PTSD III

 After a while, the enlisted members of the Psychiatric Department were transferred from the Hospital to a MASH unit in support of the clinic.

We arrived late at night, and found out we had to assemble our own bunks, find wall lockers, and get set up. It was very disorganized.

Next thing we knew soneone was running thru the barracks yelling about PT. We had no idea there was PT in the morning, but we got up, jumped into our fatigues and went out to endure our morning wake-up.

All five of the enlisted people went out at the same time. Later a message was posted on the bulletin board that one of us was on report for being late. It was Ernie, the only black in our group.

All five of us went to the First sergeants office to enquire. We asked why, when all five of us whent out  at exactly the same time, only Ernie got put on report. The first sergeant blustered and stammered, as we asked if he might be prejudiced against black people. He threw a giant fit and threw us out of his office, but Ernies name got taken off the report.

We went back to our bay in the barracks and finished up getting out gear straightened away, when I recived a request to report to the office, I go in and in the center of his desk is my Personnel folder. There on the front cover was stamped in bright red letters 1AO. He started by calling me names and trying to humiliate me for being a Consciencious Objector. He told me that somegow he was going to personally going to make sure i went to jail. I just told him to be ery careful, because he didn't know who he was dealing with. We spent the rest of my time on Okinawa with hi writing me up for an article 15, and me advising him exactly why it would not be a good idea to proceed. As an example, one Sunday I was in my bunk taking a nap when he came by my bunk and ordered me to clean the barracks. I told him i declined, so he ran down to the office and wrote me up for disobeying an order. they called me down to thee COs office and there in the center of his desk was an article 15, which they ordered me to sign.

I of course declined, but added that they were aware that I was a 1AO and that regulation chapter verse and sentence prohibited them from making me work on my religious holidays, and that if I was forces to sign it, my next move would be to go to the JAG office and enter a complaint against them. They looked up the regs ad realized that they had made a mistake. So they tore up the article 15 and tole me to get the **** out of the office. They had no way of knowing that where I say in the reception arera there was a full set of the Regs, which I had been studying in my spare time. Nothing petty tyrants hate worse than a barracks lawyer,

There was a requirement from the Hospital at Camp Kue for a Liason NCO for the locked Psychiatric Ward. So although my work area war in the Hospital, my Barracks was in Sukiran, which meant getting a taxi every morning. No big deal.

Working with psychotics every day was not my ideal. the patients had all been locked up for doing outrageous things.

One morning as I unlocked the ward, the doof was banged open and left me laying on the floor looking at the ceiling. I looke down the hallway to see a little bitty Asian lady staggering down the hall as fast as she could go. II jumped up and ran her down. It was like trying to control a mad dog, but help arrived and we gor her back to the ward.

When we got back to the ward I asked what the heck was going on. They told me she had been admitted the night before. She had drowned her three children in the bathtub, and was out of control psychotic. They had medicated her with 500mg of thorazine, which was enough to medicate an elephant, but barely slowed her down.. I felt so sorry ffor her, being so out of touch with reality that she drowned her three kids.

Another time we had an Air Force enlisted dued admitted. I was never gotten all the details of what he had done, but from what I understood, he had been a discipline problem in his unit so their punishment was to have him do perimiter patrol at night on the airfield. The "voices" had convinced him that there were infiltrators in the jungle so he started unloading rounds. There may have been a B52 involved.

He had been on the ward a couple of days, and he was OK to talk to, so I was getting to know him to assess hs mental state.

One morning he came to me and said he wanted to go play pool in the hospital day room. I replied that I didn't think he was ready to be allowed that much freedom. He picked up a trash can and threw it across the ward and said "Now can I go play pool?" I replied "That king of behavior will not get you what you want" So he picked up a chair and threw it through a window. "NOW CAN I GO PLAY POOL? II told him if he didn't clean his act up, he would end up in restraints.

He ran to the back of the ward and came back with a 12" diving knife and demanded to be allowed to go play pool. AT that moment I left the ward and called the "Goon Squad" which was a group that was supposed to handle anything violent on the ward. They came in and peeked around the corner and saw this big crazy dude with a knife, and turned around and left.

The three enlisted guys left looked at each other and the airman in the group said "Well, we got it to do, so how are we going to handle it. I suggested we go onto the ward and get a mattress of of one of the beds and rush him. we needed to figure out who was going to do what, The Airman took the right end of the matress. His jib was to get behind hin after we got him coralled against the wall. I was in the middle and my job was to make sure he remained under control and pinned to the wall. The third guy was to get control of the knife and make sure he couldn't hurt anyone. It worked very well although there were seeral moments when things were dicey. We had him under control and were yelling "Trank him, get your asses over here and Trank him" which eventually happened.

During my time with the Psych department I learned a couple of behaviors that have never left me.

When entering a room, make sure you know where all the etrnces and exits are.

Never turn your back unless you know everyone present and feel comfortable with them

Always be prepared to go into action in an instant, as you are not in control.

The perversity of the universe tends towards the maximum.

PTSD II

     OUT of the 300 or so people in my AIT class for Combat Medical training, 3 of us were not selected to go to Vietnam.. The top 3 in scores were sent elsewhere. one was assigned to Thailand. one to Hawaii, and I was sent to Okinawa. What a relief.

To this day I still figure that there was  higher level plan to eliminate the 1AO population. Since the Government couldn't send us all to prison, they sent us to Combat medic school, because medics are a high priority target in aa firefight. A way to get rid of us while not appearing toget rid of us.

Any way after a 30 day leave,, off I went.

When I got off the plane on Okinawa , standing on yhe tarmac of Kadena Air Field, I heard this whirwhirwhir noise in the air. I turned to look as a SR-71 came in for a landing. I had  never seen or heard of the Blackbird spy plane. As my jaw dropped, I thought "Holy shit batman, you aren't in Kansas anymore".

I went to Personnel to be processed and given an assignment. After examining my scores, they sent me to the Psychiatric department for an interview. I was interviewed by Col. Scott Peck, who was to becme my mentr fr the next two years. Although I had no real experience, they thought  would fit in nicely with their organization.

So I was assigned to the front desk, to handle the office. Sounded like an OK job. They were going to teach me to administer standard tests (MMPI etc) .   

Shortly after I was assigned, I was in my bunk sleeping when I woke op mid-air. Had no idea what was going on. The ground was jumping up and down and had thrown me out of bed. I turned and looked out the baracks window, and there was a huge black red amd yellow cloud to the north of us. My immediate thought was that sone idiot had pushed the big red button, and I was watching the end of civilization as we knew it. I hunkered down and waited for the shock wave to hit, It never did. I found out later that  B52 had gone den with a full load of bombs. The scary part was that it had gone down a short distance feom Ichibana which was at that time the largest storage facility for chemical and biological warefare stores outside of the US, A little change in flight path,, and there would probably would be nothing left alive on Okinawa.

The next thing that happened was to affect me for the rest of my life.

I was in my normal place at the reception desk, when Capt. Rod Carman told me to be on the alert. There was a special prisoner being brought in to be interviewed for a legal sanity exam.

Earl Pleasant was a Marine. He had done six tours in Vietnam and wanted to go back for a seventh, Rumors had been going around that he enjoyed killing people. I mean he REALLY enjoyed it. And he wasn't real discerning about who he killed. He was sent to Okinawa while the Marines tried to figure out if he was fit to return. He got tired of waiting for the Brass to make up their minds, so he went to push thjngs along. He went into the Company Commanders office and demanded to be sent back. When his demand was refused, he emptied an M-16 into the CO.

We ran a Multi-service treatment facility in the Hospital at Camp Kue. We were tasked with examining him to asses his sanity for legal purposes. Capt. Carman was going to do the interview.

They brought him into the reception area, Three fully armed Marines. Loaded weapons, He was in chains, shackles, handcuffs. He was about average height, slender and seemed  pretty chill for a dude undergoing a psychiatric exam 

Capt. Carman told the guards to remove the restraints. Said "I will not interview a man in restraints". The head guard said "Sir, we were specifically ordered to not remove his restraints under any circumstances". Captain Carman pointed to the Captain's bars and then at the guards stripes, and told the guard "These bars outrank your stripes, and I am giving yo a direct order to remove the restraints. If you want to keep those stripes, I strongly suggest you do not refuse a direct order from  superior officer,"

The guard replies he would remove the restraints under protest. So the restraints were removed and the prisoner and the doctor went into a conference room to the right of the desk.

I was siting at my desk a few minutes later when u heard a commotion in the conference and a very faint "help    help" so I jumped up and ran over to the door.

When I went in, the prisoner had Dr. Carman bent over backwards over his desk and was being choked out. Capt. Carman appeared to be unresponsive, and his lips were blue.

Since the prisoner's back was to me. He was positioned such that I could come up behind him and put him in a full nelson wrestling hold. The next few seconds were not real clear. I remember being smashed up against the office furniture. I do remember being smashed into a file cabinet, The more he fought the tighter i held either he was going to submit or I was going to break his neck, I was terrified that he would get loose.

He was a trained to kill people, and enjoyed doing it. he would have no problem disposing of me, As I tightened down on him, after some time he ceased to struggle. He said " You can let go. I'm OK mow" I replies "Well I am NOT" and tightened down a little more.

Eventually the head guard peeked around the corner and asked "Is everything OK in here?" I am not sure what I said, but I am pretty sure it turned the air blue and contained several words that should not be used in polite company.

The guards put him back in his restraints and I checked on Dr Carman.

I didn't sleep for a couple of days.

I had to testify at his cour martial a couple of months later, He stared at me with such total malevolence the whole time that it freaked me out, His look said that somewhere, some time we would meet again, and he would end me. His eyes were not those ofa sane person. There was noting human in them. Whatever traits of humanity had ever inhabited that body had long since departed.I know that pure evil exists in this world. Not as an abstract idea, but as a real perceptible force, because I have looked it in the eye and triumphed over it. But it still scared the shit out of me.

I have seen that look other times in my life. Charlie Manson had that same look. My wife was watching  a true crime show a couple of months ago, and one of the scenarios was about a dude in Tennessee who went on this senseless crime spree. They showed a shot of him being interviewed, and he had that same batshit crazy smile that Earl  pleasant did during his trial. Nothing human lived behind those eyes. Gave me nightmares for weeks.

I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night in the clutches of a dream, convinced that something evil is in the room. It takes a quite a while for my conscious mind to convince me that it isn't real.