He says he killed a human being on his 27th birthday.</p><p>His words are louder than the clatter of customers on this Veterans Day at Panera Bread in Oak Park Mall.</p><p>But the 29-year-old Army veteran from Lenexa, with baby-face cheeks and crinkly eyes, tells it so matter-of-factly, so dead on bluntly, it sounds normal.</p><p>He was pulling night-time guard duty in Iraq. A bullet whizzed past his head. Through the scope on his M-16, he found the shooter on top of a building nearly a mile away. Watched as the shooter popped his head above the railing and swung up his weapon for another try. &hellip;</p><p>He tells how he saw the man&rsquo;s face long enough that he&rsquo;ll probably see it the rest of his life.</p><p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s one of the memories I brought back,&rdquo; Hank Eaton says. &ldquo;But I never told my wife much about it. I didn&rsquo;t want her to get the secondary PTSD from me. This stuff is hard to hear. It can make you crazy.&rdquo;</p><p>He&rsquo;s read about post traumatic stress disorder. Tried to prepare for it before he deployed. Sought help for his symptoms after he left the Army. But since the shootings at Fort Hood last week, the worst of his own war experiences are streaming back in crystal-clear images, saddling him with insomnia and depression. Anger. Forgetfulness. </p><p> Eaton is not alone. The Fort Hood shootings have plunged untold numbers of other veterans into roiling, rekindling emotions that many thought they had learned how to shut away. </p><p> &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had many, many, many calls,&rdquo; says Thomas Demark, a staff psychiatrist who treats Eaton and others at the VA Medical Center in Kansas City. &ldquo;These are calls from patients getting treatment. We&rsquo;ve have several crisis situations. </p><p>&ldquo;&hellip; I worry about all of those who haven&rsquo;t sought treatment and are really suffering even worse now.&rdquo; </p><p>Demark worries, too, about veterans losing their trust in the people trying to help them.</p><p>&ldquo;Guys don&rsquo;t like to tell anyone what&rsquo;s going on, let alone guys in the military. &hellip; (The shootings) might make the guys question the stability of their own psychiatrists,&rdquo; he says. </p><p>The suspect in the shootings is an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.</p><p>Eaton, who has spent a lot of time at Fort Hood, only has to close his eyes to see the building where the shootings occurred, leaving 13 dead and 29 wounded. He was in an Apache helicopter unit based at the fort, the 1st Cavalry&rsquo;s 4/227 Attack Reconnaissance Battalion.</p><p>It was from Fort Hood that he deployed to Iraq in 2006, and to Fort Hood that he returned after a mortar killed two of his buddies and slammed him onto a dirt road. He suffered a traumatic brain injury. </p><p>Eaton knew two of the soldiers killed at Fort Hood. He&rsquo;d talked with them, had lunch with one, remembers how much they helped him. Thinking about them makes him grow quiet. </p><p> &ldquo;I&rsquo;m having a really hard time wrapping my brain around this,&rdquo; he says after a few moments. &ldquo;Soldiers protect fellow soldiers, not hurt them. Especially a soldier who was someone you were supposed to trust.&rdquo;</p><p>Eaton was sitting in an English writing class at Johnson County Community College last week when his wife texted him the news. He felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. Tears swarmed his eyes. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t breathe,&rdquo; he remembers.</p><p>He left class, slumping against a hallway wall, as the impact grew from reading news accounts on his cell phone. He called a buddy at Fort Hood, a sergeant, until the Army lockdown was ordered and his friend had to hang up.