War and living with PTSD: Vietnam 1969-1970 and the Cambodia incursion in 1970

Robert was a carefree college student when he was drafted in July 1969. He was soon crawling through the steamed rice patties and fetid swamps of the Mekong Delta around Cu Chi and then in 1970 from April until June, the Cambodia incursion in III and IV Corps. Robert spent a year humping the boonies as a radio telephone operator in the 25th Division. Through air strikes, firefights, and ambushes, he fought the grunts war; the war the base camp commandos never saw. Robert captures the terror, anarchy, death, dying and trauma of war. All the bloody horrors that etched into the faces of countless young American men, searing images that would last forever in their minds and would last forever. Robert was then stationed at Fort Polk, Louisiana (called little Vietnam) as an instructor to train future grunts in Radio Telephone Communications. Betty and Robert returned to Denver and he completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees. Robert then went to work on a long list of jobs (28). For the 30 years since he returned, he could not figure out what was happening to him and was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. He then began the Post Traumatic Stress Program at the V.A. Hospital in Denver and found thousands of "Brothers" were suffering the same truma. One concern combat veterans realized very quickly was "you never get over PTSD," you only learn how to manage the symptoms. Thousands of combat veterans have PTSD today as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers are or will experience. This book is dedicated to the need to select leaders who believe war is the last solution and to quote Thomas Jefferson: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free...it expects what never was and never will be."