On killing

by Unknown

  "And," said another veteran, almost whispering, "society didn't make any distinction in w h o they spat on."

  "And," continued Dave, "just like . . . if you came in this room and attacked one of us you would be attacking all of u s . . . society, this nation, attacked every one of us."

  His point is valid. Everyone in that room understood that he was not talking about the veterans of noncombat situations in Vietnam who, according to Stellman and Stellman, were found to be statistically indistinguishable from those w h o spent their entire enlistment in the United States.

  Dave was referring to the veterans w h o participated in high-intensity combat situations. They may not have killed, but they POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

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  were there in the midst of the killing, and they were confronted daily with the results of their contributions to the war.

  In study after study two factors show up again and again as critical to the magnitude of the post-traumatic response. First and most obvious is the intensity of the initial trauma. The second and less obvious but absolutely vital factor is the nature of the social support structure available to the traumatized individual. In rapes, we have come to understand the magnitude of the trauma inflicted upon the victim by the defense tactic of accusing the victim during trials and have taken legal steps to prevent and constrain such attacks upon the victim by a defendant's attorneys. In combat, the relationship between the nature of the trauma and the nature of the social support structure is the same.

  PTSD in the World War II Veteran

  The degree of trauma and the degree of social support work together to amplify each other in a kind of multiplicative relationship. For instance, let us take two hypothetical World War II veterans. One of them was a twenty-three-year-old infantryman who saw extensive combat, killed enemy soldiers at close range, and held his buddy in his arms as he died from close-range enemy small-arms fire. The trauma he endured would probably rate at the very top of the degree-of-trauma scale.

  Our other World War II veteran was a twenty-five-year-old truck driver (he might just as easily have been an artilleryman, an airplane mechanic, or a bos'n's mate on a navy supply ship) who served honorably, but never really got up to the front lines. Although he was in an area that took some incoming artillery (or bombing or torpedoes) on a few occasions, he never was even in a situation where it was expected that he would have to shoot at anyone, and no one ever really shot at him. But he did have someone he knew killed by that artillery fire (or bombs or torpedoes), and he did see the constant remains of death and carnage as he moved along behind the advancing Allied lines. He would be placed very low on our degree-of-trauma scale.

  When our hypothetical World War II veterans came home after the war they returned as a unit together with the same guys they 286 KILLING IN VIETNAM

  had spent the whole war with, on board a ship, spending weeks joking, laughing, gambling, and telling tall tales as they cooled down and depressurized in what psychologists would call a very supportive group-therapy environment on the long voyage home.

  And if they had doubts about what they'd done, or fears about the future, they had a sympathetic group to talk to. Jim Goodwin notes in his book how resort hotels were taken over and made into redistribution stations to which these veterans brought their wives and devoted two weeks to reacquainting themselves with their family on the best possible terms, in an environment in which they were still surrounded by the company of their fellow veterans.

  Goodwin also observes that the civilian population they were returning to had been prepared to help and understand the returning veteran through movies such as The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Pride of the Marines. They were victorious, they were justifiably proud of themselves, and their nation was proud of them and let them know it.

  Our infantryman was one of the comparatively few World War II vets who participated in a ticker-tape parade in New York.

  Everyone griped about how what they really wanted to do was put all this "Army BS" behind them, but he would privately admit that marching in front of those tens of thousands of cheering v civilians was one of the high points of his life, and today even just the remembrance of it tends to make his chest swell a little with pride.

  Our truck driver, like the majority of returning vets, did not participate in a ticker-tape parade, but he would probably say that it made him feel good to know that vets were being honored.

  And next Memorial Day he did march in his hometown parade as part of the American Legion's commemoration ceremonies. No one was making him do it, but he did it anyway because, well damn it, because he felt like it, and he would keep on doing it every year just like the World War I vets in his town had done as he was growing up.

  Both our veterans generally stayed in touch with their World War II buddies, and they linked up with their old comrades in reunions and informal get-togethers. And that was nice, but what was really best about being a veteran was being able to hold POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER 287

  your head high and knowing just how much your family, friends, community, and nation respected you and were proud of you.

  The GI Bill was passed, and if some politician or bureaucrat or organization didn't give the vet the respect he deserved, well, buddy, they would have to answer to the influence and votes of the American Legion and the VFW, who would make damn sure you got treated right.

  On our social-support scale, social support provided to these two veterans can be rated as very supportive. Not all returning World War II vets got this kind of support, and it was no bed of roses to return from combat under the best of circumstances, but their nation generally did the best for them that it could.

  Remember that the relationship between the degree-of-trauma scale and the social-support scale is multiplicative. These two factors amplify each other. For our infantryman that means that his highly traumatic experience was largely (but perhaps not completely) negated by the very supportive social structure he returned to.

  Our truck driver, suffering very little trauma and having received a great deal of support, will probably be able to deal with his combat experiences. Our infantryman may tend to medicate himself pretty regularly down at the bar at the American Legion, but like most veterans he will probably continue to function and lead a perfectly healthy life.

  PTSD in the Vietnam Veteran

  Now let us consider two hypothetical Vietnam veterans, an eighteen-year-old infantryman and a nineteen-year-old truck driver.

  The infantryman arrived at the combat zone, like most every other soldier in Vietnam, as an individual replacement who didn't know a soul in his unit. Eventually he engaged in extensive close combat.

  He killed several enemy soldiers, but the hard part was that they were wearing civilian clothes, and one of them, well, damn, he was just a kid, couldn't have been more than twelve. And he had his best buddy die in his arms during a firefight. The trauma he endured definitely rates at the top end of the scale. Maybe fighting kids in civilian clothes, with no rear lines and no chance to ever really rest and get away from the battle, maybe that makes the trauma he endured greater than that of the World War II vet, but 288

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  at the top of the trauma scale there probably isn't much value in trying to distinguish between shades of black.

  The truck driver also arrived alone, but although his job was the same as a World War II truck driver, the environment in which he had to do it had changed. There was no rear area for him, you could never really let your guard down, even when you were off duty, and convoys were one long hell of fear from ambushes and mines. It was like living in the Battle of the Bulge all the time. Convoys into base camps were often like some kind of "Relief of Bastogne," and his truck was always armored and sandbagged in a way that a World War II truck driver would probably never even have considered doing. Fortunately, he never did have to shoot at anybody, but that was always a possibility, and he kept
his weapon handy and loaded all the time, and plenty of people were shooting in his general direction on several occasions. Our Vietnam-era truck driver might rate low on the trauma scale, slightly higher than his counterpart in World War II, but not unmanageably so.

  Our two Vietnam veterans departed the war the way they had arrived: alone. They departed with a mixture of joy at having survived and shame at having left their buddies behind. Instead of returning to parades, they found antiwar marches. Instead of luxury hotels, they were sent to locked and guarded military bases where they were processed back to civilian life in a few days. Instead of movies about the veteran, his struggles, and his vulnerable emotional state upon reentry into civilian life, the media prepared the American people by calling the returning veterans "depraved fiends" and "psychopathic killers," and beautiful young movie stars led the accusing chant of a nation that echoed through the veteran's soul: "Baby killers . . . murderers . . . butchers . . ."

  They were rejected by girlfriends, spit on, and accused by strangers and finally dared not even admit to close friends that they were veterans. They did not show up for Memorial Day parades (which had gone out of style), they did not join the VFW or the American Legion, and they did not participate in any reunions or get-togethers with old comrades. They denied their experiences and buried their pain and grieving beneath a shell.

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  Some Vietnam vets had families and communities that could insulate them from this, but the vast majority had only to turn on the TV to find themselves being attacked. Even the most average of Vietnam vets endured an absolutely unprecedented degree of societal condemnation. On our social-support scale, our two Vietnam veterans rated at the "condemn" end of the scale.

  Remember the multiplicative, amplifying relationship between trauma and social support. For our truck driver the interaction between his limited combat trauma in Vietnam and the societal condemnation that he endured afterward resulted in a total experience that might very well have been more conducive to posttraumatic stress than that experienced by a veteran of close combat in World War II. For our infantry veteran of Vietnam the magnitude of the total trauma experienced is beyond description.

  The diffusion of responsibility that happens in combat is a two-way street. It absolves a killer of a part of his guilt, diffusing it to the leaders who gave the order and the truck driver who brought the ammo and hauled back the bodies, but it does so by giving a piece of the killer's guilt to others, and those others must then deal with it just as surely as must the killer. If these "accessories"

  to killing in combat are accused and condemned, then their slice of the trauma, guilt, and responsibility is amplified, and it will reverberate in their souls as shock and horror.

  The Vietnam vet, the average vet who did no killing, is suffering an agony of guilt and torment created by society's condemnation.

  During and immediately after Vietnam our society judged and condemned millions of returning veterans as accessories to murder.

  At one level many, even most, of these horrified, confused veterans accepted society's media-driven, kangaroo-court conviction as justice and locked themselves in prisons of the worst kind, prisons in their mind. A prison whose name was PTSD.

  I have known these men, both our two "hypothetical" World War II vets and our two Vietnam vets. They are not hypothetical at all. They are real. Their pain is real. Societies that ask men to fight on their behalf should be aware of what the consequences and what the price of their actions may so easily be.

  Chapter Four

  The Limits of Human Endurance and the

  Lessons of Vietnam

  PTSD and Vietnam: A Nexus of Impact upon Society For the Vietnam infantryman in the example in the last chapter, the condemnation upon his return amplified the horror of his combat experiences to result in a staggering degree of horror. By the very nature of its unique historical causation, the existence of any significant number of individuals in such a condition is unprecedented in the history of Western civilization.

  Although this model only crudely reflects what has happened, it begins to represent the relevant forces.8 Statistics on the horrible number of suicides among Vietnam vets, on the tragic number of homeless who are Vietnam vets, on divorce rates, drug-use rates, and so on, give evidence that something has occurred that is significantly, startlingly different from that occurring after World War II or any other war our nation has ever encountered.9

  There is a nexus of events and causation linking the death of enemy soldiers and the spittle of war protesters with a pattern of suicide, homelessness, mental illness, and divorce that will ripple through the United States for generations to come.

  The 1978 President's Commission on Mental Health tells us that approximately 2.8 million Americans served in Southeast Asia, T H E LIMITS O F H U M A N E N D U R A N C E

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  and almost 1 million of them saw active combat service or were exposed to hostile, life-threatening situations. If we accept the Veterans Administration's conservative figures of 15 percent incidence of PTSD among Vietnam veterans, then more than 400,000

  individuals in the United States suffer from P T S D . Other figures place this number as high as 1.5 million veterans suffering from PTSD as a result of the Vietnam War. Whatever their numbers, there are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of them, they are four times more likely to be divorced or separated (and those not divorced are significantly more likely to have a troubled marriage), they represent a large proportion of America's homeless population, and as the years go by they are increasingly more likely to c o m -

  mit suicide.

  Thus, the long-term legacy of the Vietnam War upon American society is not just hundreds of thousands of troubled veterans, it is also hundreds of thousands of troubled marriages impacting women, children, and future generations. For we know that children of broken families are more likely to be physically and sexually abused, and that children of divorce are more likely to become divorced as adults, and that victims of child abuse are more likely to become child-abusing adults. And this is only one facet of the price this nation will pay for those personal kills in the jungles of Vietnam.

  It may indeed be necessary to engage in a war, but we must begin to understand the potential long-term price of such endeavors.

  The Legacy and the Lesson

  Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it.

  Whatever he does to the web he does to himself.

  — Ted Perry (Writing as "Chief Seattle") We may have enhanced the killing ability of the average soldier through training (that is, conditioning), but at what price? T h e ultimate cost of our body counts in Vietnam has been, and continues to be, much more than dollars and lives. We can, and have, conditioned soldiers to kill — they are eager and willing and trust our judgment. But in doing so we have not made them capable 292

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  of handling the moral and social burdens of these acts, and we have a moral responsibility to consider the long-term effects of our commands. Moral direction and philosophical guidance, based on a firm understanding of the processes involved, must come with the combat training and deployment of our soldiers.

  At the national strategic level, a recognition of the potential social cost of modern warfare has been obtained at a terrible price, and a form of moral and philosophical guidance gained from this experience can be found in the Weinberger doctrine — named after Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense for President Reagan.

  This doctrine represents an initial attempt to form the kind of moral direction and philosophical guidance that can be built upon the lessons of Vietnam. The Weinberger doctrine states that:

  • "The United States should not commit forces to combat unless our vital interests are at stake."

  • "We must commit them in sufficient numbers and with sufficient support to win."

  • "We must have clearly defined political and military objective
s."

  • "We must never again commit forces to a war we do not intend to win."

  • "Before the United States commits forces abroad, the U.S. government should have some reasonable assurance of the support of the American people and their elected representatives in the Congress. . . . U.S. troops cannot be asked to fight a battle with the Congress at home while attempting to win a war overseas.

  Nor will the American people sit by and watch U.S. troops committed as expendable pawns on some grand diplomatic chessboard."

  • "Finally, the commitment of U.S. troops should be as a last resort."

  A Quest for Further Understanding

  The Weinberger doctrine represents, in part, the recognition that a nation that sends men out to kill must understand the price that it may have to ultimately pay for these seemingly isolated deeds in distant lands. If this doctrine and the spirit in which it is intended THE LIMITS OF HUMAN ENDURANCE 293

  prevails, it may prevent a recurrence of the Vietnam experience.

  But this is just the beginning of a basis for understanding the potentially devastating social costs of modern war at other levels.

  Commanders, families, and society need to understand the soldier's desperate need for recognition and acceptance, his vulnerability, and his desperate need to be constantly reassured that what he (or she) did was right and necessary, and the terrible social costs of failing to provide for these needs with the traditional acts of affirmation and acceptance. It is to our national shame that it has taken us almost twenty years to recognize and fulfill these needs with the Vietnam War Memorial and the veterans' parades that have allowed our veterans to "wipe a little spit off their hearts."

  The military also must understand the need for unit integrity during and after combat. We are beginning to do so with the army's new personnel system (which assigns and replaces whole units instead of single individuals in combat), and we must continue to do so; and like the British, who took their soldiers home from the Falklands by long, slow sea voyage, we must understand the need for cooldown periods, parades, and unit integrity during the vulnerable period of returning from war. During the 1991 Gulf War it appears that we generally got these things right, but we must make sure that we always do so in the future.