bat away culminated when, while in a Burger King parking lot on break after installing internet for a Comcast customer, he had a panic attack that lasted half an hour.

“I couldn’t move,” he said. “I was stuck in place.”

Eventually he remembered some techniques a counselor had taught him while he was stationed in New York – like focusing on his breathing – and he regained control.

But the incident made it clear for him that he couldn’t just ignore his problems. He checked into the Salem Veteran’s Affairs office and they set him up with regular counseling.

With time, he got better at managing his symptoms and accepting that they were for him a fact of life, but not something that had to control his life.

But something was still missing, Humphreys said. He lives with his wife and the two are trying to have a baby. He works as a technician for Comcast, installing internet and fixing various problems. But he doesn’t have many veteran friends close by who he can really talk to, people who could relate to his experience.

That’s where General George Patton’s grandson, Benjamin Patton, came in.

Patton, a filmmaker and a graduate of Columbia University master’s program in psychology, has done workshops for veterans to help them process their PTSD through film. Through his not-for-profit, the Patton Veterans Project, Patton has worked with about 1,500 veterans over the past nine years in workshops across the United States. His first Portland workshop ran from Oct. 4-6, and the three films that came out of it screened Oct. 20 at the Portland Film Festival.

Humphreys’ manager at Comcast heard about the event and told Humphreys it would be right up his alley. So, he signed up.

After a few icebreakers, the group of veterans split up into threes and fours. Humphreys was partnered with a Vietnam veteran, a woman who served in the Marines in the pre-9/11 era and had PTSD from sexual assault, and a veteran from Afghanistan who filmed the video.

Humphreys said he was skeptical that he could find anything in common with the two older veterans. But that didn’t matter: They had to work together to make a short film that resonated with each one of them.

As they worked on a storyboard, the idea changed several times, Humphreys said. But eventually they decided to combine two themes: counseling can help veterans from any generation, and sometimes it just takes a bit of support to get started.

Two weeks later, Humphreys sat with his fellow film makers, his family and friends in a Portland auditorium as Humphreys and his partners’ film, titled ‘Gen3ration,’ played on the screen.

****

One by one on the big screen, each of the three veterans reads or carries a letter stamped with a blue ‘VA.’ As they do, derisive voices speak.

“Chill, it’s not your life to take,” a voice says as Humphrey looks down at his letter.

“You’re just a bunch of whiney Vietnam vets,” a voice says as what sounds like a heartbeat thrums to a recording of crowds chanting “Hell no, we won’t go!”

Another: “Women don’t belong in the [expletive] military.”

“You’re lying. You never did anything. Get over it.”

Jonathon Humphreys, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, partnered up with other veterans to make a film that he hopes will inspire others to get the help they need.Courtesy of the Patton Veterans

In the next scene, Humphreys sits on outdoor concrete steps, shaking back and forth as he swipes through pictures from his deployments while a siren pulsates in the background.

Jeff Drake, the Vietnam Veteran, comes down the steps holding an envelope, then stops and looks down at Humphreys.

“Hey brother, you here for an appointment?” Drake says, pointing with his right hand at the envelope in his hand. “Come on.”

Humphreys gets up and follows Drake down the stairs, and Citlalmina Rios, the female veteran, comes down the stairs right behind them, holding her letter.

The three veterans go through a pair of doors then walk through a Veteran’s Affairs hallway, side by side.

***

Patton said he thought Humphreys went through a transformation between the first day of the workshop and the film’s screening.

“I saw him coming in and being very shy,” Patton said, “to shifting to someone who really came out of their shell.”

From a therapeutic standpoint, “the secret sauce is really the collaboration and a sense of agency, a sense of ‘I’m in control of my destiny,’” Patton said. “They’re not just the subject of the film, they’re also the creator of the film.”

For Humphreys, a big part of the satisfaction was the hope that maybe his message could get to another struggling veteran.

“That was my big thing,” he said. “I wanted to be motivation for someone.”

-- Fedor Zarkhin

fzarkhin@oregonian.com

desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin

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