David Wilson / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)
In December of 2019 I attended a literary gathering and had an impromptu discussion with a psychologist. He casually mentioned that PTSD had simply been called something else prior to Vietnam (shell shock in WWI, combat stress in WWII). In one sense, war is war and we are all human beings. This is true.
In Poisoned Jungle, Andy Parks grapples with this dilemma. When he returns different from the boy who left for war, many people inform him how “normal” the WWII Vets were after their return. Some even confront him about why he can’t do the same and just “get back to normal.” Andy even notices the difference and searches for answers. He wonders if he is weak, or has a defective gene? But he also learns an uncle disappeared after WWII. He begins to suspect not all the Second World War Vets effortlessly returned to their prewar lives. Years later, he meets a neighbor who is psychologically damaged from WWII. He begins to sort through what is universal to all wars and what is specific to the Vietnam War.
World War Two veterans were united in their sense of purpose. With few exceptions, their societies approved of their military service. Refusing to participate in the war effort brought derision.
A personal anecdote is relevant.
Instead of being welcomed home, the first Americans I interacted with after deboarding my plane at Travis Air Force Base were screaming obscenities at me and 180 other veterans. Still in our jungle fatigues, we had to walk within a few feet of a chain link fence which separated us from hundreds of angry and jeering protestors. The message was clear; we were not welcome in our homeland. War is war, but receptions are important. It was our first lesson in what being a Vietnam veteran would entail.
At the time, I wanted nothing more to do with conflict. I was too numb from my tour to react in any overt way. I just wanted to reach the out-processing center nearby and get on with my life. Years later, it had become the most searing memory of my return. And I had plenty of other negatives to compare the experience with.
Most of us were draftees, and too young to vote. None of that mattered. There were many who blamed us for the war. I carried a lot of guilt home with me and have not fully sorted it out. It’s part of what psychologists are identifying as moral injury. I will explore this in greater detail in subsequent posts. My view is moral injury should be interpreted more broadly than in the context of abstract ethical codes. At the heart of the matter is human empathy. Psychologically healthy people find killing other human beings reprehensible, even for what they consider a just cause. When the justifications are dubious, the moral injury intensifies.
"1969 Wire Photo Vietnam War Demonstration at Tulane University in New Orleans" by manhhai is licensed under CC BY 2.0
1969 Wire Photo by ASSOCIATED PRESS. Anti-War demonstrators carry signs and call cadence as they march along with United States Air Force ROTC cadets during a drilling exercise at Tulane University in New Orleans Thursday. The protesters heckled cadets and were involved in several scuffles with pro-war demonstrators on campus.
Even though I did not start the Vietnam War and was too young to vote, I feel a responsibility for participating in how my country conducted the war. I survived and others didn’t. As a medic, not every casualty I treated lived. Riddled with survivor’s guilt, I muddled through a confusing maze of conflicting emotions. Receptions do matter.
I am convinced our problems as Vietnam veterans, the “war is war” part of the trauma universal to human beings, was worsened by the hostility of our reception. And it was not just the anti-war protestors.
Pro-war Americans were not always welcoming. Stereotypes of dope-smoking misfits unable to whip an underfed enemy in sandals were common. World War Two veterans were not always kind. I have personally resented what I have considered an overstatement of drug use in Vietnam. I couldn’t have functioned as a medic if I were stoned or drunk, and it wouldn’t have been tolerated in any of my units by commanders nor the soldiers who depended on me functioning. I am not oblivious to the fact there were drugs used by U.S. troops. I mostly witnessed pot and a little bit of opium. Context is everything.
Returning to my conversation with the psychologist, I guess I was intimidated by the academic credentials, which I do respect, to speak freely. But I have also lived the gamut of the PTSD, the survivor’s guilt and the moral injury. They are all entwined. None of it was taken seriously by the Army, or U.S. society, when I returned from Vietnam. Not even the “war is war” part of the trauma.
In his remarkable book, The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, David Morris writes about WWII vets suffering in silence. I envied their moral clarity and united sense of purpose. Whole cities were incinerated during Allied bombing blitzes. Of course, that went both ways. Then came Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Yet, I have never had a conversation with a WWII vet who doubted the necessity of going to war. Morris has done some interesting research on their experiences returning to the U.S.
“Within the history of psychological trauma, the era that remains most shrouded in myth and misapprehension is World War II… In the popular imagination the war which ended the lives of an estimated sixty million people, is still remembered as “The Good War,” and the veterans who fought in it are generally regarded as having returned home, put their uniforms in the closet, and gotten on with their lives. For the United States, the war came on the heels of the Great Depression, and the soldiers who fought the Nazis and Japanese came from a culture that had little patience for people who dwelled on their personal problems. ”
Perhaps Americans expected the same from its Vietnam veterans. And a lot of Americans did expect racial minorities who had risked their lives in WWII to return to a prewar status where they were not given the very freedoms they had fought for. Vietnam vets of all ethnicities were not granted the same moral clarity as their Second World War counterparts. To some of us, we were on the wrong side of history. We were not warmly welcomed on our return. In my view, this took an extra emotional toll and complicated our readjustment into U.S society.
In Trauma and Recovery, psychiatrist Judith Herman observes. “As long as they (WWII vets) could function on a minimum level, they were thought to have recovered.”
In Poisoned Jungle, Andy Parks eventually begins to recognize what is universal about going to war and what is specific to his experiences in Vietnam. There is never an easy fix to the moral dilemmas of participating in such violence. Healing from trauma is never a certainty. It can take years if it occurs. Andy figures enough out on his own to have a life, but there is no going back to the innocence of the boy before the war. After participating in such barbarity, nobody returns the same.