THE SILENT MADNESS: COMBAT’S UNSEEN TOLL IN VIETNAM

The public knows the stories. The newsreels. The books. The movies. The Hollywood heroes. The glory of battle. But they don’t show the truth beneath it all. The quiet, sordid truth no one talks about. The part not fitting the script. Too ugly, too small, too shameful to put out for the world to see.

I’m talking about the effects of combat. The kind slowly eating at you. A gnawing hunger you can’t ignore. It’s not in the big battles or the medals. It’s in the cracks. The things you don’t notice unless you’ve been there. It’s the quiet madness. It gets into everyone.

Take this one thing. It’s nothing heroic. Just a moment, but it sums it all up.

We were heading back from a job. The jungle was thick. The air sticky with sweat. We broke through into a field of elephant grass. The chopper ride back to base was coming, but for now, we remained exposed in that open space.

There were men at the far side, gathered around a water hole. It was nothing more than runoff from a storm. Black, filthy, smelling of mud and excrement. But they were in it. Bathing. Filling their canteens.

I figured they’d pop an iodine tablet. Maybe. But I wasn’t sure. I knew the risks. Parasites. Bacteria. Leaches that’d crawl into any crack in your clothes. You’d be infected if you didn’t get them off quick — some kind of liver cancer from the water itself. But still, they were there. Washing in filth. Drinking it.

We hadn’t bathed in a week. Skin rubbed raw. Fingers broken; wounds untreated. The thought of cool water was too tempting to ignore. But we passed. Kept moving. Didn’t join them.

It didn’t make sense. But then again, nothing did. Nothing made sense anymore. We were in it now. Trapped in a place where sanity had no place to go.

So we didn’t judge. Not anymore. We were all crazy — just different shades of madness. The war had that effect. You could see it in their eyes. In the way they acted. In what they did to survive. You could see it in us, too. We were all part of it now. A circus of horrors we couldn’t escape.

And that’s another part of Vietnam I’d carry home to haunt me.

Vietnam Uncensored — 365 Days in a Nightmare tells the truth, raw and uncut. It’s about the men who fought in a war that never made sense, driven by politicians who couldn’t see the cost. It’s about survival — the kind you don’t learn in training, the kind you learn when the bullets fly and the orders don’t. The book takes you through the chaos, the corruption, the incompetence, and the sheer absurdity of it all.

Readers on Amazon and Goodreads say it’s worth your time. They call it insightful and illuminating. And the best part? All the net proceeds go to the Kaufman Fund, helping veterans who need it.

Buy it. Read it. Help. You’ll be glad you did. Thanks.