Category Archives: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

One Reason Why “we” Wore the Uniform and Put “our” Lives on the Line

Less than one percent of Americans currently serve in the US Military defending their nation and fighting for its interests in foreign lands. Between 1964 – 1968, I was one of those troops serving for America wearing the uniform.  I put my life on the line just like the others that wore similar uniforms in the US Navy, Army, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard.

In 1964, I joined the US Marines and went to boot camp at MCRD in San Diego, California. While I was in boot camp, the Tonkin Gulf Incident took place and President L. B. Johnson used this as an excuse to go to war in Vietnam, where I served in 1966.  I came home with a bad case of PTSD and still suffer from it.  I cannot sleep without weapons close at hand.  One of those weapons is a seven-inch bowie knife with a razor sharp blade.  Another is a 38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver loaded with hollow points. Remove the weapons, I cannot sleep. Every night sound brings back memories of Vietnam.

In Vietnam, my battalion, while it was there during the war, took 50% casualties and earned a Presidential Unit Citation.

I often ask myself, who did I sacrifice for?  Why did I put my life on the line and who did I put my life on the line for?

I’ll tell you. Out of patriotism, I served to defend the American way of life—the freedoms this country provides and the opportunities offered by a capitalist, consumer economy that is supposed to reward merit and hard work.

My wife was born in China. She experienced severe hunger during the famine of the Great Leap Forward (1959 – 1961) and she lived through the insanity of Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966 -1976). In the mid 1980s, she came to the United States on a student Visa, earned an MFA from the Chicago Art Institute and went on to write her memoir, which became a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award.  As an immigrant and a naturalized US citizen she benefited from what America had to offer to all immigrants and citizens that live and hopefully work here.

Therefore, I served in the US Marines and fought in a war to preserve the right of immigrants to come to the United States and succeed.  Since less than 2% of the US population are North American Natives, that means 98% of the population in America are either descended of immigrants or immigrants.

According to Index Mundi in 2012, 79.96% of Americans are white, 12.85% are black, 4.43% are Asian and 15.1% of the total US population is Hispanic (Latino). Note – there is a separate listing for Hispanic since the origin may be white, black, Asian, etc.

For example, I fought for Jessica Sanchez (age 16), so she could have a chance at the American dream. Her father, a Mexican-American born in Texas and a US citizen served in the US Navy and wore the uniform, so he also served for his daughter and others just like her.

In fact, Jessica’s grandfather (a Filipino), who wasn’t a US citizen, joined the US Navy and wore the uniform.  When a Navy transport carried my battalion from Okinawa to Vietnam in 1966, Jessica’s grandfather could have been serving on the crew of that ship. In addition, the United States, out of gratitude, offers citizenship to foreign nationals that serve in the American military and are willing to fight and even die for this country.

If you do not know who Jessica Sanchez is, I’ll tell you. She started singing at the age of two and her dream is to become a professional singer.  For fourteen years, she competed until she became a finalist at the age of 16 on Season 11 of American Idol where she came in second place losing out on $300,000 and a guaranteed recording contract.

Another young American, a white boy, may have cheated Jessica from achieving her dream. In fact, this other young American who never wore the uniform, may have cheated others out a chance to win too, because he claims that he is responsible for the person that won the contest. He admits that he rigged it and he did it legally because there is no law against what he did.

The American military is not a white-man’s club.  In January 1948, President Truman ended segregation in the armed forces. The most decorated unit in the US military during World War II was the 442nd Infantry Regiment—the Nisei, Japanese-Americans born in the United States.  This unit became the most highly-decorated regiment in the history of the US Armed Forces, including 21 Medal of Honor recipients.

In fact, during World War II, over 250,000 to over 400,000 Filipinos served/fought in the US military. In addition, the US army reported in an Army Profile in September 2005, that 17.4% of the troops were female, 60.8% were white; 21.6% were black (African-American); 10.5% were Hispanic (Latino),  and 4% were Asian.  Source: http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/docs/demographics/FY05%20Army%20Profile.pdf

The US even offers citizenship to foreign nationals that serve in the US military because so many Americans are not willing to serve or are not qualified for one reason or another.

However, one white boy is so proud of being the creator of “Vote for the Worst.com” that he boasted on his site, “We did it, Worsters! 132 million votes were cast last night, and in the end, we helped the fifth straight white guy with a guitar win American Idol… we succeeded yet again and helped make sure Pinoybot Jessica Sanchez was left in the loser’s circle.”

The week before, only 90 million votes were cast to decide who the final 2 would be.

This white boy’s name is David Della Terza, and he launched “Vote for the Worst.com” in 2004. To discover his alleged influence rigging votes on American Idol and other TV talent contests, it helps to understand that an active Website-Blog often doubles its viewers annually, and a recent Alexa Ranking shows that Terza’s infamous Blog is ranked in the top .01% of all global Website and Blogs.

For a comparison, we will use my iLook China.net Blog. In 2010 (the first year), there were 28,341 total views; in 2011, there were 126,557.  So far in 2012, there have been 95,050.  The average per day views in 2010 were 84 with 347 for 2011, and 645 for 2012 (that number could go up or down before the end of the year).

At my iLook China.net Blog, daily views increased by 400% in 2011 over 2010.  So far, in 2012, daily views have increased by about 180%, and there have been almost a quarter-million total views since the January 2010 launch.

If we use the conservative estimate that a Blog’s views will double each year and use the same number that iLook China saw in its first year, then “Vote for the Worst.com”, since it has been active for eight years, may have reached more than seven million views annually or more than 20,000 a day, and those numbers could be much higher.

If a white boy uses the media (a Website or Blog is media when it reaches these numbers) and called an African American by the “N” word, what kind of reaction would result?

One talented contestant that was voted off the week before the final round was Joshua Ledet, and I believed he was so good that he was a contender for first place. How would many in America react if David Della Terza’s ‘Vote for the Worst.com’ had posted, “We succeeded yet again and helped make sure ‘N-word’ Joshua Ledet was left in the loser’s circle.”?

How is that different from calling Jessica Sanchez, a Hispanic-American born in Chula Vista, California, a Pinoybot as he gloats that he rigged the vote on a popular TV talent show such as American Idol and possibly cheated her out of several hundred thousand dollars and a recording contract that might be worth millions?

The reason why I wore that uniform and put my life on the line was not for someone like David Della Terza.

To discover more on this topic, see The True Value of American Idol – (Viewed as Single Page) and learn more about David Della Terza and contestants that have competed on American Idol.

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

Casualties of the Mind (part 3 of 3)

For those fifteen years, I didn’t talk about the war. During the day, I didn’t think about it either. However, at night, every sound was the enemy coming for my family and me. I’d wake sweating and grab the eight-inch knife I slept with, and there was a loaded revolver under the bed.  Then in 1981, I was working toward a MFA in writing and proposed an individual graduate project where I would write about my experiences from Vietnam.

It took six months to get beyond page forty in that manuscript, which was my first day in Vietnam. The Ph.D. with the major in English literature finally gave me an ultimatum, and I opened up. On page 41, I scrambled down a net and boarded a landing craft that carried me to the beach in Chu Lai.

Did that breakthrough help me sleep through the night?  No.  I still wake up listening to every sound.

If the crickets around the house stop chirping, I open my eyes and listen.  You see, the crickets have become my first line of defense—my trip flare.  Before bedtime, I check all the doors and windows to make sure they are locked. I still keep an eight-inch knife close and a twelve-gauge pump shotgun one-step from where I struggle to sleep. I’ve lived with this combat in my head for forty-four years so far.

When my VA shrink told me a few years ago that I had to lock my weapons up so no one would get hurt, I stopped going to counseling. Even in the US, the odds of becoming a victim of violent crime are one in four according to statistics and the last piece I read said the odds are getting worse. When the real beast comes, I have to be ready, because we live in a combat zone.

Return to Casualties of the Mind, Part 2 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

Casualties of the Mind (part 2 of 3)

In Vogt’s piece, one soldier says, “When you come back to here and you go to a combat stress from somebody who has a Ph.D. and whatnot and had never set foot in harm’s way, he’s only giving you textbook criteria or a pill to help you sleep better at night.”

The shrink says, “This is the kind of thing I hear a lot. Avoidance is typical. Each soldier’s timeline is different. There’s no predicting when a soldier will be ready to open up.”

It’s true. We all have different timelines, which may be unpredictable bombs ready to explode without warning. From 1966 until 1981, I didn’t even know my flashbacks, drinking and anger were from the combat I carried in my head.

The beasts come out at night and wake me to a nightmare world of combat where I hear the sniper round that touched my left ear—an inch to the right and I would have been dead or the time we were escorting a supply column north and one truck hit a landmine and we found only the foot (still in the boot) of the guy who was riding in that truck—he had two weeks left before he would have gone home.

Continued with Casualties of the Mind – Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

Casualties of the Mind (part 1 of 3)

Associated Press writer Heidi Vogt wrote “Casualties of the Mind”, and I read her piece in the Bay Area News Group about the trauma of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The copy I found on-line was from the Fresno Bee and had a different title, Dying faces, body bags: How trauma hits a US unit (you may read the whole piece here). I checked. It’s all there.

Vogt writes that 20% of the 1.6 million troops who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan have reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress (PTSD).  I’m sure the numbers are higher.  After all, many do not report the symptoms.  Even if it were 20%, that’s still 320 thousand Causalities of the Mind, and the casualties from Vietnam, my war, may be higher.

Each troop interviewed by Vogt relates symptoms that are connected to the combat they experienced. For me, it was the long nights waiting for the enemy to infiltrate or hit our hill one more time or the night patrols and ambushes outside the wire moving through rice paddies on hyper alert in inky darkness because the enemy could be anywhere and hit at any time. The enemy could even be buried in the dirt we walked on waiting to blow off our legs if we stepped on one.

Then there were the field operations—one time I was part of a five or six man team on a recon thirty miles in front of our lines. We drove through a village where we saw no one but a radio antenna sticking from the top of a tree with a Vietcong flag flying from it.

Continued with Casualties of the Mind – Part 2 and/or discover A Prisoner of War for Life

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

Trained Killers

That was me in 1966, a trained killer. That was what I was trained to do at MCRD—to kill the enemy and not fight him—but to destroy him or her.

When I read the title, The Threat From Within, Some soldiers become murderers by Jim Frederick, Time Magazine, February 22, 2010; my first thought was that this issue was more complicated than that.

I read the piece, and then looked up the author’s bio. I saw no mention that Frederick served in the military or in a combat zone as a member of the military. No matter how many military men he interviewed or how much research he did, Frederick will never understand what it is like to be the hunter or hunted in a combat zone and what it does to that person.

The Threat From Within never mentions PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I have a PTSD VA rated disability from serving in combat in Vietnam in 1966. When I was in Vietnam, I knew men who did horrible things probably driven by PTSD.  Current research shows that PTSD causes permanent brain damage. I’m sure that the reason the military handles incidents that would appear to be crimes in a civilian world the way they do, is because the officers know the horrible blood price that comes with winning a war and many people like Jim Frederick do not.

Frederick indicates that the military should find a way to root out these potentially dangerous individuals so these types of killings do not take place. It’s bad enough that our soldiers are put in harm’s way with rules that do not allow them to shoot unless they see the shooter with weapon in hand. They did that to us in Vietnam and America lost that war.

After years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and a military stretched to the breaking point, if every solider damaged by PTSD were pulled from combat, there wouldn’t be enough troops left to accomplish winning a war America cannot afford to lose. Consider that Al-Qaida and their allies have sworn the utter and total destruction of our entire civilization.

In war, the military has a job to do. If that means sending partially damage troops into combat still capable of fighting and killing, that’s what’s done.

From history, we learned that great military minds like Alexander the Great understood that war is hell and must be fought as if the battlefield is hell itself. America fought like that in World War II and won. In a war zone, there are no innocent people no matter what the media prints or says and only ignorant people and fools support putting limits on our troops doing their job. Even in the Korean conflict, the harsh reality of war existed.

If the rules that our troops fight under today existed during World War II, America would have lost and eventually been split between Japan and Germany.  If you lived in the West, the flag to salute would have a rising sun and in the east a swastika.

In my opinion—Jim Frederick and people that think like him are ignorant fools. Let them have their say and politely ignore them.

Discover The Public Image of PTSD and the Vietnam Veteran

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Pain, Pollution and People

It’s difficult to write when I’m gasping for air and blowing my top. When I was still teaching, walking into a classroom in the morning made me sick—and no, I wasn’t allergic to my students, but I should have been.

Then I retired and for five years, I have been free of wheezy lungs and sinus infections that always arrived with the start of each school year when I worked in those old buildings at the high school where I taught. Have you heard of sick building syndrome? I lived it.

This new, peaceful world changed several weeks ago. Workers came with power tools and mud-caked boots. I should have fled, but I stayed at my computer as a stupid, stubborn, former United States Marine would.

My office has three doors. One that leads toward the other rooms and one that opens to the outside. Then there is the door that opens to the space under the second story and the foundation. That crew drilled, pounded, cut and tracked dirt from room to room—always in my office. I had trouble concentrating. I suffered from memory loss. Plastic tarps covered most of the furniture, and I couldn’t find things. When I left the office to find a moment of peace, I covered the computer and printers with a bed sheet. The noise reminded me of combat but worse, because I was nineteen and then twenty when I was in Vietnam—noise did not bother me as it does now.

covered office furniture

Concrete dust floated through the air and my sinuses and lungs rebelled, so I put on a 3M mask with two pink HEPA filters attached. The last time I wore a mask like this was when I was teaching. I searched the garage and found the noise suppresser to help mute the pounding and drilling.  I looked like an explorer to Mars or a survivor of trench warfare struggling to write while the frigid air froze my fingers.

The crew had arrived to bolster the foundation against future earthquakes that might never arrive. Even if a hard tumbler did visit, I doubt that all that work would hold our sixty-year old hillside house together. It still might slide down the hill into the middle of the street blocking traffic.

I could have moved, but I didn’t want to disconnect all the cables and cart the equipment to another room for a few days to escape the dust and noise—something (I soon discovered) that would have been impossible without checking into a hotel.

Even with a noise suppresser covering my ears, muted sounds intruded and the last place I wanted to be was in this chair writing about China, the Vietnam War or being a teacher in the tortured American public schools. I stuck with it for days as my suppressed anger fueled by PTSD started to simmer and fume.

It was a relief when the workers finished. I thought I was going to have the tranquility back where the only noise would be the click of the keys as my warmed hands flew across the keyboard meeting my Blogging goals.

But the workers left something behind.

I started sneezing. My sinuses ran hundred mile marathons. I went to the doctor and he prescribed medications that didn’t work. The sneezing went volcanic—like Mt. Saint Helena blowing its top.  One time, I sneezed so bad, I blew the 3M mask off my face—so much for a mask that’s supposed to protect you from every gas and plague Islamic terrorists can brew. Upstairs or outside, I was fine. But in my office, I was a goner. “Blam, blam, balm,” my nose exploded like rapid shots from a fifty-caliber submachine gun.

I could have opened windows, but it’s been raining for weeks.  The sky has been overcast.  The air breezy and cold.  Then today, the sun came out and I finally let the outside in and the sneezing stopped—I’m crossing my fingers and knocking on wood. I’m afraid to close the windows, but night will come and with it lower temperatures. I fear that whatever industrial poison is haunting my once tranquil office space might return.

Return to A Repeat of Agent Orange in America’s Heartland?

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

Reality TV is a Mental Illness

Reality TV is a Mental Illness

I read a blog post from The UX of Social Media Blog, and the author wrote, “The suffering of others is also the staple of millions of viewers who tune in from squalid rooms and palaces alike to watch someone besides themselves become the latest humiliated outcast.”


The Reality of Reality TV

After reading the rest of the post, I thought of a letter I received in Vietnam that said, Dear Skip. Then I thought of the millions who have nothing more constructive to do but tune in and watch others suffer and be humiliated. This same ship of fools may also have enjoyed my suffering then, but I’m also sure they would not want to have what I brought home from Vietnam—the beast that lives inside my head.

I have no desire to watch reality TV, and I’m sure America would be a better place if the misguided people that watch this junk had a dose of Vietnam as I did. Maybe then, Americans would be less combative and judgmental on so many levels like this dog fight between the Democrats and Republicans.

Learn more about the reality of Politics as Usual

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

The Recon

I was one of four Marines in two jeeps. We were Marines but we were not Recon Marines. Two of the four were officers. One was a staff sergeant, and I was the radio operator with equipment so old that the three spare batteries had a better chance of being dead before me. Heck, they were feeding us twenty-year old C-rations. The sides of the boxes were stamped 1945 and it was 1966. Proof that the Marines don’t waste anything.

What was more dangerous? The food we were eating or the Vietcong. It’s good to be stupid and nineteen—not knowing about botulism. Besides, I liked the ham and limas.

The 1st Marine tank battalion was involved in a field operation with a South Korean unit—the kind of soldiers you want on your side. The US Marines and the Koreans, along with an ARVN unit, were forming a box to trap a regiment of North Koreans.

We drove ahead of our troops to check the depth of the rice paddies making sure our tanks wouldn’t be bogged down. Every mile or so, we would stop and the officers, a major and a lieutenant, would take a long pole and poke a paddy.

Once we were fifteen to twenty miles ahead of our lines, I lost contact with our people.  I switched batteries until I’d tried them all. Then we rolled through a recently deserted village where I saw the Vietcong flag and radio antennas sticking from the top of a tree.  Food was still cooking on open flames inside empty huts.

I pointed them out, and the staff sergeant said, “Don’t tell the officers. They don’t need the worry.”

Thirty miles in front of the lines, the officers were busy poking a rice paddy when I spied a line of muscular men in peasant clothing coming toward us. I was squatting behind the second jeep watching our rear holding a fifty-caliber Ingram submachine gun. I was dressed in camouflage, the jeep was olive green, and I was squatting in shadows. These guys were approaching from the rear and the staff sergeant and officers didn’t know.

I felt like an orphan about to be molested.

When that line of men reached the dirt road and climbed from the rice paddy, I stood so they could see my weapon and me, the skinny Marine who had gained twenty pounds in boot camp and was no longer invisible if he turned sideways.

A fifty caliber Ingram submachine gun with a fifty-round clip will cut small trees and men in half. Once you pull the bolt and let go, the entire clip empties.  There was another clip taped to the first one. It’s a quick change.  You aim to the left of the target and the recoil swings the weapon in an arc to the right.

They saw me and, still walking military fashion, crossed the road, went down the other side into the next rice paddy and kept going. No one shot at us on that recon, but this kind of memory causes you to wake sweaty at three in the morning listening. I remember thinking that maybe my hands were too slick with sweat to pull the bolt and fire.

Discover The ambush; the king cobra and the water buffalo

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

“This Emotional Life” on PBS

PBS Tackles Happiness In ‘This Emotional Life’
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122207615

I understand that this series on PBS will also be discussing PTSD.  Since PBS offers Podcasts of programs that have aired, you may want to listen in.

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

About the PTSD Forum

I found this interesting site and wanted to share it.

http://www.ptsdforum.org/

This is the site’s introduction: “Welcome to PTSD Forum. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a life threatening, debilitating disorder that can break down a sufferer’s body through anxiety and stress. Further it poses a significant suicide risk resulting from the brains neurological imbalance and chemical depression. Sufferers often live in denial, thus this community is aimed at helping PTSD sufferers help themselves through others experiences, guidance and education. We are here for the sufferer, spouse and families surrounding PTSD. Spouses and family are too often forgotten in this equation, and often they receive all the worst that PTSD has to offer. If you’re involved in any way with PTSD, get registered and help yourself now.”

This Website asks for donations. They claim that the “PTSD Forum is costly to run and maintain. Your donations assist to keep this free resource online. All donations are gratefully received.”

I question the “costly” claim. I pay less than a hundred dollars a year to maintain several Websites, and the Blogs I maintain cost nothing but time. Blogs like mine on WordPress are free. The Soulful Veteran was created on WordPress and there was no cost except in the time writing and posting. It would be interesting to see an itemized list of expenses from the PTSD Forum.  Maybe they pay a Webmaster to maintain their site.  I don’t have that problem since I am the Webmaster for all my Blogs and Websites. The Soulful Veteran will never ask for money. If you see an error or mistake, I’m the responsible party. Let me know, and I may correct it.

The only way I could see that the PTSD Forum is costly would be if the staff paid themselves and running the forum was their job. Maybe I’m wrong. Regardless, there could be important information to help someone with PTSD on this site so do not ignore it.

Learn more about PTSD

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”