Statistics are an objective way to look at the
scope of the Vietnam War, but each person who served during the war was missed
and loved by their friends and family. As the war escalated fear and anger
gripped the nation. Evening news listed the death toll of the US and Viet Cong
and showed horrific scenes. Yet, the media coverage did not capture the smell
of death, heart-stopping moments, physical discomfort, and the vigilance necessary
to stay alive.
The randomness of death and destruction haunted
the survivors. Jim talked about how he was on his way to the motor pool for his
day’s work when he jumped the ditch instead of crossing the foot bridge. When
he did, my class key hit him in the face. He wasn’t allowed to wear jewelry so
he turned back to remove it. When he did, a mortar hit where he would have
been. Such a small event to determine life or death.
Vietnam changed Jim. He came home haunted by the
things that happened in Vietnam. He was claustrophobic, shattered by loud
noises, avoided crowds, and occasionally had a flashback that had him in the
middle of combat. Jim suffered from PTSD well before it was identified in 1980.
I always suspected that Jim’s skin issues and his
dementia at such a young age was from his exposure to Agent Orange. Jim talked
about being on the ground while planes were dumping Agent Orange in the same
area. We tried to get compensation for his exposure to Agent Orange, but at
that time you somehow had to prove you were exposed. The skin condition had to
be diagnosed within a year following service in Vietnam and dementia was an
exclusion to the Agent Orange presumptive conditions.
Jim’s disability rating was because of a service-connected
injury to his neck. When he first applied for it, we made a trip to St. Louis
where the VA gave him the bad news that they couldn’t locate his medical
records. A DAV representative left and returned with the records in a few
minutes.
Throughout the entire VA saga, records were lost
multiple times. Eventually, I started copying every medical record before
sending it to the VA. We finally had to hire an attorney to get an increase in
Jim’s disability. By the time we had a court date, Jim was in the beginnings of
dementia. The attorney was able to represent us in court without Jim’s
testimony, and we were successful in getting the increase with backpay for two
years. The case had been ongoing for decades, but we took what we could get.
The sad thing about the Vietnam War was the way
soldiers were hustled off to war and separated from everyone they knew and
brought home individually without ceremony or a welcome except by family. They
were more likely to face hostility from random strangers on the street.
Jim told me that he thought the people of Vietnam
would have been better off if we had stayed out of the war. Fortunately, most
of us don’t have to live every day of our lives in fear of a bomb falling out
of the sky and destroying homes in our neighborhood, hitting our kids’ school, a
hospital, or the nursing home where our grandparents live.
The sad
reality of war is that no one wins, and everyone loses.
Copyright © March 2026 by L. S. Fisher
http://earlyonset.blogspot.com
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