Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet....Memoirs of a REMF, Chapter 3, The Shock

Uncle Sam

Ain’t Released Me Yet

Memoirs of a REMF

  

Copyright© 2016 by Robert B. Martin, IV

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. I have attempted to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them.

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Chapter 3

The Shock

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”...........Laurell K. Hamilton

After my extremely emotional experience at the Wall, I was eventually able to close my little black box and move on with my life. It was three years after my pilgrimage to the Wall when I found myself sitting in the PTSD seminar in Denton, Texas. I was not expecting to get anything from it. I was even becoming somewhat bored as the speakers droned on and on in psychobabble. I don’t remember who any of the speakers were, except for Laura Palmer. I didn't pay much attention until she came to the podium and began to read excerpts from her book. All were very sad because they were from actual interviews with families and friends of men killed in action (KIA) during the Vietnam War. It was hard not to cry while listening to those sad stories. I was beginning to empathize with the families and friends by imagining how they must have felt when they first learned that their loved one had been taken away from them so suddenly and horribly.  

I was doing a good job of keeping the lid on my little black box when all of a sudden I felt as though a bolt of lightning had suddenly struck me, sending a giant charge of electricity surging through my body and shooting out through every pore in my skin. I was vibrating and all of the hairs on my body were standing erect. Goose bumps popped out all over me. My ears began to ring loudly. My pulse was pounding and my heart racing. My extremities tingled and I began to feel numb all over. I began to hyperventilate and was becoming dizzy. The room began to spin and all of sudden my little black box exploded inside of me and tears began to fall from my eyes, run down my cheeks, and drip from my chin. I was unable to control my body’s response to the state of shock in which I found myself.

This was probably as close to an “out of body” experience that I will ever know. Although seated near the back of the room, I began to fear that I would be noticed. I was embarrassed, ashamed, and frightened. I wanted to get up and leave but was unable to stand. Besides, it would only have drawn more attention to me.

I was immobilized by emotional distress all because of twenty-six words that Laura Palmer had just read from her book. They are found on page 152, beginning on the third line. These words were the reason for the emotional state in which I found myself. She read, “Bob Kalsu was running to meet a chopper that had just landed at Fire Support Base Ripcord, on a desolate jungle mountaintop, when he was killed.” That one sentence caused an emotional dam to burst inside of me, virtually destroying my little black box and allowing twenty years of bottled-up grief, guilt, and shame to gush out of me like a tidal wave, washing away any emotional lines of defense I might have employed.

Two other Vietnam vets sitting near the rear of the room noticed my distress and quietly moved over and sat next to me; one on each side in silent support, until Laura Palmer finished reading. No words were exchanged between the three of us in that room, yet they seemed to understand exactly what was happening to me. When Laura Palmer finished reading, they each took an arm, stood with me, and literally steered me from the room. We sat down in a corner of the lobby and they told me about their therapy group. They each gave me their card and told me to call them anytime I needed help. Then they waited with me until satisfied that I was okay to drive home.

I attended a few of their group sessions over the next few weeks but I eventually stopped because the problems of each person in the group seemed to be much worse than mine and hearing their stories only served to deepen my feeling of guilt. Most of them had been through horrible combat experiences and had been exposed to many terrible and frightening things of which “normal” people could never even imagine.

Before Vietnam I had been very outgoing. After Vietnam I found it difficult to continue this effusiveness. I became quieter and seemingly uninterested in life around me. I eventually managed to put the pieces of my little black box back together and began honing my acting skills, which constituted my defense against unwanted emotions by allowing me to act out the emotions expected from me. I was able to cope in this manner for another five years until I sought professional psychiatric help and was diagnosed with “moderate to severe depression.” I was prescribed an antidepressant but it took a couple of years of trying different antidepressants and dosage regimens before I began to feel “alive” again. I can’t say that I felt “normal” as I don’t really know what “normal” is. As of this writing I am still taking antidepressants and although I am still quite reserved and “distant” to most people, I feel and cope much better know that I am medicated.

To be continued in Chapter 4, "Greetings" From Uncle Sam....

Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet....Memoirs of a REMF

Uncle Sam

Ain’t Released Me Yet

Memoirs of a REMF

Copyright© 2016 by Robert B. Martin, IV

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. I have attempted to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them.

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“Is this a god-damned army or a mental hospital? Jesus Christ! What happened?”

………..General Creighton Abrams, Commanding General, Military Assistance Command Vietnam, 1971

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INTRODUCTION

“Politicians hide themselves away. They only started the war. Why should they go out into a fight?

……..Black Sabbath, War Pigs, from the album Paranoid, 1970

This is a memoir of my one year, seven months, and three days spent as a reluctant, though proud, member of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Or, as we measured time in Vietnam, for five hundred and eighty (580) days. Of those five hundred and eighty (580) days in the Army, four hundred and four (404) were spent in the Republic of South Vietnam. Time wasn’t measured in weeks, months or years in Vietnam.  It was counted one day at a time because every day in Vietnam was someone’s last no matter his job or assignment. You would be just as dead whether it came from an aimed bullet or from a random piece of shrapnel in the field or in a “safe” rear area.

Although I was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1969, I will set the stage for the reader by beginning my story in 1989, twenty years after my tour of duty in Vietnam. This is when I was diagnosed with “moderate to severe clinical depression” and what is commonly called “Survivor’s Guilt.” Although friends and relatives may have noticed earlier, 1989 was the year I first began to realize that my life had been greatly affected by Vietnam. That is when I decided to try and remember (and understand) as much as possible about that period of my life and the war so many of us were sent to fight. Up until that time, my goal had been to forget as much about Vietnam as possible.

I began writing this memoir as a form of self-therapy and after a few years realized that I was also writing this for my family. I have never talked at length with my wife or two children about my time and experiences in the Army and I thought that by putting them in writing it might help them to better understand why I seemed to have shut them out of my life during the previous twenty years. Realizing that my experiences were not unique, I decided to make my story available to others.

Every few months over the twenty-five years spent writing this book I would open the manuscript, add a few words or pages, make a few changes, and save it on my computer. At first I saved it on a 5.25-inch floppy disk and after a few years was forced to transfer it to the newer 3-inch floppy disk. Now I keep it on my laptop’s hard drive AND an external hard drive AND in the “cloud.” Times have changed in many ways.

Writing this memoir has not been easy and I had a very difficult time completing it. I may never have completed it had it not been for the copious notes I made when I first began the project. From my original notes - plus letters, descriptions and dates written on the backs of photos, and conversations with a couple of old comrades - I was able to cobble together a decent accounting of those days so long ago. Where possible, I have placed events in chronological order, otherwise I have placed them where they best fit.

I am not a professional writer. I researched “how to write a book or memoir” on the Internet and found a staggering number of articles on the topic. I also researched writing conventions and the formatting of books. However, I was not attempting to write a bestseller so I finally said to hell with it. I would just write the way I talk.

There are a lot of facts in this manuscript and where possible I have included appropriate references. There are still many without citations but I don’t really care whether or not you believe every fact mentioned in this memoir. If you do feel that anything I have written is untrue, then please write me and let me know. I’m not saying I will change anything, but feel free to write if it will make you feel better.

You will have to pardon the occasional vulgarity used in this memoir, but it was common language among those of us who served in Vietnam. I was a REMF, a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker, in Vietnam. Not a term of endearment, it refers to the fact that I spent most of my tour in the relative safety of the rear area as a clerk-typist. I didn’t ask for the job. It embarrassed me to tell people I was a clerk-typist. When I was drafted, I was a practicing hospital pharmacist with seventeen years of education, just short of 25-years old, and with a pregnant wife. After receiving my draft notice I enlisted with the hope of getting a better “deal.” I was lied to by a recruiter who told me I could attend Field Artillery (FA) Officer Candidate School (OCS) and then receive a branch transfer to the Medical Service Corps as a Pharmacy Officer. I was trained in field artillery as a Fire Direction Control Specialist in preparation for FA OCS. However, I received an "invitation" to Infantry OCS, which I declined. I was then sent to Vietnam as a Fire Direction Control Specialist. I was assigned to the 101^st Airborne Division where I was told my skills were needed elsewhere. I was to become the Headquarters Battery Clerk of the 2/11^th FA because of a skill learned in the tenth grade. I could type. Apparently it was a rare and highly sought after talent in Vietnam.

You will undoubtedly notice that I tend to be somewhat cynical, sardonic, and sarcastic (I looked all three up and still don’t know the subtle differences among them). I suppose my behavior is also somewhat passive-aggressive. This memoir recalls events with humor, seriousness, sadness, happiness, excitement, boredom, apathy, and probably other descriptors. I just call it what it is.

I will be posting the entire book, a chapter at a time, in this blog. If you miss a chapter, check the blog archives.

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Chapter 1

My Life Changes

“It’s not forgetting that heals. It’s remembering.” ...........Amy Greene

Something happened to me on a hot July Saturday afternoon in Denton, Texas in 1989. Something that made me want to remember as much of my experience in the Vietnam War as possible. It had been twenty years almost to the day since I had first set foot on South Vietnamese soil. During those twenty years I had forgotten a significant portion of this important period in my life. I was unable to remember the names of people with whom I had closely lived for most of my 404 days as a U.S. soldier in the Republic of South Vietnam. Later I would realize that I was subconsciously blocking out many of these memories. However, it was still six more years before a psychiatrist diagnosed me with “moderate to severe clinical depression” and prescribed my first antidepressant.

There is a veritable witch’s brew of possible reasons that my depression is related to Vietnam, but it was not the result of any terrible wartime experience. Even though the world was going mad all around me, I was never physically injured. During my service in Vietnam I was almost always in a relatively safe area. I was assigned to the Headquarters Battery of a field artillery battalion. The Field Artillery is one of the Army’s “Combat Arms,” but I was never required to go out into the “boonies,” except for the occasional jaunt driving the Battery Commander or First Sergeant to locations outside of the camp’s perimeter. That’s not to say that I was never in any danger. Just being there seemed to be dangerous enough.

Whatever the cause or causes of my depression, the results began to effect my life and personal relationships in the years after Vietnam. In response, I poured most of my time, energy, and attention into my career. When I got home at night there was only a shell left for the people in my life. Something had to change. If not for me, then for my family.

On that hot July Saturday in Denton, as a result of much urging from my wife, Carol Ann, I attended a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) seminar sponsored by the DEROS Foundation in Denton, TX. DEROS is a military acronym for “Date Eligible for Return from OverSeas”, or simply the day one was scheduled to leave the ‘Nam for the World (what we called home). The DEROS Foundation was formed as a support organization for Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD. I was ready to admit that perhaps Vietnam might bear at least a portion of the blame for the strain on my personal relationships. However, I was not, and had never been, much of a believer in a lot of “psychological bullshit,” even though I had already spent some time several years earlier visiting a marriage counselor to keep peace in the family. I would eventually admit that some benefit had resulted from those counseling sessions but I still didn’t like the idea. I stopped the sessions when I thought I had been in counseling “long enough” to satisfy Carol Ann.

Anyway, back to that Saturday in Denton. We were living in Coppell, TX, which was no more than a thirty-minute drive from Denton, so I attended the PTSD seminar by myself. I would estimate there were somewhere close to fifty Vietnam veterans in attendance but I didn’t feel like mingling or making small talk before the seminar began. I found a seat near the back of the room and quietly waited. The speakers were mostly local mental health workers with a vet or two tossed in to describe what they had been through since Vietnam and how the DEROS Foundation had helped them. But one speaker, the "headliner," was a syndicated columnist who had spent a little time in Vietnam near the end of the war. She wasn’t what you would call a war correspondent. I’m not even sure that she ever saw or heard any part of the actual war. As a matter of fact, I have since discovered that a significant number of vets thought she was attempting to capitalize on having “passed through” Vietnam. But it didn’t matter how much time she had or had not spent in or near the war. What mattered was what she had written. Her name was Laura Palmer and her new book was named “Shrapnel in the Heart,” published by Vintage Books. This book is a collection of letters and remembrances from friends and families of service members whose names are engraved on the Vietnam Memorial, or “The Wall.” I had not read the book but I had made my “pilgrimage” to the Wall several years previously.

To be continued in Chapter 2, The Pilgrimage....