"It's scary. It seems like the 'Nam guys aren't going to be around a long time, not like their fathers."

NOTE from Larry Scott, VA Watchdog dot Org ... Be sure to watch the video using the embedded player at the bottom of the page.

And, use our search engine for more about Vietnam veterans ... here ...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=vietnam&op=and

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Vietnam generation begins to fade as death rate rises for war's veterans

By Brian Albrecht

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/02/viet
nam_vets_fight_final_battl.html

Forty years ago, Ron Willoughby was death with a telescopic sight as a Marine sniper in Vietnam.

Today, mortality has Willoughby and other Vietnam veterans in its crosshairs.

The generation of an estimated 8 million military service members of the Vietnam era, 1964-1975, is fading.

The number of Vietnam veteran deaths has almost doubled since 2001 and, according Department of Veterans Affairs' projections, will hit 103,890 this year -- approaching 300 a day. That's more than five times the average daily number of U.S. combat deaths during the peak casualty year of the war in 1968.

Willoughby, now 63 and a year older than the national average age of Vietnam vets, said three members of his old unit have died in the past five years, two from cancer and one from a heart attack.

That's why the North Olmsted veteran said the unit reunions have been changed from once every two years to annual affairs.

Time is catching up, and they know it.

Jim Quisenberry, a member of the local Joint Veterans Honor Guard, said he has been serving at an increasing number of funerals for fellow Vietnam vets in recent years.

"It's scary," said Quisenberry, 61, of Lakewood. "It seems like the 'Nam guys aren't going to be around a long time, not like their fathers."

John Wilson, a professor of psychology at Cleveland State University, said one difference between Vietnam vets and those who served during World War II is that the older vets had closure -- a recognized victory -- for their conflict. The World War II vets came home heroes and were treated as such, he noted.

But "for the Vietnam vet, there was never an end point, psychologically," Wilson said. So the impact of war continued long after the shooting stopped.

When Hank Vasil, 62, of Brook Park, gave a eulogy last summer for Shelby businessman Ralph Phillips, 65, a close friend and fellow member of his Army unit in Vietnam, he was joined at the funeral by a friend from the unit whose legs were failing from diabetes. Another close buddy from those days couldn't make it because of cancer and multiple sclerosis.

"It's not a good feeling" watching them pass, Vasil said. "It's an emotional numbing, almost the same as the combat experience. The only way to survive is to become numb, because you feel so helpless."

So the survivors of the battles of Khe Sanh, Dak To and Hamburger Hill wait and watch their ranks thin.

One concern is Agent Orange, a defoliant used in Vietnam to deprive the enemy of forest cover, destroy crops and clear vegetation from the perimeters of U.S. bases.

Though the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, finds only "suggestive but limited evidence" that Agent Orange can be associated with diseases, Veterans Affairs lists 15 conditions -- qualifying veterans for service-related compensation -- that might be connected by exposure to the defoliant. Among them are ischemic heart disease, prostate and respiratory cancers, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, Parkinson's and Hodgkin's disease.

Quisenberry, wounded twice during his Vietnam tour with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, wonders about the risks.

"We were in some areas of deforestation where we drank our water out of rivers and bomb craters," he said. "So far I haven't shown any symptoms, but I worry about it."

In the past three years, the number of Vietnam vets seeking treatment from the VA has gone up 25 percent nationally, about 10 percent locally, and the largest category of that treatment is for post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Dr. Edgardo Padin-Rivera, chief of psychological services at the Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center.

Vietnam veterans are reaching a point in their lives where they may be retired, losing the past support systems of family and friends, susceptible to depression and prime candidates for late-onset PTSD, Padin-Rivera said.

Marine Vietnam vet Jim Minnery, 66, of Elyria, said counseling has helped him cope with PTSD -- the modern term for the "shell shock" diagnosis his grandfather got after serving in World War I.

"I'm doing pretty good now," he said. "It helped that I quit drinking 23 years ago. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't be here."

Willoughby, the Marine sniper, said one member of his unit is a recovering alcoholic who once said "he wasn't drinking to get drunk. He was drinking to go to sleep because of all of this stuff."

Willoughby revisited the ghosts of his own past with a return trip to some of his old battlefields in 2008.

"I guess to remember and forget at the same time," he said. "I wanted to go back to see what it was, because that was a time when we thought we were going to die."

Now they know they are.

The prospect of death has lent a new urgency to life for some Vietnam veterans.

Some plan to start collecting Social Security as soon as they can, while they still can.

After seeing two Vietnam buddies die of cancer, both at age 54, then discovering he had diabetes, Marine veteran Ron Covrett, 60, of Fairview Park, made funeral and burial arrangements, right down to his headstone and disposition of worldly belongings.

"I've got all my ducks lined up with the insurance, all the legal stuff tied up," Covrett said, remembering the buddy who lost a bout with cancer. "It got in his throat and just ate it."

But Carl Carter, 62, of Richmond Heights, isn't disturbed by the looming mortality among his fellow Vietnam vets.

"It's a normal phase," he said. "I'm not looking forward to it, but, hey, it's coming no matter what."

"One thing for sure, I'm not as afraid as I had been in the past," he added. "The things we've been through and done, many a day we didn't think we'd come home. So this has all been gravy since then."

As an increasing number of Vietnam vets make that final march, some look back on what their generation is leaving behind.

Their legacy.

To Carter, it's difficult looking back. "Sometimes the thing that distresses me most is that we put forth all that effort and it seems like nobody appreciated it," he said.

Others point to treatment programs for PTSD and chemical contamination that didn't exist when Vietnam vets left the service, but because of their efforts now serve a new generation of warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan.

As CSU's John Wilson noted, "Vietnam veterans brought an awareness to the American people that there is a post-traumatic war syndrome that is real. By their voices and their suffering, these veterans drew attention to a wider audience, both scientifically and medically."

Vietnam veterans like Bob Stockhausen, 62, of Lakewood, cite another legacy.

"Our generation was the one that figured out you can oppose the war but support the troops," he said. "Even though our welcome home was 15 years late, we're out on the front line welcoming home the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan."

That community support of the troops nowadays will prove invaluable in treating returning veterans with PTSD, said Dr. Padin-Rivera of the VA.

"The atmosphere of acceptance around veterans is very different from what it was back in the '70s, and this has made a tremendous difference beyond anything we could do as professionals," he said.

Some Vietnam vets believe their legacy in the lessons of that war has yet to be learned.

Mary Reynolds Powell, 62, of Cleveland, is still proud of her experience as an Army nurse in Vietnam. "I am the person I am today because I went through it," she said.

But she believes the United States still hasn't learned how to fight a war while considering the potential political, social, cultural and historic ramifications, an oversight ultimately dooming any military action overseas.

Quisenberry prefers that their legacy be remembered for the positives.

"We championed the PTSD issue, the Agent Orange issue and the POW/MIA issue," he said. "You can change things. But you have to be willing to work at it."

On a personal level, he said the experience "made me a much stronger person, a more caring person and opened my eyes to the horrors of war. It's not all Hollywood crap. It's a very scary, horrible place to be.

"But if you can survive that," he added, "you can survive anything."

Except time.

 

Vietnam vets fight final battle

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