Vn Vet

[Jimmy1]

My grandfather was part of the 3rd Pioneer Battalion during WWI. He was at The Somme, Ypres, and places like that. I have his unit's book with a nominal roll at the back. He has made pen markings in it as to when people got killed, 'mustard gassed', etc, and continued marking it until he died.

My other grandfather served during WWII near Darwin, Australia when it was bombed by the Japanese, and my father served during the last days of WWII then discharged and became a Police Officer for 32 years.

They all had PTSD and did not know it. Sometimes I wish I did not know it and sometimes I wish I had gone bush when I had planned to and not come back. There are parts of Australia where you could survive in the wilderness quite safely.

 

[ephemeral]

Everyone has an opinion mate, just don't force it on others. PTSD makes physiological changes to the brain, this is proven. We are all veterans and have all been diagnosed with A MENTAL ILLNESS according to the DSM V. Realistically though, and in 'my opinion', PTSD is just an umbrella term to encompass a variety of things, such as:

1. All of us have gone through a boot camp of some sorts where they rip you out of the civilian world and teach you to think military. You operate by a schedule, everything is uniform, you learn to kill.
2. They teach you to operate in small teams and rely on those teams to save your life.
3. They teach you to watch your back and cover your arcs so you don't end up dead.
4. They send you overseas for long periods away from 'normal society' where you see first hand how nasty humans can be by witnessing death and destruction up close and personal. You may also be called upon to pull the trigger or press the button, or you may be required to try and give aid to your fellow man who have been exposed to this. You may also witness your best friends evaporated in a blast or have their legs blown off.

Then they send you home without any real debriefing and expect you to function in society




You say you didn't come here to upset people or start fights, well what you have to understand is this. We are one of the best forums on the internet when it comes to helping our international brethren. The problem we have though is we have all types of whack jobs who come on here to cause trouble. We have university students wanting first hand stories to help with their studies, we have 'trolls' who come on here to cause trouble, we have wannabe's who for some strange reason want to pretend they have PTSD when they don't, and lastly (maybe I missed a few), we have so called experts who think they have miracle cures for PTSD. So that is why you might get some animosity from the guys and gals on here.

So it's simple, how about you get to know a few of the guys and gals on here first, or just come straight out and tell us exactly what you want.

I'm not "forcing" my opinion on anybody......I simply stated that I had an opinion, and offered a very cursory version of what it was.....that seemed to be enough to raise quite a bit of suspicion concerning my motivations for being here.

You state, "just come straight out and tell us exactly what you want" , well alright.......I was looking to see how people here defined what PTSD was, and not by describing symptoms, or by stating that, "PTSD makes physiological changes to the brain", and leaving it at that. I am sure that learning to read causes permanent physiological changes to the brain, so do many other things. Also, man has lived on this earth for thousands of years, and surely in that time span he ran into many horrific situations.......have people always been subject to the degree of debilitation from the effects of these encounters that we seem to be seeing in our times, or has something changed in the equation, and if so, what? There are many avenues of inquiry, that I have not seen explored, that may be of use to veterans.

I don't blithely accept the findings of the so called experts in all of this. The WWII veterans were treated for their PTSD by lobotomy, the VN veterans were pumped full of Thorazine, and when that got too ugly they went to Quaaludes, Oh how jolly, that really worked out well, the veterans hated that crap drug and flooded the streets with them to make a little money. Now they are experimenting on thousands of veterans with a myriad of powerful drugs that they don't really understand the effects of, short or long term. What will be next? I hear talk of going back to electroshock to deal with PTSD.Given the history of the treatment of veterans, I don't trust the experts. I listen to them to gain what knowledge I can, but with a healthy dose of skepticism.........I have learned over time, and by getting badly burned repeatedly, to attempt to think for myself, that other people, and "official" groups, have agendas, and rarely have my best interests at heart.

You don't trust me, you suspect my motives, well that is reciprocal; why should I trust you, or anybody on this board, but I don't come out immediately pointing fingers of suspicion, and thinly veiled accusation. This world is full of crazies, as a matter of fact I have come to the conclusion that everybody is insane, it just being a matter of degree, and when you happen to observe them. We all have to do the best we can in this regard, but there is common courtesy to grease the skids.

JennyMac states, "please respect our introduction policy and be more thorough"......well alrighty now, just what do you want from me, with such immediacy? I searched for some sort of policy statement regarding introductions, and did not find anything very definitive, perhaps I went blind and missed it, anything is possible. I do suspect that what is desired is a "spilling of the guts" to some degree, and for what purpose? I have been dealing with PTSD for a long time, it is not new to me. Do you want to hear about all the drug fueled rages and insanity I endured/survived? Do you want to hear about all the wretches I found at bars, to savagely beat in my frustration and anger? Do you want the juicy details concerning the multiple suicide attempts? Do you want to know about the horrific nightmares I have continually had to this very day? Just what do YOU want from me, that you say I have failed to provide?

I suspect, and once again I may be wrong, that there are certain parameters for how the people here view PTSD and related issues, and that you don't welcome anybody rocking that boat.

 

[JennyMac]

Actually, an introduction should include where & when you served, with whom did you serve, if you have been officially diagnosed with ptsd from a medical professional, any other details that a veteran would know....not one or two sentences, as I see you are a prolific writer.....not war porn, not exaggerations, not inflammatory by way of comments...if you want to be a part of this community you should attempt to put your best foot forward, not come storming in demanding answers so you can argue with the other members here. I will ask you one last time, please introduce yourself properly, advance one and be recognized ...thank you.

And wretches .... Really.......are you a veteran from the Crusades?

 

[reddevil1111]

I think we all rock the boat to some degree. We vet the forum to insure the people who post here are not only legit but that we know some degree about the person.
As in real life you would not walk in to a room full of strangers and join in random discussions without first introducing yourself and maybe helping people get to know you a little. This helps with future discussions to have a clue where the other person is coming from. It helps us relate, as in "oh! I was a medic as well"...that sort of info goes a long ways in here.
Sorted details of your personal causation of PTSD is not wanted or needed.
If you ever desire to talk about stuff your welcome to do so within limits of decency. No war porn is an example of what we are trying to avoid.
You should feel welcome (and you are)to contribute your views even if they oppose everyone else's.
This is not a pissing contest either. There is no need to discover who is the greatest warrior or the biggest badass.
We just want to get to know YOU a bit better so we can have conversation with you. We ask this of everyone who decides to join and then post. Your not being singled out. it happened to me and everyone else who has joined.

 

[fwduff]

Actually, an introduction should include where & when you served, with whom did you serve, if you have been officially diagnosed with ptsd from a medical professional, any other details that a veteran would know....not one or two sentences, as I see you are a prolific writer.....not war porn, not exaggerations, not inflammatory by way of comments...if you want to be a part of this community you should attempt to put your best foot forward, not come storming in demanding answers so you can argue with the other members here. I will ask you one last time, please introduce yourself properly, advance one and be recognized ...thank you.

And wretches .... Really.......are you a veteran from the Crusades?

i agree with jenny after reading all your posts the only mention of your service is basically one line and every thing you post is more text book wording as if its been copied and pasted there is no true feeling's in the words.
i hope i am wrong and if i am i appolagise now.

 

[JarHed]

I suspect, and once again I may be wrong, that there are certain parameters for how the people here view PTSD and related issues, and that you don't welcome anybody rocking that boat.

Hey Ephemeral

I would hope that that statement would be wrong. It's more that we've had some bad experiences lately with some people that have come here. That may not make you feel any different and perhaps it's more that we're very protective of this place. It's the internet and we have an open door policy but we do look sharply at everyone that joins. Not from the stand point of whether you make it according to our standards but we do look at everyone.

We don't want nor do we expect anyone to 'spill their guts' so to speak. Just as was mentioned, an intro. Like if we met in a pub somewhere and were talking. Just a little to get to know you. Trust isn't one of the worst parts of PTSD, at least it is for me. It's hard to do.

I read with interest your post where you brought up the idea of whether this is a modern condition or part of the human condition that goes back a long time. That is the kind of thing we talk about here all the time. And I think many would be interested in your thoughts and ideas concerning PTSD and what you have learned.

Anyway, the decision is yours. We're just a bunch of combat vets with PTSD. That's what makes it dicey for us. I hope you can understand that. As a 'Nam vet I've been through the mill like many here have and like it would appear you have as well. What ever the future is I wish you the best.

JarHed

 

[reddevil1111]

71-72....Hco. 75th Infantry attached to the 1st cav
Some questions that I can think of might be:
Did you only serve time in Nam? or maybe you had to serve in another theater or the states?
What role did the Army ask you to perform while in Vietnam? Rifleman, medic, REMF?
Was the 75th attached the entire year to the 1st?
Did you stay in one area of operations or did you go lots of places? Some guys planted on one spot and didn't move the entire time they served in Nam. Others were all over the place. What about you?
You could humor us with a bit of background and it would help a lot.

 

[Spock]

... I am sure that learning to read causes permanent physiological changes to the brain, so do many other things. Also, man has lived on this earth for thousands of years, and surely in that time span he ran into many horrific situations.......have people always been subject to the degree of debilitation from the effects of these encounters that we seem to be seeing in our times, or has something changed in the equation, and if so, what? There are many avenues of inquiry, that I have not seen explored, that may be of use to veterans...

You're got that right...PTSD can result from many things obviously, and life, especially as the planet gets more crowded, seems to increase the negative amount of stress, illness, and sickness. So we start with being here due to PTSD primarily as a result of combat but we all do occasionally share in life's other complications. That's some good stuff Eph...please share more.

...I don't blithely accept the findings of the so called experts in all of this. The WWII veterans were treated for their PTSD by lobotomy, the VN veterans were pumped full of Thorazine, and when that got too ugly they went to Quaaludes, Oh how jolly, that really worked out well, the veterans hated that crap drug and flooded the streets with them to make a little money. Now they are experimenting on thousands of veterans with a myriad of powerful drugs that they don't really understand the effects of, short or long term. What will be next? I hear talk of going back to electroshock to deal with PTSD...

So that is where ludes came from! :) I was never knew that. I just thought kids were looking for a new drug in school. They've already started back with "controlled" electroshock when baffled. Got a couple battle buddies that have had it done at Walter Reed-Bethesda.

As Jar noted, look forward to hearing more from you.

Peace

 

[ephemeral]

Actually, an introduction should include where & when you served, with whom did you serve, if you have been officially diagnosed with ptsd from a medical professional, any other details that a veteran would know....not one or two sentences, as I see you are a prolific writer.....not war porn, not exaggerations, not inflammatory by way of comments...if you want to be a part of this community you should attempt to put your best foot forward, not come storming in demanding answers so you can argue with the other members here. I will ask you one last time, please introduce yourself properly, advance one and be recognized ...thank you.

And wretches .... Really.......are you a veteran from the Crusades?

I did put my best foot, conservatively, forward.......and somebody stepped on it immediately.

Service in Vietnam - 71-72
Locations - fire base Bearcat, Bien Hoa Army/air base
Commanding Officer - Captain Peter Denker ......best friend last name Guthrie.......You don't get anymore until I know you better.
Officially diagnosed with PTSD .......As a matter of fact the shrink said I was the worst case he had ever seen, (great distinction), before handing me a bottle of 1000 ten miligram Valiums, with the instructions to take ten a day .......yeah, right, zombie land and/or death.
Disability compensation - 100%

Other details that a veteran would know......really. How much do you know about the operations of the 75th Infantry in Vietnam? You may very well suspect/accuse me of lying.

Our mission was long range reconnaissance patrols. We operated in six man teams.......point man....point man's slack man......two radio carriers in the middle........rear scout's slack man........rear scout. We set up claymore ambushes on likely trails. Once we blew the ambush, we would strip the bodies of everything, keeping what we wanted in the way of gear and money etc. and turned the rest over to S2....intelligence. We would insert a wooden nickle between the teeth of each of the dead.....said wooden nickle had a depiction of death on one side and our unit designation on the other......you figure out why we did that......maybe you're a fake. Any wounded were shot.....yeah a war crime by the standards of today, but that was our SOP in the Nam. We operated for five days maximum, or until we made contact with the enemy. If contact was made, we were pulled as soon as it was over, for we were then compromised. Five days was the maximum because one simply could not carry enough water for any longer period of time (we did run out with two days to go once, but that is another story). If your team made a kill, you got three days off before another mission, if you did not get a kill, you could go out again the day after returning from a mission. In the time period 71-72, we were getting over fifty percent of the entire 1st Cav's kills, with a rare maximum of six teams out at a time. I also ran a radio relay with another guy, situated on a mountain called, something like nue chal chin ( a spelling butchery), above a firebase called Mace, at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was laced with amazing natural caves that the gooks liked to hide in. I went into one of them to verify this. Some engineers blew up a bunch of them with (they said) twenty seven thousand pounds of ordinance. It shook the entire mountain......real cool, but one of our M-14s with ART scope fell off the wall, breaking the crosshairs.....real bummer.

There were whores, sucky f*cky, five dolla short time ten dolla all night.....LOL. There was reefer (grocery bag of bud for $20.00), there was heroin (plastic vials of two sizes, about $3.00-$5.00 each), there was killing.......what the hell else do you want to know?

How about you JennyMac?

 

[JennyMac]

Thank you, much appreciated. Now wind your neck in and play nice.

 

[ephemeral]

71-72....Hco. 75th Infantry attached to the 1st cav
Some questions that I can think of might be:
Did you only serve time in Nam? or maybe you had to serve in another theater or the states?
What role did the Army ask you to perform while in Vietnam? Rifleman, medic, REMF?
Was the 75th attached the entire year to the 1st?
Did you stay in one area of operations or did you go lots of places? Some guys planted on one spot and didn't move the entire time they served in Nam. Others were all over the place. What about you?
You could humor us with a bit of background and it would help a lot.

Combat only in VN. Lots of training stateside.
They wanted me to kill Victor Charles every time I saw him in the sticks. I did this very well, and they gave me a lot of little shiny things in gratitude. REMF!!!!! stick it!!!
We were based in one place and were transported to who knows where in the jungle by helicopter. They only gave us a small square of a topo map...I didn't care where I was, as long as I got to kill people, but I suppose the team leader had more information as to where we were.

People generally get paid for writing books of war stories......and I will pay for dredging up certain memories, tonight. I wonder if it was worth it.

 

[ephemeral]

Thank you, much appreciated. Now wind your neck in and play nice.

I'll say it now, and you can ban me if you want....I really don't give a shit at this point.

You are a patronizing smartass, but I think you know that and revel in it. You need you ass kicked.