Odysseus in America (35 page)

Terminator

W. T. Edmonds is the author of the poem “Lewis Puller Ain't on the Wall,” near the beginning of this chapter. He is the person mentioned by Mike Viehman at the end of the previous chapter as having taken him to the Wall for the first time.

>and then just put all of Vietnam behind me. [Excerpt from a posting by another list member.]

Forget it, Steve. Nevah hoppen, GI. Best you can do is live with it, and plan on continuing to live with it. I spent a long time waiting for “it” to go away. Finally realized that “it” was me, and I wasn't going away.

>(I have never believed that I suffer from post traumatic stress. I honestly wasn't exposed to that much trauma.) [A further excerpt from the earlier posting.]

I don't know how many times I've said this to myself and others. I don't know what you saw; I know what Rod and Lew and Jay-Bird and lots of others saw and experienced was far worse than what I went through. But, if you accept Jonathan's thesis, there are two things that combine to produce PTSD: a sense of deep moral betrayal, and experiencing the death of close friends. Many of us felt the moral betrayal, either through a conviction that the entire war was wrong, and/or through a sense that, regardless of the justification for the war, the government wasted our lives and society didn't give a shit about us. That, combined with the deaths of those we knew, even if not close friends, with viewing the death and dismemberment of other human beings, may bring to all of us a degree of post-traumatic stress. Such stress must be a matter of degree, rather than something you either “have” or don't “have.”

Cap'n Jack

This message responds to one that I have not included here.

Tracey,

Thanks for saying this … it's what I've been thinking all day as I've read the messages from other vwar-l folks responding to Lewis Puller's death. It's especially meaningful since I took Jay to the VA hospital last Friday to seek help with his VN demons. You really have said it well.

Suezq

A number of members of VWAR were spouses or siblings, or like the author of the next message, siblings-in-law of Vietnam veterans.

Disclaimer—I'm not a vet, and I haven't yet had to ask these questions.

What I ٭did٭ have was many nights, 11 years ago, listening to my brother-in-law ask the same question. And many more nights wondering what else I could have done, and explaining to my husband what I didn't really understand myself—that there ٭was nothing٭ else that we could have done.

That said—I don't think the answer is “when is the struggle no longer worth the effort,” but rather “when do you stop asking the question.”

As long as you're still asking, you're still hanging on.

Catwoman

Catwoman writes that she “grew up in the 60's with a WWII vet father who came back from WWII swearing that he never wanted anyone else to go through that again, and therefore at an early age was taken along to activities that included WWII vets against the [Vietnam] war.”
¹⁵

Veewees,

I second all the good stuff that everybody said about Lew, I also was moved by his book.

In addition to all his other fine attributes, his writing showed a deep love for his Dad, his wife, and his country. He gave tribute to them and the nurses, doctors, and physical therapists that were involved in his recovery.

He did an Ù­awful lotÙ­ for vets, with his book, his job as a lawyer with the VA, and many other ways.

We lost a good friend.

Polecat (aka Jim Schueckler)

Jim “Polecat” Schueckler writes that he is the “founder of the (original) Virtual Wall at
www.VirtualWall.org
.” He volunteers as a National Park Service “Yellow Hat” docent and visitors' aide at the Wall.
¹⁶

I guess I was the ultimate REMF [Vietnam vet slang for “rear echelon motherfucker,” in this instance meaning noncombat support personnel], but Puller's death did hurt, reminds of all those others who don't make the news. His death and the coverage is for them, too.

“T
HE
F
ORTUNATE
S
ON”
¹⁷

For Lewis Puller, d. 1994, from a festering wound

They shouldn't call it suicide,
this self-inflicted gunshot wound—
the trigger squeezed so many years ago—
day by day, the fragment slipped inside.
His name won't be chiseled on the Wall.
He won't reflect your face for you.
He doesn't qualify. He missed
the cut-off date. He died too late.

Lewis Puller? You'll find him on the Wall.
He's always been there. Chesty's son,
Marine lieutenant, tripped a mine, lost
his legs, made his hero daddy proud, wrote
a book, held firm the lives of all of us,
but, finally, could not hold his own.

—Palmer © 1994

H. Palmer Hall is a poet and editor of
A Measured Response
(San Antonio: Pecan Grove Press, 1993) and author of
From the Periphery: Poems and Essays
(San Antonio: Chili Verde Press, 1994), in which this poem appeared. His fourth book is
Deep Thicket and Still Waters
(Chili Verde Press, 2000), a collection of poems dealing primarily with the murder of James Byrd, Jr.
¹⁸

Palmer,

Well, you did it. Thus far in these days since Puller's death I've been beleagered by it, a bit obsessed with it, but hadn't actually reached the point of tears for him and all those who've gone before, and will go after, by their own hand. Your poem broke open the floodgates.

Thank you for a thoughtful contribution, a painful truth in a lovely package.

Michele

Michele is Michael Viehman's wife.

I did not know Puller. I have not read his book. I am saddened by his passing, as I have been saddened by the passing of others, but life does go on.

------ was a friend of mine. ------ had a wife and three daughters, all of who adored the man. ------ also had his demons which, although he put in his tour in VN, had little to do with that. We knew about ------'s demons before he went. In 1971, the demons won. ------, with his 15-year old daughter in the next room, ate a.357, doing grievous damage to himself and the wallpaper.

What he accomplished for himself I do not know, other than the fact that for one brief nanosecond he must have realized that the pain was ending. For him. It was just starting for his family and friends, who were left to clean up the mess, literally and figuratively.

A friend of mine called me this morning, disturbed by Puller's death and worried about me. I'm not sure why he was worried about me. He need not have been.

'Tis indeed, at least in my tired old mind, better to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than to end it with a bare bodkin or anything else. I believe that, like ------, there would be only a hint of relief, satisfaction, revenge, self-pity, or whatever else I might have chosen as the reason, and then there would be nothing. I would not be here to revel in the result of the action. The only consequence would be the lifetime of recrimination and wondering why by friends, and a new set of problems for family and loved ones, far more serious than the ones I fled from. I'm not that selfish. I've devoted most of my adult life to making those I love comfortable and secure. The fact that I have not always succeeded in this will not deter me from continuing to try so long as I can still draw a breath.