What happens when the stories we tell about war take on a life of their own? In this episode, a Vietnam veteran-turned-historian explores how memory, myth, and personal testimony have shaped America’s understanding of the Vietnam War and why resilience and truth matter as much as remembrance.
Echoes - EP102 - The Stories We Tell.mp3
Croan: In episode 95, Gary Kulick shared his experience serving as a conscientious objector medic in Vietnam. A devout Catholic influenced by the social justice movement. Gary received conscientious objector status and served as a medic with the fourth Infantry Division. After the war, he earned his Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University and became a historian, working at the Smithsonian and other institutions. But [00:00:30] Gary's relationship with Vietnam didn't end when he came home in 1971 as he was leaving Vietnam. His battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel William Bentley, shook his hand and said something that would stay with him forever.
Kulick: He said to me, Kulick, tell them the truths about Vietnam. Tell them the truth about Vietnam. And that always stuck with me.
Croan: Stick around. From [00:01:00] the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Founders of the wall. This is echoes of the Vietnam War. I'm your host, Michael Croan, bringing you stories of service, sacrifice, and healing from people who still feel the impact of that conflict. More than 50 years later. Episode [00:01:30] 102 The Stories We Tell. Right after this.
Gary Sinise: Hello, I'm Gary Sinise. Nearly 3 million Americans served in Vietnam, and more than 58,000 have their names inscribed on the wall. Those that pay the ultimate price in service to America. Some might ask why the Vietnam War still matters. [00:02:00] It matters because more than 58,000 lives were cut short and their families forever changed. It matters because we should never forget how Vietnam veterans were treated when they came home. A lesson learned so that our current generation of veterans are treated with respect. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the organization that built the wall, works to ensure that future generations will understand the war's impact. I'm [00:02:30] asking you to help keep the promise. The wall was built on. Never forget. Visit VVMF to find out how you can get involved.
Kulick: He said to me, Kulick, tell them the truth about Vietnam.
Croan: Decades later, Gary would follow that directive in a way he never anticipated. His 2009 book carries a provocative title War stories, false atrocity [00:03:00] Tales, Swift Boaters and Winter soldiers. What really happened in Vietnam? It's a careful, sometimes uncomfortable examination of how the stories we tell about war have shaped our understanding, maybe even more than what actually happened. Gary's journey to writing this book began when he came home from Vietnam. Like many veterans, he tried to put the war behind him.
Kulick: I was drained, I think it took a while for [00:03:30] me to settle back in, and I think that was largely uncommunicative about Vietnam with my wife. And it certainly was the case that no one, no one wanted to hear. Stories about Vietnam, no one. And that that seemed fine to me. I mean, I, I was now completely focused on my career finishing graduate [00:04:00] school, finishing my PhD, establishing myself as a scholar, getting a job despite not thinking about Vietnam, certainly not presenting myself as a Vietnam veteran. I began collecting Vietnam memoir. And so I have I have a substantial collection. And I think at one point I thought, well, you know, maybe when I get time, when I retire, I might write a book about that, [00:04:30] those memoirs. The proximate cause, however, was that I was visibly and increasingly unhappy in my last job.
Croan: So at what point does it form in your mind that this is what you're going to write about?
Kulick: My wife, Barbara said to me, you need a project. And years and years ago, someone had confided to her a veteran. Then, because [00:05:00] of my status as a CEO, I have a perspective on the war that no one else has or very few people have. And that sort of stuck in my mind, but I think the book didn't form in the way that it finally appeared, until I began reading stories of atrocities that I knew to be untrue. [00:05:30]
Croan: Okay, let's talk about the word untrue for a minute. When historians like Gary examine controversial topics, they bring a particular set of tools to the task. They cross-reference multiple sources, examine both corroborating and contradicting evidence, examine patterns across testimonies, Monies, investigate official records. It's detective work, really. And it's not about calling anyone a liar. It's about [00:06:00] understanding how stories evolve, how memory works, and how collective narratives take shape. Gary approaches these stories with both the rigor of a trained historian and the compassion of someone who served alongside his fellow veterans. His goal isn't to diminish anyone's experience or pain, but to understand the larger truth about what happened to Vietnam veterans in country and when they came home. Let's start with one of the most persistent stories we hear [00:06:30] about Vietnam veterans that they were spat upon when returning home. Almost everyone has heard these accounts. Veterans and airports accosted by hippies for serving in a faraway war that had grown unpopular at home. This is a great example of the difference between a story, which may be true but hasn't been proven, and a history.
Kulick: Let's begin with Rambo. Is [00:07:00] a key moment in that film where Rambo says.
Clip from Rambo: And I come back to the world, and I see all those maggots at the airport protesting me. They call me baby killer. All kinds of foul crap. Who later protects me? Huh?
Kulick: 1982 and the core element of the story is there happens in an airport [00:07:30] there spitting. There's the vile epithet baby killer. Prior to 1982, there are an important series of memoir and oral history compilations. I'm talking about Rankovic Philip Caputo. Tim O'Brien's first book. Michael. Hair. Anthologies. Oral history anthologies. Al. Santoli. [00:08:00] Mark Baker. None of those sources mentioned homecomings that involved being surveyed upon none of them. It was the Rambo film that provides the the beginnings of a story that would later be elaborated, and the principal evidence for that elaboration comes from the Chicago Tribune journalist Bob Greene. Green. [00:08:30] Sometime prior to 1987, asks his veteran listeners to send him stories about whether they were spit upon. He asked. He asked that question were you spit upon when you came home? And he does a series of articles in the Chicago Tribune published in 1987. He would expand that into a full book called homecoming, 1989, [00:09:00] in which he, I think 60 plus stories of men saying they were spit upon. Greene did not vet any of these stories. He did not vet whether people were veterans or not. He felt that that was disrespectful. So.
Croan: Um, well, that seems pretty elemental, right? I mean, if somebody is telling you a story about their experience as a veteran, coming home from war seems to me like verifying that he's a veteran. [00:09:30] That's basic due diligence.
Kulick: You would think. And I'll come back to that because it adds to the skepticism of the story. So I read all these with some care. Um, read the whole book. Read carefully the 60 plus stories. And there are four points I want to make about these stories. The first is they depend quite heavily on [00:10:00] the core formula articulated in the Rambo film. The sittings almost always take place in an airport, accompanied by epithets like baby killer. But then this variant Rambo mentions simply maggots. Maggots gets redefined in these stories frequently as [00:10:30] a solitary woman, a hippie coming up and spitting on the returning veteran who's saying this is happening to him. A core part of this story is that the veteran who's just been spit upon is just shocked. Surprised. Doesn't retaliate, doesn't retaliate. Now, there are variants of this story, but the core story is a solitary woman in an airport [00:11:00] spitting on a returning veteran, and the veteran doesn't respond. So one level of skepticism how likely was this to happen? I can remember very, very rarely seeing women spit in public. The second order is that some of these stories make no military sense. And this gets to Greene's unwillingness to vet [00:11:30] whether they're veterans or not. So I'll give you a few examples. We get stories of men who claim they they came home in jungle fatigues, in one case bloodied jungle fatigues, which flies in the face of my experience and that I suspected most veterans. We were expected to don class A uniforms on the way home.
Kulick: We get another supposed veteran who says [00:12:00] he received promotions. Junior enlisted man, senior staff NCO to first lieutenant in two years prior to turning 20. That's a story that makes no military sense. None. Whatever. We get stories of a man coming home with a Purple heart and the gold star. Now, maybe he misspoke. [00:12:30] Maybe he meant something else. But there is, of course, no military medal called the Gold Star. And then we get a story from a guy named Lou Ross shot from Texas helicopter pilot. He tells an elaborate story very different from the stories that are largely formulaic. He gets spit upon while he's going to Vietnam in Dallas, and he he identifies [00:13:00] the spitters as Bible flippers. Now, this is a story that really makes no sense whatsoever. Now, here we are in the heart of the support our boys, Dallas, Texas. And he's getting spit upon by by faithful Baptists, other Bible believers. He also tells us he came back with seven bullet holes and 5757 combat decorations. [00:13:30] This is a story that simply can't be believed. Now, not all of these stories are that bad, but I brought my skepticism to the formulaic airport hippie girl stories. I'm now bringing further skepticism to stories that make no military sense. And the third level is none of these stories are witnessed. There are a couple of stories I should say that [00:14:00] at least ambiguous, but by and large, these are not corroborated in any way.
Kulick: There are no witnesses. No one supposedly was walking next to me when I was spit upon. And then lastly. And related to this. Um, uh, there are no no stories of I wasn't spit upon, but I saw my buddy being spit upon. Again, this refers only to the green [00:14:30] stories. No corroboration, no witnesses, no story about a buddy being spit upon. Here's my memory of coming home from Vietnam. No one walked through a major airport on their own. We we were surrounded by fellow veterans. As as we made our way to the various flights [00:15:00] back home, I remember, you know, queuing up at the ticket counter in front of fellow veterans. I didn't walk through an airport alone. If someone had spit upon me, another veteran would have seen it. My last piece of skepticism. None of the stories that green published indicate that no, I wasn't spit upon, but my buddy next to me was. None of [00:15:30] those stories tell that story. Now I can't prove. And I really don't want to prove. It never happened. So if someone were to tell me today that it happened to them, I think I might ask. Tell me more. I'd be happy to be challenged. But again, as I say, I can't prove it never happened. All [00:16:00] I can do is bring a level of historian skepticism to the stories I've seen and read. And as I said, the cache of stories in Bob Greene's book homecoming is the largest body of evidence.
Croan: And so in the wake of Bob Greene. Do we see these spinning stories gaining traction or losing traction?
Kulick: There are no more books about [00:16:30] this. So, um, uh, bits and pieces. I wrote about some of the the there's just a handful of stories that come out that are. That get published. Uh, but basically the story goes away. It goes away in terms of anything. Uh, of anything that would find its way into print or into, um, into [00:17:00] film. You know, there are no spitting stories in, uh, the Burns novels film series on Vietnam. I don't believe there were any in any of the, uh, the major previous film versions of the war in Vietnam. So in that sense, it fades from public view. I'd be interested in hearing your [00:17:30] evidence based on all of the interviews that that you've done. What's been your experience.
Croan: Well, you know, there's there's my experience, and then there's my memory of my experience, which may be which may very well be two different things. But in my memory, you know, having spoken now with probably a couple hundred veterans, I've heard many times something along the lines of we were spat upon when we came home. I [00:18:00] cannot recall a time when I've heard I was spat upon when I came home.
Kulick: That's that's significant, I think.
Croan: But the counterargument to that is, you know, I have colleagues at VVMF who say they have heard it in the first person. They know people who tell the story in the first person, just because it hasn't happened to me as an interviewer. Um, you know, I've only been with this organization for, I don't know, five years or something like that. There are people who've been with our organization [00:18:30] for 14 years, 15 years. They've talked to far more veterans than I ever will. And, uh, you know, they, they feel pretty strongly that that they have heard these stories in the first person. Mhm. They, they could produce those veterans if with a phone call. So you know I think it's important that we draw the distinction here between skepticism for personal memories versus skepticism for [00:19:00] this particular body of collected stories that have been published.
Kulick: Exactly.
Croan: Green and maybe by others.
Kulick: Exactly. My skepticism isn't directed at any one individual. It's directed at a body of evidence. The most substantial published evidence we have of spinning stories. But there was a metaphorical truth to them.
Croan: Gary [00:19:30] himself experienced what he considers his own metaphorical spitting story. Not literal spit, but something that carried the same sting.
Kulick: I think when I came back to to Brown, that that first time after after Vietnam, I had one really awkward and disturbing lunch. And I remember talking at this lunch that I had had served [00:20:00] in Vietnam, and I'd served as a conscientious objector. And the person across from me who was who was very short, smarmy, graduate student in history, basically said, you know, there there were a lot easier ways to get out of this. And I later learned that he had conned his way out by overeating so that he weighed far more than he should have for his [00:20:30] height. And that was my spitting story.
Croan: If the spitting stories represent a kind of collective metaphor for disrespect. The false atrocity stories that Gary investigates in his book represent something far more troubling. During his research, Gary discovered that some veterans had confessed to war crimes they couldn't have committed, and that these confessions were eagerly believed and repeated. So there's a real phenomenon there. Take, for example, the Central [00:21:00] Park five. There's just tons of examples of people confessing to crimes they didn't commit. Under interrogation by detectives in an interrogation room inside a police station. Right. So that alone is remarkable enough. The fact that you can eventually get someone to admit to a crime they didn't commit. But, you know, when I'm watching the documentary Winter soldier, I mean, these guys aren't in an interrogation room. Nobody's, you know, there's no lights in their eyes. There's no antagonist across the table screaming [00:21:30] at them. These guys are testifying in graphic detail to things that they say that they witnessed. And so I guess what I'm wondering is, you know, if you take the duress out of it, right? If you take the bad cop out of the room, then what reason would someone have for giving a false confession?
Kulick: Well, I think the idea of false confessions is different from what you described. If [00:22:00] there's been a particularly heinous crime, particularly of a sexual nature. Urban police departments get numerous false confessions. People on the phone saying I did it. They're not under duress. Why did people coming back from Vietnam succumb to this? There were people on the other side of the microphone who wanted to hear these stories. There were soliciting them. [00:22:30] And you're dealing with young, impressionable people. Who are giving them what they want.
Croan: The Winter soldier investigation of 1971 became a focal point for some of these stories. Veterans testified about atrocities they claimed to have witnessed or participated in. While Gary acknowledges that war crimes did occur in Vietnam. His research revealed that some of the most shocking [00:23:00] testimonies were most likely fabricated.
Kulick: You look at the dynamic of that first panel. The first Marine Division panel. I later had a conversation with another member, a doctor, who was on that panel, and he said to me, you know, they were in competition for telling them the worst stories that you could possibly imagine. It [00:23:30] really was a competition.
Croan: I mean, there were stories there that were beyond anything I could have imagined.
Kulick: Exactly, exactly.
Croan: So you have a moral position against the war, you know, not a moral position that would preclude you from serving in it. Right. In a way that you felt was authentic. But you're not exactly a big proponent of the war in Vietnam. So it would seem to me that these stories, to some degree, [00:24:00] would be useful to that part of your brain. Right. You might be inclined in some part of your self to accept them because they are useful. They're wonderful tools for promoting an anti-war position. But as a historian and as a, you know, an intellectually religious person, you're not saying there weren't war crimes. You're saying, let's save our outrage for the ones that are real. [00:24:30]
Kulick: Exactly. If you believe all of these stories, you lose the ability to mourn. There's a single woman, nameless, who was shot in the back by a young lance corporal in Coventry. You lose the ability to mourn for her. If you believe all of these false atrocity stories, then you lose the capacity to mourn for a single woman who did [00:25:00] not deserve to die.
Croan: Can you talk a little bit more about what is lost when the waters are muddied in that way?
Kulick: I just think that guilt. One of the things that's lost is the notion of personal guilt. Guilt is personal. Robert J. Liston, prominent Psychologists invented a term for [00:25:30] Vietnam that was an atrocity producing situation. And I think that there was a long tendency to see the war in that way. And to generalize the blame. Situations don't produce atrocities. People commit atrocities. What gets lost [00:26:00] is the sense of personal responsibility and personal accountability.
Croan: What convinced Gary to write wasn't just the stories themselves, but how they were embraced by people who he believes should have known better.
Kulick: People with my political sensibilities. Who didn't have the wit or the courage to [00:26:30] call out stories like Arthur Woodley's as unbelievable. There were people on the left who wanted these stories to be true, because they could be used to delegitimize the war, further delegitimizing the war. And there were people willing to offer those stories.
Croan: One of the most egregious examples came from a book called Bloods by [00:27:00] Wallace Terry, which collected oral histories from African-American veterans. Garry believes that one soldier's account defies both military protocol and simple logic.
Kulick: Woodley is introduced to the readers of Bloods as a specialist fourth class, a combat paratrooper, fifth Special Forces Group, 75th Ranger Group 1/73 Airborne Division. He tells us he returned with five Bronze Stars for valor. By his own [00:27:30] account, he was an excellent soldier. Walking point in a dark green loincloth, a dark green bandana and Ho Chi Minh sandals and nothing else. He spent three days on a POW snatch with a Punjabi stake in his foot, the point actually protruding through his boot. He believed he killed 40 of the enemy, one with an axe. He claimed he collected about 14 ears [00:28:00] and fingers wore them around his neck. His team threw eight VC prisoners out of helicopters. He witnessed the grotesque torture of other women, participated in the killing of 20 some people, mostly women, women and children. His team found a soldier, a white guy, staked to the ground, beaten, mutilated his upper body, skinned, his belly open, flesh holes where animals had eaten. He'd [00:28:30] been staked out for three days, Woodley claimed, but he was alive. So what did Willie do? Cut him loose and call in a medevac? No. He was afraid because the maggots had eaten so much and it would have put him in even more pain. The man pleaded to die. Woodley called headquarters for advice. They couldn't bring him back. And they had another mission.
Kulick: They said it was up to him. So after [00:29:00] agonizing for 20 minutes, he killed him. And for this act of mercy killing, he claimed he was threatened with court martial. It's not a believable story. No one should have any illusions about what the VC or North Vietnamese army were capable of. But this takes us to a whole new level of The preposterous evil. No one could survive three days in such a condition. Medevac crews did not refuse missions of such [00:29:30] urgency, and no command would knowingly allow the body of a dead American to remain in the field. Investigation of his service record revealed that he never served in the fifth Special Forces, nor was he awarded any medals for valor, nor did he receive a Purple Heart for that spongy steak in his foot. But [00:30:00] even without that knowledge, Wallace Terry had ample grounds for skepticism, and so did others. What happened to the filters skeptical editors and producers are supposed to bring to stories like this? Why were otherwise intelligent people prepared to believe wildly improbable accounts without any apparent effort to corroborate them. Whitney Bailey, at writing a long review of Bloods [00:30:30] in The New Yorker, singled out Woodley and his stories of the staked out and skinned American uncritically offering it up as the truth to his upscale readers.
Croan: Why would somebody admit to committing an atrocity that they didn't commit?
Kulick: And Arthur Woodley's case. It made him famous. He's just another guy from the neighborhood who served in Vietnam. But [00:31:00] he's got all these stories that people want to hear. You look at the two most notorious story shelters at Winter Winter soldier Scott Camille Joe Banker. This made them famous.
Croan: Yeah. And if they were angry at their government, it not only made them famous, but it gave them a way to hit back.
Kulick: Yeah.
Croan: Why would young veterans tell such stories? Gary has thought deeply about this question, and the answer involves understanding the difficult position [00:31:30] many veterans found themselves in when they returned home.
Kulick: Well, behind all this is in some ways the hardest thing for young veterans, young, poorly educated veterans. They're coming back from Vietnam, and they're going off to college, and they're hearing a totally different narrative [00:32:00] of the war that they get heard from their marine superiors. Take Camille, for example. It goes to I think it's Miami University. They want to fit back in. And Camille It particularly becomes this icon of the veterans anti-war movement. It's a new kind of identity, and it's an identity in part the result of the story she told [00:32:30] that Winter soldier. I got Camille to talk to me, and I got his military record. You know, if you lie to me about what's in your military record, I'm going to be. I'm going to have a hard time believing anything you tell me. If I catch you in a lie, then I have to think that some of these stories are made up. You know, we all have a tendency [00:33:00] to embellish our past and certainly embellish our experience in war. I mean, it's probably the one area where more lies have been told than any other area. When you look at the filming of Winter soldier, I mean, this. So this was funny. Mark Lane was was a part of that. Jane Fonda was a part of that. These are the stories that I wanted to hear.
Croan: Sometimes a thing can [00:33:30] be both real and mythologized after a short break. Gary Kulick takes on PTSD. Stick around. Let's talk about the wall for a minute. It is widely considered to be the memorial that changed memorial's forever. Its design invites a level of engagement, of introspection, of reverence, that no fountain, no statue of a cannon or a man on a horse could ever match. The [00:34:00] volunteers who work there often talk about wall magic. That unexpected, often spiritual, connection or discovery that happens when you visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It's one of the reasons why the walls design has inspired so many other memorials around the world. Of course, there is one little problem with the wall's design. 140 panels of polished black granite aren't exactly portable, so unless you can get yourself to Washington DC, how [00:34:30] are you supposed to experience wall magic for yourself? Well guess what? We already thought of that in 1996. Vvmf unveiled an exact replica of the wall that could be packed into an 18 Wheeler and hauled to cities and towns all across America. Since then, the wall that heals has been displayed in more than 800 communities throughout the nation, spreading the healing legacy of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to millions of visitors. Sure, [00:35:00] there are other versions of the wall that travel around the country, but the wall that heals is the only one that is an exact replica of the one in Washington, created and maintained by the same organization that built the wall in the first place.
Croan: And not only that, the Wall That Heals is accompanied and curated by VVMF employees who work with host communities to ensure that the experience is as close as possible to the real thing. And that includes wall magic. But [00:35:30] you don't have to take my word for it. You can check out episode 15 of this podcast to learn what happens to people's hearts when this traveling exhibit rolls into a real life American community. The Wall That Heals and the mobile Education center that travels with it will be in Spokane, Washington, August 28th through 31. And Ellensburg, Washington, September 4th through seven. To [00:36:00] see the rest of this year's tour schedule, and to learn how you can bring the wall that heals to your town, visit VVMF. If you're enjoying echoes of the Vietnam War, I want to let you know about some very easy ways you can help to support the podcast. [00:36:30] Here are three ideas ranked from easiest to hardest. And the hardest is still pretty easy. Number one. Spread the word. Tell a friend or two friends or better yet, share a favorite episode on your social media accounts so you can let all of your friends know in one go. Number two.
Croan: Leave us a review or a rating wherever you get your podcasts. Even [00:37:00] if you stream echos directly from our website, you can still send feedback through the form at the bottom of the page. Number three if you're listening from our website, consider following or subscribing on one of the many platforms where podcasts are found, including Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, and many more. That way, you'll always have the most recent episode automatically [00:37:30] downloaded to your mobile device, and you'll boost our subscription numbers, which will help new listeners find us more easily. Thank you so much for just listening. We really appreciate your continued attention to these stories. We'll be extra grateful for your help in spreading the word about echos so more people can check out the work we're doing. The [00:38:00] third area that Gary examines in his book involves post-traumatic stress disorder. Ptsd has become almost synonymous with Vietnam veterans and popular culture, but Garry's research suggests that we may be oversimplifying both the scope and the nature of combat trauma. I would think it would take some courage to assert that [00:38:30] while PTSD is real, we're probably seeing seeing it over diagnosed. Maybe a bit overwrought in the in the in the narrative. The public narrative about war. Was it difficult for you to come to a place where you felt comfortable taking that on PTSD specifically?
Kulick: Well, I think it's a commitment to truth telling. I think the origins [00:39:00] of PTSD. I mentioned Robert J. Lifton. It comes out of something that was once called Vietnam syndrome. And as it emerges from left wing. Left wing psychiatrists lived in the most prominent. As this effort to explain why we're seeing in some ways it's an effort to explain movies like Taxi Driver. Why are we seeing these demented veterans coming home wreaking havoc? [00:39:30] And, you know, certainly there was some evidence of that in the newspapers played up. So the Vietnam syndrome morphs into PTSD. And if you look at it closely, as I tried to do, and I'm not an expert. On psychological injury. But one of the things that's very clear is that over a number of years, [00:40:00] a series of studies have dramatically reduced the incidence of PTSD among veterans from the earliest studies, suggesting very high rates. The most recent study brings us down into the teens, and if you're really talking about day to day dysfunction, you're in the single digits. And [00:40:30] there are respectable I mean, psychiatrists arguing this. Since I laid this case out in Worcester's book, I'm only more convinced of it. There's one very powerful work that was published a few years ago by a Columbia psychiatrist named George Bonanno. Not sure the pronunciation. It's got a title. It's not entirely true The End of Trauma, but [00:41:00] it has evidence that, to me, overwhelming. So this guy looks at a whole series of PTSD cases. Whether as a result of natural disaster or rape or child abuse. And what he found was that in about a third of the cases, people [00:41:30] developed PTSD. A third. So the intellectual problem now becomes how do you explain the two thirds who don't? How do you explain, as he put it? And it's a great word resilience. It turns out it's much harder to explain resilience than it is to explain [00:42:00] PTSD because it comes. There are just so many factors that lead into it. Yeah, yeah.
Croan: Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I think one of the complicating factors there is the act of labeling itself. Right, has an impact. So I definitely want to go down that rabbit hole for a minute. But before we do, I want to just check something that you said earlier, that PTSD morphed out of Vietnam. Since I've always been under the impression that PTSD [00:42:30] is roots go all the way back to shellshock or battle fatigue from World War One. Is that a myth that I fought into?
Kulick: No, no, I think that I think that's right. The longer history of war trauma definitely goes back to World War One and shellshock. That's correct.
Croan: Okay. I just wanted to check that because I thought, well, maybe there's a myth that I've swallowed whole without.
Kulick: No, no no no.
Croan: All right, so you were talking about the act of labeling and how that complicates things.
Kulick: Well, [00:43:00] I think I wanted to finish my point about resilience. And here's a terrible truth about PTSD that you don't read about, because it seems like blaming the victim. If you're young and poorly educated, you're at much higher risk for war related PTSD than if you were older and better educated. And it [00:43:30] shouldn't be surprising. You know, what do young people know about war? They may have seen a few movies. They certainly haven't read deeply into the poetry of World War One Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon. And much more likely to go to war with a sense of glory in their heads. And [00:44:00] of course, war turns out to be the ultimate irony. It's not gory. It's terror. It's awful.
Croan: Yeah. I mean, if you haven't read charge of the Light Brigade, you know, maybe you think war is all John Wayne movies, but I think, you know, is there a parallel truth to that? Which is that if you're younger and less educated, your experience of war is likely to be a lot different [00:44:30] than someone who's older and highly educated. Right. I mean, it's one thing to be a grunt. It's another thing to be a company commander.
Kulick: If you go to war with images of glory in your head and images of courage. And, you know, I remember young medic telling me they're just not going to get me. I remember a blustery first sergeant at Walter Reed saying, In Vietnam, only the strong will survive. And [00:45:00] both those terms are nonsense.
Croan: With this.
Kulick: Wrong place, wrong time.
Croan: Gary told me that recent research has focused less on trauma and more on resilience.
Kulick: There's one very powerful work that was published a few years ago by a Columbia psychiatrist named George Bonanno. I'm not sure of the pronunciation. It's got a title that's not entirely [00:45:30] true. The end of trauma. But it has evidence that, to me, overwhelming. So this guy looks at a whole series of PTSD cases, whether as a result of natural disaster or rape or child abuse. And what he found was that [00:46:00] in about a third of the cases, people developed PTSD. A third. So the the intellectual problem now becomes how do you explain the two thirds who don't. How do you explain, as he put it. And it's a great word resilience. It turns out it's much harder to [00:46:30] explain resilience than it is to explain PTSD because it comes. There are just so many factors that lead into it. And the one person I talk to about this, he and I argued about PTSD. He didn't like my skepticism about it, but in the end, his experience was very similar. He was convinced he had it. And and he experienced [00:47:00] serious battlefield trauma. Trapped for several days trying to escape from Vietcong attack. Badly wounded people. He's got to take care of. And he emerges from that. Convinced that for a long time that he didn't suffer from PTSD. But he comes to the belief that he has. But he his his approach to this is that he [00:47:30] becomes a pastor and he's a pastor to veterans. He believes that, yes, he had it, but it doesn't affect his daily life. He's not going to blame the US or the Army for it. He feels that his ability to talk about it, to write about it, has been a gift that allows him to rise above it. And he continues to do that as he counsels [00:48:00] other veterans. And it seems to me that's a great PTSD story. That's about resilience. That's about finding your way out of a kind of despair that keeps you from functioning. And he would have none of that. That he's.
Croan: So are.
Kulick: You.
Croan: I mean, is the essence of the distinction you're drawing here between trauma and syndrome? Right. You're not saying trauma isn't real. You're saying, [00:48:30] oh.
Kulick: It's definitely real.
Croan: But in maybe not in every case, but in many cases, by making it a syndrome, you discount resilience.
Kulick: I think so.
Croan: Or undermine it somehow.
Kulick: Well I think that and again I don't. What I'm going to say is not going to make every veteran happy, but I think. Once [00:49:00] you get an official diagnosis and you get disability percentage for that. And this is the fellow I just talked about has has that, you know, I just wonder, how do you function with that? In one case, you've got someone who says, I'm resilience. I'm not going to give in to this. Are [00:49:30] there other people who accept the diagnosis in a sense use it to define who they are? I have PTSD and I think not in terms of other diagnoses as well. Attention deficit disorder, which is, you know, was all the rage when my son was growing up. And, you know, we resisted it for a time. But in the end, there are benefits that come with the diagnosis. [00:50:00] And but then, you know, people I think he's my son has moved on from that. He doesn't think of himself as that afflicted. But not everybody. Has a tendency with these kinds of diagnoses become your identity. And I think there's some work out there that I've read again. I'm no [00:50:30] expert, but I go back to this striking phenomenon of two thirds, one third, and it turns out that, yeah, resilience is really hard to explain because it's often so personal.
Croan: As our conversation drew to a close, I asked Gary about his own homecoming and how in the decades since that experience has shaped his relationship with the Vietnam War.
Kulick: Vietnam was in the past. I wanted to forget about it, but no, I [00:51:00] was I was deeply, you know, career oriented at that point. It was this was it started that my my in a sense, my my experience was different than the average young veteran coming home. I had something I had started, I was now back to it. And I was determined to put Vietnam in the past.
Croan: Yeah.
Kulick: I succeeded for a long time.
Croan: I [00:51:30] asked Gary whether his own unprocessed trauma ever backed up on him, whether it came out later in surprising or upsetting ways.
Kulick: I mean, once I was back, I remember on a hike in New Hampshire thinking, you know, where would the ambushes come from? So, yeah. The war. The war came back. I sometimes dream about being back in the army. You know, as an old man. But [00:52:00] that's dead. No, I just moved on. And because I had this career trajectory that I had started made a huge difference. I'm just back in it. I was away for two years.
Croan: Tell them the truth about Vietnam. It was a simple directive, but one that required moral courage and unrelenting discipline to follow. Because the truth is often complicated, [00:52:30] sometimes uncomfortable, and it rarely fits neatly into anyone's political narrative. Gary's work reminds us that honoring those who served doesn't mean accepting every story uncritically. It means caring enough to get the history right in all of its complexity and moral ambiguity. Gary Coolidge's 2009 book War Stories False Atrocity Tales Swift Boaters and Winter soldiers What Really Happened in Vietnam [00:53:00] is available on Amazon and through Potomac Books. His new book, Conscientious Objectors at War The Vietnam Wars Forgotten Medics, offers an important perspective on a group of veterans whose stories have been largely overlooked. It was the subject of episode 95 of this podcast, and you could find it on Amazon and through Texas Tech University Press. We'll be back in two weeks with more stories of [00:53:30] service, sacrifice, and healing. See you then.