I noticed that a lot of media and publications talk about Vietnam War veterans suffering from PTSD and other psychological/mental health issues.
What was so devastating in this specific war comparing to other wars (i.e. WW1 and WW2) that caused so many vets’ trauma?
Or is it a matter of fact that during previous wars mental health care was less developed?
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A lot of good answers in here. It seems like WWII had a very clear purpose and narrative to why we were there. “We are here to stop Hitler’s Germany from conquering Europe and threatening the entire globe” may be a clear enough purpose/mission to ease the conscience of those people who witnessed so much death (not that WWII veterans had ‘eased’ consciences by any means, but perhaps relative to a Vietnam vet)
The “why” around Vietnam is so much murkier, that perhaps that played a role in making the atrocities of that war harder to make sense of, resolve and let go? An analogy could be killing someone in self-defense versus killing somebody by accident. I imagine it is much easier for someone to forgive themselves for taking a life if it is clearly to save themselves or a loved one, versus killing someone or seeing someone be killed for no good reason
It was partly due to what they had to do.
You hear stories about how soldiers were MADE to kill Vietnamese non-combatants: elderly, women and children.
They were forced to burn villages to prevent the Vietcong from advancing.
Add to this the fact that the terrain was unlike anything America has ever fought in, so much so that we tried to chemically burn entire regions with Agent Orange. A compound that will later cause a devastating impact on our returning troops’ health. A compound whose terrible effects are still causing birth defects to this day.
So you have the biggest clusterfuck:
1. First battle the US committed to that was essentially a stalemate: we could not advance, they couldn’t make us leave. But this stalemate is between a first world country and, what we thought, a bunch of jungle savages. It was a humiliation at a time when the “Sleeping Giant”had awoken. When our allies were watching us closely.
2. Hippie movement with “Make Love Not War” that shamed the military and held nationwide demonstrations against the war.
3. Forced execution of children and women by soldiers who didn’t want to.
4. The government using deadly chemicals indiscriminately. They would pepper an area while the troops were still there.
No morale, horrible atrocities, welcomed home by being called murderers. WWII veterans came home to parades and honor. Vietnam veterans came home to images of burning Vietnamese.
Do you remember the most famous image?
A little girl shrieking, her body covered in napalm, on fire. Behind her stands an America soldier.
That image became a summary of the Vietnam war.
It was pointless. Most people who went there are disappointed that they lost, or that the war was predicated on a lie. It’s hard to see your actions or experiences in a good light knowing it was pointless suffering and cruelty.
Mental health in WW1 was a huge issue, “shell shock” and desertion were major problems leading to increased attrition. WW1 is probably the single most brutal war in the history of the planet.
In WW2 “war weariness”/”battle fatigue” was still an issue, but there was a more concrete cause that people were fighting for. PTSD was absolutely still a problem, but the sheer number of people involved and the cause people were fighting for made it seem like less of an issue, even if it was a pretty big issue.
In Vietnam there were a lot of draftees and less of a real “cause” involved in the fighting. Teenagers were being drafted into a war that people didn’t really believe in, and then when they came home they were spat on by their own countrymen. Also after all that, we lost the war, everything they fought and died for ended up being for nothing once we pulled out. That was compounded by the fact that the illicit drug scene was booming at the time, so things like weed and heroin and LSD were used as ways to “escape” PTSD issues but in reality they were making the problems worse. Also there are a lot more Vietnam veterans alive today than WW2 (and definitely WW1) veterans, so there are more people still around that are suffering.
It’s easier to deal with mental stress when you feel like you fought for a good cause, you’re celebrated as a hero in the end, and you have millions of other people to relate to.
When you’re shoved into a warzone you don’t want to be in and not sure why you’re even there and then demonized when you get back home, that’s a lot harder to deal with, and hardcore drugs only make things worse.
On top of all that, the entire field of psychoanalysis was being developed in like the 1920s which was between WW1 and WW2, so only the beginnings of concepts like PTSD were being developed around then.
There are probably a bunch of ways to answer this question, but this would be my contribution.
The Vietnam war was part of a very turbulent moment of history, an important piece of the generally socially and politically turbulent 60s and 70s, and it’s important to note that the war involved significant conscription, particularly among the working and oppressed sections of society, meaning very few except the higher-ups (officers, leutenants etc) had generally chosen to be there – especially by the final years. The number of people willingly signing up dwindled very quickly once the realities of the war became widely known. Of course that was true for other major wars too, but like i said there are many perculiarities about this period in history and culture and particularly brutal aspects to the war.
The US side of the Vietnam war, by the end, had one of the lowest/worst morales of any war in modern history, atleast partly because by the end of it, alot of the official so-called justifications for the war were seen by many to be lies. By the time the US pulled out, the Gi revolt was extremely widespread; many officers had absolutely no authority or power over their soldiers, who simply refused to continue fighting. Partly this was because of how absolutely brutal the war was, without adequate justification to convince the majority of soldiers they were actually doing a moral act by continuing the war. In many people’s eyes, the Viet Cong had proven itself to be a mass, popularly supported movement against colonial/imperialist subjugation; meaning the US weren’t intervening to protect the freedom of the Vietnamese, but actually to prevent that freedom.
Adding to all this, the US’s official strategy in Vietnam was to wage a war of attrition. Meaning to try and force surrender by basically decimating and devastating the entire population and all civilian infrastructure. That’s why they carpet-bombed and used chemical weapons. It was well understood among GIs that it was not only permissible to kill innocent civilians but pretty much a daily event, as any man, woman or child dead were often counted as part of the ‘quotas’ of dead Viet Cong. Officers were under extreme pressure to meet these quotas and tried to transfer that pressure to their units. This is all well documented by countless personal accounts from the war, as well as official US documents.
One common method that was used to count ‘quotas’ was to get GIs to slice off victims ears to prove they had made a kill, and all the ears were counted at the end of the day. Civilians were being killed all over the place and they were passed off to be Vietcong, to make it seem like ‘progress’ was being made in the war.
The most infamous case of the US forces slaughtering civilians was the Mai Lai massacre, which was one of the turning points that spurned on the GI revolt and the anti-war movement abroad. Many of the soldiers involved in massacres like Mai Lai understandably suffered significant trauma.
If you watch the documentary ‘Sir no Sir’ that interviews former GIs, it help paints a picture of how widely hated this war was by many. This is not a left wing, ‘biased’ take on events – it’s the reality of what happened. The sentiments that became widespread were anti-war in feeling, not just among latte-drinking students in the US but among the soldiers themselves. The GI revolt was one of the 3 main reasons why the US eventually had to pull out. The other two reasons was popular discontent/unrest at home, and the fact that the war was becoming more and more economically unviable.
The Vietnam war was a HUGE failure and embarrassment for the US in the end. Not only because they did not achieve the desired result, but because it backfired on them in so many ways, and became proof that you can’t necessarily just throw hundreds of thousands of people into a war they have no lot in, and expect them to blindly follow what they are told. Sometimes it might work, often times it doesn’t, because people have their own agency and tend to be more ethically concerned than the people in power, as they have no stake in the outcome of such a war. The Viet Cong didn’t actually threaten American lives in their own country. Many of the people conscripted were poor working class Americans, many were black workers and students who faced brutal racial oppression in their own country. What stake did they have in killing innocent Vietnamese people in another country who were just trying to fight for better conditions of life? The civil rights movement had a huge political influence on the GI revolt and the anti-war movement too. All of the different political and social strands of upheaval interacted with eachother in this time.
Really recommend the documentary I mentioned called ‘Sir no Sir’, and the well-cited book ‘a people’s history of the Vietnam war’ by Jonathan Neale which gets its information from first hand accounts from GI’s and higher-ups alike, from both supporters and opposers of the war, as well as from official US strategy documents.
I’d summarise my point by saying, the war was (I would guess) particularly traumatising for many soldiers, because they didn’t believe in it/ weren’t convinced of a compelling moral obligation to fight that may help other former soldiers deal with their PTSD. For many soldiers in Vietnam, it all turned out to be senseless violence for no good reason.
Compare that to US soldiers in WW2 who, from what I understand, generally had decent morale because they felt they were fighting a morally upstanding war against fascism. Their PTSD may still be extremely severe, but perhaps a little easier to handle?
The combat time and style of Vietnam was fundamentally different than previous wars. Ww2 western soldiers had a few weeks of front line duty before being cycled to the rear. Combat was in one direction and the concept of safe not safe was valid. Vietnam, Afghanistan and other gorilla wars have no borders, there is no front line, there is no cycling to rear guard. The constant combat vigilance creates a mental fatigue that breaks people.
Well, for one thing, we were unequivocally the “Bad Guys” in this one. Once you’ve figured that out, and once you’ve figured out why there is a War Crimes museum dedicated to the US in Hanoi, you might start to feel bad about the atrocities we committed there.
Also, we lost this one. First major loss of a “War” by the US – if one disregards Korea (as one does.). So nobody got a hero’s welcome home. No parades celebrating the excursion. Mostly embarrassment and resentment.
So, you sit and contemplate what the reasons were that led you there, and the loss of life on both sides – the loss of your mates, the fact that you may have killed to no good result – gives one a lot to stew about.
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