455 Days: Living Beyond Vietnam

By Robert J. Conine

It was like I was in battle, and a barrage of weaponry was thrown at me, like misgivings, haunting memories, and tears that were so poignantly and strategically shot. I had no defense, and in my mind, I became a casualty of war, believing I was wounded, lying in a hospital bed, relieved to be safe and out of the war. When I got home, I left the war in Vietnam, and once I was on American soil, life started over. The past was the past. The challenge of the next fifty years was to keep it in the past. But that wasn’t always easy. I had nightmares that subsided only when everyday life challenges took precedence in our family. I had moments of depression and guilt and memories that filled the spaces brought on by scents, sights, and sounds. I couldn’t read stories about Vietnam or view Vietnam films or war movies. I kept them out of my life. I had fifty years of denial, but one day, God, whom I kept in my back pocket, pulled my past out and placed it before me, demanding that I confront it. I prayed, “My God, who am I? Please help me,” and the rest is history. I am still dealing with it, but I am at peace. My spirit was wounded; now I’m healed. My story has changed over the years, but now it has a happy ending. This story represents one soldier’s feelings during battles and the daily regimen of a soldier waiting to fulfill their 365-day stint in ’Nam. It is the story of one man’s true feelings frozen for fifty years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638854302

Book preview

America Is Manipulated by Politicians

The politicians and the military are trying to convince soldiers that patriotism is a tool to serve as their personal objective and is in the best interest of the United States. This was the excuse for being involved with Vietnam. We were deceived just so the war would suit their purpose. The politicians even deceived themselves. The war was good for big business. We are still paying the final bills with our children. This war was expensive and painful to our lives and our pockets. Why wouldn’t soldiers have a deep-seated disregard or distrust of the federal government? Even our presidents were misinformed or lying to conceal truths. Nixon, in his power, promised to end the hostilities for his first four years in office and his second term for a Paris peace conference. He sent almost as many men to their death as Johnson sent in trying to stop alleged Communist expansion. They were both ill advised and irresponsible as presidents.

Some Other Dimension

Please don’t take this the wrong way. Every war left its mark. Every war is devastating. Every war is hell. But the Vietnam War was fought with mostly draftees, soldiers who were told to serve for a cause that was unclear to all parties involved. Unlike a game of checkers where the pieces are either black or white, in Vietnam, the enemy was all over. North or South, in the jungle or hamlet, base camp or villas, Charlie was hiding. Mama sans, papa sans, children, barbers, hooch cleaners, laundry workers, merchandisers, shop keepers—all could be your ally during the day or your enemy during the night. You found out who was your enemy the next morning. It was usually a shock, an eye opener. It just made you more apprehensive and wiser the next moment. That was a short time frame, like your next breath.

If I Could Only Imagine

When I was serving my time in Vietnam and even before I heard about the war protests and peace marches, I heard about the descent to Canada and the AWOL cases. I heard about the clashes with the police on the marches objecting to the Vietnam War and the conscientious objectors. I heard about Jane Fonda wanting to go to North Vietnam and try to talk peace with them when we couldn’t even decide the dimensions of a peace table. I objected to this philosophy and anyone who protested the war. The American GI didn’t have a choice. We had to go. I know we had a choice to go AWOL or to Canada, elope to another state and not be found, but realistically in the end, who could we trust being on the run like The Fugitive, which was the number one show playing on our boob tubes for years. No, we thought we would be brave and stick our necks out.

I thought Jane Fonda going to North Vietnam was like throwing shrapnel in our faces, worse than actually being shot by Charlie. I thought those thousands deserting to Canada were wimps, pansies, and chickens. I thought the hippies carrying signs didn’t give us respect. And it didn’t matter if you didn’t want to go to ’Nam; just suck it up. Now years later, I have a change of heart. I do forgive them. After going through the war and seeing hell play out before my eyes, I sympathize with them. After seeing the wounds of the Vietnamese children and the scratches and scars on their bodies, I sympathize with them. After seeing the one arm and one-legged GIs and the pathetic children hobbling around, I sympathize.

Then there was LBJ who didn’t know what to do except to put a feather in his own cap and think the war decision would benefit him and his cronies. Should we bomb or not? All of us in ’Nam said, Let’s get it over with. Bomb them until they give up. We knew some of us would be killed; however, fewer is better than all of us perishing. I think this was a turning point in the war, and we soldiers all thought this would have turned defeat into a victory.

In a letter to my sister dated October 20, 1968, I wrote the following:

They are still trying to get a bombing halt I see, but it is too good to be true now. I put another editorial in the paper; they probably won’t print this one. I really shocked it to them about Johnson. But if he can pull this out of the bag over here, he will have my apologies. I can’t understand why they could not have done it before though instead of just before war. I could probably talk all day with people on Vietnam and give them my opinion of it—most of them bad and I would tell them ways in which we should work over here, but it is impossible and I’m not the president.

If we could only imagine just for a moment, if a different strategy would be available and used during war times that could alter the outcome of a war and cause no loss of life, would a nation use it? It is already at our disposal, but no one uses it. It is called love. If the peace marchers would have started their crusade earlier in the ’60s, it may have altered our involvement in ’Nam and may have had a different outcome. They affected Nixon’s agenda, and the war started to deescalate. However, the enemy remained aggressive, and their territory had no boundaries. The antiwar marches were not as aggressive, and wars like Desert Storm and Afghanistan still take their toll on lives lost.

If nations would harness all the energy war protests exert toward love and peace, this world would be more inhabitable for all peoples. There are a few nations that want more of what others have. It is called greed and power. When there is greed and the desire for more power, wars are inevitable. God said there would be wars and rumors of wars. God also said, Love one another as I have love for one another (John 13:34). Can we imagine what our world for our children would be like, if only?

Rubik’s Cube

We all know what a Rubik’s Cube is. The dictionary describes it as a puzzle consisting of a cube with colored faces made of twenty-six smaller colored blocks attached to a spindle in the center. The object is to rotate the blocks until each face of the cube is a single color. I couldn’t ever get it back to the original state without cheating. My grandson could master the Rubik’s Cube.

Sometimes I think of Vietnam as a Rubik’s Cube. There were so many colors, so many variations, so many ways to mess up, but only one way to win. Wars are won only when leaders have the best strategies, and even then, it is at a cost. It seems no one really wins. Take the Vietnam peasants—they hated us and America because they were victimized and manipulated by our country. Our politicians paid tribute to America’s morals and values, but our inherited qualities were never allowed to interfere with corporate profiteering or military adventuring. This again reminds me of the Rubik’s Cube. You can win if you cheat and look at the puzzle solution. There is an easy way out at the expense of others, the American veteran and the Vietnamese people. The American soldiers in Vietnam were honorable, deserving praise, and sincere. This can be said of the Iraq or any other war veteran. However, our government, along with the industry, lied and maneuvered and manipulated us. They told us it was our duty. We were obligated to serve but really obligated to die for corporations at profits. We were taught to fight, to kill, destroy, disfigure, and harm our own kind. Then there was Agent Orange and now PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as if we didn’t have it also.

Then there were those career military lifers who were willing to advance their career by jeopardizing our lives for their gain.

Our basic American values have survived, and the new generations have taken up the cause despite the casualties along the way. We had Agent Orange. Now, it is the effects of the depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan, and like Agent Orange who is going to be accountable? It seems to me when it comes to military operations, death and destruction has no limits, and there is no blame. I’m afraid when it comes to these continued atrocities, we have little hope in our government. Still there are good people who are charitable and kind to one another and have hope in America. We would like to believe our family values we learned and were stated by our forefathers would be retained. I pray they will.

Reflections

The war is over. Its fifty years later. I was discharged from the army May 9, 1969—a date I shall never forget! My fiancée’s brother was in the Navy. He got killed in an auto accident driving back from an Air Force party. He was buried May 9, 1969.

That was the day I was to forget everything I had been exposed to in Vietnam. All memories were suppressed and blocked out, my choice. I wanted to go back to normalcy, a normal life in a normal community. I didn’t care if someone or anyone knew I was a veteran. I say this not to make fun or berate the Army, government, or my buddy veterans, but it was to be for my own good. My own health and mental state were in jeopardy. I just knew what I had to do. I didn’t want to remember anything. The problem about remembering is you don’t forget. It replays over and over in your mind unless your body is busy, and that’s exactly what I did. After I drove around and drove myself into insanity, I had a six pack from time to time. I was invited to church and met this sophisticated lady. That’s what someone told me. However, she was all that and more—charming, beautiful, and very scholarly. I saw her as my wife very soon. She got me involved in church, and for the next fifty years, I was busy hiding my memories and thoughts. It worked until I accidentally read a book about Vietnam and the American soldier. My recess was over. The memories came back like an assault on my real me. I dealt with it one day at a time. It was not without sadness, tears, and withdrawal like a dope addict. But I never did dope. Here is my story.

Things Remembered, Things Forgotten

As we grow older, we seem to remember our childhood as we see it through the eyes of our offspring. Otherwise, we may not remember or want to remember our childhood years. But life has a way of reflections illuminating through our memories. Some of these flashbacks are like ghost stories dangling in our past, waiting to come forth from a dark closet. We have to protect these actual experiences, and our brains can control these emotions at our disposal. There are these times, though, when the smallest reminders prick our mental alertness. I can’t seem to forget the things I remembered from the past even if I wanted to. These pieces of memory are broken remnants that pop in and out of your mind.

I remember the fog in Vietnam. I could see the environment around me closed off from the real picture. I could see one granule, one droplet of water floating in air with the other condensational mist. It was a blur, all these molecular specs bumping together forming a shroud over my front. There was no place to go even if I wanted to escape. There was no beginning; there was no end, just more of the same, an iron curtain in a different war. All my emotions, all my dreams, all my worries, all my fears came crashing in on me, and I felt helpless. Along with the darkness, I remembered more darkness. It was 1968, and I thought about the draft-card burnings at home. I thought about the burning and smoke in Detroit. I thought about the National Guard and what role they would play. I thought about the Ku Klux Klan. In my county in Michigan, the Klan leader Robert Miles lived. I thought about all the neighbors and friends he had and how they secretly sympathized with his philosophy. I thought about how close Canada was to Detroit and how I could easily find refuge from going to ’Nam.

I thought about the nation taking up their own arms, becoming vigilantes. Then there were the political upheavals and the list of war casualties broadcast at home and in ’Nam. The world chaos and the Vietnam fears churning in my mind and twisting my stomach all carried over the threshold of fear and the unknown. I was sick to my stomach. Pepto-Bismol and Alka-Seltzer wouldn’t ease the discomfort. Nothing would help but a letter from the draft board saying, We regret we made a mistake. Please accept our apologies. I could go back to what I was doing, what I was dreaming of. But the fog was real; the darkness was real. The place was real. This was ’Nam.

A Vietnam Nightmare

I have talked with many Vietnam buddies, and we certainly have camaraderie with each other. Sometimes just a few words spoken offer assurance that we were not alone. We may have served miles apart and in different years.

If and when the conversation gets deep and personal, a character, comment, or trait develops in their thought and brings forth something that is happening in their life. It stems from the Vietnam tour and causes a dramatic change in their personality. This one recurring dream flashback or a nightmare happens frequently. It happens night or day inside; it seems to put the veteran in a state of melancholy, a stupor, or a sudden change of awareness to the outside world. It is kind of a pensive state. It may be sad and happy where you may want to keep hold of a euphoric moment. It may last thirty seconds, one minute, or five minutes, and then it’s back to reality. At night it is in a dream where the veteran is awakened in his sleep, and it may be the same recurring dream, and the veteran may not remember except to be startled by the dream or nightmare.

I know many veterans suffer from PTSD, and part of this depression may be episodes that are sparked by anything that is developing in a normal or abnormal day; they can be disruptive and distracting. One might think the veteran has an attention deficit disorder, but PTSD does have the characteristics of ADD. PTSD may seem like a relatively simple concept, but it is a mental illness linked to trauma caused in the military service in combat. Reports indicate 10 percent of women and 5 percent of men are diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime and suffer some adverse effects from this trauma. Current scientific understanding is that experiencing traumatic events can change the way our brains work. Researchers also say that the body keeps score when it comes to remembering trauma. As humans we are programmed to react to threats to our safety. Unfortunately, this adaptive response in the face of danger can leave people with ongoing, long-term psychological symptoms. This is what happened to my brother. He served in the Korean War and came home and developed PTSD. It took years for doctors to diagnose his condition, and after twenty years of battling this disease, he died at the age of fifty-two. Scientists, researchers, and doctors knew little about this mental condition, and still, we are not quite behind the eight ball. I learned so much about my brother’s condition that helped me assess my condition with PTSD, and I could readily admit to the similarities, the struggles, and how to deal and cope with post-traumatic stress disorder.

When the parts of the brain where memory, emotion, and thinking are processed get turned off, human beings tend to react to threats involving their safety. This spawns a fight attitude in them until the threat is gone.

I remember my brother became angry, antagonistic, and belligerent when he went into an episode. My brothers and sisters reacted in a positive way to counter his anguish and try to avert an abrasive situation. This is the only thing we knew, and it was our instinct to help him overcome the situation and change his demeanor, and most of the time, it worked until the next time. My brother would have been helped with therapy; however, it was not offered at the time. PTSD was fairly new, and the assistance available to veterans was little.

It wasn’t until I accepted my diagnosis when I learned about my PTSD and how I could cope with it better. Certain conditions and traits I saw in my brother tipped me off to my condition and alerted me to future problems. When our brother was into one of these episodes, as we referred to them, we tried to divert his attention to a safer atmosphere. He seemed to be in a fight situation, and we knew in order for us to be safe, we all had to give him an escape route out of his dark time. I called it a flight out of his dilemma. It was like he needed to be turned off and taken away from this unsafe environment. Diverting his attention changed his behavior mode.

There is another key element in PTSD that I learned and saw in my brother that I have dealt with also—hypo and hyper arousal. Hypo arousal is characterized by numbness and avoidance, which represent self-protective efforts by the brain to keep overwhelming feelings under control. Hyper arousal is a much-heightened startle response to triggers seen as threatening. After the traumas and after surviving it, the body remains on alert to prevent another traumatic experience. Without the proper help, veterans living with PTSD have a difficult time regulating their emotional and physical responses. Body-based changes help explain why a veteran reacts to different sounds and sights, for instance the sound of fireworks or a helicopter flying overhead. As a result of these PTSD-related biological changes, the ability to tell the difference between a real threat and a perceived threat can be weakened.

My brother was living a perceived threat as real every day. When he needed help, he didn’t know how to get it and used alcohol to mask his feelings. His health deteriorated, and his condition with PTSD worsened. He lived each day in the safest way he knew, and that was like he was still in the service. He was an excellent hunter and spent much time hunting deer, rabbit, and squirrel. He felt safe in the woods, and he became the stalker and there was nothing to fear. But when alone and idle, his dreams and nightmares ruled his life and were so real. My brothers and sisters and I tried to figure him out, and how we wished we could have helped him. Unfortunately, his battles came home from Korea with him.

When growing up, we heard words like shell-shocked, battle fatigue, and combat fatigue tossed around but never really understood what it meant except we knew he was wounded in Korea but he never would talk about it. We saw his Purple Heart, but he never showed it much, if at all.

My brother suffered from anxiety. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, he was in and out of the vets’ hospital and given heavy dosages of medication for anxiety and depression. Mental health experts now recognize anxiety, the umbrella term that includes social anxiety and PTSD, as a legitimate brain disorder, sharing some of the same underpinnings as depression.

Today 31 percent of adults in the US will experience an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. There have been extensive studies done, and more doctors are prescribing pills. But this short-term fix has become a long-term problem.

If I knew then what I know now about PTSD, I could have helped my brother cope with his problems. He was on heavy dosages of medication, and at times he walked around like a zombie. He wasn’t in total control with his PTSD, and he wasn’t in control of his life after. I watched him at times, and he became helpless. It was sad to see him deteriorate in time. I can now understand his feelings and really relate to his condition. I would watch all his actions. Some made sense; others were off-the-wall. I now know why he acted so strange, even changing his personality in the twinkle of an eye. The other day I was out for a walk, and ten minutes into the walk, I heard this helicopter overhead, and my train of thoughts stopped as if I was in midair. Everything around stopped moving, or so it seemed. Tears came to my eyes, and I became very emotional. I didn’t feel sad; actually, I felt overcome with security and was glad life had paused and I was caught up in the moment. After the helicopter had gone out of sight, I resumed with my walk and wondered what had taken place. I know it was some mechanism in my brain that kicks in when danger approaches but there was no danger, but my brain doesn’t know this, and I take action to compensate for it. The result is not to fight but take flight and avoid any kind of trauma, and it is substituted with a strong feeling of happiness. It’s like euphoria; I felt confident. Everything was good. I felt good. I was in control of my life. I have baggage and accept my PTSD. I’m in therapy, and it has helped me to deal with and live with it. When I was diagnosed with PTSD, it was a shock. I found it by accident. I went to the veterans’ counselor to inquire about a claim. They suggested I go to the VA hospital to be examined first and come back and present their findings. In the process, I saw the doctors and was sent to see a psychiatrist to be checked for PTSD. It turns out that it was severe enough to go to therapy. It’s taken two years, and it has helped me tremendously. If I hadn’t followed through with the recommendations, I don’t exactly know where I would be at with all of this. It turned out very beneficial for me.

The Veterans Administration counselor also had PTSD and was very helpful in getting me the proper help. We remain close today, and I’m thankful for his assistance. He told me to go and help another vet. I have done that and will continue to help as many veterans as I can. I know there are more Vietnam veterans that need help and go unnoticed every day.

Reaching the veterans for information is easy. Every state county has VA offices that serviced veterans locally. Important phone numbers to remember are the following:

Veterans’ crisis line: 800-273-8255

Telephone care center after hours: 888-838-6446

Health-care benefits: 877-222-8387

VA benefits: 800-827-1000

A Poem

The snow melt recedes

back up into the bank

along the sides of road

running creeks by the curb

just like life memories go back

it comes with a bang

and then routines and time erode

the snow thaws as temperature rises

a trickle here, a trickle there

until an ever-flowing stream

makes its way to a lower point

the snow shrinks

the ice crystals form

the earth in drab returns unsurprised

it won’t be long

and spring returns

sprigs of grass

and new twigs appear

the birds fly about

scouring fresh food

ending each day with a new song

how true it is like life

we rise and we fall

we bid new ways

we stay with the old

we make new boundaries

we capture our own.

My Safe Vietnam

My last year in high school, I took a world history and government class taught by the same teacher. She was a much-older teacher, probably in her early seventies. She knew her history and the government of many countries. In 1961, the year I graduated, Ms. Warner gave me my first taste of Vietnam. She taught also about Cambodia and Laos. She was very informative and made the class interesting. She taught about the regimes, the presidents, and all the military leaders including President Diem of South Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh from North Vietnam. We discussed the pros and cons about Communism and the dictatorial Diem administration. Ms. Warner had done her homework. She seemed to know more than we could ever understand as young minds. Two years after I graduated, in 1963, the political scene was disrupted by the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government and the assassination of President Diem. Almost two years of political unrest and turmoil followed before the crisis was resolved. I somehow think Ms. Warner had predicted a long battle but maybe didn’t want to scare the young minds she was teaching to get alarmed. I never forgot her speeches and her teaching about Vietnam. I really never thought I would have to go