PTSD should be a badge of honor

With PTSD in the news after what happened at Fort Hood, when a doctor that was supposed to help PTSD soldiers, ended up going on a killing mission, we forget a lot of history. As bad as it is for the newer veterans, think of what it's been like for the Vietnam veterans as they suffered all these years, watching their families fall apart, doing the best they can to "get over it" and attempt to hide it without anyone they knew understanding it. Heck, some of them didn't understand it themselves. Some still don't understand.

PTSD should be a badge of honor
By Guest Columnist
November 07, 2009, 7:33AM
By JACK ESTES

The doctors fixed his body but there was trouble in Bobby's mind.

What happens to our soldiers when they return from war? Where do they go? What do they do? For many the war isn't over, it's only just begun.

Forty years ago I carried Bobby out of a rice paddy. He was shot four times and covered with blood when I laid him down in the safety of a tree line. He had a shoulder wound, a sucking chest wound and his forearm was shattered. I tied my sock around his arm to hold the bone in place.

Then I pulled Bobby to his feet and we staggered to the medivac truck. As he left I feared I'd never see him again. They took him to a firebase, put him in a bunker and worked feverishly to save his life. When the doctor probed inside the hole in his chest, to spread his ribs, the pain was so great Bobby sat up and punched him. They shot him up with more morphine, inserted a tube in his lung and soon he's on a gurney, in a plane full of wounded, on his way to Guam.

In Guam they re-broke his arm and spent hours suturing him up. Days later he's on another plane headed to Camp Pendleton in Southern California. Back in Vietnam I already missed him. I trusted him. We used to run patrols during the day, set up ambushes at night and lived through nightmare firefights, often tending to our dying brothers. Like all combat Marines, we became adrenaline junkies, hooked on hunting other men.

Months later, Bobby is awarded the nation's second-highest medal, the Navy Cross, and meritoriously promoted to sergeant. Then he began his long rehabilitation at the Naval Hospital and soon married his high school sweetheart. The Marines tried to give him a medical discharge but he wanted to go back to Vietnam, to finish his duty. He worked out every day. He aced the physical fitness test and appealed to the commandant and was allowed to stay in the Corps.
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PTSD should be a badge of honor