NO MAN LEFT BEHIND

BY LYLE MAY

War is for patriots. There is not a more self-sacrificing duty than to work and die protecting one’s country. The fallen and military veterans deserve honor and respect in our society, especially those who do not escape the horrors of war unscathed. Over the last fifteen years there has been an increased awareness and treatment of mental health issues among soldiers returning from combat. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), initially a buzz word thought of as a weakness by military commanders, is now a recognized but treatable problem. Yet, many veterans do not receive the necessary help or even recognition for their service despite these unseen injuries.

The dysfunction created by the deinstitutionalization of the mental health system is apparent in VA hospitals. Notoriously mismanaged, underfunded, and backlogged, the VA has always struggled to treat current troops and veterans for PTSD and other mental illnesses through outpatient treatment centers. This is especially true of soldiers, sailors, and airmen from the Vietnam era forced to “tough it out” on their own, despite the prevalence of PTSD. Over 830,000 Vietnam vets experienced behavioral impairment related to PTSD symptoms. Four out of five struggled with chronic symptoms 20-25 years after the war (Dieter, 1). Suicide, homelessness, and violent crime are common among vets who suffer severe PTSD because flashbacks, insomnia, angry outbursts, disassociation, and other symptoms make the adjustment to life extremely difficult. Unable to re-socialize with civilian life, some vets succumb to their mental illness. When violent crimes are committed as a direct result of the trauma experienced by combat veterans, the criminal justice system is unsympathetic. Retribution replaces mercy, and “Thank you for your service” becomes a meaningless platitude cast among the spent shells of a silent war.

Be All You Can Be

Vietnam was a war without room for diagnoses. A deadly, wet environment where rats climbed the pants legs of sleeping soldiers, mosquitos fed upon exposed flesh, and the indigenous population bristled with antipathy for American troops. The distant whir of helicopters cut thick jungle air with the promise of deliverance. In Vietnam, a place where explosions of molten lead ripped through flora and fauna alike, one lived or died on a coin flip and young minds decayed beneath the onslaught of horrors. 

James joined the Army to escape an abusive home. The man who claimed to be his father spoke with a leather strap and broken mop handle, cursing his children in a drunkard’s slur or threatening to cut their throats while they slept. James’ father went so far as to lock the freezer while at work so his children only ate by his offering. They went hungry a lot. When James turned eighteen and graduated high school he knew joining the military would provide sustenance, housing, and escape.

James learned a lot in the Army. They trained him to march, run, fight, and shoot at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina. “If you couldn’t shoot a rifle, you were out,” he told me when I asked about basic training. My father served on a carrier in the Navy during Vietnam and stories of vets who went in-country always fascinated me. “They taught us to be killers. [Vietnam] was about living and dying. Both were possible.” Train to live. Live to kill. Kill to win.

James took pride in voluntarily joining the Army when so many others had to be drafted. “It was a patriotic choice. The draft had already begun. It was for people who wouldn’t volunteer. Mostly the poor. Later, college kids once the government suspended draft deferments. There was a lot of people angry about this. Protests on campuses happened because people were against the war, but not when the poor were drafted.”

Upon his arrival in Vietnam, James was assigned to an artillery unit where Death greeted him with a welcome grim. “When your number comes up you die. When it doesn’t you live. Some guys got there and were shot dead on the first day. What was scary to some guys was being short—getting ready to go home—and being sent out into the bush. One guy was short and went out. Raised his hand up and a sniper got him . . .We didn’t think about living and dying. We couldn’t. They trained you to do a job and put the rest out of your mind. Otherwise, you make mistakes that get you killed. Or you go crazy.”

On his first tour James’ artillery unit (six 105mm T.O.W.s, big crew-served howitzers) frequently moved around. When not changing position to avoid enemy detection, they dug foxholes and trenches, filled tens of thousands of sandbags, and stole what little rest they could. At times digging holes, filling sandbags, and breaking open ammo crates seemed to be all they did. Until, that is, they received orders to fire their weapons or took incoming enemy fire, then the smell of cordite, explosive concussions from their howitzers, and screams of the dying reminded them they were at war.

That first tour marked the best year of James’ life. “Even though it was hard – the constant rain, mosquitos, heat, lack of sleep, and death – it was the best. I can’t explain it any better.” He considered a moment. “This is one reason: it was better over there than anywhere else.” James was becoming psychotic. He and others would engage in combat with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army and laugh. They’re training to block it out could only go so far. After a while, the trauma of war corrupted his already damaged psyche, though James did not understand how.

At the end of his tour, James returned to North Carolina for a 30-day leave. For a time he haunted Shoney’s Drive-In, where girls on roller skates took orders and the crooning of Elvis and Patsy Cline played from the radio of James’ ’61 Galaxy Starliner. As he listened, the oppressive heat and death of Vietnam a world away, James remembered how intensely alive he felt and knew he wanted to go back.

By the time James shipped to Ft. Hood, Texas, he knew something was wrong with him. Loud noises startled him. He grew angry over simple things. His thoughts, disjointed and plagued with a sense of an impending attack, were fragmented. Much of his leave in the states felt alien as if the Vietnam war was the only reality that mattered.

James’ second tour nearly killed him. A chemical spill set his pants on fire, hospitalizing him for a week with second and third-degree burns. Then came the Tet Offensive. The NVA and VC pushed ground attacks at major cities and American outposts in Vietnam, firing rockets and mortars in an attempt to soften targets. A lot of people died.

James’ unit had dug in at Chu Ci firebase. “We were firing back and forth when a mortar landed behind me. It blew out several truck tires and hit me. I reached down and felt my leg was wet with blood. There were five of us [manning the 105mm T.O.W.] and we hurried up and took cover in a bunker. The injury burned. Hell, there was hot shrapnel in my leg!” 

Ultimately, James’ time in Vietnam ended with an incident as serendipitous as any in the war. Standing guard one night “I threw a grenade down the hill out of boredom and got lucky. It was so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The next morning they found a VC who had tried to sneak into camp, dead from a grenade. The supply sergeant said ‘Good job!’ and gave me some more grenades.”

Returning to Asheville, North Carolina, proved a welcome relief this time. The war had physically and mentally exhausted James. Yet, his training did not prepare him for the transition back to civilian life. Now that thinking about his experiences would not get him killed, voices of soldiers and former commanders persecuted his every waking moment. The thunder of artillery and chatter of machine guns echoed in his mind again and again. James tried to move on, briefly marrying a woman, but the war would not let go. He attempted suicide. While hospitalized, a VA physician diagnosed James as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, depression, and severe PTSD. Then they returned him to a world he no longer understood.

Neighbors and co-workers who met James knew he had mental health problems, but no one seemed inclined or able to help the military veteran. Besides, soldiers returning from Vietnam were not treated with respect or lauded as heroes; they were spat upon and ridiculed. This sentiment was magnified by James’ paranoia, and the fact people whispered about how he shot at imaginary groundhogs in his front yard or talked to himself. The community that should have embraced a soldier who needed help after protecting their freedoms further ostracized him.

Maybe this led to the fight at work. Another whispered conversation. A snide comment said within earshot. Whatever it was, in 1995, twenty-five years after the end of his second tour of duty in Vietnam, James got into a fight at the Asheville tool company where he worked. Fired as the instigator, James snapped. Two days later he returned to work with a semiautomatic rifle and pistol, fired about fifty shots, and killed three people.

“In an era where yellow ribbons adorned light posts, cars, and front doors in honor of those fighting in Desert Storm, this sentiment turned to hypocrisy in the criminal justice system.”

Thank You For Your Service

The State of North Carolina tried and sentenced James to death for the 1995 triple murder. At trial, his public defenders failed to develop a mental health defense. James’ military service came up during sentencing, but the prosecution used it to convince jurors this made the Vietnam vet more responsible and cognizant of what he did. In an era where yellow ribbons adorned light posts, cars, and front doors in honor of those fighting in Desert Storm, this sentiment turned to hypocrisy in the criminal justice system.

James is not alone. Approximately 15 percent of prisoners incarcerated for homicide are military veterans, (Dieter, 9). Though the number varies by state, 22 of the 139 prisoners on North Carolina’s death row are vets [IS THERE A SOURCE FOR THIS]. By 2004, about 16,400 veterans nationwide were serving either a life or death sentence. The percentage of incarcerated vets who served in combat is unclear, but for those who did, PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and other serious mental disorders are common.

Horrific crimes are without excuse and the victims, their families, and the community should be protected from the people who harm them. However, some crimes can be mitigated by the state of mind experienced by the perpetrator. Not everyone who experiences PTSD and schizophrenia commits violent crimes, but combat vets who decline into mental illness, experience psychotic breaks, and lack social supports are most likely to do so. When the symptoms of any mental disorder go untreated it does not disappear, but often worsens and finds a violent outlet.

Not until 2013 did PTSD become a serious mental disorder recognized by the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5, a diagnostic manual that lists mental disorders, their severity of impairment to functioning, and symptoms, (Dieter, 17). A PTSD diagnosis for combat vets who experience symptoms at the time of a crime they commit should limit culpability and preclude capital punishment.

Except, ineffective trial and post-conviction counsel, a history of mental illness, and military service are common factors in hundreds of death penalty cases. In these ways, James is not unique. Like so many others, he has been abandoned and failed by people incapable of doing their duty even as he volunteered to do his.

Recognition

After thirteen years on death row, James’ appellate attorney hired therapist and retired Army chaplain, Jim Johnson, to talk with his client. Even on his good days, James could be combative and difficult, so it was hoped Johnson, himself a Vietnam vet who struggled with PTSD, would be able to connect with James and get him to talk. In one of those conversations, Johnson learned that James never received a Purple Heart for being wounded in combat. 

Johnson contacted some people in the Army and got the paperwork moving. James’ appellate attorneys were surprised it worked and that their mentally ill client would be awarded two medals for his military service. Johnson wanted a ceremony for James at Central Prison, to award both the Purple Heart and Good Conduct medals. He believed, even though the man lived on death row, James was entitled to recognition for his service. Initially, the warden refused, but after some intervention by the regional director of prisons, James French, who also served in Vietnam, the ceremony happened.

When asked what the medals mean to him all these years later James thought a moment, adjusted his thick state-issued glasses, and spoke. “You have to go back to 1968. It took over forty years to get those medals. A lot has happened.” He looked at his yellowed nails then at me. “I don’t know why it took so long, but the point is I lived to see those medals. Here, more than anything, it was recognition from other guys and officers who were surprised I was getting a medal. It meant a lot more to them, and that means a lot to me.”

After a while, James went back to his daily routine on death row. A few television programs, maybe an old movie with John Wayne, then an afternoon nap. Later, he would work in his coloring books sent by attorneys unable to help the 72-year-old veteran in any other way. Eventually, he would roam the dayroom talking to himself. Maybe he thought of thundering salvos of 105 mm T.O.W.S or the scream of fighter jets before they dropped napalm. Maybe he remembered the burning sensation of shrapnel in his leg while sleep took cover in its own foxhole. Maybe regret for the victims invaded his mind in more lucid moments. Whatever his thoughts, James lives with the pride of having served his country even though it ultimately failed him.