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I served in the army in Vietnam.

I started in the army infantry, from 1969 to 1970


I was in the Vietnam infantry, got out of the army, figured out that I was smart and I was
enjoying my medical core, but since I had infantry experience they sent me right back. So
I wound up doing two tours and one was on the front and the other was medical. I was
offered by a judge, I had a small amount of pot back in the 60s and that was serious stuff,
so in 1969 I was offered by a judge to either go to jail or join the army, and at the age of
17 with a parents signature or a judges signature, you could enlist in the army and I
chose the army, at least I would learn something.
The last thing I expected was to be in the infantry, which was unique to say the
last. After a while you learn that you have certain senses that are better than others and
you can feel yourself in situations that can make or break you. I skyrocketed through the
ranks, made it to E6 in less than two years, got a field promotion, got a crapload of
medals, and three purple hearts, and my specialty was ambushes and I was damn good at
what I did. I brought everybody in my platoon home, everyone in my squad or my
platoon, and I didnt lose anybody. I told everybody Listen to me and youll all go
home and they did. Thank god. The second time it didnt work out that way. In the
infantry you can move and shoot and scoot, as a medic when somebody calls medic you
have no choice, you have to go, you have absolutely no choice. And if you dont go, your
own people will wind up killing you, or at least messing you up pretty bad, because
theyre counting on you to save lives.
Some of the things I saw and some of the things I did, I am still ashamed of. I
suffer from PTSD at 100% and its kind of tough to talk about because sometimes the
words just dont exist, and I think youll find that with a lot of veterans. You can picture it
in your mind but there is not a word that can go to it, you cant even make one. Its a very
strange situation. I remember a very good friend of mine, and I never mention names
unless I have their permission even if theyre deceased I never mention names, so a very
good friend of mine was shot in the right forehead and it took off part of his right
forehead and he was laying, I was leaning up against a tree and he was laying in my lap,
and he was going Mom? Mom? Mom? three times he said it and three times I said yes,
yes, yes, yes, Im here and then he died, and I killed everything that moved after that,
pigs, horses, buffalo, I didnt give a crap. The only things I didnt kill were women,
children, and old men. It was just, you know it was rage, complete rage. I think a lot of us
are afraid to speak of things like that, but its like I told my son, if my father had spoken
to me about World War II, we might never have had another war. If the people who came
back from World War I spoke, we might never have had World War II. You know the
Civil War, there were still people alive from it in 1914, that had fought in the Civil War

and they were seen every day. People didnt want to go to war because they could see the
horror of it all, lost limbs, lost eyes, jaws blown off, I mean its a horrible thing. When you
see these things, you try to picture it in your mind and once theyre there, they dont go
away, they stay there for a long time. You think, what could I have done different?
The first guy I ever shot, the first guy I ever shot at other than a target, the first
guy I ever shot at I shot him right in the middle of the head, the forehead. Every night I
see his face and I wonder who he could have been, could he have been a farmer? Could
he have been a doctor? Could he have been a father? Or a son? I mean obviously he was
somebodys son, I just turned somebodys son into corpse. In my own infantry days, I had
21 guaranteed kills that I took out. I dont know how many hundreds I took out through
air strikes, artillery, and more by fire. So I carry that guilt with me and what Ive learned,
time has passed, it still 45 years later and now I can understand why my dad and my step
dad never spoke about World War II. But Ive gone out of my way to speak to my son
about war and to speak to anyone that will listen about the horrors and the nightmares and
the war and what its brings upon others, especially civilians. of the people who die in
wars are civilians, and 9/10 are displaced. Normal civilians. The soldier never dies, in an
odd kind of way, its the others, its the ones killed by rockets, its the ones who get
bombs dropped on them, the ones in the basement you toss a grenade into and then you
find out it was a mother and four kids down there, so you killed 5 people, and for
nothing. So its a nightmare.
Other than that it did have its good moments. If I can get away with saying this,
we had a monkey, Jerome, we called him Jerome. Every night, now this is slightly off
color, but every night, around dusk, we would get hit with rockets, you know just to keep
us awake, let us know that they were out there, never much damage done, but we would
all dive for a hole or hide behind sandbags that sort of thing. Jerome, he would climb up
on the highest sandbag, screech at the top of his lungs, and masterbate furiously, and it
was the funniest damn thing I could possibly, I was like this is unreal, this is completely
and totally surreal. So I brought it up to the guys one night, I said Ive got an idea.
Tomorrow night when they hit us, lets all just screech and drop our drawers and see what
happens. They all told me I was crazy. I said You know what, I think we can put an end
to this war in about ten minutes, because theyll think were absolutely insane, theyll
never mess with us.
I lost some friends, although they were in other units. I did a lot of things I
probably shouldnt have done. I didnt murder anybody, however I did put one person out
of his misery. He was too shot up. But anyway, thats it in a nutshell and it goes from 69
to 70 and 71 to 72 and then I got out in 1983 as an E7 medical platoon sergeant. I was

tough as nails on my people because the lives of others depended on them. If they werent
up to snuff I kept them with me until they were, until I was positive I could send them out
and they could handle the situation. I couldnt send them out and have them freeze, worst
thing that can happen over there is for a medic to freeze. I, at one point, an 81 millimeter
mortar took off this guys legs right below the knees. I put on, I dressed it up, put on a
pressure bandage, and I couldnt stop the arterial bleeding and the only thing I had left to
do was grab his garrison belt and pull his stumps against my shoulders to try to put
enough pressure on them. I was amazed at how much strength I had to do this and it
worked and it stopped the bleeding and we got him out of there and of course,
unfortunately, he did lose his legs. But those were the types of things, the nightmarish
types of things, that you had to do. As soon as I was done and I realized the blood had
clot, I raised my head and took a bullet right through the back of my helmet, so I was
already targeted. Their object was to kill medics with the thought that for every medic
that they killed they killed five more PIs. So it was a tough game, but they come through
it.
So I came home, I was kind of lonely. The only people who knew me were my
friends and my family. I just knocked on the door, I didnt have my keys with me, so I
knocked on the door and my mother almost fainted when she saw me I said Im Home!
and after that I went around the country to see what I fought for. I found out that 95% of
the people in this country are fantastic and 5% of them are jerks. After that I went back,
because nobody else would hire me. Everyone who say Oh great a veteran, what did you
do? and I said I was in the infantry and they would say Oh so you killed people and
so they thought that I was ready to kill anybody which wasnt true at all, so I went back
into the military and became a medic. At that point the colonel handed me my diploma
and said I was golden and I thought, Oh boy, Im good for the rest of my life. Since I
changed my job and I had infantry experience they sent me right back. So after that tour, I
stayed in and wound up becoming a medical platoon sergeant and did 13 years in and
after that I got out and went to work at Bally Medical Center in Wrentham Washington
for 11 years in a hospital, then moved to Arizona and worked for aircraft, Allied Signal,
we worked on aircraft wheels and brakes and that was a very exacting job, which was
nice because it was nice to be able to focus like that and I had learned how to focus well.
It wasnt all that bad, as long as I was working it was okay, it was at night that things
became different. First time I went to the VA hospital they gave me a vile of 1010
milligram Valiums, and they told me Well see you next year. So I was like Oh, this is
terrible, but now my experience with the VA is absolutely excellent. Agent Orange is
beginning to take its toll and Im slowly starting to lose pieces.

Later, I went to Nebraska, got a degree in alternate fuels and ecology and
environmental stewardship and I havent had a chance to use it unfortunately because the
price of gas bottomed out and ethanol is now slightly more expensive than gas so were
going to continue to put tons and tons of carbon in the air. If we dont kill off the planet in
my lifetime itll definitely go by the time my son is my age. If we dont make some very
serious changes, you know Ive been working with various groups and the hardest things
Ive found is dealing with people with egos, I mean we all have egos, but the best
meeting I ever had between green groups and peace groups was when I set up a box
outside and I wrote in big red letters, Put ego in here and pick up on the way out, it was
the best meeting we ever had. Nobody was trying to take over, everybody got along, and
what we would do was bring ideas forward, add to them or detract to them, polish them
up, and before you knew it we had an answer. There was none of this interacting rivalry
which disgusts me to no end. So we came up with some really good ideas, implemented
some of them, slowly but surely the egos came back, over time, and it became more and
more divisive. One of the groups I got in touch with more recently is Mothers out Front
and I told them that the VFP would support them because were against Keystone
Pipeline, were environmentalists too, we want a place where our kids and grandkids can
grow up and have a life where we dont leave them a burnt out cinder and thats where
were heading. I guess I belong to about 15 peace groups, at varying degrees, but Ive
been spending the past two and a half to three years trying to bring them together, but
theres always that ego thing and you have to treat people courteously in order to keep
them on your side, but at the same time you have to be firm enough to tell them theyre
wrong and weve already tried that and it didnt work, now it might work in a different
aspect it we try t at a different angle but weve already tried these things and thats where
age and knowledge comes in, and thats why Im trying to get young people to join the
VFP because we can teach them the things that worked and the things that didnt work,
violence never works.
I worked in the VA for seven months, I got fired because I was too nice to the
veterans. You know, I talked to them. They would come up, sign in, and one thing is that
there is a common, invisible bond between all veterans, its just there. There arent words
to describe a lot of the things we saw, but we know, inside we know. When I get to talk to
another veteran, Im congenial about it, and they didnt like that, they said I was taking
too much time. I was sitting there, there were four of us including me, and one of them
said How many of us here are veterans? and I stuck up my hand and I said See, youll
never understand. They will listen to what you have to say, they will follow what you tell
them to do, but they will never trust you. I can walk out there and talk to any veteran and

he or she will automatically trust me, because Ive been there. It might be different wars,
peace time, theres no difference, once youve worn the uniform and been places that
other people havent, you are part of the one or two percent of the entire nation who was
willing to put their lives on the line, and thats a very special place to be. A lot of people
degrade it and they say Oh its horrible, I look at it in context and I realize that it made
me a better person, because it made me not hate and I know, I know how to treat people. I
can be mean like anybody else can, but I find it not worth my time. I would rather bring
people together rather than separate them, except for one individual I threatened to kill
because he interrupted, down in Miami at a VFP convention, and he grabbed the
microphone and spoke over the president and he just started screaming into this
microphone and I thought it was just him being an idiot, I mean I know this guy, but then
he did it again so I got up and left. Later on I ran into him and I said Hey, you wanna
come up to my room for a while? and he said Well what floor are you on? and I said
33 and he said Wow, thats pretty far up there and I said Yeah, I just want to check
what the terminal velocity is when I throw you out the window because youre such a
goddamn asshole and then he ran around and told everybody I threatened to kill him,
which I did, but I wouldnt have actually done that. I mean what he did was really out of
line, you dont just bark at somebody just to make your point, hes done things in the past
that are good and every time Ill say that was a good point and hell just come back
with something smart and I dont want to play that game. So thats the only person I
really dont like in the whole world and thats because hes a jerk, so all things considered
I learned a lot.
We were at UMass and they had just brought out a new thing called HomeBase,
which is run by the Red Sox and Mass General Hospital, any veteran after 9/11 can be
treated for free, for anything, absolutely free. The Red Sox, I give them a lot of credit for
that and Mass General for the medical support. I support that immensely, its absolutely
incredible. When I run into somebody and I get a feeling that they might harm
themselves, those are the people Im really ing of doing it. They would rather keep it to
themself, but there are tell tale signs. Being a medic, I can tell when somebodys going
downhill and Im not afraid to ask. I will tell you the same thing Ive told a psychiatrist,
because he asks me the same thing every week, every month, Have you ever thought
about suicide? and I tell him Of course I have, tell me somebody who hasnt. Theres
a big difference though, Ive thought about it, but I dont dwell on it. I have other things
to do. I have a son, I have a grandson, I have to make sure theyre taken care of, got an
environment that needs to be taken care of, I focus myself on positive things. Ive spent a
lot of time on the negative stuff and I wasnt going anywhere, but as soon as I shifted, it

was fine.
So what I was going to say about this HomeBase thing, I was one of the people
who got up to the microphone, I was the last person who got up to that microphone, and
what I did was, like on of those people who has addressed this a hundred times, I said
Id like to thank the good citizens of this city for showing up to this, its a very
important thing. I got their attention, theyre thinking Im talking to them, works every
time, so, I got their attention and then I thanked the people up there for what they were
doing. Now I do everything almost impromptu and I was really surprised that I said this
because I had thought of it before, I said the last thing that I learned was the first thing
that I should have learned, and that was that I had to forgive myself before I could forgive
anybody else and the place went crazy. Cheers and applause and all kind of stuff and it
was really weird, it was just one of those things, but its true. You know, you cant forgive
anybody else until you forgive yourself and theres one other point to that, a lot of people
dont understand forgiveness but to honestly forgive somebody for whatever happened,
then its forgotten, its gone, forever. You can never bring that up again, thats what
forgiveness is all about. So you cant say Yeah, I forgive you and then ten years later
say Do you remember when.. because then you didnt forgive, you kept that for ten
years. Forgiving is forgetting it, its gone, you dont remember it anymore, its as if it
never happened, it might cross your mind but you cant hold it against someone because
you forgave them, and if you do hold it against someone, then you never forgave them.
You have to be very careful in that situation and I learned that in a very very hard way. A
friend of mine, he was in the navy and he was in submarines and he shot himself. He
turned up the T.V all the way, turned on the vacuum cleaner, and he shot himself. I grew
up with this kid, I knew him since I was eight years old, thats 20 years ago and I was in
Arizona at the time, if he had only called me I wouldve drove down to Phoenix, I
wouldve gone down there, I wouldve walked down there, I had to. But he didnt have
my number and there was nothing I could do, I found out about it hardly, but you know,
there was nothing I could do. I forgave myself for not knowing, there was no way for me
to know, so there was nothing I could do. Life is filled with interesting turns, you never
know whats coming around the corner, it could be something great or it could be
something horrific, if its something horrific, go back the other way, if its something
great, embrace it. Take it in.
I love listening to other people because I get ideas, I get their ideas, that helps
polish up mine, or change my mind sometimes. It becomes reality, I become a better
person because that person mentioned something that was important. Unless its
something that has to do with religion, then it sucks. Ive got no use for any of that, not

that I have any problem with anyone elses religion, it means nothing to me. Im nobody
special, I do what I have to do, and I try to keep the peace as much as I can. I guess it
comes from being the middle son. My younger brother is a complete and total asshole,
republican, jerk. I hadnt seen him in five years and I go down to Long Island to see him,
Long Island New York. I didnt even get in the car and he was already bitching about
Obama. My older brother thinks like I do, so thats no problem. My younger brothers out
there cutting wood for his stove and hes whacking his axe down and Im thinking my
God. My older brother served in Germany, my younger brother didnt end up going in,
which is funny because hes big on the military, but hes the only one who didnt go in. I
came back with a shitton of medals and wounds and everything else, he was like Boy
Im glad I didnt go in, I said You can have some of these, I didnt need them all. But
hes the bigger warhawk, hes a chickenhawk, thats what we call him, just like Cheney
and the others, Bush flying around in an F105 protecting the Texas borders from the Al
Qaeda or whatever, its just so ridiculous. I honestly believe that if we took every war
profiteer and put them on the front lines with one magazine and said well be back in
about a week, war would end almost instantaneously, because they never have to go.
They send sons and daughters, aunt and uncles, and mothers and fathers to go, while they
avoid it. They create the weapons that kill people by the thousands, so put them out there.
Lets see them, lets see how they handle it.
I can honestly say during every firefight I was ever in, I was never afraid of dying.
It was afterwards, when it was all over, that my knees were starting to shake. During
every firefight I held my own, I never saw any of my people show the slightest bit of
cowardice, they followed orders, they did what they had to do, and we consistently won.
Afterwards, it was like smoke half a pack of cigarettes every day of the year and thats
how we lived our lives day to day. Once you have decided youre already dead youre no
longer afraid of it and thats where I was. Sooner or later theyre going to get me, but they
didnt, so I got to stick around to survive the nightmare of war and when I do speak about
it, when I am asked to speak about it, I always ask Where do you want me to go with
this? Do you want me to go light or do you want me to go straight into the depths of
hell? and everybody says Go into the depths of hell and when I look at people after
Im done speaking theyre all white, they have no idea what goes on in war. When they
really hear youre fighting hand to hand and youre sticking a knife into a guys skull
scrambling his brains, or youre taking a piano wire and popping the guys head off, its
hard to describe things like that, that was my job, those are things I did, thats what I did.
I thought killing people sucked so I went to heal people. I know I killed at least 21 by my
own hand, I dont know how many I killed by calling in artillery or air or anyone else,

probably up in the hundreds, but I saved over two hundred, to include kids I inoculated
against various diseases like typhoid and stuff like that and kids were scared but I only
used a tiny little needle, they never felt it, I was just sticking them with a tiny little
needle. These other guys used these things that looked like nails and I was like what are
you doing? these are tiny little kids, treat them, give them a lollipop or something before
you stick them, not afterwards, dont make it a reward, just give it to them, just be nice.
Do what you would do with your own son or daughter, you know, pat their head, pat their
cheek, look at them with love, and theyll trust you. It takes a split second to inoculate a
kid against typhoid and youve saved a life, its worth every second of it and thats what I
like to remember. Those were the days, as they say the best of times and the worst of
times.
Life After Vietnam
There is no doubt that Vietnam served as a turning point within the veteran
community. Soldiers returning home from Vietnam were drastically different and
therefore were treated drastically different by the general public. No matter what side of
the war civilians were on, everyone demonstrated animosity towards veteran populations.
Those who were against the war condemned the veterans as being baby killers and
those who were for the war condemned the veterans who sought peace before or after the
war. No matter what the circumstances were, it proved extremely difficult for veterans to
find work. Aside from finding work, it was also hard for many veterans to use their
benefits to their advantage. Of the 700,000 draftees who served in the war many were
poor and lacked a college education and of these numbers many were less than honorably
discharged due to addiction disorders or beliefs against the war. Due to this, these
veterans were unable to access veteran benefits such as education and medical care in
order to further their lives after the war. Similarly, many veterans returned from Vietnam
suffering from addiction disorders caused by their experiences there, PTSD, or Agent
Orange effects that they were unable to be treated for because of stalled treatment at the
VA and the denial of the existence of PTSD and Agent Orange.
In 1978, the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) started the Forgotten
Warrior Project to reach out to veterans in need of counseling. The project set up regional
offices throughout the country for outreach programs to help the veterans with their
continuous transitions back into civilian life years after the end of the war. A year later,
the VA started similar programs and the two organizations worked together to treat the
large population of veterans suffering from PTSD. Psychologists of the VA and DAV
stressed that PTSD was not a mental illness but rather a reaction to the stress of war and

traumatic experiences associated with it. Dr. Goodwin, a psychologist who worked in
cooperation with the DAV, studied PTSD in depth and how it affects veterans even years
after the war. He found that veterans were suffering from isolation as they drove their
family away, they couldnt talk about their experiences due to the continuing public
issues surrounding the perception of the Vietnam war, and they couldnt reach out for
proper medical help because PTSD was largely unexplored and was new territory for VA
researchers, doctors, and clinical psychologists.
Before Vietnam, the idea of PTSD existed but under a different connotation. After
World War I, a term known as shell shock was attributed to stresses and tensions after
combat duty. The term was coined because it was believed that the symptoms veterans
were suffering from were the result of explosions of highly pressurized shells. After
World War II, shell shock became known as war neurosis, leading to more discharges
on account of psychological problems arising from combat experience. However during
Korea discharge rates due to these arising problems dropped when they began to treat
soldiers for psychological issues on site before sending them back into combat shortly
after. Vietnam brought about much change for the treatment of psychological disorders
from combat experience, but it didnt occur until after the war had ended. The idea of
shell shock still existed but the programs and organizations that arose during the war
pressured the VA to join them in research concerning what would become classified as
PTSD. Today, the symptoms of brain damage from explosions are classified separately
from PTSD as TBIs or traumatic brain injuries. The explosions themselves do not cause
PTSD but they can cause brain damage, hearing loss, blindness, and other internal and
external injuries. Today and since Vietnam, more and more soldiers live from the result of
modern technology and medicine, which means that more and more veterans return home
needing to adjust to immensely different lifestyles than they had previously experienced.
A major change that led to more research was the prevalence of psychological
problems after the war, rather than during the war. Psychologically based discharges were
less common after the usage of on site treatments in Korea, but officials began to notice
that veterans from Vietnam were struggling at home just as World War I and II veterans
had. Many veterans who returned from Vietnam displayed no immediate signs of any
psychological distress upon discharge, but just as veterans from the World Wars began to
demonstrate these signs during their transition back into regular life, the Vietnam veterans
did the same. Due to this, more advanced research looked into why these symptoms
existed largely within the veteran population and why regular people within the civilian
population experienced the same after traumatic events. The symptoms included
nightmares, aggression, relationship problems, anxiety and more. In conclusion of the

research, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome was classified and recognized before being
officially published in the 1980 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
For Purple Heart Veterans, returning home and getting service from the VA was
slightly easier than it was for most veterans. Purple Heart veterans are not required to pay
co-pays at the VA and are only required to pay $2 for every 30 day supply of medicine.
Aside from having cheaper access to healthcare, Purple Heart veterans are also prioritized
in the VA when it comes to receiving service. Although this was only written into law in
2000, the medal was highly recognized by VA centers even during Vietnam, so their care
was always prioritized based on their status. Since 2000, a system has been in place to
determine the status of veterans so that the VA can prioritize the groups that are ranked
first. The first group is a group of veterans whose disability ranking meets or exceeds
50%, the second is 30-40%, the third is 10-20% disabled and includes any Purple Heart
Veterans who do not meet the standards for the first three groups. The rankings go all the
way up to 7, which is for non-service veterans who are required to make co-payments for
care at the VA. Group 4 is for veterans on pensions or who are housebound, group 5
includes non-service veterans with an income low enough to exclude them from having
to make co-payments, and group 6 includes veterans service connected veterans at 0%
disability or veterans who were exposed to toxic substances such as Agent Orange. This
rankings help the VA determine who should be seen first, but often lead to excessive wait
times because the system does not well accommodate veterans who need care
immediately or cannot receive basic care for long periods of time because they are never
prioritized. This system, in many ways, has been in place since the beginning of the VA
despite not being in writing. It was officially put into writing when the VA became
focused more greatly on the healthcare needs of the aging population of veterans from the
World Wars through the Vietnam era and when Agent Orange became more prevalent
within discussions concerning veteran health care system.
Due to the prevalence of the Vietnam war in the culture and movements of
the 60s and the 70s, war came to be seen as immoral. Veterans and civilians have
different opinions concerning this, but society continues to degrade the value of veterans
in the workplace because of the stigma surrounding their experiences. The unemployment
rate for Vietnam veterans today remains at a relatively low rate because as more time
passed after the war, employers began to hire more and more veterans comfortably and
veterans began to work through issues that may have prevented them from work before.
Today, the unemployment rate of veterans from recent wars is staggeringly high at 11.3%
and the numbers dont include veterans who are unable to work due to disabilities and
disability ratings. Aside from the stigma surrounding troops today, it is also increasingly

hard to find jobs in a competitive job market when a veteran has been out of the job
market for a while.looking out for. Its not something thats really spoken about,
especially by the person who is think

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