Good on you, Chuck, for keeping on about PTSD -- and as eloquently as you do.

Thank you, Chuck, for sharing a little about PTSD and especially for telling us, the loved ones watching helplessly from the outside, what we can do to try to help. It's good to know that, while we can't take away the horrible re-living memories (or the terrible need to try to control them), we can help by providing a safe place for that "wall" to begin to come down.

Chuck, thanks for posting this and thanks for your service to our country. My husband was drafted and served in Viet Nam from 1969-1971. I didn't meet him until 1980, but he would never talk about his experience. He was very defensive and dismissive. Everything was "ok." I couldn't sort out what was his personality, what was depression, and what could be PTSD. It wasn't until we went to see the movie Platoon, and he left the theater in tears after the opening scene when they were unloading body bags, that he had the "release." We sat in the car in the parking lot for two hours while he let it all out. He was in artillery, and they had to unload body bags before they could load the artillery. I have been very involved in Washington policy working on issues related to veterans health and military healthcare. We can never do enough for our veterans. We are finally recognizing the toll of PTSD and now we have traumatic brain injury as well. I am so glad you shared your story. Please make a point to come to DC and visit the wall. We will give you a room to stay in! The experience will tear you in half, but then you will feel whole again. I hope you are finding some peace and please know that there are many of us who cannot know, but appreciate, what you are experiencing. Take care.

It seems to me the VA should concentrate on facilitating discussions. They used to have group discussions, so vets could talk over their experiences with other vets.

Somehow, it doesn't seem to me that a counselor who has never seen battle would be much help at all.

Of course, I have no idea. All I can do is just respect and take time to listen to any vet I run into, at a party, or on the street. That I try to do.

Chuck,

I am in tears. It is late for me (2:43am PDT). but your post is doing it more than the hour. I made it all day without looking at the situation. With my special someone I always make a very big deal about Veterans Day. He is always surprised, and grateful, that I celebrate it with him. Isn't that the weirdest part! After 17 years he still can't look at the fact that while I hate war, I love and respect him for defending me and our country.

In my own heart, every Memorial Day, I think that this is also the day that we should be celebrating. The part of him that is MIA. You are the first person I have ever shared that with. It just hit me that this is my living with PTSD secret. I love you - keep writing what you do. It helps me.

You're helping all generations of PTSD sufferers by speaking out and giving a clear, personal explanation of the condition. I'm sure you hope, as I do, that those currently fighting wars (and even those not fighting but still traumatized by them) won't have to wait a generation until they can find some release and relief.

I remember reading the Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries years ago, and she spent may pages describing Wimsey's "shell shock," which occasionally showed up in the later mysteries when an event would trigger a reaction. I fear this is a condition that has always been with us, and too many people have never been able to get past that emotional blockade.

My father was in WWII, and in 1940 at 18, he went up to Canada from SF to join the RCAF. I had always known he'd been in the war, but, unlike some men of his generation, he didn't speak of it, except of the lifelong friends he'd made and a few peripheral (i.e., not battle-related) anecdotes.

It was only in the late 1980s that he finally talked about his responsibilities on the planes. He was the one who made sure that the bombs hit their targets. I don't think he was able to deal with the ramifications of that role until he, amazingly, met a Belgian man who had been on the ground when my father's plane dropped food and supplies for the occupied people, under Red Cross auspices.

As the planes went low to drop the bags—going along a very precise route allowed by the occupying Nazis—they had two rows of German guns trained on them from the ground, ready to shoot if they deviated from the narrow path. Keeping on that path relied on those same skills my father used for guiding bombing runs.

But encountering someone who had benefited from the one action in his war that saved lives rather than taking them was his release. I heard things from my father I had never heard before after that. He uncovered feelings that had been blocked since he was 20. I think it really helped him in those few years he had left. He died early in 1989.

So thank you. If this is a cause you have taken on, please know it's going to do many, many people a lot of good.