The Soul Survivor of Vietnam

The Soul Survivor of Vietnam
Wounded Times Blog
by Kathie Costos
June 14, 2013

June is PTSD Awareness Month and half way through, there are reports that are missing. One of them are the number of Soldiers, Army National Guards and Army Reservists losing their battles to stay alive. The other report is the compilation of data contained in the Suicide Event Report. This report includes data that is important for researchers but also includes the number of military forces attempting suicide and thankfully, are still here.

There is a disgraceful video on YouTube that starts out with "Don't pull that trigger." While that may sound as if the title of the video "Military Suicides Increase at Alrarming Rate -DON'T DO IT!" (their typo not mine for a change) fits, it is what is said in the next sentence. "You don't have to go." This is followed up by "fight, conquer, kill, beat, torture, scar your own conscience." Frankly this speech is more about being anti-military and blaming those we send than being about healing the ones that dare to go. While most people in this country are trying to help them heal, some are just using the pain to make their own profits. After all, lots of money being made "addressing" prevention but producing more and more suicides.

Senator Joe Donnelly has a new bill Jacob Sexton Military Suicide Prevention Act of 2013 but like so many others before, there is not much hope of this making a difference. The Congress Started writing bills back in 2007 with the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act. This followed a series of hearings listening to family members speak of the heartache they all carried when their sons and daughters should have been safe back home. Not in more danger of dying by their own hands.

The truth is the OEF and OIF veterans are not the first generation to face this deadly end when no one was looking. After offering prayers of thanks for the safe return of men and women back from Vietnam, families thought their worries were all over. That they could pick up where they left off. Yet we lost thousands of them to suicide. We are still losing them. The national media outlets don't seem too interested in the most interesting aspect of all. No matter what has been done in the past, history is being repeated.

The awful video on YouTube is a redo of what Vietnam veterans came home to. They were blamed for risking their lives for each other simply because some fools failed to open their eyes to why they were willing to die. It was not for any other reason than saving the lives of someone else. They were treated like less than dirt and no one was really interested in what was happening to them as they took their own lives, marriages fell apart, they ended up homeless and ended up in jail. After all they didn't have to care if they believed these men and women deserved it. The truth is, those men and women didn't give up on the rest of us. They fought to have the same wounds no one could see in their parents after returning home from WWII or their grandparents returning from WWI.

They fought to open our eyes so that we would do something for them and we did. We opened our wallets and supported charities. We wrote letters to members of congress to do something. We joined with veterans and fought side by side to do the right thing for a change, just as we are doing all of that now for the newer generation.

There are so many things we learned because Vietnam veterans just didn't give up, yet they are the majority of the suicides tied to military service even now.

They are ignored yet ever willing to step up and help the new generation. They are ready and waiting, eager to help this generation to figure out what PTSD is and how they can heal so they can live better lives. Congress ignores the lessons they have to teach even though had it not been for them there is an ever increasing list of mental health treatments all tied back to them.

The biggest one is the fact that while their bodies made it home, it is their soul that most Vietnam veterans to prove to the others they can live better lives today.

They are soul survivors. They figured out how to forgive. Forgive others for the way they were treated. Forgive those who sought to harm them. Forgive their families for turning their backs on them. Know they were forgiven for whatever they felt they had to be forgiven for but perhaps the hardest forgiveness to obtain was the one that healed them the most. The ability to forgive themselves.

Vietnam veterans are necessary if we are ever going to stop history being repeated and so are their families. If Congress is really serious about preventing military suicides they need to listen to these teachers of living.