Doug Jacobs 1968

This is a friend of ours who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder caused by combat duty in the Vietnam War; soon we will be posting his art and more of his articles.

A Primer to "Support our Troops"
Tales from the Font I
Tales from the Font II
As a Child
A Different Parallel
Unabashed Patriotism
Stressor Letter for a Black Man

A PRIMER TO “SUPPORT OUR TROOPS”

“Support the Troops” is a catch phrase that is a no brainer; everyone supports our troops, don’t they? We might not support the politics that causes the need for troops, we may detest the politicians who placed our troops in harms way, we may see through the lies, the concealments of truths, the double and triple talking of our congressional leaders, the vast sinkholes we backhoe vast metric tons of money into (I am not afraid of the metric system), but we will always support our troops. Isn’t that so? Hell no.

“Support our Troops” is a war chant like “Go team Go!” or “On Wisconsin!” and nothing more. History shows us this from the War Between the States through the First and Second World Wars and Korea. For many returning Combat Veterans were not only unsupported, large portions were neglected. They could not find work, could not get physical or psychological wounds healed, and could never adjust to peace.

“Child Killers” was the war chant of the Viet Nam War. These were our brothers, our sons, our husbands, cousins and friends who as soon as they were forced to cross an arbitrary border by the same kind of politicians we have today, took on an ominous and cruel persona whom none of us knew. Or was that child killer the son or brother of ‘that other’ family? But the outrage over that war, which should be the outrage over the present war in Iraq, had to manifest somewhere. The Enlistees and Draftees in 1964 through before the lottery system were of the lowest social order in this country and could not speak articulately for their lot. By the time the lottery system came in, the war was winding down and our country’s civilians were thinking about other things. So were the Combat Vets, but they could not explain what they were thinking about, not to others or to themselves.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, although only recognized as an official medical malady in 1980 and entered in the DSM II, the handbook of medically recognized nasties on that date, has been around since war has been around. It has been around since rape has been around or Columbine has been around, or the Twin Towers or any major stressful situation. But there is nothing as stressful on an individual as being in combat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; not a fireman, not a cop, not a mother of a toddler. The only other occupation I can think of is being a citizen of a country under occupation by combat forces 24/7 under the threat of death like the Iraqis or the Vietnamese.

PTSD is thought of as a psychological disorder. It is, but it is also biochemical. While under severe stress, a “fight or flight,” life or death stress, at least two chemicals are released in the brain, adrenalin and cortisol. We are familiar with the first but not with the second. In very large doses over time, cortisol brakes down the brain’s cells’ outer walls causing them to reconstruct. The brain becomes “hardwired” in a different, abnormal way. There is no undoing of this. No psychotherapy, medication, acupuncture, praying, juju beads, nothing will undo the restructuring that has occurred during long term exposure to severe stress. PTSD can only be managed. When it spikes, depending on the amplitude, it may be beyond management. Primary symptoms are depression, anxiety, sleeplessness and anger. The first three can be controlled to some degree by meds. The fourth is strictly through management skills and cognitive behavioral training.

But PTSD is a strong, sometimes hyper response to external stimuli. With me when the stimuli hits and I start to respond, the chemicals start to flow and I can feel a change in my thinking, it becomes heightened, both offensive and defensive, my body begins to shake from within, it can’t be seen. You can hear it in my voice, though. Adrenalin is flowing. I am back in combat. Adrenalin takes at least 20 minutes to dissipate from the body. I believe the amount flowing through me takes much longer. To me my thinking is very clear, well ordered, much focused for a combat situation. To others I probably sound like a psycho. I will be wiped out for the rest of the day. Sleep for hours. Be up all night. An added tragedy is that the external stimulation may be positive, good, fun, beneficial, anything that gets my adrenalin pumped, like a surprise party. Hell, winning the lottery would probably kill me.

So, why am I writing this now? Several reasons; I am understanding it better. For several years I counseled WWII and Korean along with many VN combat veterans who were still unable to cope with peace. (Many folks who still disbelieve PTSD use anecdotal evidence like, “My uncle Harry was in WWII or Korea and he was OK.” For every ‘Uncle Harry, there is an Uncle Larry who was an alcoholic. Either that or Uncle Harry lied about what he did in the war. He was probably a supply clerk.) Many Iraqi combat vets are being recycled not for the second time as you might have recently heard, but for the Army, the third 8 month tour and Marines, a second 15 month tour. These are regulars, not Reservists and it is old news. I was in combat for nine months which was long enough to gestate a severe case of PTSD. Can you imagine these people walking through an American city checking out every building rooftop, every corner, and every doorway with every step? It is called Hyper Vigilance. Many can’t keep curtains open in their home or stand by an open window, or feel unsafe unless armed with a small arsenal of weapons. These are not unusual lifestyles for years after returning home. While in Vietnam, I was so focused on my job, I could not remember what it was like before the war to be at home and speak on the telephone without saying “over.” Or drive to the Jersey beaches on the Garden State Parkway without keeping an artillery round of suppressive fire 200 meters ahead of us. The world changes while in combat and does not necessarily change back to the way it was when (if?) you came back. State-side people have to understand this. Not enough work has been done to help all Americans understand what so few Americans will be going through when they come back.

Politicians want us to Support the Troops because it helps to support the war. The true supporting of the troops comes upon their return from the war. Not necessarily immediately, sometimes years later. In my case, I returned from war in 1967, my first PTSD onset was in 1985, full blown was 1995, all triggered by outside, non-related events. Two civilian psychologists and a VA psychiatrist could not diagnose my disorder. How are lay civilians to know? The government’s concept of supporting the troops usually results in cutbacks in funding to the VA because usage caused by war is up. And they only fund on an annual basis rather than a three or five year schedule which makes planning for the VA’s future needs as any normal hospital would for patient care, plant and equipment impossible.

When I was proposing the funding for PTSD information and awareness to a battalion of military police who had just returned from Iraq, I suggested 40% of the budget be targeted to the soldiers and 60% go to their families. The theory is that the families would recognize the symptoms before the veteran would. The veteran would be in denial, is too macho or lived through a war and therefore feels impervious to anything. But the family would know. I also proposed to the VA a six week program to train the families of PTSD patients to learn how to be effective support groups in addition to the natural but ephemeral support of other combat vets. But since it didn’t come from a VA Ph.D., it didn’t fly. Instead, the families are left out of the education process. It is hard enough on a PTSD family who tries to stay together. The hardship on the wife and the young children growing up is staggering. I know from experience. So does each individual member of my family. A typical number of marriages for PTSD vets is three. Advice I recently received from an in-law was, “read a book,” and I’ve heard, “you’re over medicated.” Would you give that advice to a rape victim? That is similar advice to that of the VA doctors in the years before PTSD was sanctioned and certified by the Government as a bona fide disease as is Agent Orange, “Get over it.” I have very little confidence in the VA to solve the medical problems of combat vets for reasons I have seen first hand. It has to do with governmental politics, University funding politics, “Not Invented Here” and the lowest bidder syndromes. Don’t you think a six week course of education to help keep these families together is worth it? The bill was paid by the combat vet with every footstep of every day in war. It is a matter of human value. Support the Troops? Only while it is politically expedient to do so. That is why it is up to friends, family and neighbors to support the troops. It takes education to do it properly even though the chances are most of us will never meet a combat vet. But you never know. My butcher just came back from Iraq. He was never told about the special program the VA has for him with special doctors and teams using theories far beyond those offered to Viet Nam veterans. He was never told about these programs even though all the politicians and armed services tell us they are advising all combat vets about these special VA programs. I had to tell him. It is up to us to support the troops. After all they are our brothers, sons, husbands, wives, cousins and friends. We have the responsibility to define our society even if our elected leaders have abrogated theirs.

There is a web site that gives some insight. I do not agree with the numbers, I believe they are much understated. The seminal study for PTSD was done by Harvard a few years ago for which I have turned my room upside down but cannot find. It stated that something like 20% of combat troops will come directly out of war with PTSD and that over a 20 year period 95% will have some degree of it. The remaining 5% were sociopaths before entering the armed services. The web site is www.ecusa-chaplain.org. Go to Veterans and Combat Stress. Near the end of the paragraph it says “click here.” Click there. It is a Power Point presentation which may require that software. Slide seventeen is the most significant to me.

DOUGLAS M. JACOBS

FURTHER

I had quoted statistics that were at enormous odds stated in the web site above. I believe I understand why the difference in those numbers.

If you note any of my references to war I always refer to “Combat Veterans.” Generally speaking there has been a 10 to 1 ratio of support troops to combat troops in war historically, meaning it takes company clerks, supply clerks, mechanics, truck drivers, intelligence, shit burners, doctors, cooks, and on, all stationed in the rear where there is no combat going on to support one combat soldier in the line of fire. Occasionally a truck convoy may come under attack and the drivers must defend themselves. But this is not the sustained stress about which I was writing.

That is not to say these people were not in constant fear; they were. But not at the same intensity. I have made the case for and wrote “stressor letters” for veterans who were aboard ships thirty miles out to sea their entire tour to receive VA disability because of the stress they were under. It was wartime don’t forget and many of those folks were affected by it.

Three million people served in Vietnam. By using the 10% rule of thumb, only 300,000 were combat vets; the 10 to 1 ratio. The Power Point slide I directed you to states,”Only a small portion of returning veterans will have serious PTSD or related problems…studies indicate it will be less than 10%.” These numbers can work out to the Harvard study I quoted of Combat Vets of 95% PTSD of some degree.

I hope this gives greater credibility to both the Power Point and my presentations.

SARAH

I’m thinking of you, Doug, and hope that I have not been insensitive to your condition. It must be horrendous to have to live with such a debilitating and little understood health disability. I don’t know that anyone can truly walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

DOUG

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem writing or talking about Viet Nam or PTSD. When I was counseling Combat Vets, I was coming out of my head, using my experience and skills, and going into theirs, helping them. It was cathartic for me, spiritual. It was the most beneficial thing I have ever done for myself; helping others. It was the first time folks said to me, “God bless you” when I didn’t sneeze. Truly heart felt. We all left behind our tranquility on the battlefield and have been searching for it ever since returning home, some much longer than others.

But the real horror of this disease is the damage it does to the family. Anxiety and depression can be treated with meds, but anger, the worst of the symptoms in my opinion, can only be managed. Sometimes management techniques cannot be summoned quickly enough or don’t measure up to the anger at hand. The volatility factor and its spontaneity are such that almost anything can set you off. A family is constantly walking on egg shells. Try as they may, the children will be affected, the wife, friends, relatives, anyone around the PTSD victim over a given period of time will see an anger flare-up.

There are other issues that don’t affect combat vets of the 60s; they affect those of the 60s who did not go to war and how they relate to combat vets of that era relative to dealing with PTSD. It is a schism that exists because of the politics of the time in my opinion. A friend recently wrote, “I find it difficult to write you in that, not having served, I could never pretend to fully understand what it was like for you and those who did. I don’t want to risk offending you with some ill-conceived or politically naïve comment. Please know that I have the utmost respect for you and that I feel blessed to have you as a friend.”

First let me say that is a damned good start. Second, it is more than anyone in my family or my so called “enlightened” in-laws or anyone else ever said to or asked me about the war, ever. Let his quote be the template for all Americans in welcoming home the Iraqi and Afghani vets.

Nobody was a greater war protester than me and my buddies in the stateside Army. We were all drafted, had at least one year of college, and could have been the basis for “MASH” except we were privates. We simply didn’t give a shit and were smarter than our sergeants. We laughed at them. We hung banners in our barracks that read, “End Conscription – Make freedom work!” And like that. We typed our own passes and kept them with us at all times. We all had the best combat jobs. We all went to war and performed well, many awarded medals.

But here’s the deal, it is about time for the 60s generation to heal, war protestors and war vets alike. Get over the inability to not know how to speak to each other because of not knowing what it was like. So much animosity still exists. Especially on the combat vets side.

Let me expand on that. I was two weeks out of the jungle into a college dorm as a freshman at age 22. I went to the student union and saw a poster of a combat G.I. holding a baby in his arms and thought, “A G.I. saving a baby.” The picture caption read, “CHILD KILLER” The war protestors were blaming the soldiers when they should have been blaming the politicians who sent the soldiers there. To many people, me included, Canada, jail, and pretending I had a 4F condition were not options. Besides, I would have chosen Tahiti over Canada, much better diving. I was and am an American subject to American laws. I am glad those who took those options did not go to war and end up as ill as I am and the hundreds of thousands of all combat vets of every war and those who will be when they return from Iraq. But those who took those options fucked their buddies because somewhere down the line from them there were guys who were not supposed to go to war, but because these guys copped out, the guys who weren’t supposed to go went and to be sure, many of them got killed. Loyalty, morality, patriotism, and heroism, it is not about you, it is about the other guy.

SARAH

I don’t know if you can blame the people who found a way to stay out of the war…unless they later became politicians who sent other young people to war. My personal thought is that if everyone in the world decided they would not go to war maybe war would be a game politicians couldn’t play

DOUG

The sky is not blue enough anywhere in this world for your wish to happen, unless an event like in the movie, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” happened. Even then I bet we’d blow it.

There is always the theory of the ancient play, “Lysistrata,” no sex, no warriors.

Consider this, Iraq and the Eastern European countries when held under tyrannical rule were internally peaceful, various sects and religions intermarried and like that. As soon as the mighty hammers were lifted, they immediately returned to their thousand year old hatreds and killed and are killing each other. And Africa? Who can possibly explain Africa? War seems to be genetic.

I am glad those who draft dodged did not go to war. I am saying that they were not my options and that responsibilities attach to the options that anyone takes. It doesn’t matter whether one agrees with them or not. Ultimately the numbers are going to fall into place; then and now. By the way, my views about those who avoided the draft are in the minority of one among combat veterans. I am against people being maimed, killed, and made ill by stupid, political wars driven by political and personal hubris and foolishness.

What lessons have we learned from Vietnam? Apparently not too many. The Iraq war is almost identical to Vietnam except for the draft as far as I’m concerned. The selling of it is different; better marketing but the numbers once again will fall into place. The clamor will be to get out eventually. Were there a draft, and the upper social classes were going into combat, the streets would be littered with protesters, in my opinion.

To me the big difference is what has not gone into the calculus for the planning of war; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When will mothers and fathers and especially sons get educated? They must realize if they choose the option to become a warrior and fight in a war, one thing is for certain, if they return home they will be changed. It will not be for the better. All the generals know this, but it does not look good on recruiting posters.

DOUGLAS M. JACOBS

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TALES FROM THE FONT I

March 20 is an anniversary date of mine and 86 of my combat comrades of the 1/5 Infantry, First Air Cav. Up to this time in 1967 we had seen much combat. So much so that our numbers were down from normal company field strength of about 100 men/boys. We were good, among the best as far as I could tell. We had good officers, a marked change from when I first arrived in the field in January when the officers were responsible for more of our unit’s deaths than at the hands of our enemy. Some of the officers were responsible for their very own deaths.

But by this time we had good officers, most of our troops were southern farmers, hunters, used to being in the land, being quiet, seeing movement. There was no prejudice in our unit. We worked well together. The drugs, the “fraging,” the disharmony came largely after 1970, after Tet of 1968 and became a different war. We were a “strack” unit, but on this day, we were under strength.

That morning we were told we were being put under operational control – “OP CON” to another battalion. I never heard of that before, but then I never heard of most things Army before. Though I had a specialty position which they gave only to the brightest, all of my classmates and I in stateside training were drafted, smart, had a year of college, mavericks and constantly gave as much shit to our officers and sergeants just this side of severe punishment and got away with it. They hated us. That is why I ended up in combat. It does catch up.

Anyway, though I was privy to security (being a Forward Observer, it was my responsibility to call all supporting fires like artillery, gunships, air strikes, large Naval guns, etc., so I had to have maps with me, know our mission objectives, like that. In the States, I almost didn’t get my security clearance because on the day just before I had to be sworn in, I had to fill out one last form on which I said I wet my bed. I prayed that would keep me out and failing that I prayed the bus taking me to Fort Dix in New Jersey would get into a horrendous accident that from which, I, of course, would walk away, feigning severe injury. All prayers are not answered. Being from NJ, they shipped me to Texas for basic training While in Texas , where I did basic and AIT, they called me down to an Aid Station and said I couldn’t have a security clearance until I swore I didn’t wet my bed. (My mama told me not to swear.), I didn’t think OP CON meant anything substantial and it shouldn’t have. But it would.

For this mission, unlike most others, we were staging on a tarmac, an air strip, waiting for choppers to pick us up. Usually we’d be extracted from the field where we’d just completed one mission right on to the next.

But this time we were just hanging around on a hot tarry landing strip where we got new rucksacks. What a welcome relief from the packs we had. We stocked up on grenades and ammo, wrote letters and slept, which is what we did anytime we could because we were always tired. If we were humping, unfortunately not the good kind, but as in our area of operation, the Bong Song Province which was from the ocean to the Central Highlands and included crossing every terrain from beaches to jungles to swamps to rice paddies to mountains, carrying 30 to 60 pounds on our backs in freezing monsoons in the mountains (I am such a wuss. I had someone carry an extra blanket for me then) to the ungodly heat of the flatlands, jungles and rice paddies in the summer. We were constantly tired and if given a ten-minute break, we’d sleep 9 of them.

Hueys finally picked us up. I was on the first sortie of about 6 or 7 choppers that at that time of year could carry about 5 or 6 guys. Normally, when under our own control, before we would put down, the LZ (landing zone) would be prepped with twenty to thirty minutes of artillery fire first, then just as we were coming in, gun ships would shoot rockets and machine gun fire. We would come in right behind that. I would be one of the first off the choppers and report by radio to my artillery contacts in the rear whether the LZ was “green” or “red.” We had no prep on this air assault, we received no incoming fire, life was good. As we gathered, the choppers returned to pick up more of our unit as they would several times.

In the IST Cav then, an infantry unit had 4 platoons. The first three were straight rifle men meaning M16s, M60 machine guns, and M79 grenade launchers which look like large diameter single barrel shotguns which break open to load a special grenade round that shoots out to maybe 100 yards or so or an actual large double “O” buck shotgun round, one at a time. The fourth platoon was our mortar platoon that carried two 80 mm mortars and was able to give our own unit supporting fires when possible. They also serve as infantrymen. Everybody carried grenades, some carried Claymore mines, which is a 5X8 curved piece of C4 embedded with 500 double “O” buck steel balls. They attached by wire and have a direction and are meant to spray out. These are set up at night and triggered by a person – ours – upon trip flares going off or sounds or what ever. Often the enemy would sneak up and turn them around on us.

So our choppers were putting down, I started off with the beginnings of the second platoon as more sorties started arriving. We headed toward a large white sandy area in which the Vietnamese grew their root crop and buried their dead. There were head stones in a concentrated location. The vegetable, once harvested, would be sliced and dried in the sun on round, flat disks about one meter in diameter woven of some type of bark similar to what you might find in Pier One.

As the Company gathered the formation took shape. We were walking two platoons abreast, two in front, two behind. All in the sand. Though I don’t remember the actual direction, say that we were walking east, north was an “L” shaped row of palm trees, the long side about 150 meters long (war stories undergo conversions to the metric scale), the short side about 50m, facing the sand. Beyond the long side of the trees was a village. The sand was very fine and hard to walk through. Very white. I was in one of the two platoons away from the trees.

We had two Guthries in our unit; big Guthrie was a sex fiend, blond, good looking, always talking sex, met his wife in Hawaii on R&R and passed the Polaroids around for us to see, bless him, and as SOP he took a villager at gunpoint keeping him in front. As Guthrie looked up he saw someone duck behind a tree. Guthrie opened fire. I learned that later.

At that moment all I saw were green tracers streaming over my head. It seemed like thousands of them. When you see news highlights of combat and you see tracers, it doesn’t seem like much until you consider that only those who want to carry tracers do and that only every 5 th or 6 th round is a tracer. There’s a lot going on in between.

As in all combat, there was much initial confusion. The lieutenant I was next to thought we were shooting at us that we tripped our own ambush, which our unit had never done before, unlike many other units. He radioed over to another platoon leader who also didn’t know what was going on. I knew something was going on in as much as we shot ‘pink’ tracers and these weren’t ours.

After a couple of minutes we all realized we were in for it. Most of us were stuck in the open, no cover, some guys getting hit. I started calling for any kind of support, gunships, artillery, but nobody knew where we were or in fact who we were. This was where going OP CON came to bite us in the ass. Normally we would have been posted on an Artillery Liaison map at a forward rear, so that we could be given support if need and/or not confused for the enemy. The only board we were posted on was the North Vietnamese because as we found out from captureds the next day, they knew we were coming. In fact we landed in the wrong location. We were supposed to land in the sandy area. Their intelligence was better than our chopper pilots’ map reading.

All hell broke loose. As it turned out this was our first encounter with the NVA, extremely well trained, well equipped soldiers, who knew we were coming and had set up an ambush. They were in the tops of the palm trees, dug in in spider holes, and had heavy machine guns, mortars, all kinds of things that I thought only we were supposed to have.

What was amazing up to this point, say ten minutes into the firefight was that the green tracers were not deflecting down enough where I was at least, to do harm. One guy did get hit. My radiotelephone operator gave me his radio (rat bastard), put the wounded soldier on his back and carried him to the gravestones.

It seemed like forever, but I finally got a gunship on station. The gunship made one pass coming from behind and over us toward the trees, not a good thing, and the pilot got killed. The copilot got pissed took another pass and rocketed me while the door gunner killed a guy, our guy, about ten feet from me. Door gunners killed a couple of guys next to me several times on different occasions. They are not my favorite people. Luckily the sand was so thick and absorbent and the rocket came from over my head and sprayed away from me that all I could do was watch. The sand conditions helped with the mortars that were being shot at us by the NVA as well.

We finally got the word to ditch our packs and form a firebase around the headstones.

The firefight raged on for quite a while. It turned out that there were 200 of the NVA. We were running out of ammunition and they started to surround us. What I only recently found out was that the only person who knew where we were was the battalion commander that we were OP CON to. Some one woke him up and got word to him. He got his chopper and one other, loaded them both with ammunition and did a “kick out” to us.

I only know of a couple of war stories from that day and they are unbelievable, but true. One fellow, a medic, was awarded the Medal of Honor and our unit was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the unit equivalent of the Medal of Honor. I am so proud of both.

I saw him after the fight was over and never saw a blank stare like that ever. A hollow eyed, “thousand mile” stare. I didn’t know what he had been through at that time.

With every story, there is defining moment and this is mine.

I introduced you to Big Guthrie who tripped this ambush, a good, sex crazed American soldier as they all are, especially in a war zone, when all you see are Beatle nut toothed old ladies. Now Guthrie had been wounded once before, but alas, not a million dollar wound, so here he was, back in the field, starting a fight of fights.

Guthrie was with one of the two platoons that was along the tree line only yards, er, meters, 5 or 6, from the enemy. That’s how close this battle took place. At some point he got shot again. He yelled, “I got hit, I got hit!” His best friend was the Sarge. Guthrie yelled for the Sarge, “Hey Sarge, I got hit, I got hit in the balls!” “I got hit in the balls!” Can you imagine a worse fate for Guthrie?

Now let me backtrack a little here. Being somewhat aloof from the normal goings on during a firefight inasmuch as my role was not to shoot people with little guns, but to be on the radio to bring in the big guns, after many discussions with combat veterans, and my music orientation (listen, that is), I have found that I perceived a different form of firefight; one which was musically structured. The sound of semiautomatic weapons, automatic weapons, heavy machine guns, mortars, which take time to load, fire and have their own sound, the grenade launchers loading, firing, exploding. So many sounds that all have a progression, a rhythm, almost a melody. It may seem strange, but this what stood out to me during firefights. That is when I could hear it over my heart pounding.

Well, getting back to Guthrie, the firefight with all this noise, chaos, fear, and I mean above all FEAR unlike Americans know or should have to know, thank God, was going on when Guthrie called to the Sarge, “Sarge, I got hit!” “Oh no, Guth, where?” “I got hit in the balls, Sarge; I got hit in the balls!” “Sarge, check it out!” Bullets flying, mortars exploding, running out of ammo we are starting to get surrounded. We’re all going to die. The Sarge puts his hand down Guthrie’s pants and felt all around for what could possible be the next to the worst possible battlefield news for any young man. Especially Guthrie.

But a second later the Sarge exclaims, “Guth, it’s your leg, Guth, it’s your leg! It’s not your balls! It’s your leg! You’re ok!”

Guth, in utter relief said, “Oh Sarge, oh thank God, oh Sarge, that feels so good, do it some more!”

The next day after I spent the entire night shooting artillery all over the area, we retrieved our back packs. Mine had a bullet hole in the center of it, exactly where my spine would have been.

After we ‘policed’ the area, looking for dead bodies, live bodies, anything to help us determine what we had just endured, our own battalion commander, Colonel Mapp, who won accolades for his behind the lines work during the Korean War, came out to present ‘impact awards’ to those of our guys who demonstrated incredible acts of heroism while under fire. There were many who, on the spot, were awarded Silver Stars and Bronze Stars, my RTO among them. We were all in various states of shock; the concept of presenting these awards so soon was to help bring us out of that shock. It did help. We were a very good unit. Among the best.

I received an ‘early out’ to return to college. I found out that if you had completed a year of college, your two years were up within ninety days of the start of a new semester and you can pass a test the Army gives, you may just be granted an early out to go back to school. I did all of the above. They did not have to grant me the ‘out’ but they did and I took it. The officers suggested that I stayed for another year, I would qualify for direct commission, a high honor in Army think, to which I said thanks but no thanks, I got my early out.

Thank God for it, because unlike grunts, officers rotated out of the field in six months. All of our good officers were gone just before I left the field and we ended up with the shit again. Our Company Commander was a Major, a grade that is not even supposed to be in the field. They put him in just to get promoted. All he talked about was seeing dead Cong. The day I left An Khe, the 1st Air Cav’s home base, word came back that that this idiot got my former company suckered into an ambush. Many of these tried and true, bona fide heroes were killed. When I meet someone who claims he was an infantry company commander in Vietnam , the first thing I cynically ask is, “Were you any good?”

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TALES FROM THE FONT II

Thought you might be interested in reading about my first day “in the field” in Vietnam; on an actual combat mission with a combat infantry unit.

But to tell you the story properly, I have to go back to one of my first days as a freshman at Rutgers University. On a beautiful September day in 1963, all of the freshmen were corralled in a section of the football stadium, very impressive, when the Dean of Students spoke, “Look at the person to your left, now look at the person to your right. One of you won’t be here by the end of the year.” That was me.

By December, 1965 I was wearing khakis.

For a year I trained in Texas for a war in Europe. What’s the difference? Well for story telling purposes, and my job in particular, as an artillery person, I would not have been with an infantry company in Europe. I would have had a Jeep, parked on top of a hill watching way off in the distance the enemy’s movements and from that position I would call in the artillery or air strikes or whatever. For the most part, I wouldn’t care where the artillery came from.

In Vietnam, the artillery was landing so close to where we were that even a small deviation could be and was in many instances, catastrophic. The Gun-Target (GT) line has to be observed at all times. A round will have great accuracy left and right but given variations in powder charges (we were still using WWII artillery and eating C Rations of similar vintage), a cold gun will shoot further than a hot gun and wind and on and on, you had to be damn sure you were off the GT line or if on it, be far enough away from the target. In Europe, you would be so far away from the target, it wouldn’t mater. In Vietnam, it was not unusual to be within 200m of a 105 Howitzer round, then the smallest artillery round. Even 100m. We would often get more shrapnel than the enemy from our own rounds and as goofy as it may sound, that could be very comforting.

The same holds true for air strikes, bomb releases, etc. By the way I didn’t learn any of that in my year in training in Texas. It took about a week in Vietnam to understand these dynamics.

It’s December 1966 and my father and then girlfriend Denise are seeing me off at Newark airport. To fly military standby in those day just required a dress uniform, which I didn’t have on yet. As you may imagine, there were plenty of GIs all over the place spit shined, looking good. I wasn’t one of those guys. The Army issued me size 38 pants and matching shirt. My waist was about 30. Often, while standing inspection I would get chewed out by Captains and Majors and such about my ill-fitting clothes. My response was always the same, “It’s what the Army issued me, sir!” They could never argue the point. I even made Supernumerary twice, which is when you have to stand guard duty, the sharpest guy doesn’t get a post, and he may get to sleep in unless someone had to leave his post unexpectedly. This is with my clothes wrapped 1.3 xs around me. And I have skinny calves, really skinny.

Finally time to pull out my clothes to fly standby. They were somewhere in my duffle bag. I emerged from the men’s room and saw this weird look on my father’s face. Even Denise who understood my disdain for the Army couldn’t muster a smile. There was not a pressed square inch on my fatigues. I couldn’t find my dress uniform, which was regulation for travel.

I was about ready to leave for war and my father stepped away from me. All these other GIs with their girls on their arms, mothers so proud, all looking like they were auditioning for an Army recruiting poster, there I’m standing illegally dressed, looking like my grandmother just spent two hours in a hot tub, skin all wrinkly. My father may never see me again yet his embarrassment was overwhelming. That was another difference between wars in Europe and Vietnam. He just didn’t understand that for some, if not many reasons, this was not about pride. Maybe that was a function of being only 20 years after the end of the war in Europe. His generation had a cause, which required he support his government. It got it. My father couldn’t make the translation. Either that or I looked that ratty.

I made it onto the plane, no problem and a day or so later onto a C140 cargo jet, with its high overhead wings and four jet engines, bound for Vietnam. As glamorous as this may sound, it wasn’t. To convert this plane from cargo to passengers, seats are installed in tracks on the floor, backwards. There are four portholes in the whole plane. This was bear boned and all business. Where I was sitting there must have been a leak in the floor because my right foot started to freeze and for fourteen hours, I had it wrapped in a towel. The plane was very dark, and very noisy from the jet engines hanging at ear level and wind.

There were all ranks and all branches of the service on the plane. There was also dead silence from the folks during the entire trip. As time went on, someone would go up to a porthole and comment, “We are still over water.” That was it.

We stopped in Guam (home of the B52’s - not the rock group) and somewhere else and as tense as the flight was up till then, after the last stop and take off, the tension could float a rock.

Again, “We’re over water.” “We’re over water.” Then, finally, “We’re over land.”

We were over land for a while when the Captain came on and said “We’ll be landing in Pleiku, prepare for a tactical landing.” When I heard we were making a tactical landing, I was about to shit. I swear to God. We just spent 14 fucking hours in a cargo plane not fit for humans, my foot was a rather beautiful icy cobalt blue, I could feel my arteries harden from the tension of flying to this exotic land that even sounds dangerous – Vietnam, Vietnam – I was surprised we weren’t shot out of the sky by this time and now a tactical landing. I had no idea what a tactical landing was but I really had enough.

As it turned out a tactical landing is like the kind you make when you fly into San Diego, or St Thomas, the kind where you make a steep dive to the runway. This one wasn’t that noticeable but others I made in more tactical type aircraft, including C130s that you see so often on the news today, your arms would be thrown up over your head against the side of the plane. It was fun. We’d all be laughing.

Deplaning is a memory emblazoned in a couple of brain cells that will continue to live long after I’m gone. I thought we’d be thrown rifles as we hit the ground, take cover, take aim and start shooting. As everything had been so far, I was wrong. Lined up to get onto the plane that we were just leaving were about 150 guys who just finished their tour. One straight line of guys in their dress uniforms, looking better than I did in Newark, itching to get on that airplane and get the hell out of there. As we were leaving the plane and passing them man-for-man, two thoughts were passing through my mind, theirs and ours. Ours were, “you lucky bastards did your tour and you’re out of here.” Theirs were,”you poor suckers, how many of you won’t make it back?” A kind of ‘Look to your left, now look to your right.’ Then I looked up and caught the eyes of one of the guys who was waiting to get on to the plane. His jaw was so mangled, so ugly, so gruesome. In reality, it was bad but I’ll never know how bad it was because I was so amped at the time, distortion had set in. What wasn’t distorted was my knowledge that in all likelihood, he didn’t look like that before he got here. He was my first casualty of war and it affected me.

A day or so later I ended up in An Khe, home of the 1 st Air Cav Division and to a couple of guys who were with me in Texas and also Geoff Koper, a grammar school, high school, Boy Scout, and Rutgers classmate. He also looked left and right at Rutgers Stadium but he helped the process of being gone by the end of the year by throwing his roommate’s bed out of his 2 nd story window and blowing up a toilet with a cherry bomb. Ah, college. We were in Texas together, too, but didn’t see much of each other there. Our lives paralleled for quite a while, about a month apart. We worked Manpower jobs together before being Army bound because you couldn’t get a job with the threat of the draft. We had a car and we were white so we got the best jobs. Ah, America.

But Geoff got drafted and then I volunteered for the draft. He went to Texas, I went to Texas, he went to the Cav, I went to the Cav, he got shot, I got… uh oh.

I settled into my new unit, the 1/77 Artillery and located Geoff just at nightfall. Geoff was a medic. He has dark hair, slight of build and could easily pass in profile as Vietnamese. Soon after I hooked up with him this first night he joined a Long Range Recon Patrol – LRRP- (pronounced LERP) team where 6 or 7 guys would go into the field as a team and just observe, not engage, and report back. Very clandestine. The night he was shot, his team were dressed in Vietnamese black pajamas and walked through a village heavily populated by VC. They thought they had made it but were wrong. Geoff was the only survivor. He eventually realized his repressed desire to decorate that emerged at Rutgers. He went on to get an architecture degree from Cooper Union in New York, quite an accomplishment. That, without a spleen and a few ancillary internal body parts.

Well, it was great finding Geoff by the Medic’s unit. But the area also happened to be the home of another unit that I didn’t notice until, during the course of the “how’s it goin’s, is it really as bad’s, etc, etc,” I stepped backwards onto the body of a dead GI. He was on a stretcher on the ground. Covered. It was also Graves Registration.

Over the course of the next three weeks, came and went: Jungle Training – everything I needed to know in two days, mostly about mines and booby traps, monsoons, Christmas, New Years 1967, driving a truck in a monsoon which is much like driving on ice or slush and two major events. One was Bob Hope. I was fortunate to be in camp when Bob Hope brought his show to An Khe and let me tell you, it was great. I truly appreciated that he and his cast did that, they didn’t have to. He always had a “sex kitten” as a star to make the boys roar. This year it was Joey Heatherton, a singer/dancer who had about a three or four year run at minor stardom. Also, she is the daughter of the Merry Mailman, if you recall the…’I am the Merry Mailman’… tune.

The other major event during those three weeks prior to going to the field was another skill set that one can only pick up in the Army; it is called ‘Burning Shit.’ In order to empty the drums that contained the remains of the primary purpose of a latrine, instead of dumping it in some kind of land fill, the drums would be slid out of the back of the latrine, kerosene poured over its precious contents and set afire. Black, smelly smoke would billow out of these drums. The 1 st CAV had, I don’t know, 100,000 people. That’s a lot of shit management. A lot of black billowing smoke. When I used to watch WWII movies, in the background there was always black billowing smoke. I thought the smoke was evidence of ravaged cities. Naive me. Well, I did that for a while. Some months later, after I had made sergeant, gained a bit of a reputation within my battalion (four companies) for doing a good job and was in an officer’s position, I was waiting at the Vung Tau airport, coming back early from an in-country R&R. I just felt too uncomfortable plus I had left my infantry unit in a very precarious location, which could only be reached by artillery by shooting “high angle” which was quite a trick. My Recon Sergeant, second to me, was not capable of directing that kind of fire and I felt the need to get back to support my boys. It was very early in the morning, still dark, when this drunken sergeant a grade or two higher than me who was wearing an insignia indicating that he was in a support unit, not combat came teetering by. There were maybe 20 people there. He walked past me two or three times, looking at my travel bag (AWOL bag), and then he said to me, “that looks like my bag.” I said, “Get out of here.” He walked off, and then came back and said, “That looks like my bag.” I reiterated. Then he said in his drunk speak, “What do you do here. I’m with the Special Forces!” Or “Commandos,” with so much bullshit bravado. I responded, “I burn shit. I used to burn shit for my company but I made sergeant, now I burn shit for the whole battalion!’’ The guys around me started laughing as the drunken sergeant staggered off, mumbling.

Well, back to the then present. I had been in country for about three weeks when I was told I was going to the “Hill.” The field. My MOS or job description consists of two separate and distinct parts best differentiated this way; 1, relatively safe or 2, average lifespan – 20 minutes in combat. They gave me number 2. Do you see a pattern developing here? When my tour of duty was up and I was leaving my unit to start the flights to exit VN, they thanked me for “volunteering” to go to the hill. Fuckers.

The reason the death rate was so high was the radio and its long, whip antenna. The person standing next to the guy carrying it was a leader of some type, a “skill position.” So he and the Radio-Telephone Operator, RTO, were high priority targets and very easy to single out.

I was to fly out on the morning chow chopper. I spent the rest of the day getting prepared to go to the field. You can take anything you want to carry; it’s your back. The standard packs were not very good. I got my hands on a good rucksack with a frame. I took a poncho, poncho liner, which was a light Dacron blanket. The Marines were still carrying the very heavy army blankets. Those poor guys always get the worst of everything. They take pride in it. Most significant for me was my air mattress. This was precious. So precious that there were times when we were getting shrapnel coming in when our air mattresses were still out we covered them with our bodies to protect them literally with our lives, as if they were our wives or children. It they punctured, it took a long time to get a replacement. I even had my folks send me an air pillow. Envy turns to hatred very quickly. And these guys were armed!

Most of what I packed was ammunition, 20 round magazines for an M16 at that time. I had them everywhere. In magazine holders, backpack, my pants. I never wanted to run out of ammo.

I also picked up an M16. I had never even seen an M16 before. I wasn’t able to qualify with it so I was going to the field in hostile territory with a weapon I’ve never fired or sighted in. I guess you can rationalize that this minor shortcoming can be overcome by the super abundance of ammunition I was carrying.

Sleep probably wasn’t part of my night’s doings. The morning came damn quick. It was a nice day. I got onto the chopper, the first one I had ever been on. A Huey, the kind you see in all the VN shows. It is a troop carrier; usually with door gunners though this particular ship had no door gunners. They were also configured as gun ships and out fitted in many other ways. This one was taking hot food in Mermite Containers, large, green thermos type food storage devises that didn’t work all that well, to a couple of infantry units, one of which I was being assigned to, A Company 1/5 Infantry.

Since this was my first helicopter ride, I excitedly boarded the aircraft. There is a cloth bench seat along the back and two smaller cloth seats along the bulkhead on either side of the opening to the cockpit. There is also a pole in the middle of the passenger compartment from roof to floor. No doors, of course, and skids instead of wheels.

The motor started. The joy of flying in a chopper was quickly overcome by why I was flying in a chopper. We lifted off which in itself was a strange experience, but fun. We gained altitude and headed who knows where. Throughout my stay in Vietnam I always carried a map, one of the few in an infantry company to do so. Though I knew where we were in a micro sense, down to one thousandth of a square kilometer, I never knew where we were in a macro sense. I didn’t know how close or far we were from Saigon or the DMZ for example.

Well the chopper ride was going well until we started to make a series of turns. I began to slide out of my seat and out of the chopper. I tried holding on but the turns were too abrupt and radical. I was holding on to my seat and grabbing my pack at the same time. Finally I grabbed the pole and stepped through one of the arm straps on the packs. I had my left arm wrapped around the pole at my elbow and my right arm wrapped around my left. I was thinking my fear of going to the hill was unfounded because I would never reach the hill. How did these guys do it? I’d see them sitting in the doorways of choppers, laughing, no hands, kicking their feet, like the barnstorming wing walkers. What was wrong with me?

But I did make it and now I was in the combat zone. The first thing I remember seeing is the RTO for the Company Commander, a blond guy, squirting a stream of bug juice (insect spray) on to a frog. The stream of juice was lit with a cigarette lighter. The first question I had was, “Am I going to be thinking like him after spending time in the field?” Or will I be the frog?

I didn’t spend much time with my new unit because I got called over to go temporally to fill in at “B” Company, where the Forward Observer’s RTO had to go back to the rear to get a new pair of glasses. He stepped on them often. The Forward Observer turned out to be one of my best friends and fellow army protesters from Texas, Paul Melius. Paul has a genius IQ, went to U. of Wisconsin for a year, was a wonderful person, carried me home to our barracks when I was drunk, made up my bunk when I was drunk a different time, and lead a barracks protest when we hung signs and banners, “End Conscription, Make Freedom Work!” We continued our protest work in Vietnam.

Paul made it to the field about two weeks before me. I knew what he knew about calling in artillery because we trained in Texas together, nothing. And here he was in a 1 st Lieutenant’s position as the Company’s Forward Observer. To make maters worse he had as his RTO a man-infant, me, who knew nothing about radio procedure. I mean nothing. I had never even seen the radio that I had to carry for Paul, a PRC 25, known as a Prick 25. So Paul had no training to be an FO, I had no training to be his radioman. Yup, we’ll kick ass.

Later in the day a new “B” Company Commander, a captain, took over this unit. Of course his name escapes me, I was only with them for one mission, but his call sign was cool, Switchblade Six. Commanders are always Six, I think. When I took over as Forward Observer for “A” Company some months later I was Lightning Bolt 42, which I liked. Anyway, Six had just made Captain, so he had just at this moment taken over this command. He had been in the field as a Platoon Leader, which is a 1st or 2nd lieutenant. As a platoon leader with a different unit, Six accidentally killed one of his own men so they took him out of the field. A platoon has 25 men, a company has 100 men. Do you see the logic in the decision to give him his command?

By late afternoon, a chopper came in with orders for a mission our company was to go on as soon as we were briefed. The high level intelligence said that in a schoolhouse in the middle of a rice paddy were 25 VC heavily armed with automatic weapons, grenades, mortars, etc. I heard all of that, yet all I could think of is what is a school doing in the middle of a rice paddy?

The unit was getting saddled up to go on this mission. Two things bothered me besides the fact that I was there in the first place. One was we were taking a Vietnamese guide to show us the way. During my two days of jungle training, I learned not to trust any Vietnamese. I took that to heart, to include this guy. The other thing that itched my crotch about this mission was that we were going to walk. This was the AIR CAV. What was this walking shit?

Dusk was upon us when we were ready to go. One hundred of us, full gear, which for me meant in addition to the first time actually wearing a backpack, I had somehow squeezed a 20-pound radio into, as well. I had no Idea what my call sign was, and after being told, wasn’t listening for it anyway. I didn’t know how to call, how to answer, and was suffering from sensory overload. One hundred guys with full gear are not quiet, no matter how hard you try. One of the benefits to me was that I was with the Command Post, CP, which is in the center of the pack. One looks for anything to ease the tension.

We got lost very quickly. My jungle training was right. Six was getting pissed. Me too but for obviously different reasons. The objective was supposed to take two hours to reach and we were beyond that already. I remember going through a small village when it was very dark. It would have been beautiful and serene under different circumstances. There were about twenty huts, hooches we called them, and each had a low light burning in their window area, palm trees, well maintained from what I could see. Very calm. A place you may wish to go to read, think, be at peace with your self. Yet this was Vietnam where if this were a VC village, we could be slaughtered.

After we made it through the village, Six got pissed enough to take the CP group to the point, the lead of the company and no longer rely on the guide. I was wishing I had a union. He did get us back on track and speaking of tracks, the map showed that we had to cross a small stream by way of a bridge. When we got there, the stream wasn’t so small and the bridge turned out to be a wooden railroad tie about 6” or 8” wide. That’s pretty wide if you’re one Vietnamese person, in daylight, carrying something light, but look at the law of averages and us. That law was enforced, carried out on the guy ahead of me. He too was carrying a radio. By the time he got to the tie it was muddy as hell. He spread-eagled it. Ouch! We, that is some one who knew how, called in a Medivac and got him out of there. Does helicopter sound carry at night? Do you think we still have the element of surprise? Do you think the 25 VC we’re sneaking up on could have run away or their stomach spasms from laughing have left them incapacitated?

Despite my skepticism, we did find the schoolhouse in the middle of the rice paddy. I was never certain if it were the correct building or rice paddy. Now we had to surround it and fulfill our mission. Since Paul and I were at the head of the company about two thirds of the company had to pass us to the right and one third to the left. By the time this was accomplished, we lost track of Six. We had to find him because we had to coordinate firing artillery, with what Six was going to do with the infantry guys. So Paul and I walked up the dike, stepping on rifle barrels, yelling as softly as we could, “Hey Six, Six hey did you see Six!?” An arm reached up and pulled Paul down. It was Six. I dropped next to Paul, laying half on the dike, half in the rice paddy water, scared but more so, exhausted. It had been a very long day. I almost didn’t make it here, nearly falling out of a chopper somewhere over Vietnam earlier that morning. I fell asleep.

Paul shook me awake; it was time to call in a round of illumination. I didn’t know to do that. Paul made the call. So far all I did was carry this radio thing. He gave the command, the round was fired, and he did a good job. It detonated above us and lit up the area. That was the queue for everyone to open fire. I joined in but everyone else had their 16’s set for full automatic, I had mine set for semi auto, because I wasn’t about to run out of ammunition. I was shooting but there was really nothing to aim at, just the side of a building so I was watching the building as it began to glow from all the hundreds of tracers hitting it. It was at once beautiful and horrific. I started to think about those poor people inside. Then I thought what if the tables were turned and I was in there. It could happen. No one could live through that and with that very thought, a loud explosion went off next to my ear! My God, they are firing back! How can that possibly be? A short while passed before the echoes in my head faded. I looked next to me and saw that two guys were manning a 90mm recoilless rifle, a bazooka kind of thing they had just fired. Something else I had never seen before. But it makes a lot of noise.

The firing stopped, a squad went into the building to check it out. The results: no one had been in the building in weeks.

We moved out; found our way back to our base. Paul and I made a hooch out of our ponchos and I slept for I really don’t know how long. No matter where you are or what you are doing in the field, you must always have regular radio checks. That meant nothing to me during the 24 or 36 hours I slept.

I joined my assigned company and never saw Paul after that. His company was a hard luck unit. They tripped their own ambushes, always stepped in shit. I know Paul made it out. When I was in college, so was he.

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AS A CHILD

As a child, how did I feel or think about my country and government?

I always felt my country would protect me and my family. Since I was growing up at the end of WWII, much was based on the Defense our country and war and the superb treatment of our victorious warriors. We played soldier all the time. We trusted our government wholeheartedly. They would never lie to us or deceive us.

What did I think about Vietnam and the war when it first started?

I never heard of Vietnam prior to the war. Still didn’t know anything about it during the start up of the war and only began to learn something about it when it became relevant to me, i.e. when I was subject to attend. I knew I didn’t want to go. The thought of going scared me. The thought of being in hand-to-hand combat terrified me. I did think about dying but not too much. That is not something you want to think about too much when it may be a reality. Still, as a young man, the idea of war intrigued me. I grew up watching the WWII movies so I had a natural curiosity. That curiosity needed quenching. I had to see for myself.

How did my being in Vietnam affect my view of the war?

Being in it, seeing it first hand reinforced my opinion that we were not doing any good for anyone except those making money on the war. The Vietnamese villagers, the North Vietnamese, our soldiers, the US image, and no one were benefiting. As part of an infantry company, we continually made sweeps through our area of operation, killing as many of the enemy, the VC, as possible. After many months, there were few left. We guarded and repaired bridges that they would again be blown up. Soon, the trained and well equipped North Vietnamese Army infiltrated down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and started to replace the VC and the battles started up once again but now more fierce. Meanwhile, during all of this, people of every type, ours, theirs, civilians, were dying.

I saw very young men, boys really, make old man decisions. I saw soldiers who had 8 to 10 years in the service, on their way to be career guys, say they were getting out as soon as possible because of what they saw in the war and how the Army operated war. They wanted no part of it. I saw career officers who were terrible leaders of men get men killed needlessly because these leaders of men needed the field time for promotions. The fact that many of them were not qualified often had no bearing. They were so incompetent, they often got themselves killed, mercifully.

Often, we would mistakenly kill our own. This was called “friendly fire.” It happened much more frequently than anyone knows or admits. In my experience I figure almost one third of our people were killed by friendly fire, as defined by me. So all around me people were dying and otherwise being affected for a lifetime, and not for the better, everyday.

Many of the weapons and medicines were new or experimental. They were being used on us. We were not aware of this. So in addition to the actuality of war, we were also unknowing tests groups for very dangerous experiments that may not only directly affect us, but our children as well. So in this light, my first hand experience opened my eyes to the horrors nations and individuals can inflict upon each other, and worse, the horror the United States is capable of inflicting on its own warriors, its most loyal citizens. All while couching it in some believable, justifiable event.

Did being in Vietnam affect my view of Human Kind?

At first I could not believe that people, whole families, really lived in small grass roofed huts. And that people had schools in the middle of rice paddies. Their subsistence level was meager. I felt resentful that my life was in deep jeopardy because of these “people.” At the same time I felt guilty that I was elitist or racist. I had to keep a distance from the Vietnamese. The only thing I would feel was suspicion. That was one of the things I had to do to stay alive. I am not certain as to how my time in Vietnam has influenced my approach to Human Kind. I have been a part of and have seen evidence of events that have shaken the world. I know that people do things to other people that they shouldn’t. It has happened to me and my family.

In what ways did this experience affect me negatively?

It caused me to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Migraine Headaches, and several physical maladies. It caused an asymmetry to the very structure of my life. Things that could have been were not. The worst part is the unknown long-term effects, physically and mentally, on my family members.

In what ways did this experience affect me positively?

I had the opportunity to save peoples’ lives. I operated at a high level at a young age, with plenty of training but no practical training. I know things that most people don’t.

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A Different Parallel

Although it may be easy to draw a parallel between the war in Iraq and Viet Nam, in my opinion, at least, there may be another perhaps more obscure parallel. It is one to be drawn with the end of World War II.

Both Japan and Germany are applauded for rebuilding from near total destruction, especially Japan, a process euphemistically called “Operation Bootstraps,” pulling themselves from devastation, to becoming first-rate countries; powerhouses.

Let’s not forget that this was not so much a pull as a push, propped by the money, plants and equipment from the United States. While we gave Japan and Germany our resources, our expertise, our latest in steel mills, manufacturing, electronics, optics, all of our state of the art except in weaponry. Even management techniques developed by ATT and unwanted in this country were welcomed in Japan. They worked.

While the noble U.S effort was going forward in the countries of our former enemies, during which it might be added our soldiers were still recovering from their wounds, newly returning soldiers-now civilians could not get jobs here in the states. Our own plant and equipment was turn of the century vintage. We set up our own country for failure, which proved out by the mid ‘60s. We simply could not compete in cost and quality.

Now we are spending $1 billion per week in Iraq to rebuild the infrastructure we blew up, generate electricity, have water flow, sewers work and so on. No one even talks about factories because we can’t get passed training security, police and army to try to contend with what has become the terrorist Harvard of the world. The terrorists that Bush had originally taken on in his zeal to attack Iraq were relative preschoolers compared to what a terrorist tour of duty in Iraq will learn, and apply, network, strategize, build tactics, incorporate and spread throughout the world. All on our $dollar.

Meanwhile, our homeland security and Homeland Security would be a joke if it were funny. By choice for the Spanish vote our borders are porous, as are our ports. Airline security isn’t really and by federalizing the agents means they can cop an occasional feel officially. The promised equipment either hasn’t arrived or doesn’t work. Even major defense systems have been canceled or cut back like the F22 Raptor going from 350 to 188. You may disagree with this incredible jet fighter but I’d rather spend the money on our defense systems than theirs.

Here’s a joke. We are looking at Base closings because in the aggregate it will save the country $22b over 20 years! That’s less than 6 months in Iraq! Close them, I don’t care, but don’t shine me on with pittance. It used to be $22b was real money.

Let’s look at our own infrastructure. Where I live, San Diego, a thoroughly corrupt area, it used to be the sewerage problems which pollute the ocean after rainstorms were blamed on Mexico. No longer. The problem is all ours now and it is enormous. So what did they do about it? Tear them up and build anew? No. They built thousands and thousands of new homes over the problem.

Every year thousand of bridges in this country are put on watch lists because they are rusting away and rivets are fatiguing.

The lists go on but politicians find that bad news does not serve to acquire votes and political disciples just say, “What ever you say mien leader.”

Here’s the biggest shine-on statement by either the ignorant or those who wish to be ignorant: The war against terrorism is working because we haven’t been attacked since 9/11. If the terrorists were on our timetable, then why didn’t we stop them in the first place? These must have been the same people who devise the color code system for the terror alert levels but were color blind.

The terrorist attack on their own time table. The first attack on the World Trade Center was 1993. The next was 2001. Does that constitute a pattern or a desire for haste? What a specious, silly argument and those who make should have a cherry-bomb placed rectally and set off by techniques learned in Iraq.

It has been said that in wars, the United States is a great winner and a lousy loser. We are benevolent winners as we proved with Germany and Japan. Not so with Viet Nam and for cause, I suppose. Though Bush declared a victory of sorts on the carrier deck, I think his “G” suit may have still been inflated and 2 gallons of blood were compressed in his head, we have not yet won or lost. One set of elections does not a victory make.

I do mourn for this country of opportunities lost, for potentials not being reached, for options not being presented, for the greatness of this country not being realized because of a stupid idea; the war in Iraq. We had the model. It was our model.

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Unabashed Patriotism

In the late ‘80s, I was the San Francisco Regional Manager for a pension sales office of a large, New York based insurance company. It was a bad fit for me. The prospect base asset size was too small, meaning the contacts at those companies wore many hats, were not experts in the investment field, hard to pin down to speak about investments and just generally boring to me. I liked multimillion or multibillion dollar funds where I was calling on people who knew a hell of a lot more than me. What a rush.

What I did enjoy about working for this company was I got myself onto a newly formed Advisory Committee which reported directly to senior management. My expertise was marketing and my first words in our first meeting were “We have no marketing leadership.” This was in front of the Chief Executive and Marketing Director of the Division. What the Fuck.

Over the months we’d have mass meetings in New York were all the Representatives from all over the country would discuss this and that. After one of these meetings, a women associate volunteered her husband’s boat for an evening cruise on the East River . Sounded good. My San Francisco associate and I had dinner, and then met the host, her husband and the other invitees at the 34 th Street Pier. His “boat” was a 40’ cabin cruiser. It is funny how, when you stay at an elegant hotel, or attend a posh party, you can feel either intimidated or superior. This made us feel real good. Berthed two or three slips over was the “Capitalist Tool,” Malcolm Forbes’ Yacht.

Dusk was upon us as we pulled out and headed down river. Wine, vodka, scotch and beer were broken out. The talk started right away. Mostly shop talk, so I stayed with the Captain of the ship, the husband of our associate who was feeling left out. Besides, he was more interesting.

Nightfall came. It was beautiful, clear, dry and warm. Perfect.

We were midway between 34 th street and the Battery when from the top of office towers somewhere we couldn’t locate, green lasers shot across midtown, downtown, and Brooklyn . They were shooting over our heads. Was this just for us?

What a trip!

Continuing our journey, we passed the Twin Towers . My God, from that vantage point, absolute sea level, they were tall! I brought up the fact that some years before, some guy tight rope walked across those two towers. That became even more mystical as the ship’s Captain broke out some weed, strictly for medicinal purposes, mind you. They do that on ships at sea. I’ve seen that in the movies. That and bite down on bullets as legs are being sawn off. As far as I knew, we didn’t have any bullets on board, just the weed.

We were out of the river now, in the open bay I guess, laughing, drinking, indulging, and looking back at the south end of the New York skyline. How beautiful New York is, being in it, flying over it, and now from this vantage point.

Then we turned around and saw where the Captain was taking us. The Statue of Liberty was fast approaching. She was alit head to toe, standing very bold, very tall, representing America , and Americans.

As we got as close as we could he stopped the engines. Everyone on board went silent for as long as we were there. The experience was that powerful.

On the way back the Captain said that the same phenomenon occurs every time he brings people to Ms. Liberty. We were not alone. It is understandable. We can be skeptical, even cynical about what goes on in this country. There are so many lies and cover-ups by those who should have our deepest trust; we have not only the right but the duty to be at least skeptical. But as every one needs a vacation to refresh one’s self, if you can ever have the experience that I had, standing at the feet of the Statue of Liberty, you can refresh your love of your country from a spiritual sense, without the bullshit flag-waving, that is such a turn-off to so many of us and detracts rather than adds to our country. It is, after all, our country.

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STRESSOR LETTER FOR A BLACK MAN

Recently I briefly met a former associate from ACVOW (AMERICAN COMBAT VETERANS OF WAR) who replaced me when I resigned. He brought me up to date on a couple of matters with respect to that area of war that fascinates me, its aftermath.

ACVOW is opening an office on the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in Oceanside , CA , just a few miles north of San Diego off Route 5. It will be helping to counsel returning Marines in the near term and eventually, counsel Marines before they deploy for combat areas. In the abstract, it is a better idea to have a disinterested third party organization counsel the combatants because of the vested interest of the Marines as an entity who may withhold information to get the most performance out of their men. The question I have is how honest or how far can the ACVOW people take the information prior to deployment to make men aware but not tie them up. And how far will the generals let them go.

Another bit of news is that the medical term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is no longer in the fighting man’s lexicon. Acceptable now is the old World War II term “Combat Fatigue.” Less psychology, more warrior-like, more user friendly. Whatever works. Based on the number of GIs I’ve been bumping into around the SD area, and there are plenty, the mandated lecture on PTSD isn’t being undertaken, with response to my simple questions about it in the, “What’s that?” category. Very much like the civilian doctors who I see through my HMO when I tell them I am 100% PTSD. They say, “What’s that?” and SD is a military town. Unforgivable. Don’t they do their reading? My good friend and former next-door neighbor and bike-riding Sadist, Dr. Bob Doud reads medical journals everywhere, all of the time. I have no doubt whatsoever that his answer to my question about PTSD would not be, “What’s that?”

But I am of the opinion that forewarning may not be enough because I have personal experience. I was my own experimental group in Vietnam . First, if you have kept up with my writing, you know that Combat Fatigue, may as well jump on the bandwagon, is not just psychological, it is also biochemical, caused by massive amounts of coritsol, a stress hormone, being released into the brain, destroying the brain cell outer wall-structure causing the brain to hardwire itself in a different way. For a more in-depth reading of this and a link to picture of the view of a healthy brain vs. a PTSD brain go to www.graceartgroup.com, ESSAYS, and see the 40-year-old picture of me to click on my various writings. To be educated in advance of the cause of Combat Fatigue cannot overcome the fear, stress and horror of combat which is the cause of the Disorder.

Secondly, as I stared to write above, I tried something in Vietnam that only partly worked, in that I don’t have nightmares but do have a strong case of PTSD. After a short while, I was very tired of seeing dead GIs. Even dead GIs with ponchos thrown over their bodies. I could see a dead VC or NVA, but not GIs. It hurt too much and brought it too close to home; me. So I turned away from dead bodies. I knew they were there, I just looked away. I was not a head in the sand; I just did not want that vision emblazoned on my brain to remember forever. It was a good idea because I do not have the visual memory, the flashbacks, the bad dreams, none of the baggage. But I do, of course, have PTSD, Combat Fatigue, the Nome DeJure, Whatever. I got it.

So I wish all the fighting men and women well and a safe return knowing all-to-well something of their destiny. War ain’t good for the dead and at times not too much better for the living. Below is a “Stressor Letter” I wrote for a Vietnam vet who I met in the San Diego VA psychological lock-down. He is a black man, raised in the south, who had trouble communicating at all, especially with white folks. The stressor letter is meant for the Compensation and Pensions Division of the VA that is that entity making the decision on the percentage rating a veteran will receive toward a disability and if a disability is granted at all. Writing stressor letters to sound as if they came from the individual yet make them short, clear and concise became my specialty. It also expanded my concept of the stress of combat in that it was not necessarily contained to the “hot zone.” I do miss counseling the GIs and helping them adjust to peace. It helped them and me so much. This man went from lock-down to 100% for PTSD through ACVOW and is one example of many who had done so. The story is his, told to me by him, but put into a format that would be appreciated by the VA. ACVOW was the only service organization of the many performing this vital service. Where the average disability case was getting 30%, our guys were getting on average 70% and often 100%. We knew the system and knew how to prepare our clients. I assume that is still true. I do not know if the current war veterans are being serviced by ACVOW. I stay away. Names have been changed:

BUDDY ---

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I was with the First infantry Division in Viet Nam , 1965 – 66.

Working out of LZ Bear Cat in August of ’66, my company got called up to help a company of the 25 th Infantry who was pinned down in the middle of a VC base camp. We came into an area close to the firefight that had VC bunkers. The 25 th was intertwined with the VC. The only thing we could do was to call in napalm on the fire zone. When we did, the jets dropped them too close to my position. As I tried to jump into a vacated VC bunker, my last body part in, my arm, was struck by napalm. As I was struggling to put it out, I saw my friend, David J. take a direct hit with the napalm. He was completely on fire while my arm was still burning. He was running in circles yelling, “Buddy, put me out!” He died right there, right then. He smelled terrible. He looked worse.

That incident affected me then and throughout my life. I often wake up in sweats when not actually in nightmares. I have flashbacks of that at unpredictable moments. Sometimes the smell of overcooked beef or working fireplaces brings on strong sensations of that moment. It never goes away. I get into long-term anxiety bouts that medication does not help. The anger that I felt as soon as I got out of the Army lasts until today. I went through three wives and have three kids. I beat two of my wives. I never abused a girl in my life before Vietnam . I’ve been in jail about 20 times, mostly for drugs. I never did drugs before Vietnam . I was always in a state of anxiety when I got out. Always angry, always in some kind of depression, sometimes all at the same time. I was a good kid growing up.

The day after the napalm was dropped, while still working in the same area of operation, we came under a VC mortar attack. About the third round landed in the chest of the guy who was 2 to 3 feet next to me. A piece of shrapnel landed in my head and I was eventually Medivaced out, but not before seeing the foot-wide hole the 80mm mortar round made in my buddy’s chest. He was right next to me. He was blown up. I was still alive. Two buddies next to me in two days. Too much.

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