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| Carrying some degree of guilt seems to be almost universal
among Vietnam vets; it was there even in country. I felt it
every time a Special Forces patrol left camp while I
remained behind in relative safety. I think the Special
Forces people themselves felt it in some measure when they
sat and listened to the radio as another camp in danger of
being overrun fought for its life. What could they do? They
wept, they raged in helpless anger as they listened while
their friends were wounded or killed. They knew it was not
their fault, yet still they felt the pain. They all knew
somebody in those camps. I'm afraid that there isn't any
answer; if there is one, I'd sure like to find it.
One Green Beret went out on a patrol when he wasn't
scheduled to go. He said that he wasn't being paid to sit
around camp playing Liar's Dice with us Zoomies. He said it
jokingly, but deep inside, he believed it because it was his
job to go out. He was that sort of man; they all were.
He got separated from the others during a firefight, and
when they found his mutilated body a day or so later, he
could only be identified by some personal items that he
carried. Everybody felt guilty, from the guy who let him go
on patrol down to the people who wished they'd tried harder
to convince him to hang around for one more day of Liar's
Dice. But really, it was nobody's fault.
I never told
my friend Larry how much I cared for him because I felt that
if I did, something bad would somehow happen to him. As if
my thoughts or feelings could in some way control his fate.
It was irrational and illogical, but that was what I felt
and that was what I acted on. He had already been wounded
twice before I met him. Lord knows I didn't want to be the
cause of any more bad luck for him. It made perfect sense to
me at the time.
How do you explain the survivor's
guilt suffered by men who saw constant combat and even
sustained wounds of their own? Still, they feel guilty
because they survived when so many of their friends and
acquaintances didn't make it back home. They may have lived
simply because of a caprice of fate: A mortar round came
part way through the roof right above Valerie Robert, who
was asleep in his bunk on Trang-Sup at the time. It didn't
go off. Fate smiled on him that night. I wonder if Val
suffers from survivor's guilt today because of his good
fortune then. |
 By Thurman P. Woodfork
Copyright 2002
About
Author...
Thurman P. Woodfork (Woody) spent his
Air Force career as a radar repairman in places as disparate as
Biloxi, Mississippi; Cut Bank, Montana; Tin City, Alaska; Rosas,
Spain and Tay Ninh, Vietnam. In Vietnam, he was assigned to
Detachment 7 of the 619th Tactical Control Squadron, a Forward Air
Command Post located on Trai Trang Sup. Trang Sup was an Army
Special Forces camp situated about fifty miles northwest of Saigon
in Tay Ninh province, close to the Cambodian border.
After Vietnam, Woody remained in the Air Force for nine more years.
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