CHICAGO (REUTERS).- Joe Fornelli knows the art of survival. In 1965, when he was 22, the Chicago native was drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he served in an army helicopter unit. “So many crazy things happened, people getting killed or wounded or burned,” Fornelli said. “You never get over it.” He found solace in art. One time he used instant coffee and water to paint the realities of war. Fornelli and his fellow veteran artists find themselves in the midst of another battle — to save their beloved National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, which is struggling. The museum houses more than 2,000 pieces of art by veterans from World War II to the current conflicts in the Middle East. “We’ve got trained artists. We’ve got self-taught artists. We have people that probably would not even consider themselves artists,” said Mike Helbing, 64, a professional artist, Vietnam vet and the museum’s chairman.