by Phil Ball
My family tried to make me feel welcome, but I felt uncomfortable and very unsure of myself. The high self-esteem and confidence I once had was missing. I felt like everyone around me thought I had done something terribly wrong by serving my country in Vietnam; although no one actually came right out and accused me of murdering women and children, I bore the same reputation of those who allegedly had done those unlawful acts. I also dealt with the “drug addict” perception people seemed to have of us Vietnam vets. We were called a lot of nasty things that only a small percentage of vets were responsible for.
Then came the publication of pictures taken a year earlier of a civilian massacre by U.S. Army GIs in a small village named My Lai. The story broke in November 1969 and all over the country these terribly disturbing photographs of scores of women and children, gunned down by American GIs, were on every front page and all over the television. The antiwar climate in our country reached a fever pitch over this seemingly senseless massacre of so many innocent women and children. It was estimated by the Criminal Investigation Division that about 350 (possibly more) Vietnamese civilians had been killed there that day. The already tarnished reputation of Vietnam vets was further damaged by this event, and it became one more reason why so many people believed we were a bunch of lawless, drug-crazed, cold-blooded murderers.
I took it all extremely personally and tried to defend the GIs at first, but topics such as this were rarely discussed at length in my presence. I was confused about a lot of things and really didn’t know how I felt. My mind seemed to always be racing with many thoughts at once, and it would not slow down long enough to allow me to focus on one thing at a time. I felt paranoid, and about the only time I could really relax around people was when I was high or drunk. I started drinking a lot. I smoked pot and hashish on a fairly regular basis, and I began to experiment with many other types of drugs, all in an effort to feel “normal.”
LSD, mescaline, magic mushrooms, and speed can make a person feel a lot of things, but “normal” certainly isn’t one of them. I thought I was “expanding my mind,” but in reality I was just destroying a lot of brain cells. Again and again, no matter how much I medicated myself, that same old feeling that there was something seriously wrong with me kept creeping back. It felt like there was some deep, dark secret about me that I had to hide from everyone else at all cost. What it was, I did not know, but I knew it was something so terrible, that if anyone should ever find it out, I would most certainly be destroyed.
While I was in Vietnam, one of the things I looked forward to most, when and if I came home, was a little respect. A little gratitude certainly would have gone a long way in those troubled and confusing times. Why was a parade so out of the question? The outfit I was with never massacred anyone. We won every battle we ever fought. We tried hard to stay within those restrictive rules of engagement, and it certainly was never easy, no matter what we did or where we were.
I understand now that a little counseling by the right professionals during this time of my life might have been very helpful. Unable and unwilling to talk about my Vietnam experiences, I was bottling everything up inside. My mother recognized this and pleaded with me to go to the VA Hospital for help. Reluctantly, I went, but I received such a massive runaround from the same people I believed had sent me to Vietnam in the first place that I refused to go back. At that time, 1969–70, nobody was talking about PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), in spite of the unusually high numbers of vets who were returning home with psychological problems. To most people I knew, these psychological problems were not manly; they were a sign of weakness. Therefore, I felt like I had to hide my feelings, and once again, the drugs and alcohol came in. I was drinking to get drunk, and started blacking out more and more. I used narcotic painkillers to ease the effects of the hangovers so I could get up and go to work every day. I had no idea what was happening to me, or perhaps more truthfully, I just didn’t care.
The few hours a day that I got emotional relief were more important to me than the downside of drug and alcohol addiction. I discovered that heroin and morphine gave me that ultimate pleasure I’d been searching for, and I started injecting the drugs frequently. I actually thought I could lead a “normal” life if I could just get enough of this stuff. Of course, the stuff isn’t cheap, and the dead-end jobs I was working certainly didn’t pay enough to support my habit, so I had to steal. Although I was usually working every day, I stayed one step out of jail, walking that thin line most addicts walk from fix to fix. There were a lot of times when I couldn’t get drugs and I would try to satisfy my craving with alcohol. I could drink until I passed out, but when I woke up the next day I felt so bad I’d want to kill myself. Yet I don’t think I was truly suicidal.
One method I would use to help overcome depression was by thinking about my days in the bush and all the guys who never made it home. “I struggled too goddamn hard over there so I could come home in one piece. Now that I’m here I’m certainly not going to give it up,” I thought. I would think about Don, Tex, and Sal, and how they would love to trade places with me now. I would think if they were up there looking down at me, they might be mad as hell that I wasn’t making the best of my chance at life when theirs was cut so short. It was thoughts like these that often helped me pull myself back together and keep struggling.
I never could accept the fact that we lost the war, even after watching the evacuation off the top of the embassy building in Saigon. Like millions of Americans, I stared at the TV in utter disbelief, watching as we were chased out of Vietnam. I couldn’t understand what happened. Hell, we were winning when I left!
It took a long time before I stopped wanting to go back and “finish the job.” Although I rarely talked to anyone about Vietnam, I was enthralled by the documentaries I saw on TV. I would watch the same ones over and over, hoping desperately to see something or someone I recognized. The programs would inevitably cause nightmares, and occasionally I still experience flashbacks. Usually out of nowhere, it seems, I can “snap” and feel like I am back in the jungle, overwhelmed with that familiar feeling of impending doom. Sometimes it is the sight of blood, or the chopping sound of helicopter rotor blades, but more often than not they come completely unexpected and for no understandable reason.
It took eight years, 1969 to 1977, for the drugs, alcohol, and the endless partying to catch up with me. Most of that time I was able to hold a job, but I bounced around from one place to the next, and I continued to steal to make ends meet. I was at rock bottom, strung out and depressed over my recent divorce, losing not only the woman I loved, but also my three-year-old daughter. I was ready to give up. I’d been fired from my job for theft, and the charges were pending while I was out on bail. Finally, I got caught committing one of several armed robberies I’d been doing with a buddy, and off to prison I went. For nearly three years I had time to think about a lot of things, and I saw it as a blessing in disguise: a chance to kick the drugs and alcohol, get healthy again and get my act together. There was nothing that would ever be bad enough to lead me back to the joint again. I learned my lesson.
It was a chance a lot of people never get, the opportunity to start over with a clean slate. The only trouble was that I fell right back into the dope again and the heavy drinking soon followed. By the time I had been out of prison 10 years, I was in very bad shape once again. I was stealing again—not with a gun this time, but with a pen, with which I modified certain documents.
Thank God I now had someone who cared about me, my girlfriend, Kathy. Together we talked, and on the day before my fortieth birthday I went to the Drug and Alcohol Dependency Building at the VA Hospital in Cincinnati. I had made up my mind to put an honest effort into quitting the “hard stuff.” I thought it would be okay to drink as long as I didn’t use drugs with it. After a 30-minute interview, the counselor recommended inpatient therapy, a seven-day detox program to be immediately followed by a 30-day program, also inpatient. Thirty-seven days in the hospital? I don’
t think so. I had a full-time job where I was walking on thin ice as it was; a leave of absence was definitely out of the question.
I wound up telling my boss I had to go in for some tests that would take a week. The seven-day detox program was going to have to suffice for now. He was angry when I would not tell him what kind of tests take a whole week, and he wouldn’t promise that my job would be waiting for me when I came back. He later told me he thought I had a drug problem, but because he was not 100 percent certain, he could not bring it up.
This seven-day detox program was the best move I’d ever made. That’s all I needed to get clean and sober and I stayed that way for over a year. I was honest with my boss and he was totally understanding of the whole thing. I went back to work, and my new attitude was easily noticed by all, but it was made perfectly clear to me that there absolutely would not be a second time.
Every aspect of my life improved immediately, including my sometimes rocky relationship with Kathy. She had stuck with me for 10 years and had seen me through some very troubled times. When I got clean and sober, it was the first time I had seen her truly happy in a very long time. She probably understood me better than anyone else. If it hadn’t been for her love and support, I don’t think I would have made it.
Almost a year-and-a-half after the seven-day detox, I found myself back where I started, only this time I was worse. I lost my job again. I didn’t drink, but my drug of choice was morphine. It had a hold on me tighter than anything I had ever imagined, and this second time around was a hell of a lot tougher than the first.
About that time, the United States became engaged in Operation desert Storm. The disturbing pictures I saw on TV drew me in like the Vietnam documentaries did. I was fascinated by all the new smart bombs and high-tech weaponry we did not have in Vietnam; perhaps I was a little envious of the way this war was being run with such surgical precision. I kept hearing the same thing repeated over and over: how this was not going to be another Vietnam. I felt a certain sense of satisfaction in knowing that our country had learned certain lessons from my war and maybe the same mistakes would not be repeated. I was highly impressed with General Schwarzkopf and the way he handled the press, virtually inventing a whole new language to describe the action and downplaying the enemy body counts.
All this talk of war began to bring back some of my own haunting memories. My thoughts were consumed with the insane ideology of war itself and that was when I chose once again to reach out for help.
It was while I was in detox in March 1991 that I first learned about PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). The symptoms explained to me were exactly what I had been feeling all these years, ever since I came back from the Nam. It was enormously comforting to me to know I wasn’t the only one going through all this and that they even gave it a name. What made it even better was that I could actually get compensated for having suffered from this disorder, by way of proving to the Department of Veterans Affairs that it was indeed service-connected and not caused by some childhood experience. I was warned that it could be a painfully long, drawn-out affair, but if I saw it through to the end I would almost definitely be awarded a disability pension that could range from as little as $100 a month to as high as $1,700.00.
I filed all the necessary forms and paperwork with the DVA (Department of Veterans Affairs) and using the DAV (Disabled American Veterans) as my official representative, the claim filing process was begun. I was asked to write a “stressor letter” as to what happened in Vietnam that might have been sufficiently distressing to have caused PTSD. They wanted exact names, dates, and places, as well as some sort of verifiable proof that I actually participated in a “near-death experience.” Needless to say, this became an enormous task, but I sat down, and from memory alone, I wrote about the battle on Foxtrot Ridge. I wrote how my best buddy, Private Don Schuck, was killed and how I searched among the dead Marines looking for him. I wrote about my feelings of guilt and fear. I told them about the nightmares, the flashbacks, and how I was discharged for somnambulism. I wrote about my downward-spiraling lifestyle after Nam, the 21 different jobs in 21 years, divorce, and three years in prison. After deliberately suppressing all these memories the past 20 years, bringing it all back up like this was deeply disturbing to me, but I found that it was actually becoming very good therapy.
The board denied my claim for service-connected PTSD benefits on the grounds that I failed to prove my case. They said their records do not indicate my unit was even of a combat nature. This really threw me for a loop. I began to wonder if it all was just one big nightmare. Maybe I had dreamed up the whole thing.
I had the right to appeal their decision, and I promptly did so. I tried to get the DAV to work with me, but they were not much help. I started asking other Vietnam vets about the appeal process, but I couldn’t even find anyone who was receiving PTSD benefits. If I could find just one guy from Fox 2/3 who had been at Foxtrot Ridge, his word alone might be all the proof the DVA needed to verify my claim. Even better, if I could find documented proof, such as after-action reports, unit diaries, or a letter from my old commanding office, the board would have to agree that I had experienced this so-called “close to death” scenario. And so, the search began.
I started writing letters to everyone I though might listen, asking for assistance in locating members of my old unit and documents of my company’s participation in Vietnam. I read everything I could get my hands on pertaining to 1968–69 and Third Marines, but I was soon deeply disappointed in the lack of information available. It seemed like I found material about every other unit except mine, as though Fox 2/3 never existed. I wrote to the present commanding officer when I learned Fox 2/3 was now stationed in Hawaii. I asked for any information he might have pertaining to Vietnam. He tried to help, even called me a few times, but in the end he really didn’t have anything for me.
I wrote to the records department in St. Louis and received my personal file after several months of back and forth runaround. They sent me an address of the USMC Archives in Washington, D.C. Bingo! That was what I’d been searching for. The head of the department, Mr. Fred Graboski, was helpful beyond belief. He started sending me information and maps that would allow me to virtually trace my footsteps through my entire 13-month tour of duty in Vietnam. Nearly every significant event had been recorded in the unit diaries, listing exact coordinates that could be found on the maps. This information was invaluable; it jogged my memory and led me to recall many things I had long since forgotten.
Along with these diaries I also received company rosters, several of them from several different months. Personnel changes were continuous, so it was important to have these rosters throughout. Every Marine in Fox Company, along with his Social Security number and the dates he served, was right there. This allowed me to locate several of my old buddies as well as many men I never knew.
The only one I had ever kept in contact with was Mike Atwood, but I hadn’t heard from him in 10 years. I was beginning to wonder if he was still alive when I finally located him in the Dallas County jail. We started writing and we had a few phone calls, discovering very quickly that the old friendship we once had was still just as strong as ever. I’d always assumed Mike had been on Foxtrot Ridge until he told me he had been medevaced that afternoon before the attack. His memory was very good in other areas and he helped me out a lot when I started writing the book, but at that time I was only interested in verifying my own combat experiences to prove my PTSD claim.
I pursued the appeal vigorously, submitting new evidence all the time. Using the unit diaries and the company roster, I was able to give them the detailed account they wanted. I continued to send registered letters to the Board of Veterans Appeals in Washington, D.C., describing how my symptoms manifested themselves in my daily life. I studied the disorder at great length, and all the while I was in treatment for it at the VA Hospital. I was also involved in outpatient drug and alcohol therapy, all of which was beginning to help me a great deal.
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It took nearly four years for a final decision to be made by the board, but in 1995 I was awarded 30 percent disability for service-connected PTSD. For me, it had become so much more than just the money; $270 a month was not going to change my lifestyle. It had become a personal victory, to get the same government who sent me to Vietnam in the first place to admit that I served in a combat role that would be “markedly distressful to any normal human being.” In a sense, they had to admit that the war fucked me up. Everyone knew I was a little crazy, and now I had papers to prove why.
In the long process of filing this claim I had accumulated a lot of information and knowledge of the Third Marines in Vietnam in 1968–69. I was essentially becoming an expert in the field. I was encouraged to put it all together for a book, and thus this monumental task began. The May 28, 1968, battle on Foxtrot Ridge was the most significant event in my tour, so it naturally became the focus. By using the unit diaries and other documents from the archives, I used my refreshed recollections to piece together the 12-hour battle. Then by telephone and personal interviews with several former Fox 2/3 Marines, I managed to put some of their recollections in, which really helped round out the story and give a more complete account of the night’s events.
I sent a letter to an organization called Friends of the Wall, whose main purpose was to unite the families of those approximately 55,000 KIAs with survivors who knew their loved ones. I asked to be put in touch with Don Schuck’s family and anyone else from Fox Company during my dates in Vietnam. I received a letter back from Don’s younger brother, who expressed a desire to learn more about what happened to him. He told me the funeral had been closed casket at the military’s request, and he often wondered how his brother died, or if he really died at all. Unable to actually view the corpse and properly say his goodbyes left a huge hole in any closure he might have had.