PTSD "moments"

After reading my “wartime recollections” post, one reader asked me if I had PTSD, ostensibly because of some of the harrowing stories that I had penned. I do not have PTSD, but I am sure it exists with many. I never had Vietnam nightmares that I recall — dreams, yes.

However, I think some serving under me actually had PTSD while we were in the bush. We didn’t call it PTSD back then, but periodic erratic behavior at times gave me pause and caused me to watch them more closely. Notwithstanding the stress, anxiety, emotional highs and lows, miserable environment, lack of rest, human loses, and fears, I do not recall a suicide in my company during my 12 months in Quang Nam Province.

Relative to fear and anxiety (a lesser form of fear), it was ever present at night to some degree and when on the move (we called it movement to contact). Almost miraculously, once the shooting started the fear dissipated and the rational mind took over — adrenalin I suppose. As a leader, my prevailing fear was getting ambushed or attacked and not knowing my unit’s precise location, which was a haunting and frequent occurrence when in the mountains, or rapid movement in a jeep, truck, or helicopter. It became very complex when you needed supporting arms but could not give your location or that of the enemy.

This would invariably occur in helicopter-born operations, where I would be pre-briefed on the landing zone and sometimes the probable location or direction of the enemy force, but for whatever reason, when we scampered from the helicopters with pack, weapon(s), body armor, and ammunition at the landing zone (LZ), nothing looked familiar from the previous air or map reconnaissance. Either the pilot of the lead bird landed in the wrong LZ or chose another because it looked safer for the birds. I was never notified of an LZ change in route and hence, often didn’t know where we were when we landed. Talk about anxiety! These are the kind of things that we were never told about during our training, and they were “PTSD moments” if there is such a thing.

The good part is that in my experience we never got ambushed or attacked at the LZ where we were most vulnerable. However, there were times during the approach that we heard pings of bullets hitting the rotors and fuselage of the helicopter. These were “pucker” moments as we prepared to land and disembark.

As the platoon commander in helicopter-born assaults or insertions, I would go in the first bird and exit first or with the first squad to get my situational awareness/bearing, scan the danger areas, survey the situation, and quickly in mind picture the 360 degree perimeter we would establish. As the squads disembarked, I would direct them to a sector of the perimeter using whatever cover and concealment was available, which usually wasn’t much or the helicopter could not have landed there. After covering the birds departure, I would pull a couple of leaders together, and we would try to determine where we were, the direction we would take as we moved out, and the order of march. As soon as we were formed up and off the LZ, one of the most difficult periods of the operation was completed and successful.

Years later in Washington D.C. in the parks and Mall where I used to run at noon, I would see the disabled and disheveled Vietnam veterans living in improvised shelters, some with terrible infirmities and others completely ambulatory; I assumed that PTSD was a causation. In either case, I prayed for them all the while thinking, “but for the grace of God there go I.”