Richard Hernandez, Marine, Vietnam Vet just wanted to sleep

Vietnam vet looks back to battlefields

BY JAMES GILBERT
SUN STAFF WRITER



Some veterans who served in Vietnam wanted to put the war behind them as soon as they returned home from the fighting.

That's what Foothills resident Richard Hernandez, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, said he did for nearly four decades.

But in the course of getting records to document his claim for greater disability benefits, he decided he wanted to know more about how his actions on the battlefield fit into the bigger picture of that war.

"I wanted to know what all I did while I was there. It was important to me," Hernandez said of the armed conflict he experienced. "It was a lot of muscle, sweat and blood. But you got used to it after awhile."

Hernandez, 59, grew up in Gonzalez, Calif., and joined the U.S. Marine Corps on March 6, 1968, at the age of 18. He did so, he said, so he could be more like his older brother, who had already enlisted and was wounded while serving in Vietnam.
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He went to the VA so that he could sleep. That's all he wanted. Imagine a lifetime of service, deaing with PTSD and that's all he wanted!