Vietnam Veteran with PTSD Proves It Ain't Over Yet

A veteran remembers 
Willits News
By Karen Rifkin
POSTED: 01/16/2015

In the early 1980s, when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built, Anthony flew to D.C. to see it. "I walked across the green and saw vets dressed in their camouflage; I couldn't get closer than 100 yards and turned and got back on the plane for home. I didn't relate to being a Vietnam vet; I didn't talk with other men."

Tony Anthony, veteran. (Photo by Nathan DeHart)

It was 1967 and Tony Anthony was in his second year of college. "It seemed like all the guys were there to stay out of the Army; to me that felt like fraud." So he quit school, got a job and three months later was drafted. Afterward his head was spinning, "Oh my God, what have I done?"

Vietnam was raging; it was the height of the war and he was drafted in November of that year, the largest draft month ever. Completing his basic training in Fort Dix, New Jersey, he remembers it as being his coldest winter ever.

"The commander there had it in for college guys. There were eight of us; he put us all in the infantry and we were shipped to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for advanced infantry training," Anthony said.

"Even though I was drafted, I had been fighting the whole thing, but when we got to Fort Jackson, the guys who were training us had just returned and were missing body parts. I got serious then; I had to listen if I wanted to survive."

Graduating at the top of his class, his reward was being allowed to stay and teach the next cadre while the rest of his unit was sent to Vietnam. Seven months later Anthony was shipped out on his own.

"It was one thing going with a unit and a much harder thing to go on your own," he said.
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