I was the Senior Advisor to the 36th Vietnamese Ranger Battalion in 1966 and 1967. Decorated for valor, I led a team which included a 1st Lieutenant, two sergeants and one Private First Class Radioman.
My “story” consists of one sentence uttered by a Vietnamese lieutenant while on a search and destroy mission: “Dai-uy (Captain), I’m 23 years old and all my life all I know is war.”
Think about the statement and all that it portends. I will never forget that moment.
Aloisia Pollock, Jefferson
Leonard returned from Vietnam on May 19, 1971. We met and fell in love in July and married in November.
We were married about a year and moved from a high-rise apartment in Queens, NY, to a garden apartment. Shortly after our move very disconcerting and frightening episodes started to happen. L would wake up in the middle of the night and - not quite awake- would attempt to attack and kill me. I would run quickly to the living room, hide behind the sofa, and by the time L had caught up with me, he was fully wake, unaware of what had transpired and very apologetic for his behavior. After several attempts at killing me he pieced this puzzle together. L had been a Marine and had been trained to kill on instinct. Whenever he awoke and arrived at that precarious stage between sleep and wakefulness, his training took over; I became the Vietcong enemy who had to be vanquished.
It never occurred to us to discuss these episodes with anyone or seek help. We both felt embarrassed and responsible for what was happening.
We moved to another apartment. L’s alcohol consumption increased and the midnight attacks ceased. He told me that alcohol helped him drown out his flashbacks where so many young men, now soldiers, were both hunter and prey on either side of the divide.
L had stepped off the airplane after 2 years in the jungle of Vietnam and to my knowledge, no one ever thought of or offered any kind of retraining for civilian life.
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Our marriage did not survive his alcoholism. In 1988 I moved to Maine, where I found peace for me and my growing children. L eventually sobered up. Four years ago he was diagnosed with bone cancer resulting from Agent Orange in Vietnam and his family stands by watching him suffer still as a man in his seventies.
I feel sad for the two most important men in my life. I am the child of an Austrian father who was forced to march to Stalingrad under Hitler and then found myself married to a Vietnam Veteran; both men marked by experiences too gruesome to ever fully share with a young daughter or a wife.