Walking Wounded

A conversation on my porch

PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was first formally recognized as a psychiatric diagnosis in 1980, fifteen years after the end of the War in Vietnam. The walking wounded of that war had suffered for anywhere from fifteen to twenty years or more before it was even admitted by the government that they were suffering from something while dealing with American emotions surrounding that war. Unjustly these soldiers had returned to an America that saw them as the symbol of American Foreign Policy gone terribly wrong. Because of our anger over the war they suffered more than they ought to have. Suicide rates in that generation of soldiers is 1.7 times the national average. Estimates range from one third to one half of all Vietnam Veterans, or 1.7 million of those who served there, have suffered from PTSD to varying degrees. Many escaped to places like the Long Beach and Olympic Peninsulas where they could live anonymously with their demons amongst the Doug Firs, asking themselves why they had survived; wondering if their comrades who didn’t come home might not have been the lucky ones.

Yesterday one of those walking wounded stopped by my house in Ilwaco and sat on my porch for a while.

I have known Daniel (not his real name) since the summer of 1965. I was fourteen and he was nearly seventeen when Daniel and his little brother were out for hijinx in Seaview and his little brother lobbed a water balloon at my girlfriend and me as we were walking back to my grandparents’ beach house from Sugarman’s Store. It turned out that the boys lived two doors down from our family beach house and the stage was set for Daniel and me to become friends and boyfriend and girlfriend. He was the "older man" and I was "the summer girl." On that sunny summer day in 1965 Daniel had no cares further than his job at the Bumble Bee cannery, talking his parents into letting him drive their 1964 turquoise Chevy Impala, and his up-coming seventeenth birthday. Three years later he was in the jungles of Vietnam and his life changed forever.

Daniel did two tours in the hell that was the Vietnam Conflict as part of the Army’s 101st Airborne. Like most veterans of that war, he does not talk much about his experience there. The chaos of that war became normal for him, hence the second tour. He could not live in the society he’d left behind when he deployed from Lt. Lewis in 1968.

Following Daniel’s second tour in Vietnam he wandered through life in a haze of drugs and alcohol. He attempted to return to college. When his then-girlfriend told him she was pregnant he re-enlisted in the Army to have an income and benefits and was sent to Germany where he continued to self medicate. The pregnancy ended and the girl broke up with Daniel, but he was committed to another two years in the Army with whom he had a love/hate relationship. Or so he thought. Daniel’s story is that he fell asleep while sitting on a radiator next to an open window in a two story barracks. Alcohol probably was a factor. The fall out the window shattered his leg. The Army cobbled together his leg and he received an honorable discharge.

Daniel continued to drink and drug and attempt to hold down a job. Employers had difficulty dealing with someone who would show up in the morning, ready to work and suddenly have to heed the call of his addictions. He attempted taking classes at Clatsop Community College and did well in many of them, but when he was on the verge of becoming successful he found ways to sabotage himself. Sometimes, when things were going fairly well, Daniel had his own apartment either in Astoria or on the Peninsula. Other times he drifted from the couch of one alcoholic friend to another, sleeping under his camouflage poncho or in his attic bedroom in his parents’ house.

Holidays were deadly and sure to bring on a binge that upset his family. He was quite capable of spoiling Christmas and Thanksgiving by getting drunk or disappearing before family gatherings, but the two holidays that sent Daniel into a tailspin were the Fourth of July and Veterans Day. Those holidays were accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol and illegal fireworks that have become legendary in Seaview. When Daniel later married and moved to Klipsan the neighbors in Seaview were relieved.

Daniel did try to become sober. More than once his parents drove him to American Lake, the Army’s medical center in Tacoma. Twice he was sober for seven months, each time achieved with a large allotment of religion that bordered on obsession and manifested itself in copying Bible verses and hymns all day for days at a time. Use of antabuse might keep him from drinking for a while, but Daniel became a dry drunk. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder had not been addressed by the Army. Neither had Daniel’s exposure to Agent Orange. The government was reluctant even in the mid to late ‘80s to admit that they had brought home a lost generation from Vietnam.

Sometimes Daniel would go for days and days at a time without eating, only consuming alcohol. He knew he had no business driving a car and had not the funds to obtain one anyway. He peddled his bicycle from bar to bar. When he fell off into a ditch the neighbors would call his folks. They might or might not go get him.

During the late 1980s, when I had returned from California, Daniel spent a lot of time with my family. On sober days we took the family to the library, checking out stacks of books we took to my house to read. He took my boys clam digging and then cooked the best Razor Clams you ever put into your mouth. Many days he would disappear. Madness is contagious or at least I found it to be. After a while I realized that Daniel’s madness was beginning to seem reasonable to me. I felt myself slipping into his world and had I not had precious children to think of I might have accompanied him through his inferno, but I could not. I could not make him well and would not let him take me into his levels of hell.

Finally Daniel’s pain became so great that he landed in a psych ward where he met a soul mate. Claudia was schizophrenic and ultimately their doctors put them on the same medication. Convenient. They were both crazy and they both liked to drink. A marriage made in heaven. And so it seemed. Although they both had monumental problems they seemed to manage to balance each other and care for each other. Claudia had inherited money and bought them a house in quiet Klipsan where Daniel was calmer. He could read and drink in peace.

Daniel’s parents were morning regulars at the Cottage Bakery in Long Beach and when I was on the Peninsula I would stop in to chat. My last conversation with them before Daniel’s father died they expressed the comfort they took that while Daniel and Claudia were far from well, they had a home and functioned fairly well. We talked about the dates and proms Daniel and I had during high school and laughed at the memories of our clothes and hair. Daniel’s dad was saying goodbye and I think he died—they both died-- with as much peace regarding Daniel as could be expected. We were quiet a bit there in the bakery, thinking about those innocent days in the mid ‘60s. When I’d broken up with Daniel in 1968 he’d left Central joined the Army. I know his parents blamed me for that because his mother called to tell me so when he was deployed to Vietnam. As we sat in the bakery I felt that maybe they’d forgiven me for that and for leaving him again in 1990. I’d had to in order save myself, but I don’t know if I will ever entirely forgive myself for abandoning someone so dear and with whom I had such a long history.

Sometimes the peace in Klipsan was shattered and the noise reached Gig Harbor in the form of occasional late night phone calls. By that time Daniel had been awarded full disability from the Army based on his PTSD and exposure to Agent Orange. Claudia had her own money so neither needed to work. They were incapable of working at anything beyond their garden. Their substance abuse knew no clock and no regard for the sleep patterns of others. One night Daniel called upset over a light airplane that had been flying “too low” over their house in Klipsan. Why he waited until ten o’clock at night to call is the nature of alcohol. He knew that my husband worked for the FAA and wanted redress for the situation. This phone call had awakened the house, but not my husband who was still at Seattle Flight Service. To get some peace I phoned him and asked what I could tell Daniel that would satisfy him. My husband gave me a telephone number the FAA has for people to report dangerous flying—rather like the numbers you see on the backs of trucks that say “How’s my driving?” “Tell him to get a tail number before he calls,” my husband told me. The information was relayed to Klipsan and I drifted back to sleep envisioning Daniel with his binoculars on the deck of their house. That ought to keep him busy for a while, I thought.

Then there were calls when Claudia decided to stop taking her medication. The demons of schizophrenia will sometimes whisper in the ear of the sufferer that they don’t need the medication. Sometimes one of Claudia’s friends will whisper the same thing and then they are off to the races. Daniel would call frantic with worry over her behavior and threatening to leave. Over the years Daniel has had to deal with Claudia’s psychotic episodes, going so far as to have to testify against her and have her hospitalized. Then Daniel got sick which oddly made him better than he’d been since 1968.

In July of 2004 Daniel stopped by our house in Ilwaco. It was as though someone had rewound the tape. He looked wonderful. Had the bit of gray in his hair not testified otherwise, he looked so much like his high school self that I nearly fainted. Three months sober and on a vegetarian diet he was transformed. Claudia was back in a psych ward in her latest schizophrenic period and Daniel was clearly concerned for her welfare, but he was in control of himself if not his wife. He had recently been diagnosed with pancreatitis. Finally it had gotten through to him that he was killing himself. The doctors had told him that if he didn’t quit drinking and go on a vegetarian diet he would be dead in months. The illness had saved him. I was thrilled.

When Daniel left I excitedly called my husband to tell him of Daniel’s resurrection. “Don’t get your hopes up,” my pragmatic husband told me. “He’s quit before as you well know.” But I had a feeling. I believed that this time it just might work. If Claudia were to survive, it had to.

Last fall I arrived in Ilwaco from Gig Harbor on a dark and stormy night—no kidding, alone with my two-year-old grandson. On our answering machine were five long, deranged and threatening messages from Claudia. Clearly she’d stopped taking her meds again. I called my husband in a panic, wondering if I should phone the sheriff. “Were they all from the same day?” Yes. “Well, maybe she was just having a bad day. Don’t erase them. I’ll bring down my tape recorder and we’ll save them in case there’s more or in case something at the house turns up amiss.” And that’s what we did. In the light of day the messages seemed sad and less threatening and even somewhat comic. We got caller ID so that I’d know if Claudia was calling while I was here and I got into the habit of turning off the answering machine when I went home. At Christmas we received our usual Christmas card from Claudia and Daniel written in her handwriting so we concluded that if she had been in a psychotic episode she was home for Christmas.

Yesterday my husband and I were planting our “Linda” rhododendron given to us when our granddaughter Linda was born. It had set in various pots on our patio in Gig Harbor for three years and was now going into the yard here since we are preparing our 126 year old house to be our year ‘round home. Being on a busy street at the edge of town we are used to people pulling over in front of our house to read their maps or ask directions so we ignored the big new Silverado that pulled to the curb on the other side of our picket fence until a familiar laughing voice said, “Being concerned about the environment, I decided to buy this.” There stood Daniel, still looking fit if a little heavier than three years ago.

On our porch Daniel told us the story of Claudia’s episode last fall. He’d started smoking again, but was three plus years sober. “I have had doctors tell me to leave her; that she’ll never be any better. My so-called friends have told me to run. I can’t do that. She’s my wife. We don’t have many friends anymore. It’s difficult. You weren’t the only one she called this last time. She called everyone and you should have seen my phone bill. I’m afraid to have a computer. It’s already too easy for her to order things by telephone. If she had access to the Internet I’d be broke.” It was obvious that Daniel lives a lonely stressful life, but nearly forty years after deploying to Vietnam he is finally healed enough to be able to tolerate driving off the Peninsula without Valium (last time Claudia disappeared he had to go fetch her from Everett) and accomplish normal tasks that most of us take for granted. Like Claudia, Daniel will never be entirely well. His PTSD will likely last forever. He takes his medication, prays, and lives to keep Claudia alive.

Like many Vietnam Veterans, although his walk is straighter now, Daniel is among the walking wounded. It has taken forty years for him to heal to this point. My prayer is that today's returning veterans receive better treatment than their predecessors and that they don't begin to inhabit our forests and skidrows, looking for relief.