The adventure of being transferred as a patient from small medical units in Vietnam to home in Michigan involved numerous hospitals. They included a four day stay at the Army hospital at Cam Ron Bay in Vietnam, another short stay at a Naval hospital somewhere in Japan for six days, a month at the Army hospital in Yokohama Japan, and six days at the army hospital at Fort Dix, NJ just prior to reaching Valley Forge army hospital in Pennsylvania. They kept me there for nine months until my disability case was evaluated by the medical board. I was then discharged from the army and sent to the VA hospital in Ann Arbor Michigan for two weeks.
Originally, my discharge from the service was supposed to be sometime in the middle of October, 1968, only about a month and a half after I was wounded. I sadly watched it come and go as I laid there healing up At Valley Forge for about six months beyond my discharge date. This long and gradual transition from Vietnam to Michigan left me with the sense of still being under the controlling power of the military. I went home on leave several times from Valley Forge, but it was always just a leave, not a discharge.
As a patient at Valley Forge, each day of the last couple of months slowly dragged on. Meanwhile, my mother and two brothers at home were having family problems. I felt as though I needed to be there with them, to give them some support. But for some reason, the doctors on the medical board didn't want to discharge me even though I was well enough to go home. After explaining to my mother that I needed help in persuading the hospital to discharge me, she contacted a newspaper reporter in Lansing who explained my situation to a congressman. It was only about a week later while monitoring my case file, that I noticed a hand drawn red star at the top of my folder which was now mysteriously at the top of the pile. I discovered later that the congressman was Senator Hart of Michigan who I spoke with a couple years later about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. I took that occasion to also thank him for any help he may have given me in obtaining my release from the army and the hospital at Valley Forge...
My stay at the VA hospital, after being released from the army at Valley Forge, was a short one. I was there for two weeks before they let me go home; walking with a cane. I still needed surgery for both of my ears, which would be a year or two later. Instead of reporting back to Valley Forge, I was now continually reporting to the VA hospital in Ann Arbor, MI. Meanwhile, the VA had me taking some very painful boric acid ear drops daily to get rid of the infection in my ears. The hospital at Valley Forge had focused mainly on my feet and leg while the infection in my ears, as the result of the grenade blast, grew worse throughout my nine month stay there.
The long and winding road was slowly beginning to turn from the reality of endless combat in Vietnam, to the reality of making it home alive, back to "the world". The prolonged period that was spent in hospitals from Vietnam to Michigan delayed the realization that, for me the war was over. The lengthy, ongoing list of medical consequences of my injury down through the years has kept me from experiencing a complete mental disconnection from the war in Vietnam. The awareness that my involvement with the military and the US government is actually over is something yet to be fully realized. Some, unrealistically believe that war veterans should come home and carry on as if everything was the same as it was before they went into combat. However, the pictures in our minds of traumatic events that we endured will never leave us. For me, the pictures are still very vivid, as if it was all just yesterday. We can block them out for a while, but never totally get rid of them. It's what we do with them that's important, I believe...
In my case, the whole war experience changed the"happy go lucky attitude" I had, into being much more focused and serious about life. After making it home, to my dismay, the majority of the world didn't seem to want much of anything to do with being serious. Needless to say, my quest for the truth about life has cost me some relationships. My former friends at home had changed a lot in the time I'd been away. Trying to get back with them, where I left off with everyone, was impossible. Too many things had happened in our lives and in most cases, where there once was closeness, there was distance...
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