by Sol Wachtler

But it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, and "Chuck him out, the brute!
But it's "Savior of ‘is county" when the guns begin to shoot"

"Tommy" by Rudyard Kipling

Memorial Day should be a time of reflection, remembrance, and gratitude to those members of our armed forces who served and died for our country. My Memorial Day reflection went back to 1994 when I was in a mental health prison unit in Rochester, Minnesota. Because it was Memorial Day, my fellow veterans and I were given extra privileges which permitted us to sit in the yard listening to a prison band playing hits from the sixties.

Most of the veterans in the mental health unit had all served in Viet Nam. Tragically, most became acquainted with weapons, drugs, and drug trafficking while in the service - and now they are paying a precious price for misapplying their knowledge.

Like Carl Terpac - affable, helpful and very good company, except on those rare occasions when the temper born from the post traumatic syndrome he brought back from Dong Ha would take over his personality. I first met "Terp" when I was transferred to the mental health unit where he was housed. I had occasion to read his military transcript which detailed the incredible combat record and the heroism which won him countless awards and 3 purple hearts.

He was raised in a good home in upstate New York. A devout Catholic he neither smoked nor drank before he entered the Marine Corps at age 18. During training he proved himself a superb soldier who was anxious to fight for his country. He was soon given this opportunity. It came during the now infamous Tet offensive.

Shortly after his arrival in Viet Nam, his company was ordered to the relief of a company of the 9th Marines then heavily engaged with a large enemy force along the Demilitarized Zone. They had hoped to link up with the beleaguered company by nightfall. Unfortunately, they encountered the enemy en route and, after suffering heavy losses, were forced to withdraw. Many in Terpac's unit were killed, and he was detailed the next morning to retrieve the corpses of his comrades. Most had been horribly mutilated - some with their sex organs amputated and crudely stuffed into their mouths. After that "Terp" became a killing machine.

On one occasion, after being severely wounded, he was loaded into a Medi-Vac helicopter which was shot down immediately after take off. He was believed to be the only survivor. The battles detailed in the records Terp shared with me were the stuff of which heroic legends are made. In one battle after another he proved both his heroism and his ability to kill. The enemy did not have sophisticated weaponry, but they made up for this by their perseverance, cunning, knowledge of the terrain and a never-ending source of replacements whose ages ranged from nine to seventy years old. Because Terp carried the most lethal of the weapons in his company, including an M-79 grenade launcher, he killed more than one hundred enemy soldiers.

Terp was introduced to marijuana and alcohol after his first battle. It helped him to forget the blood and the horror. His first use of heavier drugs came on March 3, 1968 when his arm was almost taken off by an enemy grenade. He injected himself with the morphine he had been issued, and was transferred to a hospital ship. Within a month he was back in combat.

When Terp was discharged from the Marines he found himself in constant pain from his wounds and humiliated by having fought in Viet Nam.

"Humiliated?" I asked, "I've read your record. You were a hero."

"You don't understand, no one who came back from Nam was a hero. It was a no-win war. So many good kids were killed. You'd take a hill one day - lose it the next - go back the next day. All the time having your friends killed. For what? There came a point when I enjoyed the killing. The guy with the most kills got R&R. I used to work like hell to get that reward and I never thought about the people I killed. I was like an animal. How can you be proud of being an animal?"

His psychiatric reports detail the profound trauma he suffered and still suffers as a result of his Viet Nam experiences. When he hit the streets he tried to obliterate his bad dreams and "humiliation" with alcohol, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine. His drug abuse led him into a life of crime - from burglary and possession of a deadly weapon in New York to a kidnapping connected to a drug operation in California for which he served 5 years in Vacaville. His most recent offense, was for trafficking in narcotics. He told me he used more than he sold.

I met hundreds of combat veterans in prison like Carl Terpac. At that time, there were over 200,000 veterans in our prisons and jails. I felt sorry for them and for those members of society who suffered and will continue to suffer from their conduct when they are back on the street. In our haste to lock up Terp, we seemed to forget that he would be getting out one day. He will still be harboring the same hostility and anger that leads to the commission of crimes. As one of his treating psychiatrists wrote while recommending comprehensive treatment - treatment which Terp never received in prison:

"He has lost respect for all traditional institutions associated with the government as a result of his experiences in Vietnam and this is not atypical. I see no hope for Mr. Terpak (sic) without treatment. Incarceration will simply protect society and himself for a period of time and he will remain unchanged when he leaves the system."

A recent report tells us that one third of the veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2006 were diagnosed with mental health and psychosocial ills. As of last year, more than 25,000 of these veterans were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, an anxiety disorder that can occur after the experience or witnessing of a traumatic event. PTSD can lead to depression, and problems of memory and cognition. In addition, and as a unique characteristic of the current conflict in Iraq, the concussion of car bombings have caused a physical trauma to the brain which is a cause of acute mental illness.

Tragically, because of the stigma associated with mental illness, thousands of these veterans will not seek treatment. Instead they will self-medicate with alcohol and drugs in an attempt to cure themselves or simply to "forget the blood and horror." The inevitable consequence of alcoholism and addiction, known as co-occurring disorders, is domestic violence, homelessness, and inevitable interaction with the criminal justice system.

We must not treat those veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq the way we treated Carl Terpac and his comrades who fought for this country in Viet Nam. Instead of building more prisons, as we did in the wake of the Viet Nam war, we have a responsibility to our veterans, and other mentally ill persons, to build more mental health treatment facilities. Now is the time to increase the number and efficacy of mental health courts so that those veterans who suffer from mental illness as a result of their military service, are diverted from prison and provided available treatment.

Much has been said about mending the bodies of those whom we have sent to war. It is time we also remembered the need to heal their minds.