365 Days (17 page)

“I see,” Kohler said. “His mental status. If the Provost Marshall wants a psychiatric evaluation of this patient, he can request it in writing.”

“We know that, sir. But we were hoping for a bit more. This man was...well, he was one of the troublemakers in his brigade.”

“In what way?”

“There were racial overtones to what he did.”

“So?”

“You know, the Army is concerned with this kind of dissent. We’d like a fairly definitive evaluation.”

“Mr. Tamni, I would advise you to do your investigative work yourself. That is what I believe you are trained for. I will do what I am trained for, no more. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m a very busy person and I assume you are.”

Tamni got slowly to his feet.

“I will tell you this, though,” Kohler said. “He’s sane, eminently sane. But the Army made a bad mistake with him. They made him a medic, gave him respect and an important job, and then rotated him back to a base camp where he was harassed, abused, given menial jobs, treated like a stupid nigger, and told to mind his own business. I’m certifying him fit for duty and recommending that he be sent back to his unit. And I’ll tell you something else. You’d better learn how to investigate guys like him and learn how to do it well, because you are going to be spending a lot of your time on soldiers just like him.”

“Gentlemen, the Korean war began in the middle of all these new concerns. For the psychiatrists, it began much the same as World War II ended. There is, unfortunately, a certain inertia to military thinking that at times, I admit, can be numbing. The lessons of 1943 and 1944 were simply forgotten and the psychiatric cases were once again being treated the same as all other medical cases, as sick people who should be removed from the combat zone. Six months into the war, the number of psychiatric patients being evacuated from the front were up to early World War II levels. The shocked response of the military was quicker, though, this time, and the new theories and methods that were already on the shelves were quickly put into use. To repeat, they entailed: (1) treatment of patients as far forward as possible to eliminate the fixation of symptoms; (2) maintenance of unit identification to contain the anxiety of being suddenly alone, from adding to the already developed anxieties; and (3) the unwavering expectation that these patients, no matter how bizarre their symptoms, would be returned to duty as soon as possible.”

“Excuse me, sir,” the ward master said, “is something wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“Like Washington?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

Kohler sighed. “Try to get him back to duty. What I’d really like to do is make him white.”

“Or make everyone else black,” the ward master said.

Kohler had to smile at the thought. “What I’m trying to do is make him look at the reality of what he did and what he is. What’s bothering him is that he lost control. It’s the whole identity crisis all over again. What am I? Who am I? I have to be his sounding board, sort of give him permission to be angry with the whole damn mess and appease the guilt that goes along with losing control. Try to get him proud of being black. Now, how the hell can I do all that?”

“Why, then, gentlemen, does a soldier crack? If it’s not from the shock waves or a blossoming neurosis, what’s left? Well, quite simply, war itself and exhaustion. Let me read from the reprint you were handed when you walked in”:

In combating fear, the combat soldier employs a good deal of his energy. There is an end point in the available resources of any individual. There is a place in time when all the positive motivation, training, and leadership are not enough, when the soldier’s capability and willingness to continue begin to deteriorate. If there is no chance of relief or no additional factors to sustain him, the potentiality for combat exhaustion exists. It is also important to note that this energy juncture may begin to indicate his impairment as a soldier in spite of his physical presence. His judgment is not as good, alertness may suffer, and his willingness to take chances may disappear. He and his men may become physical casualties long before they become psychological casualties.

This exhaustion is also partly physical. No rule exists as to which—mental or physical—exhaustion is either more prevalent or important; they both play important roles. Physical exhaustion is more comprehensible than the other factors mentioned. Nearly everyone has, at one time or another, expended about as much physical energy as possible in a certain period of time—whether during a football game or a strenuous evening of activity—the feeling can readily be recalled by anyone. In many ways, the symptoms of exhaustion are similar to those resulting from fear. In combat, they are mutually reinforcing.

“Sir, Dienst is here to see you.”

“OK.” Kohler rose from behind his desk.

Dienst entered the office. He looked a bit embarrassed.

“I just wanted to thank you, sir.”

“Come in,” Kohler said. “Sit down. Take a load off your feet.”

“I don’t have much time,” Dienst said. He was dressed in his jungle fatigues with his bush hat perched on the top of his head. “I’m going out this morning. All I wanted to do was say thanks.”

“No,” Kohler said, “you’ve got it wrong. It is I who should be thanking you. You’ll do fine. Write me and let me know what’s happening.”

“I will. I mean, I promise.”

“Good luck.”

“Well, Major, I made it through nine months; I can make it through three more.”

“No need for psychiatric contortions; no shock waves; no need to conjure up deep-seated anxieties and conflicts. It is combat exhaustion—instead of something ominous and mysterious. It is, quite simply, just having had too much. Of course, in more technical terms, combat exhaustion can be thought of as an abnormal reaction to the stress of combat, its manifestation being unique to the person who develops it, channeled into a specific form by the person’s own individual personality and background experience. But it is only one of many abnormal reactions. A soldier who has had too much might choose to surrender or convulsively go forward. He might panic and get killed; he could get himself wounded or wound himself; he might even go to the chaplain or decide on the relative safety of a stockade. He might—if he’s so disposed—develop psychosomatic complaints, get angry, or, in some cases, become totally unreasonable. He can become neurotic, begin to shake, refuse to move, or go completely hysterical. He might even become grossly psychotic—hold imaginary rifles, hear voices, or see his grandmother in every chopper that flies by.

“You will be treating these men, and the treatment is simple. For most it will just be rest. In more severe cases, those soldiers whose functioning is beginning to be impaired, who can’t rest, you will medically put to sleep. They are given enough thorazine to put them out and left alone for a day or two. They too, though, like the troopers who are merely resting, stay near the aid station. The more disturbed patients, those troopers who for the moment may be truly disoriented, who have completely stopped functioning, who for any number of reasons appear to need more than a short rest, are sent to an evacuation hospital. But they are never lost to their units. Their group identity is never tampered with, and they know they will be going back. And they do go back. And they are accepted by their units. Believe me, the casual, yet efficient way it is all handled, the official emphasis on health rather than disease, and the lack of mumbo-jumbo have taken the stigma out of having had too much. To the men, it is just something that happens; and more important, it is something they realize can happen to anyone. It is handled that way and it is presented that way. “Gentlemen, it works.”

It works, thought Kohler, but the war goes on. The new psychiatry has done nothing about that. There were 11,000 wounded last month; two fire bases were overrun, and 700 boys were killed. We used to believe that conversion and anxiety reactions removed without sufficient uncovering techniques would only go on to reestablish themselves in other ways. No more of that now. In Nam the psychiatric patients go back to duty. One hundred percent of the combat exhaustion, 90 percent of the character-behavior disorders, 98 percent of the alcoholic and drug problems, 56 percent of the psychosis, 85 percent of the psychoneurosis, 90 percent of the acute situation reaction—they all go back with an operation diagnosis on their record of acute situation reaction. No ominous-sounding names to disturb the patients or their units.

It works. The men are not lost to the fight, and the terrifying stupidity of war is not allowed to go on crippling forever. At least, that’s the official belief. But there is no medical or psychiatric follow-up on the boys after they’ve returned to duty. No one knows if they are the ones who die in the very next fire fight, who miss the wire stretched out across the tract, or gun down unarmed civilians. Apparently, the Army doesn’t seem to want to find out.

“After six months they promoted our

colonel and sent him to Washington. It’s

not that he’s a liar or a bad guy. It’s

just that he likes this shit. If they listen

to him, they’re fucken crazy.”

Trooper, 101st Airborne

Orthopedic Ward

U.S. Army Hospital, Camp Drake, Japan

THE OFFICERS WHO RUN
this war survived World War II. They remember, as if it were yesterday, what it was to lose a division in an afternoon and then go on to worry about losing an army. They remember what it was not to be ready and then not to have enough. It was their youth, and even today, thirty years later, it is what happened then that forms the comfortable base on which they work and argue. They are not dishonest officers, nor are they particularly shortsighted or brutal; if anything, they are incredibly sincere and dedicated men who unfortunately are locked into the early 1940’s. For all their professional and at times personal restraint, though, they desperately want to win, or at least not to lose, and are always, even within the shifting quagmire of Nam, pushing a bit, trying for a better way.

Bosum had been trying for quite some time. It was not his first war. He’d been in Burma and Korea. Things had been tougher then, much tougher, but they had never been so confused or muddled. In Nam, he’d been assigned to MACV as an operations adviser to the ARVN’s and spent his first five months in country trying to understand what was expected not only of the South Vietnamese Army but the Americans as well, and what could be done to satisfy those expectations.

It had been a tortuous pursuit, during which, despite himself, he gradually became uneasy about the whole thing, then plainly doubtful. No one seemed to know anything. When he questioned his superiors about how many men they thought they’d need to do the job, nobody seemed to know; worse, no one knew exactly what the job was. When he asked if the bombings of the north had been effective, the field Commander said no, while the Air Force officers said yes. When he asked if the recent troop buildup had changed the complexion of the war, the answer was no. When he asked the ARVN Commanders about deployments and orders of battle, they just shrugged. He came to realize that despite what was said, the only real United States policy was to send in more and more troops to fight more and more communists. The number of villages pacified, the amount of area held and people won over were simply manufactured data distributed, as necessary, withdrawn, and manufactured again.

The only realities he found were the soldiers and the gunships. The weapons and troops he agreed with; what he opposed was the sloppy, inconsistent way in which they were used. There was no commitment; everything was done in dribbles. And with the dribbling went a constant, never-ending shifting of resources and concerns. No one knew what was going on. The only thing everyone agreed on was that they were killing people, but the killing, Bosum realized, wasn’t enough. With it had to go the understanding that the killing and terror must go on until the whole thing was over. If Vietnam could not be handled politically, then at least the solution should be found on the battlefield.

The tail, it seemed to Bosum, could wag the dog, but during his time with MACV he kept his thoughts to himself, supervised what he was supposed to supervise, and continued to write his trim, efficient reports.

From MACV he went to Headquarters, USARV. He began by inspecting the field units, going on patrol with them. He found the troops universally sloppy. They smoked on patrol, played radios, and dropped cigarette butts and candy wrappers around ambush sites. Some even lit fires at night. They fought well when they fought, but they seemed to give no thought to the fighting until the shooting began.

If there was any morale at all, outside of the mutual concern of a fire fight, it was a morale of time. He had never seen troops so fatalistic. Even at the worst in Burma, when the only thing between the Japanese and India were 15,000 poorly equipped United States and British troops, there was nothing close to the soporific fatalism he found gripping the GI’s in Vietnam. The troops knew that if they made it 365 days without getting killed or wounded they were done. It would be over without even having to look back. Everything was geared to that departure date—their hopes, their concerns, their plans. Friends, if there were any, came next, and then maybe the VC. It was an impossible way to fight. He could only wonder how the troops did as well as they did.

Bosum was up with the 1st Air Cav when they tried to take hills 837 and 838. Two companies tried for three days, and finally, after almost 80-percent casualties, they drove the VC off the hills. He stood there in the valley and watched the helicopters come to take the troopers home. Perhaps he was too old-fashioned not to feel a bit foolish to have seen troops fight so hard to get somewhere only to be taken home just when they got there. But this wasn’t to be a war for land.

He went back to headquarters in Saigon and wrote a factual report on what he had found. All the units were understrength; platoons that uniformly were to hold forty-seven men ran with thirty; ambushes were poorly arranged and carried out; LRRP units were not being used effectively; booby traps were not standardized throughout the same unit; body counts were not reliable. The report was fully documented and endorsed. Again he kept his more subjective thoughts to himself.