Posted on 05/05/2005 5:10:38 PM PDT by AZHua87
Thirty years ago the last American troops left Vietnam. More than 58,000 Americans died in that unpopular war, and hundreds of thousands were wounded or injured. Thousands more carry invisible scars from intense and prolonged combat.
Returning soldiers faced an indifferent or hostile citizenry. Frustrated at the slaughter and cost of the war, the protesters vented their anger on the brave soldiers who had endured a year in hell. The protesters cursed at Vietnam veterans, and spat upon them and called them baby killers.
I commanded an infantry company during my second tour in Vietnam. Fighting in the jungles and on the thinly populated coastal plain for endless months, I learned to watch for signs of combat fatigue among my soldiers. However, my company was often stretched across two or three kilometers of hedgerow-interrupted rice paddies. Or we fought in dense, suffocating jungle where good visibility meant that a soldier could see 50 feet - in the daytime. Assessing the mental anguish that my soldiers suffered from close combat was difficult. In most cases, visible reactions to their distress manifested after the soldiers returned home.
Even now, some of the soldiers who served with me call or write to me about their combat experiences. The phone rings, a man identifies himself as a soldier who fought in Charlie Company, and I attempt to recall the names and places the tormented caller mentions.
Most of them have learned of my address or phone number because of a book I wrote about my Vietnam experiences. They grasp at the shared combat thread that still connects us. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has consigned many of those unfortunate warriors to a life that revolves around a war that, for many, never ends.
A man whom I'll call Mac contacted me last week. Mac said he was one of my soldiers, and, as always, I asked when he served in my company and then pressed him for details that only one present at that time would recall. Mac had been there.
"Sir," he said, "I did OK for several years. Then about 15 years ago I began to have nightmares, couldn't sleep, couldn't get enough rest to hold down a job."
"Are you married?" I asked.
"Yes, and I have three children, one still in high school. I'm proud of them, but they've suffered a lot because of my PTSD."
"Is VA treating you for PTSD?"
"Yes, sir. I attend therapy sessions at the VA hospital every week, and my wife attends sessions for spouses twice a month." Mac then launched into the details of the battle that haunt him day and night. I listened for a long time as he again lived through the trauma. Yet, he was one of the lucky ones who escaped without a scratch, or at least he bears no visible scars.
Mac's story is typical of the conversations I listen to when a strange voice on the phone relives some of the combat experiences we shared.
Another former soldier-whom I'll call Sam-has called at irregular intervals for several years. He's an alcoholic who was barred from re-enlisting after serving in the Army for many years. He, like Mac, carries a 100 percent disability rating due to PTSD. His story resembles Mac's, yet Mac still makes an effort to overcome the affliction. When the imaginary bullets zing, Sam reaches for the bottle. Or perhaps the bottle launches the bullets.
Those two former infantrymen were 20 years old when they served in Charlie Company, and the war still grips them more than 30 years later. For them, the war never ends.
We didn't learn as much as we should have from Vietnam. Intelligence continues to be suspect, and politicians continue to be too eager to rush to war.
However, one positive development emerged from the Vietnam War. Americans have learned to refrain from taking out their frustrations on our fighting forces. We learned that we mustn't abuse our brave soldiers who fight where and when they are told to fight. And we have learned to welcome them home.
To the families and friends of combat veterans of our current war: Please be patient while these veterans learn to deal with their memories of combat.
To combat veterans of all of our wars and conflicts: Welcome home.
LEE BASNAR may be reached by sending e-mail to basnar@cox.net, or by writing the Herald/Review, 102 Fab Ave., Sierra Vista AZ 85635.
PING
Though many of us returning from Nam are fortunate enough not to be 100% disabled, the war is still fresh in our minds. The comradship developed in a firefight , being with good men and making it through some harrowing times far outweighs the disgust of being cowardly abandoned by our country.
THANKS
He also wrote a book "Vietnam Vignettes". Excellent book. He was selling them one day at the PX and I bought one, not really thinking that I would read it but more to support the guy. I couldn't put it down, and it still to this day haunts me.
Thanks. I'll take this with a grain of salt. Though maybe this guy should go back to Vietnam to get some of these bugs out of his system.
I don't take it with a grain of salt. I had problems when I came back home and was diagnosed with PTSD in 1984. I fought it for years but in 2001 I was declared 70% disabled plus unemployable. I got my security information from the Freedom of Information act and found what people had been saying about me for years. It was a text book case of PTSD. I have contacted a number of my men and they, too, are having some problems to different extents.
I relive the war all the time. Everytime I plow a field, I see unexploded munitions in it. I was in EOD in Korea, Vietnam, and CONUS. I actually came the closest to getting killed during one of Kerry's peace demonstrations. We got all the IED's from VVAW, SDS, Black Panthers, Weather Underground, Bader-Meinhoff, etc. and other Kerry, Fonda, and NVA supporters.
I think a lot of the problems people had was lack of decompression. You are in a combat situation and all of a sudden you are on the Freedom Bird with round eye stewardess and then back in the world like it never happened.
I am personally ashamed of the problems I have and don't understand them. I had a mailman in Germany who fought in the infantry on the Eastern Front for six years, he didn't seem to have any problems. I just don't understand it. At times I wonder if we are just "role playing".
I will say though that perhaps I was capable of seeing so much of the beauty of that country then. Relativizing the environment, so to speak.
And ya' know what? It was true. I went back there with my daughter in 2000. I can't tell you how it helped work out some of the bugs in my system. Though I might've done without it, the only thing I'd trade for it it now -either time - is the lives lost.
Think about it. Be proud. Screw Kerry, Jane Fonda and all that crap. Live today, and thank God you can.
Thank you for the ping!
Well said...
I understand, somewhat, what they are going through. The military does a lot better job in PTSD mitigation now than during the VietNam war. Generally speaking, a strong family support system, counseling, education and aversion to addiction - all types - helps in handling battle stress.
I know the smell of death; that combination of blood, feces and urine, of burnt meat, of aviation fuel and cordite, and of rotting vegetation, garbage fires and mosquito repellent. I know the smell of my own insides. I was wounded twice, the second time seriously and was medivaced to a Field Hospital in Saigon and then on to the US Army Hospital in the Presidio. I remember having garbage thrown at the hospital bus that took us from Travis AFB to San Francisco and being denied service in a New York restaurant because I was in uniform.
The most painful memory was when I was on a security detail for some congressional VIPs and heard them discussing with some senior brass what constituted an acceptable kill ratio in their pursuit of body count numbers. We weren't just sold out by the academics, the hippies and the Democrats. We were sold out by career officers more interested in brownie points with the Pentagon and their next promotion than the troops. There is plenty of blame to go around. I pray often that God forgives me for not forgiving.
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