INVISIBLE WOUNDS: THE VIETNAM WAR’S LASTING TOLL

They were mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, and family. The ones who took the blow when the veterans came back from Vietnam. The ones who tried to help but couldn’t. The ones who lived with the madness, the silence, the boy who once laughed but was gone, replaced by a stranger complete of rage and sorrow.

They cried — night after night. And still, they tried. They asked, “What can we do?” but the answer was nothing, nothing that worked. The veterans, the men they knew, were changed. The wounds inside are too deep. The anger, the horror, the weight of things no one could touch or fix.

There was no one to blame, not really. Except those who sent us there, who spun the lie of stopping communism in a place few understood and fewer cared about. A war with no end, no reason, no meaning. And when we came back, we were broken, and so was everything around us. There was no map for the way home, no guide for how to live after what we saw and did. The past wouldn’t let go. It grabbed hold of us with the talons of an eagle.

The homecoming that should have been joyful turned sour. Arguments, misjudgments, silence. The people who loved us couldn’t understand why we didn’t come back whole. And we couldn’t tell them why.