Foreword by Gerald French
In 1989, Dr. Gerbode, Gerald French, and others were using Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) with a number of Vietnam combat vets who had been diagnosed as having PTSD. Tom Joyce, a freelance writer and (former) member of the IRM Board of Directors, was a guest at that year’s IRM conference where he heard an address by one of those vets “Jack”, in the accompanying essay. Subsequently he sought Jack out, and the two spoke at length. As a result of that meeting, Joyce researched and wrote a penetrating article on traumatized Vietnam veterans and the attempts that the U.S Government and others have made to help them. A somewhat abridged version of it appeared in the Institute’s newsletter and even reprints sold out. As the topic he addressed continues to be one that is most popular on TIR.ORG, I asked Tom if he would produce an updated version of it for re-publication
Warning: the following article contains strong language and graphic violence
It was endless nights, trying to stay awake, stay alive, counting the hours until dawn, the days, the months, utterly alone, trusting nobody. It was waiting in rain-soaked, mud-caked fatigues for Victor Charlie, an enemy who seldom showed his face and killed mercilessly when he did, who used his school children as lethal weapons, and brutally tortured his prisoners. It was a litany of unspeakable atrocities: the grunt watching his buddy’s legs blown off by a land mine, the nose gunner smoking black tar to numb the mental imagery of his gruesome handiwork on a village, the FNG [f***ing new guy] fumbling a grenade and dismembering one of his own platoon, the short-timer fragging his field commander for ordering a suicidal assault on a worthless patch of jungle. It was the freckle-faced kid so transformed by fear and rage and frustration that the sight of hacking an old woman’s ears off, smashing a baby’s head against a tree trunk, and castrating a prisoner during interrogation were all met with indifference. It was laughing at a joke called the Geneva Convention, and wondering in suppressed horror just how far you could push that envelope of sanity before shit got out of hand.
It was walking point and dodging sniper fire along the DMZ one morning, then stepping off an airplane at SFO (San Francisco Airport) forty-eight hours later, dumped back into America’s lap, expected to act civilized. It was literally being spat upon by other Americans who could no longer distinguish between vandals and victims. It was never knowing if your friends made it back alive and living with the slow-burning fuse of survivor’s guilt, muted by the magnitude of your experience, the onslaught of ineffable emotion, the dumbfounded expressions of those who hadn’t been there and couldn’t possibly understand what you’d seen—what you’d found it necessary to do. It was separation, and divorce, and dulling the anguish with drugs and alcohol, subsequent years of sleepless nights, embarrassing startle reactions, unrelenting Technicolor memories, and uncontrollable tears.
It was a war without glory, a peace without honor, an epic with no heroes.
Vietnam: A Different Kind of War
My companion—call him Pete—lights another Marlboro and continues his measured account of watching his entire platoon wiped out by an NVA [North Vietnamese Army] ambush during the first frantic days of the Tet Offensive, in January 1968. It is a graphic description of sodden fear, bleeding men, and a single, scared boy left alone too long, pushed over the edge by taunts and sniper fire from an enemy hidden in a green hell. For thirty-six hours following the ambush, Pete lived through an inferno of napalm, artillery shelling and friends dying in pieces a few yards beyond his ability to reach them, before being medevaced out of the bush with malaria. Pete was eighteen years old at the time.
His story is visceral, so much so I can feel the knot tightening in my own gut. As he speaks, the September wind outside causes the louvered glass windows in the room to slip shut with a loud crack. Pete’s creased face contorts instantaneously; his arms snap out in automatic defense; his lean body tenses like a steel spring. When he notices my alarmed expression, Pete relaxes and laughs in embarrassment. “There was a time,” he says, “when a noise like that would have ruined my whole f---ing day.”
And he’s not the only one.
Continued in Part II
You can read the article in its entirety in Beyond Trauma: Conversations on Traumatic Incident Reduction. See http://www.BeyondTrauma.com
