by Unknown
And the war was worth fighting. Perhaps we can see Vietnam from that perspective now, and I believe that there is truth and healing in that perspective. But for most Vietnam veterans this
"victory" comes more than two decades too late.
Unwelcomed Veterans and Unmourned Dead
T w o sources of public recognition and affirmation vital to the soldier are the parades that have traditionally welcomed them home from combat and the memorials and monuments that have commemorated and mourned their dead comrades. Parades are an essential rite of passage to the returning veteran in the same way that bar mitzvahs, confirmations, graduations, weddings, and other public ceremonies are to other individuals at key periods of their lives. Memorials and monuments mean to the grieving veteran WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO O U R SOLDIERS? 275
what funerals and tombstones do to any bereaved loved one. But rather than parades and memorials the Vietnam veteran, who had only done what society had trained and ordered him to do, was greeted by a hostile environment in which he was ashamed to even wear the uniform and decorations that became such a vital part of who he was.
Even the twenty-year-late Vietnam Veterans Memorial had to be constructed in the face of the same indignity and misunderstanding that the veterans had endured for so long. Initially the memorial was not to have the flag and statue traditionally associated with such edifices: instead the monument to our nation's longest war was going to be just a "black gash of shame" with the names of the fallen engraved upon it. It was only after a long and bitter battle that veterans' groups were able to get a statue and a flagpole flying the U.S. flag added to their memorial.
At their own monument, our veterans had to fight to fly the flag that meant so much to them.
The thousands of veterans who wept at "the wall" and marched with tear-streaked faces at welcome-home parades, given two decades after the fact, represented a sincere grieving and a true pain that most Americans did not even know existed. But most of all it represented reconciliation and healing.
The veterans who spurn this reconciliation and "get all they need down at the American Legion" may simply be those who have withdrawn the most deeply into their shells, and as we will see in our look at PTSD, the cost of that shell is significant. But perhaps they have a right to remain in their shells, and it may be that the society that drove them there has no right to expect reconciliation or forgiveness from them.
The Lonely Veteran
The experience of the Vietnam veteran was distinctly different from that of the veterans of previous American wars. Once he completed his tour of duty, he usually severed all bonds with his unit and comrades. It was extremely rare for a veteran to write to his buddies who were still in combat, and (in strong contrast to the endless reunions of World War II veterans) for more than a 276 KILLING IN V I E T N A M
decade it was even rarer for two or more of them to get together after the war. In PTSD: A Handbook for Clinicians, Vietnam vet Jim Goodwin hypothesizes (I think correctly) that "guilt about leaving one's buddies to an unknown fate in Vietnam apparently proved so strong that many veterans were often too frightened to find out what happened to those left behind." Only now, two decades after the fact, are Vietnam veterans beginning to get over this survivor guilt and form veterans' associations and coalitions.
For the Vietnam vet, the postwar years were long, lonely ones.
But the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Memorial Day parades in their honor have fortified and cleansed them, and n o w they are finally beginning to find the strength and courage to reunite with long lost brothers and welcome one another home.
The Condemned Veteran
On returning from Vietnam minus my right arm, I was accosted twice . . . by individuals who inquired, "Where did you lose your arm? Vietnam?" I replied, "Yes." The response was "Good. Serves you right."
—James W. Wagenbach
quoted in Bob Greene, Homecoming
Even more important than parades and monuments are the basic, day-to-day attitudes toward the returning veteran. Lord Moran felt that public support was a key factor in the returning veteran's psychological health. He believed that Britain's failure to provide her World War I and World War II soldiers the support they needed resulted in many psychological problems.
If Lord Moran could detect a lack of concern and acceptance that had a significant impact on the psychological welfare of World War I and World War II veterans in England, h o w much greater was the adverse impact of the Vietnam vet's much more hostile homecoming?
Richard Gabriel describes the experience:
The presence of a Viet Nam veteran in uniform in his home town was often the occasion for glares and slurs. He was not told that W H A T HAVE W E D O N E T O O U R SOLDIERS? 277
he had fought well; nor was he reassured that he had done only what his country and fellow citizens had asked him to do. Instead of reassurance there was often condemnation — baby killer, murderer — until he too began to question what he had done and, ultimately, his sanity. The result was that at least 500,000 — perhaps as many as 1,500,000 — returning Viet Nam veterans suffered some degree of psychiatric debilitation, called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, an illness which has become associated in the public mind with an entire generation of soldiers sent to war in Vietnam.
As a result of this, Gabriel concludes that Vietnam produced more psychiatric casualties than any other war in American history.
Numerous psychological studies have found that the social support system — or lack thereof— upon returning from combat is a critical factor in the veteran's psychological health. Indeed, social support after war has been demonstrated in a large body of research (by psychiatrists, military psychologists, Veterans Administration mental-health professionals, and sociologists) to be more crucial than even the intensity of combat experienced.7 W h e n the Vietnam War began to become unpopular the soldiers w h o were fighting that war began to pay a psychological price for it, even before they returned home.
Psychiatric casualties increase greatly when the soldier feels isolated, and psychological and social isolation from home and society was one of the results of the growing antiwar sentiment in the United States. O n e manifestation of this isolation, noted by numero us authors such as Gabriel, was an increase in Dear John letters.
As the war became more and more unpopular back home, it became increasingly common for girlfriends, fiancees, and even wives to dump the soldiers w h o depended upon them. Their letters were an umbilical cord to the sanity and decency that they believed they were fighting for. And a significant increase in such letters as well as many other forms of psychological and social isolation probably account for much of the tremendous increase in psychiatric casualties suffered late in that war. According to Gabriel, early in the war evacuations for psychiatric conditions reached only 6
percent of total medical evacuations, but by 1971, the percentage 278
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represented by psychiatric casualties had increased to 50 percent.
These psychiatric casualty ratings were similar to home-front approval ratings for the war, and an argument can be made that psychiatric casualties can be impacted by public disapproval.
T h e greatest indignity heaped upon the soldier waited for him when he returned home. Often veterans were verbally abused and physically attacked or even spit upon. T h e phenomenon of returning soldiers being spit on deserves special attention here.
Many Americans do not believe (or do not want to believe) that such events ever occurred. Bob Greene, a syndicated newspaper columnist, was one of those w h o believed these accounts were probably a myth. Greene issued a request in his column for anyone w h o had actually experienced such an event to write in and tell of it. He received more than a thousand letters in response, collected in his book, Homecoming.
A typical account is that of Douglas Detmer:
I was spat upon in the San Francisco airport. . . . The man who spat on me ran up to me from my
left rear, spat, and turned to face me. The spittle hit me on my left shoulder and on my few military decorations above my left breast pockets. He then shouted at me that I was a "mother f ing murderer." I was quite shocked and just stared at him. . . .
That combat veterans returning from months of warfare should accept such acts without violence is an indication of their emotional state. They were euphoric over finally returning home alive; many were exhausted after days of travel, shell-shocked, confused, dehy-drated, and emaciated from months in the bush, in culture shock after months in an alien land, under orders not to do anything to
"disgrace the uniform," and deeply worried about missing flights.
Isolated and alone, the returning veterans in this condition were sought out and humiliated by war protesters w h o had learned from experience of the vulnerability of these men.
T h e accusations of their tormentors always revolved around the act of killing. W h e n those w h o had in any way participated in killing activities were called baby killers and murderers, the result was often deep traumatization and scarring as a result of the hostile WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO O U R SOLDIERS? 279
and accusing "homecoming" from the nation for which they had suffered and sacrificed. And this was the only homecoming they were to receive. At worst: open hostility and spittle. Or at best, as one put it in his letter to Greene, an "indifference that verged on insouciance."
At some level every psychologically healthy human being who has engaged in or supported killing activities believes that his action was "wrong" and "bad," and he must spend years rationalizing and accepting his actions. Many of the veterans who wrote to Greene stated that their letter to him was the first time they had ever spoken about the incident to anyone. These returning veterans had shamefully and silently accepted the accusations of their fellow citizens. They had broken the ultimate taboo, they had killed, and at some level they felt that they deserved to be spit upon and punished. When they were publicly insulted and humiliated the trauma was magnified and reinforced by the soldier's own impotent acceptance of these events. And these acts, combined with their acceptance of them, became the confirmation of their deepest fears and guilt.
In the Vietnam veterans manifesting PTSD (and probably in many who don't exhibit PTSD symptoms) the rationalization and acceptance process appears to have failed and is replaced with denial. The typical veteran of past wars, when asked "Did it bother you?" would answer, as a veteran did to Havighurst after World War II, "Hell yes. . . . You can't go through that without being influenced." The Vietnam veteran's defensive response to a nation accusing him of being a baby killer and murderer is consistently, as it was to Mantell and has been so many times to me, "No, it never really bothered me. . . . You get used to it." This defensive repression and denial of emotions appear to have been one of the major causes of post-traumatic stress disorder.
An Agony of Many Blows
American veterans of past wars have encountered all of these factors at one time or another, but never in American history has the combination of psychological blows inflicted upon a group of returning warriors been so intense. The soldiers of the Confederacy 280
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lost their war, but upon their return they were generally greeted and supported warmly by those for w h o m they had fought. Korean War veterans had no memorials and precious few parades, but they fought an invading army, not an insurgency, and they left behind them the free, healthy, thriving, and grateful nation of South Korea as their legacy. No one spat on them or called them murderers or baby killers when they returned. Only the veterans of Vietnam have endured a concerted, organized, psychological attack by their own people. Douglas Detmer shows remarkable insight into the organization and scope of this attack: Opponents of the war used every means available to them to make the war effort ineffective. This was partially accomplished by usurping many of the traditional symbols of war and claiming them as their own. Among these were the two-fingered V-for-victory sign, which was claimed as a peace symbol; headlights on Memorial Day used as a call for ending the war, rather than denoting the memory of a lost loved one; utilizing old uniforms as anti-war attire, instead of proud symbols of prior service; legitimate deeds of valor denounced as bully-like acts of murder; and the welcome-home parade replaced with what I experienced.
Never in American history, perhaps never in all the history of Western civilization, has an army suffered such an agony of many blows from its own people. And today we reap the legacy of those blows.
Chapter Three
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
and the Cost of Killing in Vietnam
The Legacy of Vietnam: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Before a presentation to the leadership of New York's Jewish War Veterans, in a grand old hotel up in the Catskills, over a bowl of borscht, I met Claire, a woman who knew the meaning of PTSD.
She had been a nurse in Burma during World War II and had seen more human suffering than any person should. It had never really bothered her, but when the Gulf War started, she began to have nightmares. Nightmares of an endless stream of torn and mangled bodies. She was suffering from PTSD. A mild case, but PTSD nonetheless.
After another presentation in New York, a veteran's wife asked me to talk with her and her husband. At Anzio he had won the Distinguished Service Cross, our nation's second-highest award for valor, and he continued to fight throughout World War II.
Five years ago he retired. Now all he will do is sit around the house and watch war movies, and he is obsessed with the idea that he is a coward. He is suffering from PTSD.
Post-traumatic stress disorder has always been with us, but the long delay time and the erratic nature of its occurrence has made 282 KILLING IN V I E T N A M
us like the ancient Celts w h o did not understand the link between sex and pregnancy.
What Is PTSD?
Vietnam was an American nightmare that hasn't yet ended for veterans of the war. In the rush to forget the debacle that became our longest war, America found it necessary to conjure up a scapegoat and transferred the heavy burden of blame onto the shoulders of the Vietnam veteran. It's been a crushing weight for them to carry. Rejected by the nation that sent them off to war, the veterans have been plagued with guilt and resentment which has created an identity crisis unknown to veterans of previous wars.
— D. Andrade
Post-traumatic stress disorder is described by the American Psychological Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as "a reaction to a psychologically traumatic event outside the range of normal experience." Manifestations of P T S D include recurrent and intrusive dreams and recollections of the experience, emotional blunting, social withdrawal, exceptional difficulty or reluctance in initiating or maintaining intimate relationships, and sleep disturbances. These symptoms can in turn lead to serious difficulties in readjusting to civilian life, resulting in alcoholism, divorce, and unemployment. T h e symptoms persist for months or years after the trauma, often emerging after a long delay.
Estimates of the number of Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD range from the Disabled American Veterans figure of 500,000 to Harris and Associates 1980 estimate of 1.5 million, or somewhere between 18 and 54 percent of the 2.8 million military personnel w h o served in Vietnam.
H o w D o e s P T S D Relate to Killing?
Societies which ask men to fight on their behalf should be aware of what the consequences of their actions may so easily be.
— Richard Holmes
Acts of War
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Relationship Between Degree of Trauma and Degree of Social Support in PTSD Cau-In 1988, a major study by Jeanne and Steven Stellman at Columbia University examined the relationship between PTSD manifestations and a soldier's involvement in the killing process. This study of 6,810 randomly selected veterans is the first in which combat levels have been quantified. Stellman and Stellman found that the victims of
PTSD are almost solely veterans who participated in high-intensity combat situations. These veterans suffer far higher incidence of divorce, marital problems, tranquilizer use, alcoholism, joblessness, heart disease, high blood pressure, and ulcers.
As far as PTSD symptoms are concerned, soldiers who were in noncombat situations in Vietnam were found to be statistically indistinguishable from those who spent their entire enlistment in the United States.
During the Vietnam era millions of American adolescents were conditioned to engage in an act against which they had a powerful resistance. This conditioning is a necessary part of allowing a soldier 284
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to succeed and survive in the environment where society has placed him. Success in war and national survival may necessitate killing enemy soldiers in battle. If we accept that we need an army, then we must accept that it has to be as capable of surviving as we can make it. But if society prepares a soldier to overcome his resistance to killing and places him in an environment in which he will kill, then that society has an obligation to deal forthrightly, intelligently, and morally with the psychological event and its repercussions upon the soldier and the society. Largely through an ignorance of the processes and implications involved, this has not happened with the Vietnam veteran.
P T S D and Non-killers: Accessory to Murder?
After I had presented the essence of the hypotheses in this book to the leadership of a state Vietnam Veterans Coalition, one of the vets said to me, "Your premise [the trauma of killing, enabled by conditioning, and amplified by society's "homecoming"] is valid not only for those w h o killed, but for those who supported the killing."
This was the state's Veteran of the Year, a lawyer named Dave, w h o was an articulate, dynamic leader within the organization.
" T h e truck driver w h o drove the ammo u p , " he explained, "also drove dead bodies back. There is no definitive distinction between the guy pulling the trigger, and the guy w h o supported him in Vietnam."