Another brush with mortality for the Killeen area

By BRIAN CHASNOFF

San Antonio Express-News

KILLEEN — Louie Caraballo has long believed that he can sense death before it comes.

The auto mechanic has spent more than three decades in this military-dependent town of about 111,000 people abutting Fort Hood. And like many here and on the post, he is accustomed to an intimacy with mortality.

Hundreds of Fort Hood soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since deployments began eight years ago.

Even in leaving through its main gate, drivers pass a sign that tallies how many days have passed since the last traffic fatality in this close-knit community of Army retirees and military families.

"You survived the war," the sign reads, "now survive our highways!"

Yet even by Killeen’s standards, Caraballo is a survivor.

Drafted at 19, he spent nine months fighting in Vietnam.

About 20 years later, he was eating lunch with a friend at a Luby’s Cafeteria here when Georges Hennard smashed a pickup through the restaurant’s front window and fatally shot 23 people.

The truck knocked Caraballo across the cafeteria, and Hennard shot him once in the back.

Nearly two decades later, Caraballo sat in his kitchen just miles from Fort Hood and mulled similarities between his ordeal and the terror that struck the post Thursday afternoon, when a gunman fatally shot 13 people and injured 37 others.

Caraballo conjured probable parallels, such as the "shock effect" that seemed to paralyze victims during Hennard’s attack and the inspiring efforts to save lives and heal survivors in its aftermath.

One thing he’s certain recurred was a premonition. Days before both massacres, Caraballo said, he felt catastrophe bearing down.

War’s toll

For many here, the strains of war are more pronounced than ever, and Fred Latham, a former mayor and councilman in Killeen, has noticed.

"This community has been involved in this war effort for a long, long time," Latham said. "To use the same people three times in the same war is taking a toll."

Latham said repeated deployments are acute stressors, causing the prolonged separation of spouses and the recurring exposure of soldiers to mortal danger. "The law of probability is going to catch up to them, I would think," he said.

Michelle Sparks said she is reminded of her husband’s absence every night at 10 o’clock, when taps echoes across Fort Hood, where she lives.

The 32-year-old said her husband is on his third tour of Iraq. "He might not come home," she said.

Katherine Maddon is also grappling with the recent deployment of her husband to Iraq. The 26-year-old said life in Killeen is tense.

"We are on call 24 hours, seven days a week," she said. "We never know when we’re next."

For Caraballo, war’s toll set in after he returned from Vietnam. Once, while walking to work in a suit, he heard a jackhammer and dived underneath a car.

"I would get so stressed-out I couldn’t swallow. Combat does bad things to people," he said.

In a recurring dream, he found himself standing in a field and enjoying a picnic with friends. Then, against his will, he would wander away and realize he was back in Vietnam.

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