Download PDF of this full issue: v17n1.pdf (15.9 MB)

Welcome Home Stan Verketis

By Bob Hanson

In April of 1968, Stan Verketis was assigned to Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Parachute Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade. He joined his company LZ English, a forward-area landing zone outside the rural village of Bong Son and an area of South Vietnam known, in military jargon, as II Cops (pronounced "two-core"). The Army didn't take much notice of him. He was a good soldier, he followed orders and stayed out of trouble. The Vietnamese didn't pay much attention. He was just another soldier in a war that had gone on for generations. With luck, "X'in Loi" as the locals said (roughly, "Sorry about that"). Vietnam was a fairyland of picture book rice farms and exotic animals in National Geographic jungles, but this tale held a thousand bitter twists. The fairy tale had been rewritten and this time the three bears ate Goldilocks.

Stan learned the skills necessary to his survival here. He learned to drop at the sound of gunfire, to tell the difference between incoming and outgoing dire (even in his sleep), and to listen to everything, especially at night. One of the most important skills was the ability to forget what he saw so that he could sleep. Those who couldn't forget had to find other ways, other refuges. Alcohol and other drugs; were plentiful, and were consumed openly in large quantities.

On September 24, Stan learned something else. He learned firsthand exactly how it felt to step on a 105mm round booby trap with two good legs, and to hit the ground moments later with none. He was picked up by MedEvac helicopter and was taken to Company B (Medical) of the 173rd, back in LZ English. He looked into the faces of the medics and doctors in the underground bunker treatment area and he knew. A doctor ran a spurlike instrument up and down what was left of his feet trying to find evidence intact nerves. It was no good. He would lose his legs. He felt nothing, nothing but the pain. It was getting worse all the time. Give him something for the pain. I was there somewhere. I was another staring nineteen-year-old face in that bunker. I probably helped as Stan was loaded on to another chopper and taken to a hospital in Da Nang. From there he went to Tokyo, and from Tokyo to Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. I don't remember Stan. I can't recall his face in my walking hours. I have forgotten much of that bunker and most of those who came to us for help. Occasionally, in my dreams, they still come and even now I simple can't do enough.. There are too many, and I am ignorant. I don't know enough. I don't know what to do. I wake up, and my wife rubs my shoulders Once again, I forgot.

Stan disappeared. He was swallowed by the VA bureaucracy. I had some sort of naive notion that as long as we got people home alive, they were OK. Mostly, I just didn't think about it. I was busy trying to heal myself after I got back and I had forgotten. We all had.

Meanwhile, Stan got out of Letterman. For once, he left a hospital with more than he had had when he entered. He now had a drug habit. He got married and had two daughters. I don't know much about his wife except that she left him. She took their daughters with her. Stan had been involved in a drug rehabilitation program through the VA but found himself drinking instead. She couldn't take any more and she left, probably around the time my first wide let me. We find a lot of parallels when we vets sit down and compare postwar histories.

Somewhere along the line, the counselors stopped being helpful. One went so far as to suggest that jail might be good for him. Stan switched off. He no longer had enough incentive to keep fighting. Something was wrong with him. He couldn't identify it and neither could anyone else. He was defective, useless to society, a disposable. No one knew. No one cared. He was one more of us who satirically labeled ourselves "DCBKVs": Drug-Crazed Baby-Killer Vets, after the media image of the Vietnam vet at the time. We were aliens, volatile, emotionally and physically dependent, lonely suicidal. Each of us was sure in his own mind that he was the only one, that everyone else was okay. No one had ever heard of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, so we were creeps, jerks, losers.

Stan felt so alone, so unnecessary, so hopeless that he decided to die. What he couldn't know was that even suicide wouldn't go smoothly for him. Somewhere inside, a tiny part of him still hoped for a better life ahead, and he didn't manage to kill himself. Tragically, a police officer left lost his life trying to prevent the suicide, and Stan now faces murder charges in addition to his other problems.

He is something like a monument in my mind, this legless vet. He was lost more than flesh and bone, and there had been very little effort made to restore him to himself. Instead of recognition, or even just the treatment he is owed, he was reaped a grim harvest of neglect and indifference. Where is his parade? Who will welcome him home? Who even cares? I do. I care. It may not sound like much, but welcome home, Stan Verketis. Welcome home, brother.

—Bob Hanson, Pembine, WI