To this day the fears, tragedies and depressive moments of Vietnam and Laos continue to be my private curse since leaving those dreaded grounds. With but a handful of exceptions, my four-plus years in combat assignments presented challenges at every turn. But even when trapped in a hostile and perilous environment, you will always find opportunities for personal growth and development if only you seek out and aggressively pursue those opportunities.
I had just turned twenty when I landed in Vietnam. I was at that age when a man first begins to develop his future self. I learned so much in that first year primarily because I was exposed to countless numbers of learning opportunities in such skill areas as work ethic, critical thinking, organizational ability, conflict resolution and time management. An association of these basic skills existed in every future work experience of my later life, so it was good I learned these basic skills in my younger days. They helped me tremendously as I continued my military career, worked with military contractors after military retirement and served as consultant working with the Saudi Ministry of Defense. They served me well on through to my retirement from Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).
I had been in retirement some eight months when CSC contacted me to join a contract proposal team in London and the British sovereign military bases in Cyprus. CSC had partnered with InterServe, a London based contractor in a joint venture to provide a response to the British Ministry of Defense Request for Proposal to operate and maintain their military bases in Cyprus.
I left for London and joined the other four members of the American team just as they were checking in at the Royal Horse Guards Hotel in London. In addition to me as the logistician, we had an aviation consultant, an information technology consultant, a weapons systems consultant and a technical writer on the American team. The British team had corresponding specialists on their team.
We were in London the first two weeks structuring a plan for the proposal response then flew to Larnaca Airport in Cyprus. We spent the next few days touring the British bases interviewing both British military and Cypriot workers involved in the operations and maintenance of their particular areas. My British counterpart was a retired Colonel in the British Army and had been selected by InterServ because he was a past commander of British forces in Cyprus and was intimately familiar with all facets of operations and maintenance at the Cyprus bases. He was well-known and respected by the current leadership at the bases and remembered for being "the one who brought our bases into the 21st Century" as the current commander stated.
One of the tasks in the proposal became personally fascinating to me. There is a British Royal Air Force base in Akrotiri. One of our duties to develop our joint venture response to the proposal included a requirement for us to tour and observe their Royal Air Force base terminal facility and their administrative operations then hold interviews and discussions with key personnel.
Shortly after we observed the landing of a C-141 with British troops coming in from Afghanistan, I experienced subdued anguish which quickly took me back to the several times when I left Vietnam and was back home in Texas little more than thirty hours later. British troops coming in from Afghanistan began descending the steps of the plane on down to the tarmac while our observation team stood in an open area of the terminal looking down at them walking across the tarmac. They looked tired, drained and totally subdued. No sign of relief, no horse playing as is common with soldiers, no talking, no expression on their faces. Each about a meter apart, they all followed pretty much a straight line where several military buses were waiting for them.
I had read the specifics of Operation Decompress in the request proposal and had become acquainted with the process, but there can never be any way of gleaning from written text the emotional state of these British fresh from their combat environment of Afghanistan. This is a case that requires eyes-on to feel the dynamics of these returning combat veterans to their first taste of British rule - their sovereign bases in Cyprus.
During the Vietnam era, we were never prepped or transitioned from combat zone to the safety and quietness of home. Adjusting from a combat zone to the safety of our home was a personal responsibility. We left one, arrived at the other. Deal with it.
The buses carried the British troops to a ten-foot-high fenced-in area on the beach named Bloodhound Camp but affectionately known at the bases as "Camp Swampy". Once they arrived at Camp Swampy, they were issued a bag of toiletries, swimwear and athletic uniforms. Their military clothes were collected and put in laundry bags with their identification markings to be cleaned for them. They were required to process through the showers, change to athletic uniforms issued to them then briefed on their next 48 hours at Camp Swampy. Briefings included transitioning from combat to family life, evaluation of their mental and emotional condition and one-on-one counseling for anyone needing it or requesting it. They were not even allowed to call their loved ones from Camp Swampy.
In interviews with British personnel who ran Camp Swampy, life during this forty-eight hour period was spent drinking, swimming, barbeques on the beach, gourmet meals and all the pizza and junk food they had been deprived of during their Afghanistan tour. Occasionally, fights would break out between the soldiers, the same soldiers who were watching out for and covering their buddy's back just a few hours previously. The Military Police would not interfere in these fights unless "bones were being broken" our military escort informed us. One of the camp operators stated, "This gives these blokes the opportunity to get it all out of their system here before we send them back to their loved ones. They'll be beating up on themselves here rather than on family members back home."
Operation Decompress started as a result of an alarming number of suicides, divorces and family violence by soldiers returning directly to England from Afghanistan. Much like us during the Vietnam era, these British soldiers were in Afghanistan one day and back in the streets of their hometown in England less than twenty-four hours later. Once Project Decompress began, these incidents dropped sharply.
Our mission was to observe and develop a costing proposal for the operation and maintenance of their facilities. We all struggled putting a cost to Operation Decompress because of the many unknown variables in providing counseling and therapy for the British troops. In the end, an acceptable cost was found and determined to be fair and just.
The British military in Cyprus appeared to be inefficient and antiquated in several areas of their operations and maintenance in their sovereign military bases; however, their Project Decompress is a stroke of genius. The Americans could learn from this, yet even to this day, our American troops leave Iraq or Afghanistan one day and are back on the streets of their hometown with little or no effort to "decompress" or prepare them for the transition. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reported veteran suicide was running at 22 a day or about 8,000 a year.1 It has been forty-plus years since Vietnam, and we are making the same mistakes, and the suicide, divorce and family violence incidents continue.
There was a change of leadership in the English Parliament towards the end of the proposal to civilianize the operations and maintenance of the Sovereign British bases in Cyprus. Prime Minister Tony Blair under whose leadership the Request for Proposal was issued was subsequently replaced by Gordon Brown. The proposal was pulled, and British troops continue the operations and maintenance of their bases in Cyprus. Operation Decompress remained intact.
I am dismayed that the U.S. has never put in place a program patterned after the British forces Operation Decompress. They've made only feeble, half-hearted attempts to address the PTSD issues but haven't really gotten a good grasp on the prevention or treatment of PTSD. Instead of trying to resolve the veteran suicide problem, the Veterans Administration prescribes medication drugs not to actually cure anything, but to merely mask the symptoms. The VA has several PTSD seminars available for those who seek treatment. I attended two of these seminars. Nothing meaningful was presented in either of these seminars except an opportunity to voice your repressed anger at having fought a meaningless war in Vietnam and a more current battle with the Veterans Administration. I completed the first seminar and walked out of the second one disappointed, frustrated, discouraged.
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.2
We have a lot to learn from the Brits!
1 Citizens Commission on Human Rights-http://www.cchr.org/documentaries/the-hidden-enemy.htm
2 https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/04/11/hundreds-witness-veteran-shoot-and-kill-himself-in-va-waiting-room/
3 DD 214 - A document of the United States Department of Defense, issued upon a military service member's discharge from active duty in the Armed Forces.
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