For Vietnam vets, no cheering crowds

"For a lot of guys, your DEROS (date of expected return from overseas) date comes up, and a few hours later you're back in the States, with dirt from Vietnam still under your fingernails,"

Can any other words paint a better picture of how they came home? They didn't go to Vietnam in units they would serve with. They went alone. They served their time counting down the days as some would go and others would come. They went home alone.

For Vietnam vets, no cheering crowds
By Amy Ryan • For the Wausau Daily Herald • February 11, 2010


When Wisconsin soldiers returned home in January after fighting in Iraq, they were greeted by crowds of supporters. Local media were there to record the event as families were reunited with hugs and happy tears.

Forty years ago, Schofield resident Tom Lawrence came home from Vietnam to a very different scene.

"It was thinly disguised hostility," said Lawrence, 66. "Even if you weren't in uniform, you still had short hair and shined shoes. Most people could pick up you were military, and people were speaking their mind. They were anti-war."

Lawrence served two one-year tours with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, one in 1966 and another in 1968. Like other Vietnam War-era soldiers, sailors and airmen, he was sent back to the U.S. almost immediately after being discharged.

"For a lot of guys, your DEROS (date of expected return from overseas) date comes up, and a few hours later you're back in the States, with dirt from Vietnam still under your fingernails," he said.
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For Vietnam vets, no cheering crowds

In 1984 after listening to a group of Vietnam veterans, I wrote the following from their words and their lives. I just put their words into a different order but this is their story.

IN THE NAME OF GLORY
The things I’ve seen and done would boggle your mind.
I’ve seen the death and destruction created by mankind
in the living hell that I walked away from but could not leave behind.
It all comes back to haunt me now and makes peace impossible to find.
The ghosts of the past that find me in the night
make me wonder if my life will ever be right.
I have tried to forget what I have done,
and now there is no place left to run.
All this in the name of glory!
There is no end to this horror story.
It still does not make sense even now that I am older,
why, when I was so young they made me a soldier
and why I had to be a part of that war
when I didn’t even know what we were there for.
At eighteen I should have been with my friends having fun
not patrolling through a jungle with a machine gun.
I did my part just the same, just for my country
and stood helplessly watching my friends die all around me.
I felt a surge of hate engulf my soul for people that I did not know
and saw children lose their chance to grow.
All this in the name of glory!
There is still no end to this horror story.
There was no glory for guys like me
only bitter memories that will not set me free.
I can never forget the ones who never made it home
some of them dead and others whose fate is still unknown
and the stigma that we lost what was not meant to win
most of us carry that extra burden buried deep within.
All this in the name of glory!
Will there ever be an end to this horror story?


I signed the poem W.T. Manteiv for We Trusted and Vietnam backwards. @1984

It was not that we didn't know about PTSD. We were just calling it something else until word got around it was no longer "shell shock" but Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with a title that did more to explain what it really was. It was a wound to the soul. Trauma is Greek for wound. It came from an outside force and attacked the soul of the warrior just as it does today but back then, no one was talking about any of it. They were trying to hide it. When you looked into their eyes, you could see it. When they talked about men they used to know, you could feel it. When they allowed themselves to cry, it touched your own soul. Their horror story is still being written, now joined by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. We still have not reached all of them and we lose 18 veterans per day taken by suicide. 12,000 per year attempt it. The worse fact in all of this is these are just the ones researchers know about. Too many Vietnam veterans never sought help from anyone and suffered in silence. Some did not claim the title of Vietnam veteran at all.

We have a lot of work to do for the sake of all veterans but as we try to help them, the contributions of the Vietnam veterans into the programs and treatments available to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans would not have been available had it not been for them pushing for it.

Because of what we knew and how long we've known it, there is no excuse for this and no end to their horror story.

Many veterans not getting enough treatment for PTSD
Barriers to care may prevent many US veterans from receiving full course of PTSD treatment
Contact: Bethany Carland-Adams
scholarlynews@wiley.com
781-388-8509
Wiley-Blackwell

SAN FRANCISCO—February 10, 2010—Although the Department of Veteran Affairs is rolling out treatments nationwide as fast as possible to adequately provide for newly diagnosed PTSD patients, there are still significant barriers to veterans getting a full course of PTSD treatment. The study is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress.

More than 230,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans sought treatment for the first time at VA healthcare facilities nationwide between 2002 and 2008. More than 20 percent of these veterans, almost 50,000, received a new PTSD diagnosis. Treatments that have been shown to be effective for PTSD typically require 10-12 weekly sessions. VA follows these recommendations, however, fewer than ten percent of those Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with newly diagnosed PTSD complete this recommended "dose" of PTSD treatment. When the timeframe was expanded to a year rather than four months, fewer than thirty percent of the veterans completed the recommended course of treatment.

The study showed that there are groups of veterans that are less likely to receive adequate care than others, such as male veterans (compared to female veterans), veterans under twenty-five years old, veterans who received their PTSD diagnoses from primary care clinics (requiring referral to a mental health program), and veterans living in rural areas.
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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/w-mvn021010.php