Blog
A good Memorial Day for one family
Posted by Michael Putzel • May 27, 2018
It is among the worst days I remember.
On February 10, 1971, a South Vietnamese military helicopter was shot down in Laos, killing all those aboard, including four combat photographers for Western news organizations and a South Vietnamese army photographer who worked as a stringer for The Associated Press when he shot something worthy of worldwide exposure. His name was Tu Vu, an amiable young man, dedicated to his craft and anxious to succeed.
Tu Vu (Photo by Michael Putzel, AP)
I was covering the same operation as the others, an audacious invasion of Laos by U.S. aircraft and South Vietnamese ground forces to cut the notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam’s principal supply route to wage war in the South. I had seen them that morning. They were glad to be […] READ MORE
Vietnam vet crosses U.S. to thank the docs who saved him nearly 50 years ago
Posted by Michael Putzel • May 14, 2018
The little scout helicopter sailed in “low and slow” at about one hundred feet off the ground as the pilot and observer in the front seats looked for signs of the enemy. Specialist 5 John Fogle, the crew chief, was scrunched into the little bird’s only other seat in a cramped space that barely had room for him, his M-60 machine gun pointed out the open doorway, and a box of ammunition. His seat faced the door, giving him the widest possible arc to point his weapon—and the maximum exposure to enemy fire.
OH-6a scout and Cobra gunshipArtist: Dan Greer
As the helicopter cleared the edge of a canyon, Fogle spotted about a dozen North Vietnamese soldiers directly below, out in the open, and clearly not expecting company. One was […] READ MORE
A New Monument to the Pilots and Crews Lost in the Helicopter War
Posted by Michael Putzel • April 18, 2018
They gathered in the vast amphitheater at the top of Arlington National Cemetery to pay tribute to their fellow flyers, children, brothers, fathers, grandfathers and long-ago friends. Nearly 4,000 people made the trip up the hill on April 18 to dedicate a memorial to the helicopter pilots and crews of the Vietnam War, the last of whom were killed in action forty-three years before.
They were dressed in almost any style, from casual tourist to crisp dress uniforms, but those who stood out were the men wearing the olive drab flight jackets or flame-proof Nomex suits they could still get into after all these years. Many wore the black Stetson hats of the elite air cavalry units that took to the sky as their forebears had ridden fast horses to find […] READ MORE
Late-onset PTSD
Posted by Michael Putzel • February 26, 2018
When I was doing research for my book, The Price They Paid, I spoke to quite a few combat veterans who didn’t experience the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) until many years after the war, often when retirement or a similar change in lifestyle or an unexpected flashback would trigger memories of the war they had stowed away for decades. Some of the military psychiatrists I interviewed were skeptical of such “late-onset” stories, but the evidence has continued to build as Vietnam-era warriors entered new phases of their lives and began to reflect on their experiences.
The following account, published last week by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is a typical example. It is the story of John Henningson, as told to Abby Weingarten for the Herald-Tribune:
Vietnam War veteran John Henningson served […] READ MORE
“Emotional first aid” to head off PTSD
Posted by Michael Putzel • February 07, 2018
My cousin, Judith Putzel, specializes in preventing or interrupting PTSD among people who experience trauma in accidents, natural disasters, etc. She was quoted in an article by staff writer Liora Engel-Smith in the Keene, N.H., Sentinel on February 3, 2018, about extending compensation to first responders with the disorder. An excerpt from that story:
Not every grisly incident triggers full-blown PTSD, said Dr. Judith Putzel, a trauma specialist who is part of a statewide volunteer team called the Granite State Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Team. Putzel and other volunteers on the team talk to first responders after particularly difficult incidents, providing what Putzel calls “emotional first aid” — a guided conversation designed to help first responders move past the trauma.
“I would say PTSD, meaning disorder — meaning a really extreme reaction […] READ MORE
The agony of Vietnam may follow soldiers to the end of life
Posted by Michael Putzel • December 11, 2017
The following article written by KQED reporter April Dembosky and published by California Healthline is republished here with permission of the publisher.
Reverberations From War Complicate Vietnam Veterans’ End-of-Life Care
April Dembosky, KQED
Many of Ron Fleming’s fellow soldiers have spent the last five decades trying to forget what they saw — and did — in Vietnam.
But Fleming, now 74, has spent most of that time trying to hold onto it. He’s never been as proud as he was when he was 21.
Ron Fleming, former helicopter door gunner in Vietnam
Fleming was a door gunner in the war, hanging out of a helicopter on a strap with a machine gun in his hands. He fought in the Tet Offensive of 1968, sometimes for 40 hours straight, firing 6,000 rounds a minute. But he never […] READ MORE
Tough New Film About Enduring Wounds of War
Posted by Michael Putzel • November 01, 2017
Anyone who doubts the impact that war can have on those who fight should sit down and stay there for the 108 minutes it takes to watch Thank You For Your Service, a wrenching new film about a handful of American soldiers who return home after fighting together in Iraq. My wife was overcome and left after twenty minutes. I handed her the car keys and didn’t try to stop her.
Coming home from war
It’s not just the violence, although there are some frightening moments of combat and shocking scenes back home. The film evoked in this viewer an inner pain one cannot escape by walking out of the theater. As a writer who knows of that pain from another war, in Vietnam, it rings so true in places that I […] READ MORE
On Moral Injury
Posted by Michael Putzel • October 13, 2017
Excerpt from an address to alumni of C Troop, 2/17 Cavalry, 101st Airborne Division
San Antonio, Texas, October 7, 2017
How many of you know the term “moral injury?”
It is not a recognized disability or as carefully defined as PTSD, but it is a concept many of you may recognize. As it is generally understood, moral injury refers to people who come home from war and find over time that they can’t square was they did with the values they learned growing up. They may have performed admirably, been proud that they fulfilled their duty, saved the lives of buddies and earned the gratitude of their superiors, their friends and their families. But for one reason or another they come to feel a sense of guilt, of betrayal.
Whether the cause they fought […] READ MORE
Farewell to a friend
Posted by Michael Putzel • September 30, 2017
When I stepped off the Pan Am plane that brought me to Vietnam the first time in the fall of 1969, a small crowd of greeters was assembled on the tarmac between the new arrivals from the plane and the obligatory customs and immigration officials waiting for us inside the terminal at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut (now Tan Son Nhat) Airport. There was a war on, but only one person was wearing a helmet. He had on a custom-made civilian “TV shirt” with epaulets and multiple pockets, including one for pens on the left sleeve and another for cigarettes on the right. I was already nervous about my new assignment as a war correspondent and probably took little comfort in hearing the guy with the steel pot on his […] READ MORE
Charles A. Vehlow–A Remembrance
Posted by • July 14, 2017
Chuck Vehlow was my guardian at first, although I didn’t know it. He was flying a Cobra helicopter gunship in Vietnam and Laos, protecting his commander’s Huey that I happened to be aboard. He became a source, helping me understand the camaraderie and culture of the Condors, his air cavalry troop that flew into the face of enemy fire, risking everything, losing some, going back day after day because it was their job, their duty and the glue that bound them together.
Chuck Vehlow in 2009, in the “Cav hat” he wore in Vietnam
Decades later, when I began work on a book that would become The Price They Paid: Enduring Wounds of War, Chuck offered insight, perspective and vital detail to my story about how the war changed him and his fellow warriors–and […] READ MORE
