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Honorable Service, Shameful War

By Raymond Reed Hardy

I served in the 1st Cav in 1968/69. It was not all that much fun. When I got back to the World, I pushed it all out of my head. Gone. A few people asked me, "What was it like?" But most just didn't seem to be aware that I was a veteran and that was fine by me. I was ashamed.

That was then, this is now. I am no longer ashamed of my service. I am still ashamed of my country for doing to Vietnam what we did and for doing what we did to Iraq. If I were president on 9/11 things would have been very, very different. But hindsight, though it may not actually be 20/20, is still better than foresight.

But, I owe a huge debt to the VA for the recent transition from shame to pride for my voluntary service in Vietnam. That's right, I was RA. How stupid was that? But, you guys who read these VVAW newsletters, you remember how it was. I was 1-A fresh out of college. I KNEW I was going to Vietnam. Maybe I can control my fate by signing up? On the other hand, there may have been a tiny urge left over from my adolescent hormone storm telling me that it might be fun to be in the Infantry. Maybe, I'm sayin'. Maybe....

But regardless. I came home totally, totally fucked up! I mean what sane man would not have come home from serving in Vietnam in the US Army Infantry totally messed up? Really! Think about it. There we were in a beautiful country burning down bamboo villages, shooting children and bombing civilians in North Vietnam the whole time. This was, in my opinion at the time, unAmerican! I have since decided that maybe such acts are actually quite American. At very least, they are in keeping with Republican Americans like George W. Bush, Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld not to mention Donald Trump. Not nearly as unAmerican as I thought. Still...

So how did the VA help me find my truth and relieve my guilt? The short answer is PTSD counseling. I had no idea that I even HAD PTSD. I thought it was perfectly normal to shout at my kids, throw what I considered poorly-cooked beef roast in the garbage and smash my guitar to smithereens in a fit of rage. NOT! I mean now my wife's counselor agrees that she has been suffering from PTSD from living with a PTSD veteran. And I think she is right! So, what happened was dramatic. I was encouraged to see this VA counselor who could determine if I was possibly suffering from PTSD. She asked me a bunch of questions. They seemed pretty neutral mostly. I mean like where do I like to sit in restaurants? Do I ever feel a little nervous when in super large groups like a football stadium? Etc...

What happened when the questions were all answered was really the beginning of my new life. She said, Well, according to the numbers here, you have a pretty severe case of PTSD. When I heard this, I cried like a baby. Why did I cry? I was again ashamed. I did not want to be one of those veterans who had been "broken" by the experience. I did not want to know that my family and I had been suffering all these years and I didn't do anything about it. But there it was, right in my face.

Over the next three years my counselor and I worked through most of my rage. I cried and I laughed. We used EMDR very successfully to uncover stuff that I had tried so hard to forget that it hurt. Here I will tell just one little story to help you see how this kind of work can help. I was doing EMDR and just trying to remember stuff. I mean I still can not remember most of that year. But this was the first day in the field after that little training thing the First Cav put us through when we arrived in the Nam. No actually, it was the second day. I had arrived on the chopper that had carried the supper rations out to the company. That night I "slept" on one of the trees they had blown down to make the pad. It was at about a 30 degree angle, but I chose to sleep there because some of men said there were leeches on the ground.

So, early the next morning we move out. I am outfitted with two bandoleers of M-60 ammo and told that I'm a part of the machine gun team. Okay... So, we are moving down this nice trail when up in front all hell breaks loose. Small arms fire and grenade launcher explosions shatter my hope of an uneventful year in the Nam. A man shouts "I'm hit! I'm hit!" and then all is quiet again. Of course, by this time, I am practically a part of the nearby vegetation as I take cover under a fallen tree. Then I hear a man stage whisper, "Hey Ray...." I don't answer. After all, how does he know I can hear him? Then again, a little louder, "Hey Ray!" I wait what seems forever, but at least long enough for him to know I'm scared shitless.

Then I say, "What?"

"Come on. It's all clear."

So I go ahead and walking with my M-16 at the ready in a semi-crouch, I round a corner in the trail and all of a sudden there everybody is standing around watching me slink around the corner in full combat fear mode. What made it worse was that they were all smiling like Cheshire cats! I felt totally and irrevocably ashamed of my cowardice. There I was the first day with the company and they all knew I was a fucking coward. Total humiliation. Needless to say, it didn't take me long to forget that experience.

But, as I sat with the EMDR machine pulling my eyes back and forth and the sound in my ears pulling my attention along with my eyes, I saw it all from the point of view of a more mature man. I suddenly understood that those men were not thinking I was a coward. They were looking at the new guy as he rounded the bend in the trail with his rifle at the ready expecting anything. They were saying, without the words to say it, "Welcome to the 1st Cav." I had passed the test. I had the balls to walk TOWARD the gunfire.

Suddenly as I saw young and terrified self from the point of view of my more mature self I knew the truth and I cried again. I cried great tears of relief. I had been carrying around this bolus of shame deep within. Never allowing myself to look at it, yet always feeling like I was unworthy. The relief I felt was palpable. What a wonderful thing.

Since those early days of counseling I have come to recognize that it was precisely BECAUSE I was so afraid that I was a hero. I was scared to death and I still rounded that corner. I am not saying I was the only hero in that company. Later that year I watched every last man in that company do hero's deeds time and again. From the Captain to the lowliest E-2 we served with pride and distinction. Company A, Fifth Batalion of the Seventh Brigade.

Let there be no doubt. Many of us felt shame because we were serving in a war that was not right, but we served our country as well as we could in spite of that shame. And, because of that shame, we came home with more than physical wounds. We came home with psychological wounds and even more troubling we came home with moral wounds.

Did all this make me any less an American? Not at all. This is my country. And now, instead of fighting with weapons I fight with words, dollars that support my candidates, and my vote. It is what American patriots do. How about you?

Raymond Reed Hardy is a VVAW member living in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He was in the Army from 1967 to 1969.