Vietnam War experience took toll

Area man’s Vietnam War experience took toll
By John Bulger jbulger@journalnet.com

INKOM — Donald Van Der Horn has a baseball cap that notes he is a Vietnam veteran, similar to those many veterans wear to commemorate their service experience.

Only upon close inspection can one read a pin, positioned dead center in the cap, that tips his hand. It reads “Dysfunctional Veteran — Leave Me Alone.”

Military service was common in Van Der Horn’s family, and he jumped willingly, even enthusiastically, into the Vietnam conflict.

“I enlisted because I was proud of this country. I went to war so that war didn’t come to me,” he says. “I was gung ho.”

If a kid leaving divinity school to enlist in the Army seems incongruent, it didn’t seem so to Van Der Horn, who grew up in a conservative Christian world that was distinctly black or white, with no hint of gray.

“It was a demanding existence, because everything was evil,” he says.

Days before he left in 1969, he married his girl, Susan. And then he was off to qualms about defending.

His black-or-white attitude was a tool that the military put to use. His psychological profile indicated that he was “the right guy to do certain things,” he says. Dark things. Unmentionable things.
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Vietnam War experience took toll