It was the monsoon season. Nobody stays dry during the monsoon season. I was nearing the end of my guard shift, so I walked the perimeter stopping briefly at each guard position insuring the posted guards were dry and had operational field phones and radios, the required amount of ammunition and verifying there were no breaks in the barbed wire fence line. So, there was plenty of opportunity to get soaked and stay soaked.
Once we had the guard change, I stopped by the mailroom to pick up my mail. I tried to keep my letters dry under my poncho, but it was a long walk back to my hooch, and I was anxious to hear from home, so I stopped under the overhang of a warehouse building to screen my mail. I had a letter from a lady from Mercedes I had met once or twice. She was best friends with a lady I had dated and had become best friends with. As I opened it, I began reading the now-
Isabel and I had gotten pretty serious, but sadly, learning of her drowning was not really a blow for me, and that bothered me. It bothered me because I really felt no grief or pain. Many years later I recognized this to be a defining moment for it was then that I first realized I had developed a calloused, unemotional, spiritless heart. I felt sadness perhaps because I could not attend her funeral or the sadness might have been more of a sense of duty to feel some pain. Sadness, perhaps, because sadness should be the expected reaction to a tragedy of this scale. In reality, however, it was nothing more than a numbed emotional feeling to the news of Isabel’s drowning. It was another closed chapter in my life and the turning of another page and moving on. Still, something was wrong here. Doing some self-
I went to see a drinking buddy who was still sleeping fully dressed sans boots. Thurman was a radio operator whose only job was to stay in contact with a U.S. Navy vessel off the coast near us. Its mission was to coordinate air support if we ever needed to ward off enemy ground attacks. In reality, this support was pretty much ineffective and a last-
“Did you forget I work nights?” he mumbled. “Besides, the club doesn’t open till 1200 hours.”
“Well, let’s go to the snack bar then,” I said. “I’ll buy.”
“Man, why don’t you just let me sleep?” he asked.
I handed him my soaked letter about Isabel. I had talked to Thurman about Isabel, so he knew about her.
Handing the letter back to me after a brief scan, he began putting his boots on saying “Man, that really bites the big one. So what are you gonna do? You going to her funeral?”
I explained to him that the funeral had probably already taken place since it took between seven to ten days for letters to reach our team. We strolled over to the snack bar and ordered hamburgers, fries and beers. Neither one of us ever again mentioned Isabel. She was now history.
Whether it was all the alcohol I’d been consuming during my previous tours in Vietnam, the pot and occasional dab of opium I had used or perhaps just the horrors and fears I lived with -
I was to learn many years later that loss of feeling and a numbed emotional system are normal components of PTSD. In just the last couple of years and some forty years after leaving my Vietnam and Laos combat experience, I sought treatment for extreme insomnia and other conditions which I felt might be related to my Vietnam experience. A very wise country doctor at the Veterans Administration clinic diagnosed me as having repressed PTSD. He recommended and I accepted PTSD treatment through the local office of the Veterans Administration. Besides group meetings and a bounty of prescription drugs to ease the troubled mind, I have begun to explore my memories openly and bluntly. I have not fully regained the ability to feel or express emotion, a dreadful effect of prolonged exposure to combat environment. Progress, I’m told, is being made.
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