My husband brought home such huge tragic baggage from Vietnam. We were totally unprepared for it.

Back then there was drug abuse (mostly MJ) and alcohol freely available to men over there. He was very ill, gray, and throwing up when he came home. (antimalarial drugs and who knows what else in toxins). After a year to recover physically, he could not cope with life in general, so I really had to push for therapy which he did accept, and helped. (military help was nil then).

He still won't talk about it, and he did overcome the alcohol finally, but it was a long hard road, and required tremendous patience from family.

Today he seems settled, but still some topics are forbidden here. He really hated the military, and does not think highly of how it is run.(one job he had was to connect upper officers to transportation via the signal corps, and he saw so much abuse and bad behavior there) He refuses a Vietnam license plate, that we can get in our state for free. He "lost' his wedding ring there and won't talk about that either. Where he was near the DMZ, they were rocketed endlessly.

The Vietnam war was very different from this new "terrorist" offensive. At least with terrorism, our military can have a goal, a positive goal. The Vietnam war seemed like a garbage can (wasteful)and had no connection to US safety, as far as my husband saw.

I have great respect for all the volunteers who choose to protect our country, now, in this painful time of terrorism. The situation today is so much different than what my husband endured!