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War Wounds Of The Mind Part II: Discussions With PTSD Sufferers
By John Carey (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)
For OpEdNews: John E. Carey - Writer
With Thanks to all those who shared their stories.
They know who they are.
This is Part II. Part I is at:
click here
World War II combat veterans pretty much to a man told me there was no such thing as PTSD when they came home from war in 1945. Most of them said things like, "To go for medical care, you had to have a hole in you!"
We spoke to several WWII veterans that were referred to treatment years after the war. Many had entered programs to treat their PTSD because of demonstrated abnormal behavior or alcohol abuse or alcoholism. Some had been brought to treatment by wives and other loved ones. Many told me that they thought they were OK but they just had some trouble fitting in and they need the camaraderie of their friends (other veterans). This often meant long period of time at the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or other club-like environment that included a bar.Many of the WWII veterans who were subsequently treated for PTSD spent two decades or more searching for what was the solution to their nightmares and trouble: their ghosts as the poet below calls them.
Vietnam War combat veterans are vastly different from their WWII brothers. They all told me their problems naturally started in the field, but many said they first started to feel alone when they came home. They came home alone: not with a unit. The U.S. Army has now corrected this-- one of the many lessons learned that are applied to today's returning troops over those that came home from Vietnam.
I thought Vietnam War veterans would talk more about not having a parade. But that was not the problem. The problem was not so much indifference, according to these men. The problem was the disdain of their fellow citizens.
"When I would tell people I was in Vietnam, people would right away ask: 'Did you kill anyone?' I don't know how to answer that. I still don't. It was a war."
He said he felt hostility from his fellow citizens for his service.
He told me he ultimately left the United States to live in South America. "There," he said, "I was at least an ordinary guy. Sometimes I was admired. In the U.S. I had no chance."
Because the United States was so terribly divided, nearly every one of the Vietnam combat veterans treated for PTSD told me they felt a terrific sense of dislocation once they returned to normal society. Many had trouble finding jobs. When asked what kind of work he was good at a job center, one veteran told me he thought, "Well, if you had a 155 here I could drop a round on your desk from a long way away...."
Another told me he was offered a job as a floor sweeper in a factory. He thought he had real skills but he didn't know how they applied to "normal" society." He said he had been an aircraft forward air controller. There was no established system to find these veterans appropriate jobs, as far as they could recall. They also said that PTSD was not much understood-- and that to go to the VA you better have a visible wound.
More than one Vietnam Veteran told me they thought the VA had the fine PTSD effort it has today because the misconduct of suffering Vietnam veterans became an embarrassment to the government and the VA. Then action was taken.
Several veterans wanted me to know they "took it." A typical line went like this. "The men you see here are all in the mental ward for check ups. All suffer from PTSD. They are not here because they ran away or cracked up. They are here today because they could take it. And they did take it."
This line of thinking was repeated over and over and I was reminded of the movie "Twelve O' Clock High," about the 8th Air Force bombers in WWII.
In this movie, Major General Ben Prichard relieves an air group commander for being too soft on his men.
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