I lived my number of hellish moments during my forty-nine months of combat assignments, so perhaps I’ve already served a sufficient time in hell. Many of us probably believed that at some point during our Vietnam tours. One fellow Advisor put it succinctly when I first arrived at Advisory Team 99 with the 25th Vietnamese Infantry Division about mid-July 1967. I was walking the team’s compound to familiarize myself with our defensive perimeter and stopped at a corner bunker to talk with a guard I had met earlier. “You’ve come to one God-awful place, Ojeda,” he said. “It’s about as close to hell as you’ll ever wanna be.” Pointing to an area just outside the wire, he continued. “Fact is, if you happen to be in this here bunker during any of the night attacks, you can almost see hell from here outside the wire and just beyond that rice paddy. THAT is where it’s at. All shit breaks loose from there, and the only thing we have to counter that are Puff1and these crappy 30 calibers”.2 I thanked my God that my sector on the perimeter was sufficiently distanced from hell’s corner bunker.
Advisory Team 99 supported the 25th Vietnamese Infantry and was an isolated compound perhaps the size of five or six football fields next to a dirt airstrip which serviced helicopters and small aircraft. Upon seeing Team 99 compound from the air on my arrival, I recall thinking “What the hell am I getting into?” There were no American military support units anywhere in the vicinity. We were an American Advisory Team assigned to the Vietnamese Army in an area by the Cambodian border and now known to have been riddled with an elaborate tunnel system which the enemy used for transporting men and weapons to the battle. The tunnel system even included a well-equipped surgical ward. Upon leaving Vietnam, the majority of us left Vietnam behind. Many of us never did thus creating a condition which worsened with time.
The longer a person served in combat or the more intense the exposure to enemy contact, the more likely it is that he sustained some serious coping issues upon leaving the combat zone. Those who served only briefly or in the comfort of a safe environment witnessing little, if any, tragedy of war at its worst were able to easily put it all behind them and transition back to the world with seemingly little effort. The few of us affected to a greater degree tend to shut down emotionally and live life chaotically in a world void of passion or emotional involvement.
Those mildly affected by the experience would be the ones who may not be as susceptible to emotional struggles. They are the ones who have become more vocal about their combat experiences over the years. Their combat stories flourish and escalate to have been more perilous with each passing year, their combat contributions more significant. It took me well over forty years before I began sharing my Vietnam experience, and I discovered it easier to share in writing than verbally.
Despite the fears, terror and casualties experienced and observed first-hand at the hands of the enemy, I may have been less affected than some of my fellow veterans. Many years after the Vietnam fiasco, suicides of my fellow veterans escalated to about 8,000 in 20123. That's a suicide rate of almost 22 daily. Those of us who did not yield to the suicide option sustained many personal hardships as a result of living with adverse combat memories to include self-imposed isolation, breakdown of family and friend relationships and an aversion to crowds and public places. When asked by a VA counselor how he is getting along since leaving the "Nam", a fellow veteran I met at one of the VA group therapy sessions replied, "Life after Vietnam? Well, it's been a bitch, but the alternative is a hell of a lot worse." On 9 April 2019, a Vietnam veteran frustrated and totally dissatisfied with the VA mental health program, pulled out a gun and shot himself in the stomach. He died there in the Austin, Texas, Veterans' Administration Clinic's waiting area after a group therapy session.4
Long-drawn-out combat environment will most likely lead to debilities not immediately apparent until years after leaving that environment. Gradually then, these disabilities begin to manifest themselves in ways we may not associate with the combat experience of years past. A troubled and turbulent mind imperceptibly begins to take form. Increased thought and sad memories nurture the troubled mind, a condition I have been living with after leaving my four-plus years in combat assignments between Laos and Vietnam. That was forty-plus years ago. As time passes, the condition worsens and takes over a larger part of memory and thoughts, so it takes an elevated dose of self-discipline and increased effort to revert back to some form of normalcy. I am in that gray area after four-plus years in combat assignments between Laos and Vietnam. I am neither normal nor a total basket case. Self-evaluating myself, it seems my forty-nine months of combat environment wreaked hovac on my synapses. My brain does not seem normal anymore as if the Vietnam experience rewired my brain resulting in a series of situations further elaborated in the context of my book.
What follows here is a story of how I got there, what happened in the ensuing months and the struggles my experiences caused me in both my personal and family life. My accounts in the context of my book deal mostly on the periphery of combat and seldom or directly engage the gruesome details on casualties or the pained heart of knowing a fellow advisor was quickly fading and that medevac5 at this point was not an option. He was not destined to survive till morning. The grief and helplessness in learning of Staff Sergeant Hodges’ condition, a now lifeless fallen advisor with a partially missing skull because he fled the safety of our sandbagged wall to retrieve his steel pot during a rocket attack. The overwhelming fear when our helicopter crash-landed after taking ground fire and a pilot and doorgunner were seriously injured. The depression and sadness in covering up the already darkened pool of Sp5 Thompson’s blood, a fellow 101st Airborne soldier who had just been medevac’d after a rocket and mortar attack well past midnight. The sad horror of flying on Air America aircraft in Laos with body bags emanating that certain smell of death, that of the recovered American casualties. The feeling of helplessness as South Vietnamese soldiers cruelly hurt a child in his mother’s arms because none of the villagers would provide information on the Viet Cong. Some of the experiences I am not yet ready to address in detail. That’s perhaps a task for another day.
I strive not to relive the pained memories and make every human effort to push them further and further back into my memory banks. Rarely do they resurface. They were brought back during the several years of putting together my book. I isolated myself into my own fortress of solitude for the better part of the time I put my book together.
Unfortunately, in my struggle to close down my unkind memories and undesirable past experiences, my good memories and experiences took their toll. It seems that when it comes to memories the mind cannot always distinguish between the good and the bad. Whether they be memories, experiences or relationships, closing down the bad equally affects the good. That’s perhaps the reason I ended good and cherished family and friend relationships.
Looking back, it’s unfortunate that I engaged in smoking pot and doing drugs. I became a hardcore alcoholic denying it to myself for so long. Warped, sick logic helped me rationalize that drugs and alcohol were a necessary evil to maintain sanity. For many of us the pot, other drugs and alcohol were a controlled survival skill which helped us through some pretty tough times, so it didn’t seem at the time that we were participating in anything illicit or illegal since we were still able to perform our assigned duties quite well with little or no effect from those drugs. For others the same pot, drugs and alcohol were to create victims of a lifelong gruesome dependency.
This story needs telling and is a story worth reading.
1 A converted aircraft equipped with a bank of machine guns. It circled our team compound when called upon laying a blanket of fire around our perimeter. It was an awesome sight to witness.
2 .30 caliber medium machine guns were last used during World War II and the Korean War before deployment to Vietnam Advisory Teams.
3 Article from Stars and Stripes 21 Jun 2018 By Nikki Wentling printed in Military.Com.
4 https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/04/11/hundreds-witness-veteran-shoot-and-kill-himself-in-va-waiting-room/
5 Medical evacuation by helicopter
"The real lessons of Vietnam are broader and more relevant than ever: Wars must be fought not just with force, but with wisdom, and a deep understanding of the history and culture of the people involved." - David Halberstam, Author
"Make wars unprofitable and you make them impossible." - A. Philip Randolph, civil rights activist
©Copyright texan@atudemi.com - April 2016