This Veteran’s Day resolve to heal war’s invisible wounds

Forty years after the Hellhole at Khe Sanh — the 77 days under relentless bombardment, when the 19-year-old medic tended some of 2,200 wounded and 400 dying Americans — “Doc” chose to end his own life.

Robert J. “Doc” Topmiller — a retired history professor from Eastern Kentucky University, author, humanitarian and passionate advocate for veterans — despite invisible wounds, lived an accomplished and meaningful post-war life.

Until, like tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans, his demons won.

Doc’s wounds were invisible, but no less lethal. While some veterans returned decades earlier bearing physical wounds; others harbored mental and emotional wounds and poison-induced illnesses, all dormant, awaiting eruption.

Doc suffered from such invisible wounds. Invisible to us, and invisible to our ethically compromised decision-makers, these wounds have become all too familiar: PTSD, suicide, Agent Orange, substance and personal/interpersonal abuse. These wounds evince an essential truth: War does not end with treaties or homecomings. War, for veterans and families, can, rather, morph into post-war physical and mental battles.

For many, like Doc, these battles lead to death.

The history of our veterans returning to a non-empathetic reception is now recognized. But more pertinent is the lack of empathy and care from our institutions — White House, Congress, the Pentagon — which sent young Americans to Vietnam, and kept them there, lying to intensify and prolong the war. And then, abetted by a silent public, failed returning soldiers and their families.

The Veterans Administration led the war against veterans. They first denied connection between Vietnam and PTSD and Agent Orange poisoning. They dismissed indisputable research on war-induced psychosis and disease. They discounted the empirical evidence of damaged veterans and families.

When legally mandated to address invisible wounds, programs and services went underfunded, and remain so. Fortunately, institutional failure was mitigated by good-to-exceptional individual care, which, after facing initial resistance, became Doc’s personal experience.

By tradition, Veterans’ Day commemorates those killed in action. Yet, the nearly 60,000 names, etched, hauntingly and healingly, on The Wall, have been eclipsed by casualties long after active service and combat came to an end.

These are the veterans being recognized Nov. 11, the eclipsed casualties, as EKU dedicates a statue to Doc and others, symbolically re-casting war from past-and-done to post-war pain, death and grief.

Hopefully, this re-forming from passive observance to a “call to arms” will start us down a new road.

Imagine Veterans Day as a time for public voices committed to assuring the highest quality care, particularly for mental health and the myriad diseases linked to millions of toxic gallons sprayed on Southeast Asia. And on us.

Imagine veterans taking the lead.

Veterans preparing future soldiers with enhanced psychological preparation for war’s realities, and with intense ethical training affirming clear standards for battlefield behavior and personal responsibility.

Veterans working toward command accountability to produce humane strategies, tactics and ground-level orders to protect civilians from maltreatment but also to inoculate veterans against lifelong, post-war harm.

Fifty years has afforded us valuable perspective. Killing, for any reason, is destructive enough. But killing in violation of one’s moral code is dehumanizing to both self and others.

Dehumanization makes brutality seem reasonable… there. For some, refusing participation in brutal behavior without intervening to halt it, weighs heavier as years go by; failure to confront lies, or to speak truth to power, infects with moral failure.

Perspective on the past suggests rectifications. We protect future soldiers — our children and our grandchildren — by establishing foundations for deep ethical and moral standards, and instilling in them the courage to contest or defy illegitimate commands.

Impassioned disagreements among veterans, scholars, anyone profoundly impacted by Vietnam will never end. However, 50 years offers discernible consensus. Vietnam was an illegitimate, unjustly brutal and ultimately senseless war, with an unconscionable loss of innocents.

Worse, America’s neglect of veterans and families — along with our collective failure to learn our lesson — inexorably leads to foreign-policy mistakes and deaths.

Doc spent his last years supporting Vietnamese children and families, those disfigured or incapacitated by Agent Orange poisoning. And in doing so, he pointed to a necessary future: providing humanitarian assistance and recognizing that both our honor and our healing are mutually commingled with Vietnam’s.

This Veterans Day, EKU punctuates this long, sad history with a moment of honor. Honor for Doc and the others who never, really, came home. A step toward national healing.

This story was originally published November 3, 2017 at 8:48 PM with the headline "This Veteran’s Day resolve to heal war’s invisible wounds."