Kontum Diary: The Vietnam War



			Paul Reed and Nguyen van Nghia were mortal enemies during the Vietnam War. Each held the other in disdain. Each felt that he was fighting for a righteous cause. Each was a hero who condemned the nameless, faceless adversary who was actually himself in a different body, a different land ... Many soldiers never come to understand this reality. They allow their hate and prejudices to fester throughout their lives, never seeing who they are and why they must each come to respect the other when flowers again bloom in the killing fields of their past ... William C. Westmoreland General, United States Army, Retired
			From the foreword to Kontum Diary: Captured Writings Bring Peace to a Vietnam Veteran

THE VIETNAM WAR
America's longest and most divisive war, the American involvement in Vietnam spanned two decades - from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. At its height, more than 500,000 American troops were stationed in Vietnam, and more than 58,000 Americans lost their lives there. American involvement evolved from the attempt to prevent the Communist regime in North Vietnam from taking over the South. U.S. policy makers believed that if Vietnam were to become Communist, all of Southeast Asia would follow. In the early 1960s, an American anti-war movement, believing the war was an immoral and inappropriate policy, emerged in opposition to the war. As the conflict went on, American society became increasingly divided over U.S. involvement, a polarization that was to become the center of the inter-generational conflict that defined the turbulent 1960s. By the late 1960s the anti-war movement in the US had grown large enough to split the country over the war. When President Johnson declined to run for a second term in 1968, it was clear that Vietnam would be the war America wouldn't win.

THE RETURN HOME - ADJUSTMENT
By the early 1970s, American involvement began to wind down. When the last American troops left in 1973, the Communists in the North entered the South and established a unified Communist government in all of Vietnam. Contrary to predictions made 10 years earlier, the rest of Southeast Asia did not fall to the Communists.

Veterans returning from Vietnam expected a very different reception than the one many of them received. Having heard their fathers' stories and seen the Hollywood movies that celebrated the heroic welcome and homecoming that World War I, World War II, and Korean War vets received, Vietnam vets expected something similar. In contrast, Vietnam vets were often surprised and disappointed to be greeted very differently - often with indifference and sometimes even anger - as veterans of the "war that America lost." For many vets, the homecoming was often a powerful first encounter that made their adjustment to civilian society more difficult.

VIETNAM & POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
- MYTH & REALITY
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychological disorder that can develop in anyone who has suffered a profound trauma-an accident, torture, or a war experience. It is marked by symptoms such as nightmares, flashbacks to the traumatic scene and emotional outbursts. Known as "shell shock" in World War I, and "battle fatigue" in World War II, PTSD did not become well or widely understood until the late 1970s. Because it became understood during the time during and after Vietnam, people mistakenly perceived it as a phenomenon primarily of Vietnam vets.


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