Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury.

It appears that I've become some kind of a lab rat. In a sense, with all the interest in my brain functions after brain surgery, there are lots of people at the VA hospital that want to know how I've managed to deal with it all.

Vietnam, Cambodia, killing the enemy, the death of pilots I flew with and went to flight school with, the memories of dead bodies, both theirs and ours, and the effects of ground attacks that brought with them, rockets and mortar fire from the enemy. 

Flying Scouts in Cambodia was an experience that, for the most part, was a really difficult thing to survive. If there was ever anything in my life more dangerous than flying helicopters in Vietnam, flying Scouts as a member of hunter killer teams in Cambodia, was easily it.

To put it bluntly, I remember one mission where I was scared shit less as death was everywhere and, even at altitude, you could smell the dead bodies. I was literally shaking in the cockpit as I began to roll in on a target that had already proven to be deadly. Just prior to that mission, John Robb had already been shot down and before I began my gun run on that day, Wayne Morvent was shot down.

That was the first time I had ever seen a "human wave assault" that was just like the Banzai attacks that the suicidal Japanese made during the Second World War. I remember watching the Cobra roll in and shooting flechette filled rockets at the enemy as they attacked.

We saw the NVA before anyone did. That was our job. We had to penetrate the Cambodian border under the radar, not get caught, search for the North Vietnamese from tree top level, not get shot, return to Vietnam without getting shot down along the ingress and egress routes, refuel, rearm and do it all again. Sometimes, we had to do that 4 times in one day.

There was one particular area along the ingress egress route that had a radar controlled anti aircraft position that was a very dangerous place. We had pilots hit at 5,000 feet and I was always below that altitude. If I had to guess, I would say that 90% of the time, I was below 100' altitude.

I can think back and remember radio calls instructing me to : "Break right, you're taking fire". I can also vividly remember the sounds of AK 47 rounds hitting the helicopter in the skids, the dog house and the mini gun housing. Those memories don't go away. You learn to deal with all that but they never go away.

Hindsight, regarding one of the many the Nighthawk mission I flew with Wollman, proved to be more deadly to the enemy than all the missions I flew in Cambodia. The difference can be found in the fact that it was dark and I never saw the kinds of sights I witnessed in the daylight battles of Cambodia.

The point I wish to make here has to do with the process of dealing with Veterans who suffer from PTSD and or Traumatic Brain Injury. I say that because some way or another, I managed to make it through 43 years without doing anything to get me arrested or suffering anything catastrophic due to PTSD. More than anything, I stayed busy with my career and family and even though the memories never faded, they didn't control my life,

Now, with a daily dose of PTSD reports that I have to write, reports called "Stuck Points" that outline the thoughts that are Stuck in my mind, it seems that dealing with it daily, instead of staying busy with other things, finds me STUCK in Vietnam and Cambodia. That has produced a constant recollection of the most ungodly things that man can witness.

In any event, I wanted to put this into black and white and send it to my high school friend at the VA that has been such a huge help in getting me through all the hell that comes with malignant brain cancer, brain surgery, chemo, radiation and the horrors that come with that. Guy, please print this and get it to Roger as I don't have a printer and I've already submitted my reports to him for this week. Thanks, Tim