Aberdeen vet battles PTSD, addictions stemming from time in 'Nam

By YVONNE JOHNSON, APG News

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md.-- During the conflicts of the 20th century, veterans of America’s wars returned home with undiagnosed and ignored mental conditions. A Harvard University study in 2006 found that almost 19 percent of the more than three million U.S. troops who served in Vietnam returned with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

As a result, Harvard professor of psychology, Richard McNally, raised the unanswered question about Vietnam vets: “Does this indicate an upsurge of delayed-onset of PTSD, or delayed presentation of PTSD among those who have suffered for decades and are only now seeking the help they need?”

Unlike today’s warriors, more often than not, veterans of previous eras whose minds were badly “bruised” by the anxiety and atrocities they endured and witnessed went untreated. Understandably, many turned to alcohol and drugs to ease their inner turmoils. Many went on to lead productive lives, despite heavy “self” medications and only turned to health agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when it was clear they could no longer hold off the demons.

This is the story of one ‘Nam veteran who is finally winning his battle.
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Like so many other young American men in the 1960s, Baltimore native Virgie Johnson felt life circumstances tugging him toward the military. Johnson left high school in the 11th grade and joined the Army because it seemed the surest path to a new life.

“I just didn’t like the way things were going,” he said. “I wanted a fresh start so I got my parents’ permission and I joined.”

He scored high enough on the entrance exams to avoid the front lines.

“It was a relief for my family, so I was happy,” he said.

Johnson took basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina then attended Advanced Individual Training for MOS 70A, general clerk, at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He reported to his first duty station with the 5th Administrative Company, 5th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado on Independence Day, July 4, 1967.

He said general clerk training covered a wide range of possible missions and he was unsure of what his job would be at his new unit.

“I had to learn how to be a personnel clerk,” he said. “That meant a lot of typing and filing. A lot of Soldiers moved through the personnel office, so I got to know a lot who had been to ‘Nam as well as people from other parts of the world.”

Johnson said ‘Nam was never far from his mind. Unprecedented television coverage of the war led evening newscasts and the newspapers were filled with constantly changing facts, figures and political debates. All training was geared toward the Southeast Asia conflict so Johnson said he knew it was only a matter of time.

ORDERS FOR ‘NAM
He came down on orders for ‘Nam in February 1968, and after 30 days leave at home he departed flew out of the Oakland, California headed for ‘Nam.

Johnson arrived at the Cam Ranh Bay reception station where he received orders to the 124th Signal Battalion at Pleiku. He stayed there a few days with other newly-arrived Soldiers. The Tet Offensive, which had kicked off in January, was about to deliver a wake-up call.

“We stayed about a week and they kept us busy on details,” he said. “The reception station was fairly new and there were no sandbags. One night we got hit with mortar rounds, and all you saw was twisted metal all over the place. We were filling sandbags for days after that.”

He said what stood out about the incident was that the KPs – local Vietnamese villagers – hadn’t come to work that day.

“So we knew something was coming, we just didn’t know what,” he said.

Johnson moved on to his unit to find the main mission was maintenance of signal equipment for UHF and VHF communications.

“In the shop where I worked, the job was to receive incoming signal equipment and transport it to higher echelons for repair,” he said. “This was always scary; especially the first time. I had already experienced getting hit but getting hit during a convoy was even worse.”

Along with sniper fire, landmines and booby traps, Johnson said the unconventional roads held countless perils.

“One pass in particular I didn’t like wound straight down a mountain,” he said. “It made you think you survived everything else just to get killed on a messed up dirt road.”

He said he quickly learned how to identify and respond to all types of hazards and the repair runs soon became less intimidating though no less dangerous.

“It was a beautiful country, but you never knew what to expect,” he said. “I remember my first monsoon season; it rained so hard it scared me. And after, there were puddles all over the place and you had no way of knowing how deep they were because it literally was raining for days. Booby traps were all over. You just never knew.”

He said tensions were high during the offensive which made for restless, wary nights whether on the cot or on guard duty. It was a time of being always on the lookout and on the defensive. It was life and death, and it was for real. His unit assumed a defensive posture throughout, and NCOs drilled life-saving tactical skills into the unit Soldiers that became more important than the mission.

“We weren’t taught to think, we were taught to react,” he said. “It was drilled into us. They would scream, ‘What is the purpose of hand-to-hand combat?’ and we’d shout, ‘To kill!’ over and over again.”

While he did participate in fire fights, Johnson said “it never came down to hand-to-hand combat.”

“I don’t know how many I shot; that’s not something you try to remember,” he said.
CHANGED FOR LIFE
He said the 18-months he spent in ‘Nam changed him “for life.” Amazingly, he said, returning to the mean streets of the United States of America was even more terrifying.

“I was always very tense; very conscious of my surroundings and always looking behind me,” he said. “I couldn’t help it. I eventually settled down but I still didn’t feel normal.”

Johnson remained in the military and started “hanging around with senior NCOs who’d been around.”

He said he was smoking marijuana by that time and he’d started drinking heavily as well.

“That’s the first thing these guys did every morning was light a cigarette and fix a drink; at 0600 before PT, at lunchtime and then at the end of the day. We listened to each other’s stories and realized we all had something in common. Sometimes the sergeant majors would break down and cry over the men they lost over there. Everyone I worked with was a functioning alcoholic. This was the only way to the handle the nightmares, the voices, the fears. We were all self-medicating.”

By 1969, Johnson was an administrative clerk working with activated Army Reservists at 1st Army Headquarters at Fort Meade. Married by now, his wife miscarried their first child. The loss hit both of them hard, he said. They “made it through” and Johnson got orders to Germany where his oldest daughter was born. He was assigned to the 78th Combat Engineer Battalion at Rheinland Kaserne in Ettlingen near Karlsruhe.

Life was good for the family there, he said. They enjoyed German food and ate out a lot.

“I did my job like always. We met other couples and partied and had fun,” he said. “I was still drinking a lot and smoking, and this was around the time I discovered hashish.”

He said duty was light and it seemed “everybody was doing something.”

“We went out training one time and set up tents then pulled out the beer and had a good time,” he said.

TOUGHEST TIME IN THE ARMY
An E-6 by now, and with promotions in his MOS slowed, Johnson put in a request for drill sergeant status to hurry his promotion to E-7. When it was approved, he and his family relocated to Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he worked with drill sergeants until a slot opened in the school.

He said DS school was his toughest time in the Army.

“There were a lot of things I had to learn. You had to be able to explain the position of attention by the book and not miss one word,” he said. “If you messed up you had to do it all over again.

“The same thing assembling weapons and everything else. You had to take kids, who’d never been in the military, and teach them how to march, shine boots and everything else by the book. It wasn’t easy.”

He said he put in 12-15 hours a day and took extra time with “the ones that couldn’t keep up.”

“I just told them to do what you’re told, when you’re told and how you’re told to do it. I taught them how to work with each other and I taught them pretty well because I didn’t have too many that had to be recycled.”

He said he didn’t get much rest during his 2-and-one-half years as a drill sergeant but it was worth it to receive thanks from the parents of his recruits.

DRYING OUT
Johnson returned to Germany and served as operations and training NCOs and then as platoon sergeant in a personnel records company that was “real lax.” He made E-7 his second year there and proudly proclaims that he was the NCOIC of the largest records division in U.S. Army Europe at the Nurnberg Regional Personnel Center. He stayed there three years and then received orders for Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

It was the mid-80s by then and, “I was still drinking then, in fact it picked up,” he said. At APG, he could no longer hide his addiction and he was ordered to Bethesda Naval Hospital to “dry out.” He said he participated in group sessions and after a short period he was released back to his unit.

“I didn’t understand,” he said, “but I figured I wasn’t as much of an alcoholic as I thought I was. There were people in there with nothing but problems. But I had never hit my wife, and I had no legal or financial problems. I was functioning.”

When he returned to APG he started drinking again. Unhappy with his unit in the Edgewood Area, he typed up his retirement papers and put them in his desk drawer. Johnson retired in August 1988, shortly after buying the Aberdeen home he still lives in today.

“I was in good shape and all my bills were paid,” he said, adding that his marriage “wasn’t that good,” and he was still having nightmares about ‘Nam.

Johnson held several jobs including bail bondsman, building security, vacuum salesman, and factory foremen with local manufacturing companies. At APG, he said he worked as a shipping and receiving clerk and was a dining facility cook for six years.

He continued to have close calls; on one occasion he had an accident with a forklift and was ordered to report for a urinalysis. It came out positive for cocaine.

“I was still drinking too and then my sugar went up,” he said. He was diagnosed with diabetes. “I knew I couldn’t keep going on like this but I couldn’t stop.”

He moved on to Perry Point VA Medical Center where he worked in housekeeping for nine years.

“I liked it,” he said. “I worked by myself and nobody bothered me. But I was still drinking and smoking weed.”

He said he kept drinking and got back into cocaine until a friend told him to stop or he’d kill himself.

PTSD DIAGNOSIS
Johnson checked himself into the VA hospital in Martinsburg, West Virginia. He said he started going to religious meetings every week and then every day. Soon, he was getting treatment for PTSD as well.

“They taught us how to handle our conditions,” he said. “At first I couldn’t wrap myself around the changes they recommended. I’d been doing this for 40 years. But I met guys who had left and come back and they told me I was doing very well.”

Johnson returned home and started utilizing the skills he was taught. He still receives treatment at the Aberdeen Vet Center Outstation. Located at 223 W. Bel Air Avenue in Aberdeen, the center’s mental health professionals treat veterans of all wars. It is a sub-station of the Elkton Vet Center, located at 103 Chesapeake Blvd. Suite A in Elkton. For information about the Aberdeen Outstation, call 410-272-6771 or 877-927-8387. For information about the Elkton Vet Center, call 410-392-4485 or visit www.vetcenter.va.gov.

Johnson said he gained strength by turning to his faith and that he benefits as much from conversations with his pastor as he does the VA counselors. Also diagnosed with exposure to Agent Orange, he receives 80 percent disability from the VA; 50 percent of it for PTSD. He said he feels he should receive more.

“I think I should be getting 100 percent, they should be doing all they can to help me,” he said. He added that he plans to return to West Virginia just to keep himself on track.

I have to thank my wife and my family who put up with me for all these years,” he said adding that his wife now attends counseling sessions with him.

“I’m trying to adjust to doing things the right way and getting a routine,” he said. “I’m still going to choir practice and bible study, but my head is still messed up sometimes.

“The important thing is that I know I had been living selfish and not thinking about how it was affecting anyone else. Now I’m trying to do the right thing by my wife and by my family. vietnam has affected my whole life,” he added. “I never thought to put a name to it. They had to explain what PTSD meant.”

He said he’s considered writing “Oprah or somebody who’ll listen” about his plight as well as those of fellow veterans.

“The need is real,” he said,” and I know there’s others out there who need the same help.”

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Like any other war, Vietnam produced an array of veterans. When the conflict ended, some veterans opted to continue service in the military while others returned to civilian life. Some returned with life altering wounds - physical and psychological - while too many others, who never came home at all, remain among the Missing in Action.

On the surface, the veterans of the Vietnam War faced the same challenges as veterans of other wars, except for one glaring difference: they were vilified by American society like no other generation before or since.

Today, nearly 50 years after the war's end, the veterans of Vietnam are in their 60s and 70s. The passage of time has cooled the tempest of indignation that shrouded their homecoming and an ambiance of repentant thanks thrives in its wake. Many still do what they can to serve this nation.

This article originally appeared in the "APG News" as part of an ongoing, multi-year series hailing the service members and civilians who served the nation during the war in Vietnam. Giving a voice to local Vietnam veterans, it is through their stories that we honor their service and sacrifice, and offer a long-overdue "Welcome Home."

The "APG News" is the weekly newspaper produced at Aberdeen Proving Ground, an Army installation located in southern Harford County, Maryland, nearly midway between Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. APG is recognized as one of the world's most important research and development, testing and evaluation facilities for military weapons and equipment, and supports the finest teams of military and civilian scientists, research engineers, technicians and administrators.

For more information about the series or the veterans featured, contact "APG News" Editor Amanda Rominiecki at amanda.r.rominiecki.civ@mail.mil.