Bringing It All Back Home (33 page)

I am fearful that large crowds make a desirable target [for terrorism], so I avoid any function with large crowds. When I can't, I am always mindful of where the exits are and anyone who gets too close to me. I count the minutes [until] I can leave and feel relieved when I do.

I am very claustrophobic now and just recently needed to take an MRI to detect if there is any cancer in my hip area. I was on the table to go into the MRI (sweating so much the attendant had to wipe my face and head several times), and I panicked to the point where I refused to go any further and had to stop the procedure.

I am thankful that the VA recognizes these problems and is helping me through them.

Other veterans wounded in Vietnam count themselves as lucky. Ray Robertson, from Staten Island, lost a leg in the Cobi Than Tan Valley. I asked him how he felt about being a badly wounded Vietnam veteran, one of 300,000. His reply astonished me.

Badly wounded? Not! I went to [visit] this friend at St. Albans [Naval Hospital, now St. Albans Primary and Extended Care Center, in Queens, New York], who was on the neurology ward. Something similar to mine: he had been shot in the elbow and the nerve had been severed, but not too badly. They thought they could get it back together, which they did. So I go up to the neurology ward, and he's the only guy in the ward sitting up. Everyone else in the ward is in a fetal position, being fed intravenously, because they have a head wound. I left that fucking ward and I said, “If I hear anybody complaining about anything, I'm going to drag them up to that fucking ward and show them what could have been. That's even worse than being on the wall.” Not that there was [a] wall then.

As he thinks of it now, he wonders:
Where are these people now? Are they still hooked up? Are they dead? It really blew my mind. Where did all those head-injury guys go? And that was a little hospital; imagine what the big hospitals had. I don't consider myself as having been badly damaged.

If already present, PTSD can be triggered by exposure to a new trauma. It's not surprising, perhaps, that a number of New York City police officers and firefighters who are Vietnam veterans retired after 9/11. For other men and women, life since Vietnam has been defined by their experiences coping with PTSD.

Henry Burke, who received a Bronze Star with a
V
for valor for his actions in 1966, remarked in 2004:

My personal opinion is, it seems as the veterans get older, and they start retiring, they have more time to think. I think this is why more people, or more veterans, are coming forward with post-traumatic stress disorder—because they have time on their mind to reflect back, whereas before, most of us were working. Our day was taken up by our occupations and stuff, so you just kind of put it in the back and you forgot about it.

Another reason, I think, is I was never debriefed when I came out of the service, so you kind of took it in stride. Anything that was abnormal you just felt was normal, that this is what happens, right? As we went on and grew older, we found out by associating with other veterans that no, this is not true. I mean, I found out in 2000 that I was suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Lucian Vecchio, who grew up in Queens and, like Hamill, served with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, is now an administrative law judge. He speaks with candor about his struggles:

We all have the PTSD. In my opinion, it's just a matter of degree. I have it to a relatively high degree.

Aggression chases fear. Anger chases sadness. So when you get that whack on the back, and you're stiff, and you're sad, and you say, “What do we do now?” and someone says, “We get payback,” that's anger chasing depression. So anger and aggression become important tools. They are cultivated.

We didn't have enough food. We literally didn't have enough food when we were paratroopers in Nam. That's not true now. We really were always hungry. And they'd say, “Keep you lean and mean.” Lean and mean. You're hungry, you're angry.

The next time I hear an explosion and a cry, I'm going to run to that as quickly as I can. And I revisit that. And I revisit that. And I revisit that. Why? Because if there's an explosion and a cry, I don't want to be the last one there. It's a pride thing.

That's the aspect of PTSD and the Vietnam experience that is of significance now. Vietnam is gone in one way but remains profoundly present in another.

As New York City's Vietnam veterans evaluate the long-term significance of Vietnam in their lives, the experience becomes something like a kaleidoscope—a single event understood in a vast number of often contradictory ways.

Louis Marcello, who grew up in Brooklyn and served with the Fourth Infantry Division, 1967–68, loved his time in the service and the men with whom he fought, despite his wounds. He felt then and feels now a deep bond with the people in his unit.

I loved Vietnam. That's the only thing that put a damper on it—seeing so many of my, my friends getting wounded. It was the people I was with. I loved the people I was with.

Some veterans, like John Di Sanza, value their experiences in the military highly. Di Sanza, who grew up in the Bronx and now lives in Florida, is an artist and author. He says:

I tell you, you know, it turned out, as strange as it may seem, it turned out to be the best thing I ever did for myself, because I'm at this point right now, with all the suffering and things I've gone through in my life, I would not be where I am. You know, I've got a wonderful family; I've got wonderful children. I've got a wonderful wife. I'm an artist; I'm a writer. I mean, if I didn't go, who only knows what would have happened to me? You know, I might have been dead.

John Flanagan, who served as a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam with the First Cavalry Division and went on to participate in the development of military training devices, thinks military service was a key element in his life. It, and Vietnam, gave him the opportunity to mature.

I told you about growing up in Brooklyn and didn't think I was ever going to see anything more than New Jersey probably. I wasn't going to be anything more than probably a civil servant someplace just making it through. It's changed me; it's given me confidence; it's given me something to be. Nobody can take away from me the time that I was an Army helicopter pilot … not only an Army helicopter pilot: in combat, and in the best damn unit going, bar none.

I know everybody has got fears and stuff like that, but it's how you cope with it, you know, and I'm probably a calmer person because I don't have to show people what I'm doing. I've thought things out. Also, I got pretty good situation awareness. It's about knowing what I'm going to do in any situation. I mean, it gave me confidence; it gave me an education; it gave me a sense of an environment where I could stand up and speak my mind and say this is right and this is wrong. The Army has given me an awful lot.

Others are forced to measure the costs of their service. Speaking of a friend, Frank Arce, a Marine from the Bronx, recalls:

Johnny failed out of school, and the next thing you know, he was driving trucks in the Nam and he ran over a land mine. Whoever it was that was with him got blown up and got killed. When I came back from the Nam, I went to visit Johnny, and Johnny was a vegetable—realistically, he was a vegetable. His kids had been born vegetables—Agent Orange—and we didn't even know what the hell that was back then, you know, in '69 and '70 coming home. We had no idea what the hell is Agent Orange. I mean, I'm sure we had seen it sprayed or whatever, but who knew your kid was going to be born, you know, with one eye or whatever the case might be or mentally unstable, you know. I guess that was the hardest part to swallow of the war—we lost not only so many guys over there but so many guys over here who came and were able to make it back, and most of them, I bet you if you asked them, they probably will tell you, “I wish I had died back then.”

Peter Meloro echoes the feeling of many when he articulates the value of military service.

The one thing the Army taught me … you learn … in basic training when, you know, they take you as an individual and shave your head and, you know, put everyone in the same clothes so that everyone looks like a twin, you know, for the most part and then started beating you down individually. Not physically, but mentally beating you down in an effort to reduce the individual and create the team. It's an extreme example, [but because of it] I think I've understood the team concept in business. Normally, if you get everybody on the same page, [you are] much more successful … I don't think I understood [that] in basic training. These people are nuts, I thought, who were in basic training.

But after a while, you know, afterward as you grow and you move on, you say, “That's the reason.” Just to lose the individuality and create the team so that everyone's got everybody's back and everyone is working together for a common goal. That's good in areas of business, so from that perspective …

But it is a view that has relevance well beyond the business sphere. In November 2003, Al Singerman, a Brooklyn native and past president of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 49 in Westchester County, New York, described to me some of the volunteer work he had been doing since his retirement.

I'm going to tell you something. If you talk to a large enough group of veterans, you will find that … they carry this tremendous burden from going to war, whether it's physical suffering [or] mental suffering. You won't hear how they won [the war], or complain about it, or … say, “I wouldn't do it again.” And, in fact, most of the guys that I know who are members of veterans' organizations like DAV [Disabled American Veterans] or VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars], because of their service, I mean, in going to war or serving their country, have learned the lesson that there's a responsibility of doing good. That's what their service taught them.

Some men and women seem to have put Vietnam in its place: behind them. Frank DeSantis, who passed away in 2009, told me in 2005 that Vietnam had ceased being part of his everyday life. The war, he thought, was in the past, and he had moved on. In this respect, I suspect DeSantis spoke for many Vietnam veterans when he said:

I don't bother to read books about Vietnam; I don't want to know the history of it. When I'm at a meeting with guys and they know too much, you know, they just know every little bit of information about everything that happened, and it's like, you didn't know that then. You researched it; you went online; you're trying to do every bit of research about the Battle for Hill 227 … I don't remember what hill it was, sometimes I remember the name, sometimes I don't, and I kind of remember what was going on, and sometimes I may be a little out of sequence, but I don't want to go on the Internet and look up and know every little thing
.

For others, Vietnam is part of every waking moment. Rudy Dent, a helicopter door gunner in Vietnam and a retired New York City firefighter, says:

Someone had asked me about flashbacks, and it's not about a flashback; how about a flash-present? It's there every moment of every day. I don't know how to explain it; it's a feeling that's always there. I'm at a loss for words for it.

It's always there.

It doesn't go away.

16

LIVING MEMORIALS

There are tangible reminders of the Vietnam dead all over the country as well as in the city of New York. The New York City Parks Department maintains twenty-seven parks, playgrounds, and memorials dedicated to New Yorkers who died fighting in Vietnam. Queens has eight; Brooklyn nine. Manhattan and the Bronx have three each, and Staten Island has four.

Although the definitions are slippery, there is a distinction between a memorial and a monument. A monument honors a landmark or physical structure. A memorial, by contrast, is defined by the National Park Service as having “primarily commemorative” purposes.
1
Therefore, a memorial reflects on history in some way. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at 55 Water Street follows in this tradition, commemorating and honoring those who fought in Vietnam. There are, however, many ways to honor a soldier's service. The idea of a living memorial has been around since at least World War I, and the purpose behind such memorials is to do or produce something useful.
2

Many veterans do exactly this. Among my interviewees, Danny Friedman, Fred Louis, Neil Kenny, Sue O'Neill, Joan Furey, and many others work to advance public understanding about veterans and their lives. Kenny works with Marines recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Furey has recorded oral histories with other scholars and given interviews. Friedman visits high school classrooms to share his experience. O'Neill continues to write about what Vietnam taught her. Anthony Wallace in his quiet way has adopted this role as my personal tutor.

Such an undertaking is not new for him. Raised in the Cornerstone Baptist Church as a leader, made a noncommissioned officer in the Army, and ordained a church deacon at age twenty-two, Wallace has always been a teacher. He took on this role from virtually the moment he returned to the United States. After being released from the hospital, he recalls:

I sat down and wrote a letter. This is in the summer of 1970. I wrote to President Nixon and told him who I was. I gave him my name, my rank, and I said that I was in Vietnam at such and such a time, point A to point B, and wounded on this day. In other words, trying to give them enough credence to know that, hey, you know, I'm no phony. This is the truth … that there were three other people who were in the bunker [and were killed]. And I was able to give two names. Pepe's name—I didn't know his full name. They could not find anything on Pepe. President Nixon, the White House, wrote a letter back and said, “Your request has been referred to the Department of the Army.”