SURVIVING THE MADNESS: A VIETNAM ESSAY

Horror grips the U.S. movie-goer. A survey says 68% of Americans liked horror movies as kids, and 73% still enjoy them as adults.

I wasn’t one of them. As a kid, I avoided the fear. As an adult, I still do. But I witnessed the biggest three-ring circus horror show on earth, when I entered the Vietnam War.

Talk of vampires, serial killers, monsters, ghosts, goblins, ghouls — anything of that kind — and you talk of the killing fields, the jungles of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. No fairy tale, no Poe story, no wicked artwork by Bosch compares to the reality of what we saw. The terror was too much. It made men soil themselves, too stunned to move. No words or images would do it justice. But I tell it all in my memoir, Vietnam Uncensored — 365 Days in a Nightmare.

You couldn’t imagine the blood. You couldn’t imagine the gore. You couldn’t imagine the loss of brothers, the injuries, the betrayal of the life we thought we knew back home. It was all an illusion. We were deceived — first by the war, then by the people we thought would welcome us back with understanding. They didn’t.

But we survived. None of us knew the madness was working its way into our bones. And it stayed with us forever. It’s what we carried home.

Amazon reviews say Vietnam Uncensored — 365 Days in a Nightmare is a must-read. All the proceeds go to the Kaufman Fund, helping veterans. Get the book. Support the cause. You’ll be glad you did.