Download PDF of this full issue: v41n2.pdf (26.6 MB)

RECOLLECTIONS: A Memoir of Not Going to Vietnam

By Gregory Kotonias

Although I was drafted during the Vietnam War, I did not go. This was accomplished in the same way that most children of the upper middle class and upper class accomplished it — connections. Unbeknownst even to me at the time, my aunt and uncle had organized an underground support network for draft resisters and deserters. In addition I was fortunate enough to have a father, a veteran of WW II, who was opposed to the war and was "not going to send a kid of mine to be killed in some God-forsaken place we don't belong." I was ultimately rejected for minor medical reasons and went on to fight the war, safely, with signs on the streets. None of my college buddies went either — you get the picture.

At the time I harbored no delusions that this was in any way a significant anti-Vietnam War act or that I had accomplished anything meaningful other than perhaps saving my life or avoiding a move to Canada. I knew someone else would just take my place, someone poorer, less educated, with fewer connections, and probably not white.

I confess that I have always felt a bit guilty about not going — this perhaps being a mild form of survivor's guilt. What I have felt more strongly was the desire in recent years to go to Vietnam, to set foot on the land, see the people and countryside.

I did go to Hanoi and the surrounding countryside two years ago. I do appreciate that Hanoi was not the Vietnam of the war veterans, but it was important to me to simply be in the country called Vietnam. In trying to understand this pull toward Vietnam I realized a number of things.

First, I realized how deeply just the place, the name, Vietnam, were buried in my psyche.

There were so many catastrophic events in those years — assassinations, political debacles, etc., but somehow Vietnam and the war there had left the strongest mark. Why is that? Is it that I think I had escaped a certain death there? Was it that so many others died there, physically and psychologically? Was it the relentlessness of body counts, day after day, for so many years? Was it that I ended up treating so many of the war's casualties in hospitals (I am a physician)?

There is no single answer. It is all of the above plus one other very important dynamic. I also realized that I was trying to pay a strange sort of homage to all those who died and were injured there, Americans and Vietnamese. I needed to see this place which was so embedded in my psyche and where so many people, Americans my age, had suffered so much; and in many situations still are suffering. It was my trip to my own, inner Arlington National Cemetery.

I am apprehensive about how these comments will be perceived by those who did go to and fought in Vietnam. Will I be seen as a dilettante indulging myself with thoughts about horrors never experienced nor understood? I realize that my internal struggle or preoccupation with Vietnam is akin to a minor nuisance compared to what most veterans have dealt with or are dealing with. None-the-less, the Vietnam War did have a profound effect on many who never set foot in Vietnam. The Vietnam War injured and scarred us all, those who went and those who didn't go. The severity and appearance of the wounds and scars may vary widely, but they are ever present.

Dr. Gregory Kotonias is a retired professor of psychiatry and Lay Minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church. Prior to his retirement he taught medical students and residents at Tufts, Harvard and Boston University's medical schools and he was an adjunct faculty member at the Berklee College of Music and Skidmore College. He served for many years as a psychiatric consultant to the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and the Massachusetts Bar Association.