Download PDF of this full issue: v17n2.pdf (14.2 MB)

Does It Hurt Inside?

By VVAW

[This article is taken intact from The First Casualty, VVAW's earliest newspaper; this is form Volume II, Number 1, dated July 1972. There has been a lot of work done on posttraumatic stress since this article was written, but the article is as true today as it was when it was written 15 years ago.]

Until recently, psychological "disturbances" developing from combat experiences have been viewed as something that really affects only a few people. The classic example of a man suffering from "combat fatigue " has been with us since World War I. The word is never passed on about the people who, for one reason or another were able to maintain under such stress, and upon returning to their society are unable to adjust and go through their own form of "combat fatigue."

Today a phenomenon has developed from our current war in Vietnam in the form of the troops coming home and "talking about the war." Not only talking about what the war isn't but what it is as they lived it. As an outgrowth of this move on behalf of these returning veterans and current trends being developed in group sessions, some puzzling questions are beginning to be answered.

Dr. C.F. Shatan, past professor and Clinic Coordinator of the Post Doctoral Psychotherapy Training Program of New York University, while working in rap sessions with New York members of VVAW, developed a diagnosis of the situation calling it a Post Vietnam Syndrome." The syndrome tends to be broken down to roughly nine different aspects, some or all of which can generally be relative to any individual.

1. Guilt feelings
2. Self punishment
3. Feelings of being a scapegoat
4. Identification with the aggressor—no outlet for bitterness and hatred
5. Dead place in oneself—"psychic numbing"
6. Alienation—Xenophobia
7. Doubts about ability to love and trust other human beings again
8. Post Vietnam Syndrome is really distorted mourning arising out of active discouragement of open grief by the military in a climate of death.
9. Need to account for apparent absence of similar syndrome in World War II vets. Two are of particular interest—unusual group cohesion, and counter-insurgency training (with habituation to universal terror as chief weapon.)

Dr. Shatan also observed that "Vietnam vets need intensive working through of their experiences (debriefing) to overcome an official attitude of dehumanized 'antigrief.'"

Van Dale Todd

The first "official" America to die in Vietnam was James T. Davis, SP/4, Third Radio Research Unit, 1961, 25 years old.

One of the last "unofficial" American deaths caused by America's involvement in Vietnam is Van Dale Todd.

On Wednesday, May 24, 1972, Van Dale Todd died. He was a very active member of the San Francisco VVAW chapter and one of the 16 people who occupied an Air Force Recruiting Station in San Francisco. Van was a former member of the 101st Airborne and served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970.

Van, along with all the other brothers an sisters of VVAW wanted and worked unceasingly for peace and an end to "man's inhumanity towards his fellow man." A world in which all men and women would enjoy freedom, justice, dignity, and the right to live, to learn, and to love. The right to be human.

His pleadings, protests and demonstrations consistently fell on the deafened ears and blinded eyes of the government that sent him to war.

His frustrations mounted, and finally he couldn't take the nightmares ad the pain of this war anymore. In this state of extreme frustration he reached for the thing he perceived to be the answer: the "chemical cocoon" that this barbaric government provided him with.

Just prior to Van dropping these pills he talked about the way his outfit treated the Vietnamese women and children; he is another casualty of this genocide.

When the VA was contacted for help, we were told that his death was not directly service connected so the VA was not liable and would not help us.

Van was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery on May 27, 1972. VVAW made all the funeral arrangements; he was buried in his fatigues and VVAW button.

We will miss our brother, but he would not want us to mourn him.

We will not mourn this brother's death. WE WILL intensify the struggle to stop the war at home and abroad, remembering our brother's great love for peace and the many examples he set for us in California.

Van is one more victim of this government and should be counted among the millions who have been maimed and murdered. The best way to honor the memory of our brothers is to continue to work for peace and justice.