In our continuing, semi-regular series on "Healthy Sexuality and the Combat Veteran," we need to take a look at three or so "unhealthy" variations on a theme. The second, here, is about what starts out great but deteriorates quickly over an inabilty or even perhaps an unwillingness to absorb the realities of combat for the veteran. "Love is blind," but that's not always a good thing, as we shall see. Sometimes it kills a relationship dead. Home: Day One
I started down from the steps of the plane, looking around to try to spot her. Not hard at all: around five-feet, nine-inches, very voluptuous, but at eighteen, just out of high school, and almost through Cosmetology College.
She was screaming “Tom, Tom, over here, Darling!” —and running towards me. God, she was, and probably still is, beautiful. (Side note: I still love her.)
She jumped into my arms, and we went home to start a “normal” life. But in my case, how do you do that—as I had re-enlisted in the Army to get the money to marry her. We had a connection on a couple of dates before I left for Vietnam, and during correspondence (assuming we were both telling the truth) we had fallen in love, and become engaged.
So, things rolled along, and we got married, and went and used my “blood money” as I thought of it—as a down payment on a two-bed trailer home. Many soldiers and their wives were what some called “Trailer Trash” but it was a start. Due to the permissive society we lived in, we had gone on a drive one time to Pagago Park, it was almost sunset, we had been talking, and all of a sudden, she said:
“Love me, Tom,” and, well, what could I say or do, but what I felt?
The day they delivered our trailer—a beautiful twelve-by-sixty foot, two bedroom, freshly bought with a VA loan—we showed up to move in on the last week or so of my post-Vietnam leave. We had not been sleeping together. Her father, a 1st Cavalry Division veteran of the Pacific war in WWII would not hear of it and I respected that. We basically had that one slip in Papago Park; but, in all honesty, we had some “plans” after that, though we were staying in the same house, in separate bedrooms.
Yeah, I know the setup to this story is a little long, but it relates to understanding the rest of it. A hot and horny young warrior back from the war, and a hot and horny babe anxious to be married and start what was supposed to be the “perfect life.”
On night one, I felt I owed it to her to explain to her a crucial point based on the story of the tunnels of Cu-Chi. We did not know it at the time, but I still needed to relate to her the story of how the people who oriented us as we came into Vietnam had mentioned that there had been soldiers found with their throats cut. They told us we needed a “password” to get back into the “Hootches” we lived in after dark, or we could end up dead. Then, after I moved up to Dau-Tieng, and began going out on combat operations with a direct support artillery outfit, it became real one night, as I was on perimeter guard, and we were hearing reports about possible enemy infiltration through the perimeter from our “listening post” outposts.
Bottom line: I had to try to explain to her that I slept in hyper-paranoid mode, and under no circumstances was she to touch me anywhere, except in drill instructor mode: tap the bottom of my foot, or whack it. She could not get it. She did not want to get it. It was just too horrible for her to contemplate, and eventually, it ended in our divorce. I cannot count how many hundreds of times she forgot what I reminded her of every single day: while I am asleep do not touch me anywhere, but on the bottom of my foot, drill-instructor-style.
And the poor beautiful baby only wanted to wake me up passionately and lovingly to a brand new, shiny day, with some love, and maybe even some sex, and instead I had the guilt of waking up with her throat in my hands, and her eyes bulging in horror, because in my unconscious mind, I was fighting for my life against a Sapper. Her mother and father thought I abused her, because she insisted on turning over and like the beautiful loving person she was—trying to throw her arms around me and “Welcome me to another morning of love between us.”
I tried and tried, but she just could not get it. She did not want to contemplate or understand such horrible things. To get it. Double emphasis, I know, but important enough to be double. And the worst part was—she tried to tell them there was no abuse, but “Daddy’s Little Girl” could not possibly be to blame for that. And of course, that is partly true, though, it was not really her, but the mindset of Middle American womanhood.
The guilt—the good part is that eventually, my guilt forced behavior changes and it ended, but the damage had been done.
After years of bitterness about why “they” did not understand, I finally realized that there was no possible way we could possibly expect them to.
Not only were they unable to—they did not want to.
But then, the next revelation was: hell, they are just like me! I do not want to understand it, or know it, either! My kingdom for a memory eraser! What kingdom? Okay, my ratty little trailer, and my lousy seven-dollars-per-hour job. Anything! Only take the weight off! Let me live again!
-- a Vietnam veteran and PTSD survivor (name withheld for privacy)
Reprinted with permission from Close to Home: A Soldier's Guide to Returning from War, by Britta Reque-Dragicevic. The e-book is available here for the very affordable price of $10. Buy it :-)
