The Vietnam Vet

Jonathan was one of our regulars; he had well over fifty admissions since coming home from Vietnam in 1970. He was another casualty from a war that we are still trying to understand and heal from. When he came back he had gotten married to his High School sweetheart who was a nurse at a local hospital, and had tried to settle down.

After a couple of years of heavy drinking and bouncing from job to job his life began to fall apart. First his wife left him, then his drinking burned out his family and he ended up homeless, living in the shelters around Boston.

He was a quiet, polite guy who always helped out around the detox. One of our counselors at the time was a Vietnam Vet who had also served in the Marine Corps, “In Country,” as Jonathan had.

Jonathan would talk to him often. However, if the topic of Vietnam came up he would give a little smile then walk away. He would refuse to discuss any aftercare plans that included programs with the VA. There were benefits available to him, but he wanted nothing to do with them. So he lived back and forth from the shelter to the detox.

At this point in my career I often worked overnight shifts a couple of times a month. On one of these nights I had just come back upstairs from doing patient laundry in the basement. Jonathan was sitting at a desk where we often did admissions having a cup of coffee and a cigarette. It was about 3’ in the morning. Patients often who were detoxing would get up in the middle of the night for coffee and a smoke. We never shoo’d them back to bed like many facilities would do.

There is something to be said for sitting with a patient at this time of the morning. They have just gotten up and the alcoholic defenses one would normally encounter in the daytime were not present. This was the first time that I had such an experience, but it would not be the last.

As I sat there with him, I watched as he stared off into the distance, swirls of blue smoke drifting towards the ceiling. After several minutes, I made the remark to him, “Geez Jon, it feels like you are not even here.” He took another long drag from his cigarette and slowly exhaled. “No, you’re right, I’m far, far away.” I thought for a moment and deciding to take a chance, and said to him, “Are you back over there?” I waited with a knot in my gut for the response. He kept looking straight ahead as he extinguished his smoke he had just used to light another one up.

“Yea, I’m over there,” he responded. “A lot of good men were killed for nothing…I should have been one of them.” “I’m not sure I understand what you mean?” “I don’t know if you or anyone can ever understand,” he said without changing his distant gaze.

Next there was a pause that felt like an eternity. Then he went on, “my platoon had been In Country for three or four days when we were involved in a heavy firefight with the VC.” He paused for a moment then went on, ‘we called for air support to get us out. I jumped onto one of the helicopters with four of my buddies and we started to lift off the ground. When we were about twenty feet off the ground we were hit by rocket fire. As we started to crash I was thrown clear.’

For the first time since sitting with him he faced me, “I was the only one that survived.” I felt goose-flesh take over my body; I was speechless.
As he finished that statement he began to uncontrollably sob, wretch, and rock back and forth in his chair.

It was type of sobbing that comes from a person’s soul and one feels like it will never end. I knew right away that this was probably the first time he had ever told this story to another human being.

Over the years I have had the privilege of people bearing their souls to me. Others have told me that I have something that allows people to open up and tell their tales. I do not know why this is so, but, I don’t need to know I guess. This is and can be both a blessing and a curse. I thank God every day for my sense of humor. Without it, I would be a “Dead Man Walking.”

Jon did go on to get services at the VA after that night, and yes, we did see him once and awhile back at the detox; not with his previous frequency however.