THERE ARE STUDIES THAT have concluded that more Viet Nam veterans have died by their own hand since returning from Southeast Asia than were killed in combat. It is difficult for me to believe this even though many veterans I have known, including Ty, Bobby and myself, have been at one time or another “suicidal.” But being suicidal and committing suicide are not the same. And coping behaviors learned in Viet Nam—learned at the edge of life—have helped many of us, on that new edge, to choose survival, to choose life.
Some people have tried to make political hay from the issue—people apparently from both sides. I kid you not on this; this was said to me by a professor at Nittany Mountain College, and I’ve heard others say it and lots of the guys reported it said to them too—“They all killed themselves because they were guilty of atrocities and they couldn’t live with that guilt any longer.” Horseshit! On the seemingly other political side there have been some veterans advocacy groups who have pointed to the figures and used them to convince Congress and charitable donors that their group should be highly funded. It’s a two-edged sword. These groups have provided excellent and necessary crisis-intervention services. Yet they have a vested interest in these figures, and their campaigning may actually exacerbate the problem by lowering the suicide threshold for some vets.
There is no doubt that there have been thousands of Viet Nam veterans suicides. The figure, “over 60,000,” however, is very much in question. If I had died on Storrow Drive while racing Jimmy’s Harley like a possessed pariah from paradise, would that have been suicide? And if it had been, was it caused by Viet Nam? And if that is answered yes, is it because of my guilt feelings from surviving mostly unscathed while Jimmy and Manny got greased and Rick lost his legs? or guilt from atrocities I committed?
Even the VA, later, when it finally recognized PTSD, blew it. They were not there, generally, to cure guys. They were there to warehouse—and later to establish an excusable process, a complex set of obstacles for vets to hurdle on their way to collecting a lifetime “percentage” disability. Screw curing! Screw curing and assisting and returning the vet, healthy, to a productive life. Pay him off! Let him subsist. I’m overstating this, of course, but that’s because of how I personally was treated. Some guys were helped. Some VA programs were and still are beneficial. And lots of the suicide attempts, like Ty’s, were calculated, escapable, pleas. Had Ty slit his wrists vertically instead of horizontally, he would have died in San Jose.