Thrilla
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2011
- Messages
- 20,295
- Reaction score
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- Location
- Texas, Vegas, Colombia
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Other
That is a very honest and open look at your past experience. It is interesting how it changed you in as you say a very short period of time.
More than one of my friends who fought in Vietnam say the shocking thing for them was how young the enemy looked to them.
Am certain they have all those mental videos in their memories banks stored away. Majority just don't talk about that and that is very understandable.
That is a heavy burden to be put on guys of many who were just out of high school.
well, after quite a few years of drug and alcohol abuse, I underwent a few years of therapy....being honest about things is the result and ,still to this day,what helps me the most.
internalizing the burdens did a ton of harm to me... and now, I do whatever I can not to get caught in that **** again... internalizing stuff is simply not good for me.
upon my death, my full "memoirs" will be released to my family...while i still can't really share everything with them ( I don't want to put them into a position to judge me), I like knowing everything will be brought forth at some point.
obviously I have many vet friends who've seen the elephant, we all deal differently.... some could shrug this stuff off, others couldn't.... some talked, others didn't.
most of my "bad" experiences were in conflicts after 'Nam... but Nam started it all for me ( I consider myself less than a "real" Nam vet, even though i served my tour... we had our contacts with the VC, but i wasn't a ground pounder then)... and yeah, it did bother me that the VC/NVA looked like children... at first.
it doesn't take long to figure out that they are fierce lil' sunsabiches.
I read a book quite a few years back , about a guys experiences in Korea... he said pretty much the same thing I felt.... the first few firefights , you are too scared to do ****.... then comes a fight where you just get angry and everything changes.
you might get angry at simply being made to hit the dirt again .. or you just might be angry that someone is trying to hurt your bros... or you might be angry at having to hump the bush for days.... whatever you are angry about, it replaces the fear and you come to the " ok, i've had enough of this bull****, it's on" mentality... it's an interesting shift, to say he least.