By Jeannette Cooperman
World War II vets get together to retell war stories, letting memories of adventure and heroism cancel out the horror.
Vietnam and Iraq combat vets don’t talk about it unless they have to.
They found themselves drenched in sweat; squinting through sand or jungle canopy; unable to recognize the enemy; unable to know, when they burst into someone’s home, whether they’d be thanked or shot. The overarching U.S. goal was vast, vague and diffuse; the soldiers’ smaller, practical triumphs were barely noticed back home. Atrocities and botched leadership made more compelling news—and public opinion shifted midstream.
We know what happened after Vietnam. Many of us remember firsthand the bitterness, rage, addictions and craziness that kept so many Vietnam vets outside the protected circle of marriage, home and job. This time, we’re determined to do it right, give our vets a hero’s welcome and all the care they need. We think we’ve got it now.
But we don’t. Because the second silent war is very different from the first.
- The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan chose to serve, so they’re in some ways a more resolved force—but they’re fewer in number, supplemented by reservists and National Guard members who never expected to see combat. We’ve sent 7,500 members of the Missouri National Guard; we sent none to Vietnam. The average age of combat soldiers in Nam was 19; in Iraq it’s 28 (which means more spouses and children back home).
- Almost one-tenth of those on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan are women, many in combat; a total of 90 women have died to date, compared to eight in Vietnam. Military personnel are serving for longer and longer stretches (in Vietnam there was a standard one-year tour of duty), and more than half a million—one-third of the total deployed since 9/11—have been sent back a second or third time. We’ve extended the age limit from 35 to 42 and lowered both physical and mental standards for enlisting.
- There is no safe place. There’s not even a front line; danger’s everywhere. “In Vietnam, we peaked at about 500,000 soldiers a year, but only about 10 percent were actually shooting and being shot at on a daily basis,” says Stephen Brauer, president of Hunter Engineering, who was a company commander stationed in the Mekong Delta. “The remaining people were a vast infrastructure the Pentagon had built up—everything from company clerks to diesel mechanics—and a huge portion of the country was secure. In Iraq, for the average trooper, it’s more dangerous.”
- The rest of us aren’t sure how to act. “Sitting in airports, I hear people come up to these young GIs and thank them for their service,” Brauer says. “Believe me, that did not happen for us.” Iraqi vets hear civilians reminding each other to be loyal to the troops—but they also know that opposition to the war is growing, and in some ways the ambivalent disapproval is harder to handle than Vietnam’s all-out protests.
- Civilian reactions might seem more polite this time around, but don’t underestimate their effect: Dr. Jay L. Liss, a psychiatrist who fought in Nam, says, “When you are committed to some activity and it’s negated, that’s the worst thing that can happen to you emotionally. It’s the principle used in brainwashing: They wear you down and then say, ‘You love your family? Your wife had an affair.’”
- Fewer of the wounded are dying, thanks to high-tech healthcare and ceramic-plated body armor. As of September 29/October 2, there were 4,242 dead and 29,531 wounded. In Vietnam, one of every three to four combat wounds was lethal; in this war, it’s been one of every eight to 10 (although lethality rose after this year’s surge).
- Any soldier who lives through combat is likely to come home with nightmares, faster reaction times, new emotional responses or rearranged brain chemistry—that we’ve learned from Vietnam. What’s different now is the ramped-up frequency of something that can be even harder to diagnose: traumatic brain injury, which can be severe or mild, obvious or disguised, immediate or delayed in onset.
- TBI is the “signature injury” of this war, because IEDs, or improvised explosive devices (fuse caps that are packed with explosives and wired to, say, a cellphone or a garage-door opener, which is then used as a remote detonator), are the enemy’s weapon of choice. They’re causing roughly half of the war’s deaths, and some form of TBI is showing up in the majority of the blast injuries.
- We know enough about PTSD now to be terrified of its consequences—but not enough to erase its stigma or treat its symptoms. We know next to nothing about TBI. And often we can’t even tell the two apart.
Iraq War Timeline
- 10/7/01: U.S. attacks Afghanistan.
- 3/19/03: U.S. invades Iraq.
- 5/19/05: A study in The New England Journal of Medicine warns that the nature and outcomes of traumatic brain injuries are not yet fully understood.
- 8/11/06: The Armed Forces Epidemiological Board warns that we “lack a system-wide approach for proper identification, management and surveillance for individuals who sustain a TBI.”
- 3/6/07: President Bush creates a task force to assess needs of Returning Global War on Terror Heroes. Economists predict lifetime medical costs of $250 billion to $650 billion.
- 4/13/07: VA improves TBI screening and evaluation.
- 7/25/07: Presidential commission finds current system “insufficient for the demands of modern warfare.” Estimated annual cost to improve care: $500 million, rising to $1 billion in years to come.
Statistics from the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army, Missouri National Guard, icasualties.org
