When I finished the book, a dog-eared copy of Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, I rolled over and placed it on the nightstand and turned off the light. Lying there in the combined afterglow of a good read and the dreamy feeling of the onset of slumber I knew exactly what I was going to do, but I had no idea that I had just made one of those snap decisions that changes your life forever. For those who have never been there, war is so hard to understand. So foreign. Over my years of leading classes on the history of war, I had done what I could to teach students about the realities of violent conflict, ranging from having veterans speak in class to wandering the battlefields of Europe. While standing with 25 students among the nearly endless crosses in the silent cemetery above Omaha Beach was intensely moving, the experience of war still remained elusive, somehow hovering just beyond our collective grasp. Kovic's eloquent prose, though, had forcefully reminded me that wars don't end at the cemetery. Veterans were out there, sometimes invisible in the crowd, still struggling with the painful remembrances of bygone days of battle and destruction. Before I drifted off to sleep I made up my mind to contact the local Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care Center to see if any of the veterans who remained under the care of the doctors there would mind sharing their experiences with the students from my class on the Vietnam War.
Once I got to work the next morning I called the main number for the VA and fumblingly tried to get my point across to a bemused operator. “How can I direct your call?" “Well, I'm not quite sure. I think I need to speak with a doctor." “Oh, are you a veteran with a health problem?" “No ma'am. I'm a history teacher, and I would like to speak with a doctor about having my class come and meet with some of the veterans there." A short pause followed as the operator tried to process the odd information. She finally responded, “I'll put you through." “Wait! Put me through to whom?" But it was too late. The phone was already ringing. The person who answered the phone identified herself as Dr Leslie Root, who was head of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) clinic. Her announcement left me in a bit of a panic. Post-traumatic stress disorder? What was that? Sure I had heard of it. Heck, I'd seen as many movies about Vietnam veterans as the next guy, but what was it really? What was I about to get myself into? At a loss regarding how to proceed, I told Dr Root about my plan. After a few minutes of conversation, during which she began my education into PTSD, Dr Root decided that some of her patients might benefit from, if not enjoy, talking about their experiences with a group of bright and interested college students. She would work to get the veterans ready; all I had to do was bring my class to the VA in two weeks' time.
Nobody quite knew what to expect that late spring day in 1997. My class and I had no real idea what PTSD was beyond the frightening, bastardized Hollywood depictions of unhinged Vietnam veterans. For the veterans who met with us, though, the situation was infinitely worse. They were about to share their most feared memories, things that had haunted them for decades - things they had not yet been able even to discuss with their closest loved ones. And they were going to share these closely guarded remembrances of horrors endured and friends lost with college students? College students had spat on them and jeered as they got off the freedom bird from Vietnam. Those college students? After everyone took their seats, there were a few tense moments before a shared realization descended upon the room.
World History
