PTSD... Then and Now
By Thurman P. Woodfork -
July 19, 2011 |
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Sandbagging at Det 7, 619th TCS, Trang Sup, Vietnam, 1966-67
From the photograph, “Sandbagging”
Copyright 2001 by Thurman P. Woodfork |
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Someone on SafeHaven mentioned concentration camps the other day. I
immediately thought of an old friend I had met when I was stationed
at Rosas Air Force Station in Spain. Tom was a WW II combat veteran
who had survived the Bataan Death March; he was the second case of
PTSD I'd seen close up and on a nearly daily basis.
Of
course, we didn't call it PTSD then; we called it “Shell Shock” and
we just looked the other way when Tom got drunk, which was pretty
often, and went on a crying jag or started beating up on the shuffle
board game, his only target. He could consume a case of beer by
himself and still navigate. Not well, but he usually stayed on his
feet until somebody got him to bed. The Air Force allowed him to
retire gracefully.
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On the other hand, there was my first crew chief,
John, also a WW II Army combat vet. He rivaled the
famed Audie Murphy when it came to the number of
earned combat decorations he was entitled to wear.
But the Air Force bounced John out of the service
because of his drinking. John was the first person
suffering from PTSD that I unknowingly encountered. |
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John knew his job inside out, and was never publicly violent
that I can remember, but the people in his chain of command
– which mirrored Tom's – didn't consider his war record or
experiences in combat as mitigating circumstances. As a
result, John T. was gradually reduced in rank from an E-6 to
an E-3, and eventually put out of the service short of
retirement. Both men had given full measure to their
services and country, but in the end, they were treated
differently.
I suppose John's downfall came about
because nobody ever bothered to connect his day-to-day
drinking with the day-to-day horrors that he'd experienced
in combat. They didn't associate his constant state of
mellow inebriation with his war service, I suppose because
he bore no visible scars. And when he talked about the war,
he made light of it.
I remember him gleefully telling
me how he deliberately waited for a clear shot so that he
could plink a German soldier in the ass. John cackled
merrily throughout the telling as he recounted how the
startled man leaped into the air, angrily cursing him in
German as he flung his carbine away, and he had me laughing
with him. John T. could have nailed the guy with a second
shot, but he didn't. Now I wonder how many other memories
were roaming through his mind; the ones he never laughingly
shared.
To the best of my knowledge, neither Tom nor
John ever received any sort of treatment or counseling for
their condition. As a matter of fact, I'm dead certain
neither ever did, at least, not while they were on active
duty. It's a pretty good bet that neither received much in
the way of counseling or whatever from the VA after they
returned to civilian status.
“What have you done for
me lately?” has always been the theme once the GI came home
from the war and removed his uniform for the last time. And
there's little chance that it's going to change any time
soon. I would suppose that time has gentled my memories, but
John T. was a good man, and he deserved better from the Air
Force. |
 By Thurman P. Woodfork
Copyright 2001
About
Author...
Thurman P. Woodfork (Woody) spent his
Air Force career as a radar repairman in places as disparate as
Biloxi, Mississippi; Cut Bank, Montana; Tin City, Alaska; Rosas,
Spain and Tay Ninh, Vietnam. In Vietnam, he was assigned to
Detachment 7 of the 619th Tactical Control Squadron, a Forward Air
Command Post located on Trai Trang Sup. Trang Sup was an Army
Special Forces camp situated about fifty miles northwest of Saigon
in Tay Ninh province, close to the Cambodian border.
After Vietnam, Woody remained in the Air Force for nine more years.
Visit
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