Thomas Vernon U. S. Marine Corps Sergeant August 1965-August 1966 “When I came back from Vietnam, the students were having a demonstration over on the Indiana University campus and they had these jerks out there in Dunn Meadow running around with North Vietnamese flags. I parked my motorcycle, ran down the bank and cracked a few heads. Off they took me to jail for disorderly conduct. That’s when I was still pumped up about the war being the right thing in 1966. After a while the war seemed to be so useless and futile. I kind of changed and I lost track of the war. I didn’t read about it and I didn’t watch the news. I felt like we should never have been there to begin with. What the hell for? Were we going to save the Philippines from Communism? I was lucky to get back without any physical injuries. I started having problems with PTSD about 10 years after I got out of Vietnam and then about 10 years after that was when I really started having some problems with flashbacks. I was having nightmares about Vietnam. The VA diagnosed me with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder related to combat trauma. In World War II they called it ‘Shell Shock.’ You don’t ever really outlive that—it’s baggage you carry with you your whole life. It’s just knowing the next minute you could be dead. When you get into a firefight, it’s organized chaos. You’re shooting at them; they’re shooting at you. You got people getting hit. It just absolutely scares the shit out of you. Witnessing those traumatic events forever changes you, and you can’t ever forget that—it’s a horrible thing to have to go through. I’ve scared the hell out of my wife more than once when I wake up screaming in bed. One nightmare I have more than others is, we’re on patrol and somehow I get either left behind or I lose my way and the patrol leaves and goes on without me and I’m left there by myself knowing full well the enemy is right around there someplace. The next thing, I’m hiding beneath this big bush and I hear Viet Cong coming down the trail and then they stop right in front of where I’m hiding and raise the branches up and there I am. And it just scares the shit out of me. That’s when I start screaming. I have that dream frequently. I probably have nightmares four, five times a month. It didn’t start right away because I was so involved with raising a family and working but I’d had some psychological problems involving my service in Vietnam. Anybody who has ever come out of heavy combat has got a bit of baggage to carry. When I look across this field at home here today and I see that tree line over there—that’s the things you look for while you’re on patrol. You scan those tree lines for snipers or any kind of activity. You just deal with it the best you can—take your medication. It helps some with the nightmares and helps you sleep. We’re going to see people coming back from Iraq with these same problems. It can’t be helped. It’s just so frightening to be in a situation you have no control over where you can die at any moment.”