Vietnam Veterans
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder seems far more prevalent in Vietnam War veterans than in those of other wars: fifteen out of one hundred Vietnam Veterans have combat-related PTSD as compared to one out of twenty World War II veterans, a ten percent difference (“How Common is PTSD”). Although it is nearly impossible to pinpoint the root cause for the rise in PTSD in this generation of veterans, there are many factors that could have contributed to this rising issue. Many used to believe that these veterans were simply young, immature boys dragged into the war by the draft and were unable to cope with the pressures of combat: the average age for a soldier in Vietnam was nineteen and in World War II it was twenty-six (Roark 838). However, every
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war has its nineteen-year-olds and twenty-six-year-olds, many of whom have been drafted. It is not so much that these veterans were the dregs of the military, as popularly thought by those of the anti-war movement, but rather they fought in an intense theater which was unlike any war fought before. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, was formally recognized as a psychiatric disorder in 1980. It has a broad range of who it can affect, being combat related or not, but it is most widely discussed in terms of military personnel. This disorder is almost always accompanied with anxiety, guilt, isolation, nightmares, flashbacks, but the severity varies from person to person. It is not a new concept; this behavior had been seen in veterans for decades, beginning with Soldier’s Heart in the Civil War, Shell Shock in World War I, and then Combat Stress Reaction (CSR) in World War II and the Korean War (“History of PTSD in Veterans”). These disorders have all the same symptoms of PTSD; however, these terms were, of course, strictly for combat-related trauma. PTSD was later coined in to encompass any life-threatening trauma, whether related to military service or not. The Vietnam War was the first instance where PTSD was studied closely in veterans. Psychoanalysts in the eighties took notice of the vast numbers of veterans showing symptoms of PTSD and began many studies to find the reason for the rise as compared to other veterans. The most notable of these studies was the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study. This investigated the connection between the conditions of the war and the occurrence of PTSD in veterans in order to help find a treatment. It looked at many aspects of the veterans’ lives, both during and after the war, that could influence PTSD. According to the study, 830,000 Vietnam veterans had symptoms and functional impairment related to PTSD (“Findings From”). To understand the staggering differences of PTSD in Vietnam veterans and veterans of other wars, first and foremost the vastly different theaters of the wars should be discussed. The tactics used in Vietnam had never been seen by the U.S. military prior to this conflict. Combat patrols, although it had been used before, were much different in Vietnam, as shown in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” In this story, the company of soldiers move with a “kind of inertia,” with “no sense of strategy or mission,” searching “villages without knowing what to look for, not caring” (O’Brien 1306). The Vietnam War, at least to the troops, did not have much of a significance. Unlike in World War II, when the goal was to prevent fascist dictators from taking control Europe, Africa, and Asia; troops in the Vietnam War had no idea what they were doing there, to contain the spread of communism of course, but they were just pulled into the conflict without much drive to succeed or sense of duty to defeat the enemy. To them, Vietnam was just a small country in the middle of nowhere that posed no threat to the United States or world peace; because of this they moved from “village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost” (O’Brien 1306). However, when the soldiers in this story lost a comrade with nothing to show for it, everything became pointless. A study showed that there are “strong associations between combat loss and psychological maladjustment in analysis of NVVRS ” (Currier). This is seen in “The Things They Carried” after Ted Lavender is killed. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is unable to cope with the death of one of his men; the experience completely changes his view of the war and life outside of it: “He felt shame. He hated himself” (O’Brien 1307). As in any war, it is not so much that someone dies, but rather how he dies that causes pain.
The Vietnam War was the first conflict that the United States was involved in which the enemy used complex networks of booby traps. Of course, even World War II had landmines and other hazards, but in Vietnam it was different. The traps used by the Vietcong were made using simple items, not easy to track or spot. Examples of such traps were a hole covered with leaves and sticks, but once stepped upon, one would fall to the bottom where long, sharpened bamboo rods had been buried and trip wires, which looked like nothing more than vines, that would set off land mines or bamboo spears that would swing down from a tree and into the group of soldiers; these were scattered all across the terrain of Vietnam. In this war there was no frontline, no visible enemy; friends were alive one minute and dead the next, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. In “The Things They Carried,” in order to cope with this environment or, more accurately, not cope with it, the soldiers “squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn’t, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and wished for the noise to stop” (O’Brien 1308). No one can last long in that situation without all the pent up grief eventually erupting (Dennis). The soldiers in “The Things They Carried,” after Ted Lavender died, went to a village called Than Khe and burned buildings, killed animals, and completely demolished everything (1307). This, of course, did not win many hearts of people in the United States and is the main reason for the anti-war movement, saying that the soldiers were over there to cause mayhem and not to solve the problem. However, these problems still afflicted many veterans even years after the war was over; as Yusef Komunyakaa writes in his poem “Facing It,” about a man staring at
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but feeling like he is staring back into Vietnam. The narrator touches the name of his friend on the wall and then sees “the booby trap’s white flash,” haunted by the moment his friend died (Komunyakaa lines 17-18). He mostly feels guilt, much like Lieutenant Jimmy Cross; he says he was “half-expecting to find/ my own [name] in letters like smoke;” he thinks that he should have died along with his friend or maybe instead of, but now he lives only feeling that his friend died because there was nothing he could have done (Komunyakaa 15-16). Losing a close friend in combat is hard for anyone, but in a war where the enemy cannot be seen or distinguished from others, it plays a tough psychological game that some cannot overcome.
war has its nineteen-year-olds and twenty-six-year-olds, many of whom have been drafted. It is not so much that these veterans were the dregs of the military, as popularly thought by those of the anti-war movement, but rather they fought in an intense theater which was unlike any war fought before. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, was formally recognized as a psychiatric disorder in 1980. It has a broad range of who it can affect, being combat related or not, but it is most widely discussed in terms of military personnel. This disorder is almost always accompanied with anxiety, guilt, isolation, nightmares, flashbacks, but the severity varies from person to person. It is not a new concept; this behavior had been seen in veterans for decades, beginning with Soldier’s Heart in the Civil War, Shell Shock in World War I, and then Combat Stress Reaction (CSR) in World War II and the Korean War (“History of PTSD in Veterans”). These disorders have all the same symptoms of PTSD; however, these terms were, of course, strictly for combat-related trauma. PTSD was later coined in to encompass any life-threatening trauma, whether related to military service or not. The Vietnam War was the first instance where PTSD was studied closely in veterans. Psychoanalysts in the eighties took notice of the vast numbers of veterans showing symptoms of PTSD and began many studies to find the reason for the rise as compared to other veterans. The most notable of these studies was the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study. This investigated the connection between the conditions of the war and the occurrence of PTSD in veterans in order to help find a treatment. It looked at many aspects of the veterans’ lives, both during and after the war, that could influence PTSD. According to the study, 830,000 Vietnam veterans had symptoms and functional impairment related to PTSD (“Findings From”). To understand the staggering differences of PTSD in Vietnam veterans and veterans of other wars, first and foremost the vastly different theaters of the wars should be discussed. The tactics used in Vietnam had never been seen by the U.S. military prior to this conflict. Combat patrols, although it had been used before, were much different in Vietnam, as shown in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” In this story, the company of soldiers move with a “kind of inertia,” with “no sense of strategy or mission,” searching “villages without knowing what to look for, not caring” (O’Brien 1306). The Vietnam War, at least to the troops, did not have much of a significance. Unlike in World War II, when the goal was to prevent fascist dictators from taking control Europe, Africa, and Asia; troops in the Vietnam War had no idea what they were doing there, to contain the spread of communism of course, but they were just pulled into the conflict without much drive to succeed or sense of duty to defeat the enemy. To them, Vietnam was just a small country in the middle of nowhere that posed no threat to the United States or world peace; because of this they moved from “village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost” (O’Brien 1306). However, when the soldiers in this story lost a comrade with nothing to show for it, everything became pointless. A study showed that there are “strong associations between combat loss and psychological maladjustment in analysis of NVVRS ” (Currier). This is seen in “The Things They Carried” after Ted Lavender is killed. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is unable to cope with the death of one of his men; the experience completely changes his view of the war and life outside of it: “He felt shame. He hated himself” (O’Brien 1307). As in any war, it is not so much that someone dies, but rather how he dies that causes pain.
The Vietnam War was the first conflict that the United States was involved in which the enemy used complex networks of booby traps. Of course, even World War II had landmines and other hazards, but in Vietnam it was different. The traps used by the Vietcong were made using simple items, not easy to track or spot. Examples of such traps were a hole covered with leaves and sticks, but once stepped upon, one would fall to the bottom where long, sharpened bamboo rods had been buried and trip wires, which looked like nothing more than vines, that would set off land mines or bamboo spears that would swing down from a tree and into the group of soldiers; these were scattered all across the terrain of Vietnam. In this war there was no frontline, no visible enemy; friends were alive one minute and dead the next, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. In “The Things They Carried,” in order to cope with this environment or, more accurately, not cope with it, the soldiers “squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn’t, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and wished for the noise to stop” (O’Brien 1308). No one can last long in that situation without all the pent up grief eventually erupting (Dennis). The soldiers in “The Things They Carried,” after Ted Lavender died, went to a village called Than Khe and burned buildings, killed animals, and completely demolished everything (1307). This, of course, did not win many hearts of people in the United States and is the main reason for the anti-war movement, saying that the soldiers were over there to cause mayhem and not to solve the problem. However, these problems still afflicted many veterans even years after the war was over; as Yusef Komunyakaa writes in his poem “Facing It,” about a man staring at
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but feeling like he is staring back into Vietnam. The narrator touches the name of his friend on the wall and then sees “the booby trap’s white flash,” haunted by the moment his friend died (Komunyakaa lines 17-18). He mostly feels guilt, much like Lieutenant Jimmy Cross; he says he was “half-expecting to find/ my own [name] in letters like smoke;” he thinks that he should have died along with his friend or maybe instead of, but now he lives only feeling that his friend died because there was nothing he could have done (Komunyakaa 15-16). Losing a close friend in combat is hard for anyone, but in a war where the enemy cannot be seen or distinguished from others, it plays a tough psychological game that some cannot overcome.