One good thing about being a combat medic in Vietnam was never having to pull shit burning detail....
(I wasn’t with Mortars, I was with a line platoon)
This is 100% accurate. The Korengal Valley in Kunar Province is where our sister battalion 1-32 IN was for the deployment. Everything he is speaking about is exactly as I experienced it, a year after Restrepo in the Tangi. And the “punchline” is spot on.
Roger that....“Jonathan Shay makes an explicit connection between the berserker rage of soldiers and the hyperarousal of post-traumatic stress disorder.[33] In Achilles in Vietnam, he writes:
If a soldier survives the berserk state, it imparts emotional deadness and vulnerability to explosive rage to his psychology and permanent hyperarousal to his physiology — hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans. My clinical experience with Vietnam combat veterans prompts me to place the berserk state at the heart of their most severe psychological and psychophysiological injuries.[34]”
My Lai....Last thing I’ll post on it. It’s more or less for anyone not initiated to what it’s like to read and understand. Obviously, people that have experienced such things like we have already know.
...
“The rage the berserker experienced was referred to as berserkergang ("going berserk"). This condition has been described as follows:
This fury, which was called berserkergang, occurred not only in the heat of battle, but also during laborious work. Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed impossible for human power. This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and chill in the body, and then the face swelled and changed its colour. With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe. When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness followed, which could last for one or several days.[25]”
Holy shit, dude. Thank you for your service. Like, from the bottom of my heart.My Lai....