Tom Glenn's Blog, page 179

PTSI (3)

Yesterday I talked about how I found ways to live with my Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). By May of 1975, after escaping under fire during the fall of Saigon, I knew I needed psychological help. But I held top-secret-codeword-plus security clearances. Had I gone for therapy, I would have lost my clearances and my job. I had to handle it on my own.

One method of coping I described yesterday—writing down what happened thereby forcing myself to face the memories. The other method was helping others.

Some instinct in my soul guided me toward working with people a lot worse off than I was. During the AIDS crisis, I volunteered to be a buddy to men dying of the disease. I did everything for them. I bathed them, dressed them, fed them, did their laundry, accompanied them when they were well enough to venture out, stayed with them when no one else would. In short, I helped them die. Over five years, I worked seven patients. They were all gay; they all died. One result was another novel, No-Accounts.

When the AIDS crisis passed, I worked with the homeless for two years, spent seven years ministering to the dying in a hospice, and helped sick and dying veterans in a VA hospital.

I found that when my attention was rivetted on people who needed my help, my hideous memories faded into the background. I learned that compassion heals.

So I’ve come to terms with my PTSI. I know it will never go away. The memories will never fade. My grief and shock will be with me as long as I live. But I’m content knowing that I did the best I could for my country and especially for my fellow combatants. I’ve found an imperfect peace. I am at rest.

PTSI (2)

I spoke yesterday of Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) and its effects on me. Several aspects of that discussion deserve further attention.

Readers ask, how did I get cured of PTSI. The answer is I didn’t. There is no cure. The best a victim can hope for is to learn to cope. Two activities helped me—I’ll speak of one today, writing. Tomorrow I’ll address about the other.

About writing: I’d been writing stories since I was six, so when I returned to the U.S. after the fall of Saigon, I wrote and wrote about my experiences in combat and during the fall of Saigon. That forced me to face the memories head-on and prevented me from doing what I wanted to do—drive the recollections from the conscious mind and not think about them. That would have relegated them to the unconscious where they would fester and come back to haunt me. I ended up writing a novel about a man who did that, The Trion Syndrome.

Combatants who don’t come to terms with their memories are condemned to suffer flashbacks, irrational rages, nightmares, and panic attacks. The only way to go on living rationally is to bring the memories into the conscious mind and learn to live with them.

The rate of suicides among veterans is 22 percent higher than among the non-veteran population, according to the Veterans Administration (VA). Another way to express that number is that 22 of us die each day by our own hand. Of those, some 65 percent are 50 or older.

Among Vietnam veterans, 31 percent suffer from PTSI, according to the VA, a rate much greater than among veterans from later wars. I suspect the figure for Vietnam vets is actually much higher—a human being can’t go through combat without soul damage. I’m persuaded that the numbers reflect what happens to the human soul over time. The longer the memories are suppressed, the more virulent they become. My forecast is that the figures for PTSI among veterans from later wars will go up as time passes.

Finally, an aspect of PTSI rarely discussed is the sense of loss when the guy fighting next to you dies. Noted elsewhere is this blog, in the thick of combat, the combatant is fighting for the man or woman standing next to him. The bond among men who fight side by side is the strongest love I’ve ever experienced. Soldiers and Marines don’t use the word love—that’s too sentimental. But that’s what it is.

When a fellow combatant dies, especially if his death is grisly, the loss is devastating. Inevitable, too, is guilt: why him and not me?

More tomorrow.

PTSI

My review last month of events during the fall of Saigon forty-three years ago led me to speak of Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). Readers have been asking for more basic information about the malady and how and why it affected me. At the risk of repeating data presented here earlier, here’s my answer.

The Mayo Clinic defines PTSI as “a mental health condition that’s triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it.” It affects not only combatants but anyone who has lived through a great horror. The best-known sufferers other than those who have experienced combat are women who have been subjected to rape.

I call it “injury” rather than “disorder” because it is an externally inflicted wound, not an internal disfunction. Several writers call it a wound to the soul. I want to stress that reacting with horror to events like combat or rape is healthy. Not responding reflects, in my view, a lack of healthy humanity.

I knew men in Vietnam who enjoyed combat and looked forward to killing. It was obvious to me that these men lacked the full range of human emotion—they were stunted human beings. The clear majority of us hated combat and endured it because it was our duty to our country, our fellow citizens, and, most of all, to our fellow combatants. In other words, we fought first and foremost for the guy standing next to us. When we witnessed the brutal killing of our combat buddy, we were permanently damaged.

My sense is that Americans who have never gone through combat think that the killing is clean and quick, e.g., a bullet through the brain resulting in instant and painless death. Nothing could be further from reality. The killing is grisly—everything from being burned alive to being ripped apart. The deaths and woundings I witnessed were so hideous that I still can’t speak of them today. And the victims were men I loved.

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (26)

One piece of information learned long after the fall of Saigon changed my view of what happened:

Sometime around 2010, George Veith, who was then researching his book on the fall of Vietnam, Black April (Encounter Books, 2012), told me what his perusal of newly translated North Vietnamese documents has brought to light: On the morning of 29 April 1975, as we waited at Tan Son Nhat to be evacuated, the North Vietnamese 28th Regiment was en route to attack us. But as the unit’s tanks passed over the last bridge into to Saigon before dawn, the bridge collapsed. The regiment was forced to take a detour and didn’t arrive at Tan Son Nhat until the morning of 30 April. By then, we were gone.

Had the regiment reached us on schedule, my communicators and I at worst would have been killed, at best taken prisoner. Because we were intelligence personnel—spies—repeated torture and brutal incarceration for at least a year would have been inevitable.

There, but for the grace of a fallen bridge, went I.

April 1975 in Vietnam (25): The Plaque

A year or two after the fall of Saigon, as I struggled to cope with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury, we NSAers who had worked together in Saigon at the end got together for dinner to share reminiscences. At the conclusion of the meal, my guys presented me with a plaque. The text reads:

Last Man Out Award

Thomas Glenn III   29 April 1975

MACV HQS Saigon Republic of South Vietnam

The fall of Saigon will always remain a monumental tragedy in U.S. history. This is to finally recognize your exceptional leadership while safely evacuating all your DODSPECREP employees and the closing down shop amid the chaos and danger of those final days.

The women and men and dependents of F46.

End of text. About the nomenclature: The presence of NSA in Vietnam was classified. Our cover was Department of Defense Special Representative, abbreviated as DODSPECREP, and our unclassified designation was F46.

That plaque and my Civilian Meritorious Medal remain today my most precious possessions.

April 1975 in Vietnam (24)

More on my recovery following the fall of Saigon forty-three years ago at the end of April 1975:

There’s no doubt in my mind that anyone who has been through combat suffers to some degree from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), which some writers have termed a wound to the soul. One of the reasons I write is to show people how unspeakably grisly combat is. No one can live through it without permanent and damaging memories.

I suffered through combat repeatedly during my years of supporting army and Marine units throughout South Vietnam, not as a combatant but as an intelligence provider on the battlefield. Then and during the fall of Saigon, I witnessed and participated in events so gruesome that to this day I can’t talk about them. Memories of those events show up in panic attacks, nightmares, irrational rages, and flashbacks. And they creep into my writing.

I have been writing stories since I was six years old, and after my escape during the fall of Saigon, I wrote and wrote and wrote about what had happened to me in Vietnam. That eventually led to seventeen published short stories and three of my novels, Friendly Casualties (Amazon, 2012), The Trion Syndrome (Apprentice House of Baltimore, 2015), and Last of the Annamese (Naval Institute Press, 2017). I found out much later that one of the most effective therapies for PTSI is writing down the searing experiences. So to some degree, I forced myself to face my unbearable memories—by committing them to paper.

At the same time, I knew instinctively I had to help others who were worse off than I was. So I volunteered to care for AIDS patients during the worst years of that crisis, worked with the homeless, ministered to the dying in the hospice system, and finally worked with sick and dying veterans in the VA hospital in Washington, D.C. The result of those experiences was another novel, No-Accounts (Apprentice House, 2014).

I learned that when I gave all my attention to suffering people, my tortured memories receded into the background. Compassion heals.

I still have occasional nightmares, and I can’t abide Fourth of July fireworks. But these days, on the whole, I’m rational. The memories never fade, but I’ve learned to cope.

On the positive side, for my work during the fall of Saigon, I was awarded the Civilian Meritorious Medal. It remains today one of my two most cherished possessions. Tomorrow I’ll speak of the other one.

April 1975 in Vietnam (23)

Today, the forty-third anniversary of my first day aboard the USS Oklahoma City after my escape under fire during the fall of Saigon, I want to fill in a few gaps in the story I’ve told here over the last month.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t credit Al Gray, a Marine intelligence officer who became a combat commander, with saving my life and the lives of my two communicators. I don’t call him Al anymore. That stopped the day he became Commandant of the Marine Corps. These days I call him “Sir.” General Gray is the finest leader I have ever seen in action and a man I am privileged to know. I’ve never met a Marine who doesn’t know who Al Gray is. He is a deserved hero to the Marines.

None of the 2700 South Vietnamese soldiers who worked with us escaped. All were killed or captured by the North Vietnamese. Many could have been saved but for two factors: (1) The Ambassador failed to call for an evacuation—by the time he was countermanded from Washington, the North Vietnamese were already in the streets of Saigon. And (2) the general in command of those 2700 abandoned his troops. He was evacuated safely while his subordinates stayed in place awaiting his orders. They were still awaiting his orders when the North Vietnamese arrived and attacked them. I still grieve over them.

Ambassador Graham Martin’s career was effectively ended by the debacle he authored in Saigon. He returned to the State Department in Washington and moved from job to job. He was never given another overseas assignment and eventually retired.

Bob and Gary, my two communicators, survived and went on with their careers. Bob died about six years ago, but I spoke to Gary a few months ago. He’s doing fine.

And me? Besides the pneumonia and amoebic dysentery, I sustained ear damage from the shelling, and I’ve worn hearing aids ever since. Worst of all, I suffer, even today, from a condition we didn’t have a name for back then—Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). It resulted not just from the fall of Saigon but from earlier combat experiences in the war. When I got back to the states in May 1975, I was an emotional wreck. My marriage crumbled. The home I yearned for didn’t exist, and I was afraid I was going to lose my children, my reason for staying alive. I knew I needed help, but my job was intelligence, and I had top secret codeword-plus clearances. Had I sought therapy, I would have lost my clearances, and therefore my job. I still had a wife and children to support. So I had to grit my teeth and endure the irrational rages, flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks. As it happens, my vocation and my need to help others saved me. More on that tomorrow.

The two flags from my office—the stars and stripes and the banner of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam)—I carried with me on my long and winding itinerary from Saigon to the U.S. They are now in the Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade, Maryland.

April 1975 in Vietnam (22)

After I escaped from Saigon on the night of 29 April, when the North Vietnamese were already in the streets of the city, and landed on the USS Oklahoma City, I knew I was sick. I reasoned that my problem was exhaustion. For days toward the end in Saigon, my two communicators and I had had almost nothing to eat and no sleep. As the 7th Fleet circled in the South China Sea, I slept. Some number of days passed—I couldn’t tell how many—as I lay unconscious in my berth.

In early May, we finally set sail for Subic Bay in the Philippines. Once there, I booked a flight for Hawaii because I knew I’d be required to go to Pearl Harbor to brief Commander-in-Chief, Pacific—CINCPAC—about what had happened in Saigon.

When I arrived in Honolulu, still carrying the two flags that had stood on both sides of my desk in my Saigon office, an NSA official (name still classified) met me at the airport. Rather than congratulating me for getting out of Saigon alive or asking if I was all right, he took one look at me and said, “You can’t be seen around here looking like that.” I was still wearing the clothes I’d been evacuated in and hadn’t shaved for days. I knew I’d lost weight and my face was a map of lines. He assigned a subordinate to gussy me up. That guy took me to a barber and a good men’s clothing store to get a decent suit to brief the brass at Pearl Harbor.

The briefing didn’t go well. I couldn’t talk. I was coughing constantly. I couldn’t focus my eyes. I was sweating and felt like I was running a fever. When I sat down, I passed out.

I finally admitted to myself that I was suffering from more than exhaustion. Despite all the sleeping I’d done before reaching Subic Bay, I was getting sicker. Any sensible person would have gone to a doctor immediately. But I didn’t. I wanted to go home. I can’t tell you how much I yearned just to go home. Dressed in my new suit and tie, I booked the earliest flight possible for Baltimore. During the stopover in San Francisco, I tried to find a doctor. But a physician’s strike was in progress, and no doctor would see me. I flew on to Baltimore. The day after I landed—still carrying my two flags—I saw a doctor who diagnosed me with amoebic dysentery, severe ear damage from the shelling, and “pneumonia due to sleep deprivation, muscle fatigue, and inadequate diet.” He relished adding that heavy smokers are more susceptible to pneumonia than “normal people.”

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (21)

I was conscious when the helicopter on which I was evacuated as Saigon fell approached the USS Oklahoma City, flagship of the 7th Fleet. In total darkness and pounding rain, the Huey pilot circled and circled, then very slowly descended to the ship’s small floodlit helipad, where he finally landed. He told me subsequently that he, a civilian employee of Air America, had never before landed on a ship.

As we got out of the slick into the lashing rain, flashbulbs went off and sailors took my .38, but I wouldn’t give up the two flags that had stood on both sides of my desk—the stars and stripes and the gold and orange flag of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Those flags are now in the Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Sailors immediately tipped our Huey over the side and dumped it into the sea to make room for the next incoming bird. I faintly remember some kind of processing, answering questions and filling out forms, but I was only half there. The next thing I recall clearly is shivering—I was very cold. I was in berth, a sort of canvas hammock, in a room lit only by a red bulb on the bulkhead. I could hear the ship’s engine, low and far away, and men above, below, and on all sides of me were sleeping.

I discovered I could walk and found my way to the latrine where, still shivering, I brushed my teeth and showered for the first time in weeks. Somebody directed me to the wardroom where I ate a breakfast and a half, surrounded by the scruffiest mix of Vietnamese and Americans I had ever seen—all refugees evacuated from Saigon. Their clothes were torn and filthy. The men were unshaven, the women disheveled. In the midst was a distinguished older gentleman in a ruined suit, but his tie was still knotted at the throat.

When I’d eaten my fill and went on deck, it was daylight—I must have slept a long time. South Vietnamese helicopters flew close to the ship, cut their engines, and dropped into the water. The pilots—and sometimes their families—were rescued and brought aboard as the choppers sank to the bottom.

The sea, between and among the ships of the 7th Fleet and to the western horizon as far as I could see, was filled with boats—sampans, junks, fishing vessels, commercial craft, tugs, even what looked like large rowboats, each overloaded with Vietnamese waving and calling to the ships.

Someone found out I spoke Vietnamese and asked me to broadcast a message on a common frequency telling those in the boats that the ships of the 7th Fleet were already jammed to the rafters and couldn’t take any more onboard. Numb to the implications of what I was saying, I repeated the message four or five times before my voice gave way from coughing and I had to quit. Only later did I understand that many of those boats were so far from shore that they couldn’t make it back. Many didn’t make it back. The people on them perished at sea.

April 1975 in Vietnam (20)

After the evacuation of Saigon was finally ordered from Washington—countermanding the ambassador—Bob, Gary, and I, still trapped in the DAO building on the northern edge of Saigon, destroyed our communications and crypto equipment and locked the door as we left for the evacuation staging area, another office that the Marines had secured. The North Vietnamese shelling got worse.

The remaining events of 29 April are confused in my memory—I was in such bad shape I was starting to hallucinate. I know that, as the shelling continued, I begged Al Gray to get my two communicators out as soon as possible. I couldn’t tolerate the idea that, after all they’d done, they might be hurt, captured, or killed. Around 1400 (2:00 p.m.) in the afternoon, when finally they went out on a whirlybird, my work in Vietnam was done.

I recall being locked in a room alone and told to wait until I was called for, trying to stay awake in my chair as the building pitched from artillery hits. I didn’t want to board a chopper until I got confirmation that my communicators were safe aboard a ship of the 7th Fleet. And I wanted to get to a telephone to confirm that our Vietnamese counterparts were being evacuated. As far as I knew, they were still at their posts awaiting orders. But there was no telephone in the room, and I couldn’t leave because the South Vietnamese air force officers were still on the prowl.

The next thing I remember is being outside.

It was getting dark, and rain was pelting the helicopters in the compound. I protested to Al Gray that I wanted to wait for confirmation that my two communicators were safe, but he ordered me, in unrepeatable language, to get myself on the chopper now. I climbed aboard carrying with me the two flags that had hung in my office—the U.S. stars and stripes and the gold-and-orange national flag of the now defunct Republic of Vietnam.

The bird, for some reason, was not a CH-53 but a small Air America slick. As soon as we were airborne, I saw tracers coming at us. We took so many slugs in the fuselage that I thought we were going down, but we made it. All over the city, fires were burning. Once we were “feet wet”— over water—the pilot dropped us abruptly to an altitude that scared me, just above the water’s surface, and my stomach struggled to keep up. It was, he explained to me later, to avoid surface-to-air missiles. All I remember of the flight after that is darkness.

More tomorrow.