What Did The Vietnam War Do To You Soldier?

762 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Military Veterans Outline

Left, left, left, right, left, these soldiers marched into combat for their country in the Vietnam war. The soldiers did not know that their lives would change so dramatically.They thought that they would be appreciated when they got home but they got a unexpected surprise. These soldiers were spit on, screamed at and also called names. The Vietnam war gave the soldiers Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), rejection and depression. The veterans were majorly affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because they watched their comrades die right in front of them and had flashbacks of when their comrades fell. PTSD affects the brain of the soldiers that witnessed traumatic events(The VVA Veterans, web). They can have invasive memories. They can also end up with seizures. The seizures will come with a lot of anxiety or stress related from war memories. The seizures would come into play when they are having an anxiety attack or the memories. The doctors did not know how to stop the seizures at first till a year later from the soldiers being home or the doctors wouldnt diagnose the soldiers with them. When these soldiers came home the did not know what to expect from everyone that they left before the war. The war was not popular at home so the soldiers were rejected when they got home( Effect on the Vietnam War). They were also rejected by the government and their towns people. They hated that the soldiers fought for their country they thought that it was for selfish reasons. The people did not want any of the veterans near them and also did not care for their welfare. The rejection from their own town and government made it hard for the veterans to make a new life with their family. Some family even rejected them because... ... middle of paper ... ...themselves expected. That is what happened to the American soldiers in the Vietnam war Work Cited Bentley Steve, The VVA Veteran, www.vva.org, The Official Voice Of The Vietnam Veterans, March 2005. Boyer Paul, Holt American Nation, A Harcourt Education Company Vietnam War, Pg 978, 2006 Copyright. Cromie. J.William, Mental Casual Ties Of Vietnam War Persist,www.news.harvard.edu, The Causes Of PTSD, Harvard University, 17 August 2006. Hochgesang Josh , Lawyer Tracye, Stevenson Toby, War And Peace: Media And War www.stanford.edu, Effect of the Vietnam war, Stanford University, 12 July 1999. Martin .L. Lisa, War And Military Mental Health, www.nc6i.nlm.nih.gov, American Journal Of Public Health Association, 29 September 2011. Pillar .R. Paul, The Visible and Invisible Effects Of War, www.nationalintrest.org, The National Interest, 2 January 2012

Show More
Related

  • Betrayal Exposed in Vietnam Perkasie, By Ehrhart

    1591 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Vietnam War was a controversial conflict that plagued the United States for many years. The loss of life caused by the war was devastating. For those who came back alive, their lives were profoundly changed. The impact the war had on servicemen would affect them for the rest of their lives; each soldier may have only played one small part in the war, but the war played a huge part in their lives. They went in feeling one way, and came home feeling completely different. In the book Vietnam Perkasie, W.D. Ehrhart describes his change from a proud young American Marine to a man filled with immense confusion, anger, and guilt over the atrocities he witnessed and participated in during the war.

    Read More

  • Treatment Of Vietnam Veterans In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    722 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tim O’Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his short story “The Things They Carried” presents the effects of the war on its young soldiers. The treatment of veterans after their return also affects them. The Vietnam War was different from other wars, because too many in the U.S. the soldiers did not return as heroes but as cruel, wicked, and drug addicted men. The public directs its distaste towards the war at the soldiers, as if they are to blame. The also Veterans had little support from the government who pulled them away from their families to fight through the draft. Some men were not able to receive the help they needed because the symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) did not show until a year

    Read More

  • Courage and Cowardice in The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

    918 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most of the soldiers did not know what the overall purpose was of fighting the Vietnamese (Tessein). The young men “carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place” (O’Brien 21). The soldiers did not go to war for glory or honor, but simply to avoid the “blush of dishonor” (21). In fact, O’Brien states “It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were to...

    Read More

  • Things They Carried in The Great Train Robbery and The Things They Carried

    1746 Words  | 4 Pages

    The soldiers that fought in the Vietnam War had to endure many incredibly horrifying experiences. It was these events that led to great human emotions. It was those feelings that were the things they carried. Everything they carried affected them, whether it was physical or mental. Everything they carry could in one way or another cause them to emotionally or physically break down.

    Read More

  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder In U.S. Vietnam War Soldiers

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    A Vietnam War veteran experienced many gruesome and horrifying events during their time of serving the army. Seeing such horrifying things affected their mental and emotional thinking “PTSD is defined as a re-experience of a traumatic event, for example, flashbacks. Anything can trigger a flashback a click, a movement, anything associated with the past event” (Cruz). Seeing such horrifying things affected their mental and emotional thinking. A soldier was told to forget what they saw and basically move on from it, but it only made it worse. Having everything “bottled up” makes it even harder to treat PTSD. U.S. soldiers had to live with the disorder on their own without any help. “The veterans experience combat related nightmares, anxiety, anger, depression, alcohol and/or drug dependency, all are symptoms of PTSD” (Begg). The symptoms occurred over long periods of time when that person has been in certain situations that he or she was not ready to be in. Some of these situations including the Vietnam veterans not feeling like their unit was together or united. “Soldiers were sent into replace other soldiers, which caused the other members of the group to make fun or haze them. The unit never developed as much loyalty to each other as they should have” (Paulson and Krippner). “Many of...

    Read More

  • All Quiet On The Western Front

    1018 Words  | 3 Pages

    The war scarred the soldiers permanently, if not physically then mentally. After the war the soldiers usually never recovered from the war. Two of the most common side affects of the war were shell shock and stir crazy. When suffering from shell shock a soldier’s brain doesn’t function properly and the man is a “vegetable”. This means the man is alive but he can’t do anything because he is in a state of shock because of the war. Stir crazy is a mental illness caused by the firing of so many bullets that when no bullets are heard by the victim he goes insane. Everyone was scared to go to war when it started. Young recruits were first sent because the veterans knew they were going to come back dead. "When we run out again, although I am very excited, I suddenly think: “where’s Himmelstoss?” Quickly I jump back into the dug-out and find him with a small scratch lying in a corner pretending to be wounded.” (P 131) Even the big men like Himmelstoss are scared to go fight. They too go through the mental illnesses like stir crazy and shell shock. “He is in a panic; he is new to it too.

    Read More

  • Vietnam War Research Paper

    740 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Vietnam War was the longest war in America's history of involvement. Twenty years of hell, land mines, cross-fire, and death. Vietnam was divided by the Geneva Accord. The north being communist run by Ho Chi Minh. The south being anti-Communist run by Ngo Dinh Diem. Before Vietnam was separated, it was run by France. France had ruled most of Indochina since the late 1800s. The Vietnamese were unhappy with the way the French were controlling, therefore, many of them took refuge in China. When in China, they began to follow the lead of Ho Chi Minh, who wanted to model the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence as that of the U.S. version. In the 1940s, Japan had taken over Vietnam which upset Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries when they had returned a year later.

    Read More

  • The Role of Storytelling in The Things They Carried

    2570 Words  | 6 Pages

    The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in the war that he wrote the book “The Things They Carried,” that showed how important the role of story telling was to soldiers. The role of stories was important because it gave them an outlet and that outlet was needed both inside and outside the war in order to keep their metal state in check.

    Read More

  • The War Of The Vietnam War

    1809 Words  | 4 Pages

    ​“In July 1965, Lyndon Johnson chose to Americanize the war in Vietnam.” Although Johnson chose to enter America into the war, there were events previous that caused America to enter and take over the war. The South Vietnamese were losing the war against Communism – giving Johnson all the more reason to enter the war, and allowing strong American forces to help stop communism. There were other contributing factors leading up to the entrance of the war; America helped assist the French in the war, Johnson’s politics, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and the 1954 Geneva Conference. President Johnson stated, “For 10 years three American Presidents-President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present President--and the American people have been actively concerned with threats to the peace and security of the peoples of southeast Asia from the Communist government of North Viet-Nam.”

    Read More

  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder In The Things They Carried

    2018 Words  | 5 Pages

    War is no child 's play, but unfortunately, we have had times in our past when the youth of our great nation had to defend it. Combat is not an easy for anyone; watching death, the constant ring of gunfire, the homesickness, fearing for your life, and witnessing bloodshed daily, this will begin to take its toll. The minds threshold for brutality can only handle so much and eventually will become sickened by these events. This sickness is called Post-traumatic stress disorder. As shown through the characters of The Things They Carried, soldiers of war may begin to show PTSD symptoms before the war is over, and may continue to fight the disorder after the war has ended.

    Read More

  • Mental Illness and POWs

    1318 Words  | 3 Pages

    Any member of the Armed Forces who is held in captivity as a POW or as a hostage is more likely to be at a higher risk of mental illness like PTSD. This assumption goes against everything that was thought to be known during WWI, it was noted time and time again that both English and German POWs were somehow immune to war neuroses and only susceptible to the newly identified barbed wire disease which is the prisoner’s reaction to his environment during prison life. Interestingly though, up until this point in history no real data or studies had been complied on the post release effects after captivity. The repatriation of POWs and the new rehabilitation programs were designed to aid Armed Forces Service members to re-adapt back into to service life or if their enlisted was up to re-adapt back in to their former civilian lives. Disorders found in POWs were often explained in terms of a prewar predisposition to mental illness. Recent studies and those even conducted on the original WWI and later studies of POWs have discovered a higher rate of PTSD among veterans.

    Read More

  • The Vietnam War

    1443 Words  | 3 Pages

    There were many events that lead up the Vietnam War, it started in 1945 with the hostilities between the French and Vietminh. “Geopolitical Strategy, economics, domestic US politics, and cultural arrogance shaped the growing American involvement in Vietnam” (Anderson 1). As a matter of fact, the Vietnam War was several wars, but it was not until 1962 that America had their first combat mission, however, Americans were killed during ambushes by the Vietnamese before the first combat mission. There is much controversy over the reasons for the Vietnam War, supported by the several different books and articles written about the war. “The most famous atrocity occurred in a tiny hamlet called My Lai in March 1968” (Detzer 127). History shows that the reaction of many Americans to the attack by US soldiers on the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War was opposition, and the actions of the US soldiers during the My Lai Massacre will be forever remembered as a significant part of the Vietnam War and American History.

    Read More

  • Soldiers and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

    924 Words  | 2 Pages

    Our soldiers not only risked life and limb for our country while serving in the Vietnam War, but they continue to suffer immensely. Americans as well as Vietnamese troops and civilians suffered great losses when it comes to casualties. Witnessing first-hand the pain and death of strangers and allies, isn’t something one is likely to forget. Post-Traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been one of the many repercussions of witnessing these gruesome events (Mental Health America). Veterans, their families, and the government have come together in combat in attempts to address the detrimental effects of PTSD.

    Read More

  • A Speech On The After Effects Of War

    1051 Words  | 3 Pages

    PTSD was such a horrible sickness because it embedded traumatic events in a soldiers mind. So later on this memory impeded a soldier enjoyment of life. Certain smell, sights and taste a soldier experienced triggered their memory making them recall those horrifying moments when their friend was brutally slaughtered. When these memories occurred soldiers would lose themselves. They would would break down and question themselves, ‘What could I have done to save him? Why did he die and not me? The guilt was so great that for many that they simply killed themselves. However, this was only one of the horrible effects of PTSD. Another

    Read More

  • Short Summary of Vietnam

    470 Words  | 1 Pages

    As we got further and further into the Vietnam War, few lives were untouched by grief, anger and fear. The Vietnamese suffered the worst hardship; children lay dead in the street, villages remained nothing but charred ashes, and bombs destroyed thousands of innocent civilians. Soldiers were scarred emotionally as well as physically, as

    Read More

More about What Did The Vietnam War Do To You Soldier?

Open Document