The first paragraph says, “Obvious Trump supporters and/or conservatives have sent me emails, accusing me of being unfair regarding former President Trump and attacking American conservatives. They were referring to my thriller The Patriot Oath.”
The menu to the right of Lloyd Lofthouse has three new pages following links from my older blogs that are still on WordPress, and one of the new ones is the new Writer’s Blog:
He’d give his life for his country. But this time, it’s personal.
Josh Kavanagh burns for vengeance. Parachuting with no backup into a lawless area of southern Venezuela, the Special Ops legend is intent on hunting down the rogue agent who put his wife in a coma. But as soon as he gets feet on the ground, the loyal protector discovers he’s dropped into a trap… and a sex trafficking operation run by the Russian mob.
Fighting his way out and desperate to rescue the victims with minimal body count, Josh plans a daring raid on a remote ranch. But after learning the identity of the mastermind behind the hit on a former lover, the talented operative takes the law into his own hands on a hell-bent solo mission for revenge…
Will Josh’s single-minded thirst for justice finish on the wrong side of a gun barrel?
Never for Glory is the pulse-pounding second book in the Josh Kavanagh thriller series. If you like determined heroes, tough conflict ripped from the headlines, and page-turning action, then you’ll love Lloyd Lofthouse’s pursuit of payback.
“Here’s a pull quote from Chuck Yarling’s 1-star review on Amazon. “Once you started reading it, this was one book that was absolutely hard to put down. It has great characters, action galore, and about a group whose mission is to preserve the American republic. That made it hard not to put it my top ten books I read this year!”
“Yes, it was a gem right up to the near-end …”
He fought for his country. Now he’s home and engaged in the deadliest of battles.
Josh Kavanagh eats and breathes loyalty. Wary of how he’ll fit in after a twenty-four-year absence, the Special Forces legend returns to his family’s Montana ranch on an undercover mission. And though he’s anxious to see the high school sweetheart he abandoned a lifetime ago, the dedicated Marine’s greatest concern is tracking down a dangerous neo-Nazi cell.
Juggling unresolved feelings for the woman he left behind, a sister expecting him to avenge her brutal rape, and keeping his own covert activities secret, Josh discovers the threat to the US is bigger than anyone previously thought. And when a member of his team goes MIA and the danger creeps perilously close to home, the talented military man fears he’ll lose everything he holds dear…
With a tangled web of corruption pulling deadly strings, can he blow a conspiracy apart without paying the ultimate price?
The Patriot Oath is the riveting first book in the Josh Kavanagh thriller series. If you like war-hardened heroes, action-packed fight scenes, and powerful political agendas, then you’ll love Lloyd Lofthouse’s gripping adventure.
“Even if 1 percent of cases lead to long Covid, “that’s still a disaster because so many people are still getting infected all the time.” – Vox.com
Original post:
Last week, I had a physical therapy appointment at the VA. Everyone was required to wear masks because many military veterans have compromised immune systems… that may not be the only reason.
This week, I had a follow up exam from an oral surgery (tooth removed about two months ago). The VA does not cover my dental, so my dentists are in the private sector. I have no dental insurance, so I have to pay 100% for that.
No one at that dental office was wearing a mask but me. It seems this dentist’s office and its staff has had enough with COVID, even though COVID isn’t done with us yet.
I complained and kept my mask on. I pointed out that as a combat vet on the Agent Orange list my immune system may be compromised and I’d rather be dead than end up living with Long COVID. I was being nice when I complained. No “F” bombs. No loud rage!
“As of January 16, 2023, 15% of all adults in the US reported having had long COVID symptoms at some point and 6% reported current symptoms.”
Think again if you think your are safe from COVID because you already had it.
“Some people have a false sense of security after getting COVID-19, thinking they can’t get reinfected,” Dr. Varga says. “In truth, anyone may test positive for COVID-19 any number of times.”
“In 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau counted 331.4 million people living in the United States; more than three-quarters (77.9%) or 258.3 million were adults, 18 years or older.” You do the math to discover how many adults may be walking around without a mask that are infected with COVID at any given time.
I’ve been reading about the increase in POTS cases associated with COVID infections. POTS is something I’ve never heard of until recently. I went on a COSTCO supply run and was one of a handful of hundreds of shoppers and employees wearing a mask.
As I was shopping, I thought about POTS, a crippling disease that has increased during the COVID pandemic, that most people are pretending is no longer a threat. I even had a couple of maskless shoppers stare at me as if I was the freak because I was wearing a mask.
Still, COVID isn’t done with us yet!
“POTS is marked by orthostatic intolerance, a sudden reduction in blood flow returning to the heart after a person rises or stands. Common symptoms include feeling lightheaded, faint, and having an increased heart-rate after standing. Treatments may include consuming salt tablets, staying hydrated, wearing compression stockings, and taking certain medications.”
Never for Glory is the unfinished sequel of The Patriot Oath. With 25 completed chapters, there are about 10 to 15 left to finish the first draft. The first five chapters have already been presented to two of the four critique groups I belong to. One of the two groups has heard all of The Patriot Oath. The second group hasn’t, and I am getting conflicting constructive criticism from the two groups. One group is suggesting a lot of changes, and the other group familiar with the first novel in the series likes what they’re hearing with little need for massive revisions.
With this post, I’m inviting readers that have read The Patriot Oath to have a look at Never for Glory’s first chapter and, if wiling, to leave comments letting me know what works, what doesn’t. Thank you. If this early preview works, I have another four chapters I’m willing to add to this post later.
Chapter One
After their first HALO jump together in 2002, Josh and Cheéte vanished into the Hindu Kush Mountains, a rugged area covering 160,000 square miles. Their orders had been to search for targets of opportunity, and for weeks they worked alone with little or no support.
Now, in 2019, seventeen years later, they were doing it again. Still, this time their C-130 belonged to The Oath Group, and it was 30,000 feet over Venezuela.
Getting ready for the repeat was like déjà vu all over again. Back then, they were Marine Corps scout snipers serving in Operation Anaconda against al-Qaeda, Taliban insurgents, and members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. That had been their last mission together. Cheéte retired a few months later in 2003.
“I can’t believe my ghillie suit still fits,” Josh said. “It feels the same, hot and heavy. Too bad DARPA wouldn’t let me use that invisible, bulletproof combat suit for this mission. It was perfect last summer for our sortie in Montana.”
Cheéte grunted as he finished squeezing into his old camouflaged ghillie suit. Once he had it on, he looked like an unkempt yeti that needed to lose some weight. “Well, some of us don’t always get what we want. You’ve been out for less than a year so I’m not surprised your suit fits, but I think mine is going to eat me like it’s a starving anaconda.”
They were talking to each other through their helmet’s military-grade communication units.
Josh grinned as he fastened a g-suit around his abdomen and legs, covering most of the camouflaged outfit he wore underneath. Then he manually inflated the g-suit’s five air bladders. The pressure around the muscles would prevent blood from pooling in the feet and legs and push blood pressure up to the heart and brain. The last thing he did was to attach the oxygen mask and tactical goggles.
With a frustrating sigh, huffing, and puffing, Cheéte managed to do the same thing. Once they were on the ground, they’d ditch the gear required for the HALO jump. Their ghillie suits were designed to conceal them from prying eyes.
Like most Marine Corps snipers, they’d made their own unique disguises by hand and, when not in use, stored them in sealed, plastic boxes lined in cotton and kept dry with silica gel packets.
“I’m worried my Christian Crow wife knows about my two other common law wives,” Cheéte said, interrupting Josh’s thoughts.
Josh did a double-take and stared at his old friend. “Whoa! Where the hell did that come from?”
“Well, in case I don’t make it home, I wanted you to know what’s going on in my life. My Christian wife said the only reason for sex is to create children for God. When I said no more kids, she cut me off. There’s no way I’m going without. I refuse to let my demons have an excuse to mess up my nights. What about you?”
“I have nothing to confess to anyone,” Josh replied.
“Ah, … what about Rachel and Mia?”
A green light came on, signaling that it was time to jump. At the same time, the C-130’s ramp started to yawn open, depressurizing the cabin.
Josh stood, ready to go.
“Well?” Cheéte asked.
“I haven’t had sex with anyone since Rachel was shot in San Francisco and is still in the hospital. So, I’m not that desperate.” Finished, he walked off the aft ramp and dropped from sight, falling 30,000 feet toward the ground.
“Sheesh,” Cheéte hissed. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.” Then he was dropping with his belly pointed toward the ground, his chin lifted up, and his arms and legs spread out for stability.
As Josh fell hard and fast, he thought about Rachel and Mia. He’d lied to Cheéte. He was desperate, explaining why he was losing a lot of sleep. But he disagreed with the crap that sexual frustration was normal. So, shrug and take it in stride.
Bull shit! he thought. He couldn’t remember ever being celibate this long before.
The temptation to keep both of his lovers, as Mia had suggested, was almost overwhelming. But, when he thought about going through with it, he heard Dr. Tate’s voice telling him that would be wrong. Then there was the Christian guilt his mother instilled in him as a child with the Seventh Commandment, “Thou shall not commit adultery.”
He still didn’t understand why his mother started preaching that to him when he was seven. It couldn’t have been because of his crush on Rachel in 2nd grade. He never told anyone about that. There was no way his mother could have known.
To escape the jumble of depressing thoughts stirring up trouble inside his head, he gave himself over to the plunge. Jumping from 30,000 feet felt more like flying than falling. It was windy, loud, and intense. Josh’s senses became wildly alive. That’s why he had an obsession for HALO jumps. The thrill lasted about three times longer than a basic skydiver’s altitude.
With a stable belly-to-earth position, the fastest speed he’d reach was 120 mph. If he wanted to fly faster, he’d shift position so his head was facing the ground and his feet were pointed up. Then he’d drop at 180 mph. Josh had always wondered what it would be like to die like that. Every time he jumped, he’d been tempted to find out.
Checking out of life like that also offered him an easy way to avoid deciding between Rachel and Mia. Because this was a high altitude low open insertion, the main chute was programmed to open automatically at 1,900 feet. If that failed, the reserve chute deployed at 1,000.
The best way to bail out of life would be to use one of his keen-edged combat knives and cut the straps that held the two ‛chutes to his body. He had about a minute left to make that decision.
Was there a better way to die if you were doing something you loved? He started laughing and thought he sounded possessed.
Still, there was Damian Bran, the man they were hunting. He was the one responsible for Rachel living in a hospital, trapped in a coma. Wasn’t that a good enough reason to hang on?
Bran had been a heartless CIA agent for thirty years who left the agency in 2009. He was also known as the Strawman because of his tall, thin stature. Soon after he retired, he’d joined a white supremacist neo-Nazi militia in Montana and ended up working for a ruthless libertarian billionaire, a match made by Mephistopheles.
Josh had been hunting Bran since Rachel had been shot. His efforts to find the former CIA agent had started by putting the man’s wife under surveillance. There had been no calls or texts in or out. Instead, she hadn’t budged from their home in a remote area of Minnesota and didn’t seem to care if she ever saw her husband again.
After The Oath Group’s successful raid in Northwest Montana on that neo-Nazi training camp, Charles Tweet, the billionaire that financed the militia, revealed it was Bran who introduced him to the profitable sex trade. It turned out that the former field agent had started trafficking children years before he left the agency.
Most of the young sex slaves Bran sold to Tweet had ended up working in massage parlors spread across the United States. But some of the most beautiful had suffered a worse fate. If one of them was unfortunate enough to catch the billionaire’s eye, they were doomed.
His last intended victim had been a seventy-six-pound thirteen-year-old Ukrainian girl. The billionaire had slipped a plastic bag over the child’s head while he was raping her. When Cheéte had burst into the underground room where it was taking place, the girl was being suffocated by Tweet, using a method known as erotic asphyxiation.
Later, during his interrogation, Tweet revealed that Damen Bran had introduced him to that risky erotic method. When the billionaire accidentally murdered his first victim, Bran had shrugged it off and said, “Females were created for two purposes. To give men pleasure, and if they survive, to make babies. Besides, when you’re kidnapping children and selling them for a profit, expect to lose a few. Think of it as collateral damage, a business expense.”
Tweet accepted that justification as gospel and had gone on to murder more than a dozen young girls over the years that followed. Now, the billionaire was in court, fighting to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison. The judge had not approved bail, but his lawyers were claiming the evidence was inadmissible.
The information that pinpointed Bran’s location in Venezuela had come from Mia Belle-Chanson, one of Josh’s best friends and a former lover. To her fans, she was a singer-songwriter and a documentary producer. What her followers didn’t know was what she did away from a studio or stage. Because she’d been kidnapped in Haiti at the age of fourteen to become a sex slave, she now operated a secret network that rescued abducted children all over the world. Josh had met Mia when he and Cheéte had rescued her and several other girls soon after they’d been snatched.
Venezuela was the perfect country for a brute like Bran. After Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Madura’s rise to power in 2013, sex trafficking and child sex tourism had become common, and it was getting worse.
The intel from Mia’s rescue organization reported that Bran was living on an isolated cattle ranch located in Venezuela’s savanna southwest of the Rio Apure River.
Having second thoughts about dying, Josh checked his altimeter to determine how much time he had left to decide one way or the other.
It’s been forty-seven years since I served in Vietnam, and over those years, the few times I’ve been in threatening situations, my thoughts are not of running away or breaking down in tears of fear. Instead, I’m thinking of the fastest way I can kill the person I perceive as a threat. If I’m close enough, I’ll be looking at his throat thinking about digging my teeth in and tearing out his jugular.
In the film “Patton”—played by George C. Scott—there is a scene where the general explodes in anger at troops who were in military hospitals suffering from severe PTSD—known as battle fatigue or shell shock back then. The violence they had experienced had traumatized them severely. But General Patton thought anyone who suffered from PTSD was a coward and a fake.
I think that Russell Ireland, who owns the Big I’s Restaurant in Oxford, Massachusetts, is evidently an uneducated throw back to that World War II era, who does not think a war veteran suffering from PTSD deserves the same respect as a vet who lost body parts and probably also suffers from PTSD.
To Ireland’s way of thinking—just like General Patton—if the injury isn’t physical, it doesn’t count. For example, missing body parts.
I never know when my PTSD is going to flare or what may trigger it. When I’m awake, I’m always vigilant of my surroundings watching for threats.
At night and early morning hours I often wake up and see enemy combatants in the darkness—they seem real but I’ve experienced this so many times over the decades that I often stare at them and maybe use a flashlight I keep by my bed to make sure it isn’t real before I can go back to sleep. And by my side is a .45 caliber Glock automatic with a loaded magazine. In the closet is a pump shotgun. In the gun safe are more weapons and boxes of ammo.
I did not buy these weapons to go hunting. I bought these weapons so I could sleep at night knowing I was prepared for the unexpected that my PTSD keeps reminding me is out there. Watching the daily news also doesn’t help so I avoid it most of the time. Before Vietnam, I read newspapers. After Vietnam, I stopped reading them. Newspapers are filled with reminders of crimes and violence in the United States that may trigger PTSD symptoms.
PTSD wasn’t recognized until the 1980s and then vets started to receive help from the VA. I have carried the dark shadow of my PTSD with me since 1966 and didn’t get any help from the VA until after 2005 when I discovered that I was eligible.
And ignorant idiots like Russell Ireland don’t have any idea about the time bomb they may be triggering when they confront a vet with combat induced PTSD. He may have been fortunate that James Glaser had his trained service dog by his side.
By the way, it’s been forty-seven years since I served in Vietnam and I haven’t killed or physical attacked anyone yet. As for Dr. Phil, I’ve never been impressed by his show. It’s more of a shock and awe thing promoted by Oprah [she’s the billionaire who owns the show] while Dr. Phil acts the guru to an ignorant mob of fools—Dr. Phil’s net worth is estimated to be $200 million or more earned from his show.
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.
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In World War I, PTSD—known as shell shock then—was such a problem that ‘forward psychiatry’ was begun by French doctors in 1915. Some British doctors tried general anesthesia as a treatment (ether and chloroform), while others preferred application of electricity.
Imagine suffering from PTSD and being strapped down to a table with electrodes attaches followed by jolts of electricity to shock you healthy.
In 1917, four British ‘forward psychiatric units’ were set up. Hospitals for shell-shocked soldiers were also established in Britain, including (for officers) Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh.
Patients diagnosed to have more serious psychiatric conditions were transferred to the Royal Edinburgh Asylum.
Near the end of 1918, the use of anesthetic and electrical treatments to treat shell shock was gradually replaced with modified Freudian psychodynamic intervention. The efficacy of ‘forward psychiatry’ was controversial.
Psychodynamic therapy focuses on unconscious processes as they are manifested in a person’s present behavior. The goals of psychodynamic therapy are a client’s self-awareness and understanding of the influence of the past on present behavior.
In 1922 the British War Office produced a report on shell shock with recommendations for prevention of war neurosis. However, when World War II broke out in 1939, this seems to have been ignored.
Then during World War II, the term ‘combat fatigue’ was introduced as breakdown rates became alarming, and the value of pre-selection was recognized.
At the Maudsley Hospital in London in 1940, barbiturate abreaction (an emotional release resulting from mentally reliving through the process of catharsis, a long-repressed, painful experience) was advocated for quick relief from severe anxiety and hysteria, using i.v. anesthetics: Somnifaine, paraldehyde, Sodium Amytal. ‘Pentothal narcosis’ and ‘narco-analysis’ were adopted by British and American military psychiatrists.
However, by 1945 medical thinking gradually settled on the same approaches that had seemed to be effective in 1918.
The term PTSD was introduced in 1980.
In the UK the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines for management (2005) recommend trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and consideration of antidepressants. Source: Pub Med.gov
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine, Vietnam Veteran, journalist and award winning author.
His second novel is the award winning love story and suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he didn’t do 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.
Disclaimer: Lloyd Lofthouseis the editor/publisher of Alon Shalev’s Unwanted Heroes, and for a few days, we will showcase the first three chapter of his novel about surviving with PTSD.
Unwanted Heroes brings together an elderly, battle weary Chinese American war vet and an idealistic and pretentious young Englishmen, who share a love for San Francisco, coffee and wine. They soon discover further common ground when repressed memories abruptly surface, cementing an unlikely relationship that just might release each from the tragic pasts that bind them.
When Will Taylor finds employment as a barista at The Daily Grind in the Financial District, he feels inspired to write his breakout novel. Walking the streets of Kerouac and Ginsberg, Taylor discovers the harsh side of America and an injustice he must try and help right before he loses his sanity and love.
When his boss suddenly disappears, Will needs all the help he can find. A homeless professor, precariously balanced between intellectual pinnacles and mental abyss, offers advice and contacts. Taylor’s Goth girlfriend initiates him into the West Coast counter culture, while her Nob Hill father digs up his own military nightmares to help another haunted soldier in desperate straits.
The unique culture of San Francisco lends itself to the comical aspects of the novel, offset in a rollercoaster of emotions as comic follows tragic. Will finds himself dining with his Goth girlfriend and her parent at their home on Nob Hill and teaching them how to toast in twelve languages. In the next scene, he is frantically searching a military graveyard at night, looking for his boss who has suddenly disappeared for a second time.
Unwanted Heroes confronts the issue of homelessness and, in particular, war vets who could never readjust into society. This novel is a tribute to a beautiful, unique and quirky city, its people, and those who sacrificed so much to keep it and America free.
Growing up in London, Alon Shalev has been a political activist since his early teens. He strives through his writing to highlight social and political injustice and to inspire action for change.
Moving to Israel, he helped establish a kibbutz where he lived for 20 years and served in the Israeli army.
Shalev then moved to the San Francisco Bay area and fell hopelessly in love with this unique city. Being new to the US, however, he was shocked to see so many war veterans on the streets. He regularly volunteers at initiatives such as Project Homeless Connect and the San Francisco Food Bank where he meets and talks with war veterans.
“Roman Baca is a Marine Iraq War Veteran and the Artistic Director of Exit 12 Dance Company in NYC. After a career in dance, Mr. Baca served as a US Marine and was deployed to Fallujah, Iraq from ‘05-’06.” Source: Exit 12 Dance Company
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!”
Many unwanted heroes defend our nation and fight its wars—right or wrong. When America’s leaders declare wars based on lies (for example: Vietnam and Iraq) or the truth (World War I, II, Afghanistan and Korea), unwanted heroes do the fighting and pay the price.
On the side of a bus at the VA medical clinic that I go to, it says, “All gave some; some gave all.” I have a credit card sized VA Department of Veterans Affairs ID card. It says below my photo: “Service Connected.” That means I have a disability connected to my service in Vietnam in 1966 when I was serving in the US Marines.
What is the price many unwanted heroes pay for trusting their leaders?
This post has the same title of a novel that was recently released, and I had the privilege of editing Unwanted Heroes by Alon Shalev.
In Unwanted Heroes, Shalev brings together a long suffering, battle weary Chinese American Vietnam veteran suffering from the trauma of PTSD and an idealistic and somewhat pretentious young Englishmen, who both share a love for San Francisco, coffee and wine.
Alon Shalev, the author, grew up in London, and has been a political activist since his early teens. He strives through his writing to highlight social and political injustice and to inspire action for change.
Moving to Israel, he helped establish a kibbutz where he lived for 20 years and served in the Israeli army.
Shalev then moved to the San Francisco Bay area and fell hopelessly in love with this unique city. Being new to the US, however, he was shocked to see so many war veterans on the streets. He regularly volunteers at initiatives such as Project Homeless Connect and the San Francisco Food Bank where he meets and talks with war veterans. These experiences lend authenticity to the novel.
In fact, according to NIH (the National Institute of Health) Medline Plus, “PTSD affects about 7.7 million American adults” … and “members of the military exposed to war/combat and other groups at high risk for trauma exposure are at risk for developing PTSD.
“Among veterans returning from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, PTSD and mild to moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI) are often linked and their symptoms may overlap. Blast waves from explosions can cause TBI, rattling the brain inside the skull.
“The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that PTSD afflicts almost 31% of Vietnam veterans; as many as 10% of Gulf War (Desert Storm) veterans; 11% of veterans of the war in Afghanistan, and 20% of Iraqi war veterans.”
NIH says, “PTSD is often accompanied by depression, substance abuse, or other anxiety disorders.”
In addition, “between 529,000 and 840,000 veterans are homeless at some time during the year, and on any given night, more than 300,000 veterans are living on the streets or in shelters in the US. … About 33% of homeless males in the US are veterans and veterans are twice as likely as other Americans to become chronically homeless. One of the primary causes of homelessness among veterans is combat-related mental health issues and disability.
The incident of PTSD and suicide rates among veterans is also climbing and 45% of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness including PTSD. Source: Veterans Inc.org
The New York Times reported, “Suicide rates of military personnel and combat veterans have risen sharply since 2005, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan intensified. Recently, the Pentagon established a Defense Suicide Prevention Office.”
“The CDC Vietnam Experience Study Mortality Assessment showed that during the first 5 years after discharge, deaths from suicide were 1.7 times more likely among Vietnam veterans than non-Vietnam veterans. …
Why? “The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter.” Source: History.com – Statistics about the Vietnam War
I did not seek help for my PTSD for thirty-eight years, because I did not know the VA offered counseling.
It has been forty-six years since I fought in Vietnam, and watching two movies rebooted my PTSD interrupting my sleep pattern. For years, I usually wake at least once a night and listen. However, since watching the movies, I wake every hour and listen to the night sounds.
In Brothers, one of the two brothers, a captain in the US Marines, goes to Afghanistan on his fourth tour of duty and becomes a tortured and abused POW. After he is liberated and his captors killed, he returns home suffering from severe PTSD trauma. Tobey Maguire plays Marine Captain Sam Cahill and does a convincing job playing a veteran that is severely damaged by PTSD symptoms.
Watching Maguire act his part reminded me of my first decade back from Vietnam when I drank too much and often woke once or twice and carried a loaded weapon around the house checking the doors and windows. More than once, when overwhelmed by a burst of anger, I punched holes in walls with fists.
The anger comes fast—one moment you are calm as a rusty doorknob and an instant later an exploding fragmentation grenade.
In the Valley of Elah, Tommy Lee Jones plays a father, who was also a Vietnam combat veteran, searching for answers to explain his son’s death soon after returning from Iraq. In this film, we see how war strips young men of their humanity—that thin veneer that comes with so-called civilization.
From Brothers, I was reminded of the homeless Vietnam veteran I met in an alley in Pasadena, California one early morning. He had been a prisoner of war and similar to the character Tobey Maguire plays, was severely traumatized with PTSD symptoms.
The VA rated the homeless vet I met in that Pasadena alley as 100% disabled by PTSD possibly explaining why he was homeless—not because he could not afford an apartment. The disability from the VA was more than enough to support him. However, most of that money went for drugs and booze for him and his homeless buddies.
Then there was another vivid image of a Vietcong POW being tortured by South Korean troops during a field operation I was on. The South Koreans hung that Vietnamese POW by his heels from a tree limb and pealed the skin off his body while he lived.
In the Valley of Elah reminded me of an ambush where a team of Marines I was a member of went out in a heavy rain at sunset and after an hour or so of slogging through the gloomy downpour, we stopped in a rice paddy with water to our necks and stayed there for more than an hour waiting for complete darkness before moving into position. We shared that rice paddy with a very large king cobra.
In the Marines, one does not question orders—we do or die—so we stayed in that paddy knowing a king cobra was in the water with us.
Both of these films are dramatic examples of what war does to young men and their families.
Some combat veterans avoid seeing films such as these two. However, I do not. I do not want to return to that time where I avoided talking and thinking of my part in the Vietnam War, because at night when we struggle to sleep there is no escape. We cannot hide from the monster that came home with us living inside our skin as if it were an unwanted parasite.
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 Soulful Veteran's Blog 