Something unique seems to have occurred in the rationalization process available to the Vietnam veteran. Compared with earlier American wars the Vietnam conflict appears to have reversed most of the processes traditionally used to facilitate the rationalization and acceptance of killing experiences. These traditional processes involve:
• Constant praise and assurance to the soldier from peers and superiors that he “did the right thing” (One of the most important physical manifestations of this affirmation is the awarding of medals and decorations.)
• The constant presence of mature, older comrades (that is, in their late twenties and thirties) who serve as role models and stabilizing personality factors in the combat environment
• A careful adherence to such codes and conventions of warfare by both sides (such as the Geneva conventions, first established in 1864), thereby limiting civilian casualties and atrocities
• Rear lines or clearly defined safe areas where the soldier can go to relax and depressurize during a combat tour
• The presence of close, trusted friends and confidants who have been present during training and are present throughout the combat experience
• A cooldown period as the soldier and his comrades sail or march back from the wars
• Knowledge of the ultimate victory of their side and of the gain and accomplishments made possible by their sacrifices
• Parades and monuments
• Reunions and continued communication (via visits, mail, and so on) with the individuals whom the soldier bonded with in combat
• An unconditionally warm and admiring welcome by friends, family, communities, and society, constantly reassuring the soldier that the war and his personal acts were for a necessary, just, and righteous cause
• The proud display of medals.
What Made Vietnam Different
In the case of the Vietnam veteran all but the first of these rationalization processes were not only mostly absent, but many of them were inverted and became sources of great pain and trauma to the veteran.
It’s easier if you catch them young. You can train older men to be soldiers; it’s done in every major war. But you can never get them to believe that they like it, which is the major reason armies try to get their recruits before they are twenty. There are other reasons too, of course, like the physical fitness, lack of dependents, and economic dispensability of teenagers, that make armies prefer them, but the most important qualities teenagers bring to basic training are enthusiasm and naivete….
The armed forces of every country can take almost any young male civilian and turn him into a soldier with all the right reflexes and attitudes in only a few weeks. Their recruits usually have no more than twenty years’ experience of the world, most of it as children, while the armies have had all of history to practice and perfect their technique.
The combatants of all wars are frightfully young, but the American combatants in Vietnam were significantly younger than in any war in American history. Most were drafted at eighteen and experienced combat during one of the most malleable and vulnerable stages of their lives. This was America’s first “teenage war,” with the average combatant having not yet seen his twentieth birthday, and these combatants were without the leavening of mature, older soldiers that has always been there in past wars.
Developmental psychologists have identified this stage in an adolescent’s psychological and social development as being a crucial period in which the individual establishes a stable and enduring personality structure and a sense of self.
In past wars the impact of combat on adolescents has been buffered by the presence of older veterans who can serve as role models and mentors throughout the process. But in Vietnam there were precious few such individuals to turn to. By the end of the war many sergeants were coming out of “Shake ’n Bake” school and had only a few months more training and maturity than their comrades. Even many officers were coming out of OCS (Officer Candidate School) without any college training whatsoever, and they too had little more training and maturity than their soldiers.
They were teenagers leading teenagers in a war of endless, small-unit operations, trapped together in a real-world reenactment of
Simultaneously everyone leveled his weapon at him and fired. “Jesus Christ!” somebody gasped behind me as we watched his body reverse course back toward the trees; chunks of meat and bone flew through the air and stuck to the huge boulders. One of our rounds detonated a grenade the soldier carried, and his body smashed to the ground beneath a shower of blood….
The young Viet Cong was a good soldier, even if he was a communist. He died for what he believed in. He was not a gunner for Hanoi, he was a VC. His country was not North Vietnam, he was South Vietnamese. His political beliefs did not coincide with those of the Saigon government, so he was labeled an enemy of the people….
A young Vietnamese girl appeared out of nowhere and sat down next to one of the dead VC. She just sat there staring at the pile of weapons, and slowly rocking herself back and forth. I couldn’t tell if she was crying, because she never once looked over at us. She just sat there. A fly crawled along her cheek, but she paid no attention to it.
She just sat there.
She was the 7-year-old daughter of a Viet Cong soldier, and I wondered if she had been conditioned to accept death and war and sorrow. She was an orphan now, and I wondered if there were confusion in her mind, or sadness, or just an emptiness that no one could understand.
I wanted to go over and comfort her, but I found myself walking down the hill with the others. I never looked back.
At a Vietnam Vets Coalition meeting in Florida, one vet told me about his cousin, who was also a vet, who would only say: “They trained me to kill. They sent me to Vietnam. They didn’t tell me that I’d be fighting kids.” For many, this is the distilled essence of the horror of what happened in Vietnam.
