I Wanted To Kill A Lifer In Vietnam

November 7, 2009 | Danforth, Maine | Vetting explained

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Last updated: November 7, 2009

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I enlisted in the US Army in 1969, in order to get in to the Quartermaster Corps, and avoid the infantry MOS, as I was drafted, and had no desire to kill people or be injured in a war. I had basic training at Ft. Dix, during the summer of Woodstock Music Festival, and basically, took the place of Dick Cheney, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and all of the women who wanted equal rights, who were not subject to the selective service system.

I served two tours in Vietnam, and left when, what I call, the 101st Heroin/Race Riot/Fragging Division, came home from Vietnam in 1972. Just as today, most Americans were not required to serve in Vietnam, and just as today, everyone pretended it was another WW II situation, a WAR OF SURVIVAL. But unlike WW II, only a small proportion participated in the war effort.

After my first tour, spent mostly at nights on a guard tower, alone, as part of a permanent guard force in a fairly safe supply depot in a small valley, protected by Korean troops, I was disciplined for a minor infraction, and came home disgruntled, and hurt in some way. Within months, I had voluntarily put my name in for a second tour.

While in Vietnam, I read daily reports in the Stars and Stripes newspapers about the debate, and actual anti-war riots at home. I saw my cousin, Steve, and his college girlfriend (later his wife), on the front page of the Stars and Stripes, winning a 32 hour kissing contest at East Stroudsburg State College in Pennsylvania. I sat alone, each night, vulnerable up in a guard tower, with weapons I was not skilled in using, and started to wonder what I was doing in another man's land, waiting to kill him, or have him kill me. I started to have small doubts about the morality of the war, and remembered the words, "THOU SHALT NOT KILL!," from my Methodist upbringing.

I was a mail clerk at a combat base on my second tour, in what I call the 101st Heroin/Race Riot/Fragging Division. Just think why I invented that humorous, sad moniker for the 101st ABN DIV? Some angry soldiers, probably stoned on heroin, shot a grenade on to the roof of my hutch, in order to make their point. Nobody was hurt, as the room next to mine was unoccupied. I'm guessing it was a warning shot, and not a suicide attack, as this Major officer perpetrated on his fellow soldiers yesterday. A month or so later, in Company A, a man shot the First Sergeant and Commanding Officer with a pistol, and then the 101st packed up, and we came home from the war.

My service was not extraordinary, or filled with blood and guts, as some other people's service has been. I was simply a clerk before the war, and a clerk on a guard tower with weapons during the war. I did my service, to fulfill my pride and the requirements of the military, just like the current professional Army troops (no draftees) are doing. Just as today, most Americans GOT A FREE PASS from the war, and stayed home and partied, improved their careers, made money, got married, and enjoyed their families. And, just as many of the comments I read here in the NY Times Comments Section of Mr. Kinney's blog, most of my peer group made fun of PTSD, or wanted to pretend it didn't exist.

Around 2000, I started to get a lot of counseling for PTSD. In 1980, I had written that, "I STILL WANTED TO KILL A LIFER!" I got an Accounting degree from a 2 year college and dropped out of society and became homeless, shunning VA help. I never owned a gun in my whole life, and never had actual plans to kill a fellow American, but thousands of impulsive feelings to do so.

But I think that it is quite common for people to have angry feelings, that often have them thinking about fantasies about hurting others, to get even, or make retribution for perceived wrongs to our souls, which lead to depression, and hopefully, withdrawal from others in depression, rather than ACTING THEM OUT in a violent manner. The Bible seems to be full of an EYE FOR AN EYE stories, and this must be the human feeling to get back at somebody else for perceived wrongs to our ego and personality.

My two tour, Marine Dog Handler, Vietnam Veteran, VET CENTER counselor, told me that he wanted to P on LBJ's grave. I imagine that if LBJ was alive, he would have wanted to do something other than urinate on his leg. He wrote me up as having PTSD, and then died of Lupus, still involved in an angry dispute with the VA about whether he qualified for Agent Orange Benefits.

My PTSD counselor at the VA was a Jewish chaplain who had worked at the VA for 24 years, and told me that when he came to the VA, he realized he had a secondary case of PTSD from his Jewish parents, who saw their grandparents die in pogroms in Europe.

There is definitely some form of stress which can be translated to other people, and I am thinking that I may have added my stress to the professional counselors who served me over the years? This VA chaplain/counselor had some of the same feelings that the thousands of war veterans he counseled over 24 years had from their war experiences, but in a secondary form, not from personal experiences he actually had, but from growing up with his parents, who still lived in fear of war, and from the thousands of VA patients he counseled over his long career.

Just like those who were not affected by Agent Orange make fun of those who claim it injured them, here in this country, I find the same sense of denial about PTSD. In rural Maine where I retreated to, local veterans refuse to let their kin or neighbors know about their PTSD diagnosis, nor the money they get from the government as a result, for fear that they will be ridiculed by other members of their small communities (a factor not so prevalent in the more anonymous social environment of the city/suburbs where I used to live).

None of what me, or my more motivated comrade from an earlier part of the Vietnam War, Mr. Joseph A. Kinney (whose blog appears in the NY Times at this web address)

http://homefires.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/surviving-fort-hood/

will say about PTSD will influence you, because it doesn't fit in to what John Wayne, the professional actor, told us about the role of a man in a war zone. Mr. Wayne would never have acted in any movie that had a Department of Veterans Affairs portrayed in that movie. Just as some people are allergic to bee stings, others could probably take a bath in Agent Orange with no ill effects, and some people who are serial killers can kill people and not be personally affected by it (see the guy who killed all the women in Detroit, just in the newspapers).

I was listening to Sirius XM comedy channel one night, and one comedian pointed out that a serial killer was a man in a trench with a machine gun in WW I. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who taught at West Point, wrote the well received book entitled, ON KILLING: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. If my memory serves me correctly, I think that Colonel Grossman wrote that he thought 2% of men in combat would have no adverse effect after killing people for any extended period of time, and surviving combat. The Nazi government invented the gas chamber because SS commanders reported that their soldiers were suffering the psychological effects of mass killing of Jews and Russian war prisoners.

So I guess war is unfair. People are not equal. Some die. Others live. Some people suffer the effects of war. Many people, untouched by the war, prosper. People like Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and John McCain see their careers skyrocket due to war, while others rot in graves, and others live with anger and depression in less than happy scenarios. And the war movies and propaganda continue, the hoopla of war remains the same, and no matter how many veterans tell you about the psychological affects of war, or of treating war veterans, it won't affect your attitude one bit. Enjoy the parade. It cost a lot!

Roger Stavitz, a sensitive war veteran, a sensitive soul, who had psychiatric injuries from the Vietnam War, that continue on to this day. Peace and God Bless everyone, our enemies and our friends.

PS I met a retired, Air Force, career First Sergeant, who had served in Thailand, Vietnam and during Dessert Storm, in treatment, at a Vet Center in Maine. He told about how he was retired with a diagnosis of PTSD, after he made it clear that he felt like killing the Major officer who supervised his aircraft maintenance hangar. I pointed out to him that he was, "A LIFER WHO WANTED TO KILL A LIFER," and he took it in the same good humor it was meant when I said it. :)

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