enlisted in the Army in 1964 at the age of eighteen, at a time when America was heavily involved in combat. He was assigned to the 11th Aviation Group, 1st Cavalry Division, and was sent to Camp Radcliff in An Khe, Vietnam. The camp was near Pleiku, an area known for extremely heavy fighting in the mid-1960s. Herbert endured perilous missions in which he saw friends get killed or seriously injured. On one mission, his entire platoon was killed in an ambush, and he was severely injured. He regained consciousness coated in the blood of his fellow soldiers; he was disoriented and unable to move. It didn’t take long before he experienced a complete mental breakdown. He attempted suicide after suffering severe headaches. Despite multiple referrals from commanding officers for psychiatric evaluation, he remained in combat for seven months before his “crying outbursts” and “uncommunicative withdrawal” resulted in an honorable discharge in December 1966. Not surprisingly, his trauma followed him home to Brooklyn, New York, where he had nightmares, suffered disabling headaches, and sometimes ran out of his house screaming “Incoming!” He married and had children, but his post-traumatic stress disorder continued to undermine his ability to manage his behavior. He ended up in a veterans hospital in New York City, where he had a slow, difficult recovery from severe head pain associated with his war injuries.
Herbert became one of thousands of combat veterans who end upin jail or prison after completing their military service. One of the country’s least-discussed postwar problems is how frequently combat veterans bring the traumas of war back with them and are incarcerated after returning to their communities. By the mid-1980s, nearly 20 percent of the people in jails and prisons in the United States had served in the military. While the rate declined in the 1990s as the shadows cast by the Vietnam War began to recede, it has picked up again as a result of the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Herbert’s care at the veterans hospital in New York City slowly allowed him to recover. He eventually met a nurse there, a woman from Dothan, Alabama, whose compassionate care made him feel comfortable and hopeful for the first time, perhaps, in his entire life. When she was around, he felt alive and believed things would be all right. She had saved his life. When she moved back home to Alabama, Herbert followed.
He tried to date her and even told her he wanted to marry her. At first she resisted because she knew that Herbert was still suffering the effects of his time in combat, but ultimately she gave in. They had a brief intimate relationship, and Herbert had never been happier. He became intensely protective of his girlfriend. But she began to see his desperate and relentless focus on her as something closer to obsessive need than love. She tried to end the relationship. After months of unsuccessfully trying to create distance from Herbert, she finally insisted that he stay away.
Instead, Herbert moved even closer to her home in Dothan, which elevated her anxieties. It got to the point where she refused to allow him to see her, talk to her, or get anywhere near her. Herbert was convinced that she was just confused and would eventually come back to him. He was deluded by obsession; his logic and reasoning became corrupted, irrational, and increasingly dangerous.
Herbert was not unintelligent—in fact, he was quite smart, with a particular aptitude for electronics and mechanics. And he had a big heart. But he was still recovering from the trauma of the war as well as some serious traumas that preceded his military experience. Hismother had died when he was just three years old, and he had struggled with drugs and alcohol before he decided to enlist. The horrors of war had added a new level of distress to an already damaged psyche.
He came up with an idea to win back his girlfriend. He decided that if she felt
Herbert became one of thousands of combat veterans who end upin jail or prison after completing their military service. One of the country’s least-discussed postwar problems is how frequently combat veterans bring the traumas of war back with them and are incarcerated after returning to their communities. By the mid-1980s, nearly 20 percent of the people in jails and prisons in the United States had served in the military. While the rate declined in the 1990s as the shadows cast by the Vietnam War began to recede, it has picked up again as a result of the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Herbert’s care at the veterans hospital in New York City slowly allowed him to recover. He eventually met a nurse there, a woman from Dothan, Alabama, whose compassionate care made him feel comfortable and hopeful for the first time, perhaps, in his entire life. When she was around, he felt alive and believed things would be all right. She had saved his life. When she moved back home to Alabama, Herbert followed.
He tried to date her and even told her he wanted to marry her. At first she resisted because she knew that Herbert was still suffering the effects of his time in combat, but ultimately she gave in. They had a brief intimate relationship, and Herbert had never been happier. He became intensely protective of his girlfriend. But she began to see his desperate and relentless focus on her as something closer to obsessive need than love. She tried to end the relationship. After months of unsuccessfully trying to create distance from Herbert, she finally insisted that he stay away.
Instead, Herbert moved even closer to her home in Dothan, which elevated her anxieties. It got to the point where she refused to allow him to see her, talk to her, or get anywhere near her. Herbert was convinced that she was just confused and would eventually come back to him. He was deluded by obsession; his logic and reasoning became corrupted, irrational, and increasingly dangerous.
Herbert was not unintelligent—in fact, he was quite smart, with a particular aptitude for electronics and mechanics. And he had a big heart. But he was still recovering from the trauma of the war as well as some serious traumas that preceded his military experience. Hismother had died when he was just three years old, and he had struggled with drugs and alcohol before he decided to enlist. The horrors of war had added a new level of distress to an already damaged psyche.
He came up with an idea to win back his girlfriend. He decided that if she felt
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