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Five Lives Ruined

By Dian Campbell

Five lives ruined because of war, veterans who served in Vietnam. Two died in the last year and a half; three remain. I am sad about these men, who have faded from everyone's memories, except those of close relatives. They served their country, and came home to despair and hopelessness. They saw and experienced the horrors of war. Their minds were assaulted as well as their bodies.

One is a veteran who served in Da Nang. His company dropped him off in a Montegnard village with six other men. Trouble is, the commander forgot to come back for them for six months. But for the kindness of the villagers they would have starved to death, or frozen to death in the trenches of red mud. When they did come back to rescue the seven vets, Sgt. Steve Martin said he took a helicopter to the nearest place he could buy a video camera, and then he flew back to record the home of hell he and his men had endured. He suffered a nervous breakdown, got a divorce, and is currently in terrible shape, as far as I know. He couldn't even work in the family business anymore. He served as a pallbearer for my husband's funeral, as they had been childhood friends. A life ruined.

I never met the second man. His name is Dexter Dedman. His mother lives down the hall from me in a senior apartment house. Her son served in Vietnam and was exposed to Agent Orange. When he was injured overseas, he was sent home and was never the same. He has spent the years since then in board-and-care homes, unable to function. He hated the VA hospital and refused to go back. He was given medications to control his anger and outbursts of emotion. He couldn't talk about what he'd seen in 'Nam. His ability to cope declined, so they took him away last month, at the age of 55, to "adjust his meds." He came back, and in a few days he was dead: no reason given. His mother is a good churchgoing woman, and she said, "God saw my son's pain and said enough is enough." A life ruined.

Another veteran was a friend of mine. When he came back from Vietnam as the result of an injury, he was partially deaf. He joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He went to work for a paraplegic named Stan Price. When his girlfriend got pregnant, they needed extra money. I gave him and his wife a job in my hot-dog stand. He fed his friends and augmented his income. I admired the way he worked for the veterans so unselfishly, as did his girlfriend (who later became his wife). I lost track of him for years until I read about him in a book about Vietnam. I wrote the author, and he gave me Robert Waddell's address in a California state prison. He was serving a ten-year sentence for using heroin. Yes, he never shook his habit after the war. He was dying of liver failure for having hepatitis. I decided to help him get a transplant that was being denied him. I wrote to him, and he was excited about my attempts to bring some publicity on the prison to shame them into helping him. Before I could help, he died of pneumonia, from neglect. A son I never got to meet is without a father now. A life ruined.

I have a two cousins who live near me, Joseph Lugo and Robert Lugo. They say they were exposed to Agent Orange. One is okay, if you call being a functioning alcoholic okay. The other fellow has a severe drug and drinking problem. He was living in the park and got hit by a car on his bicycle a few years ago. He sued, and got an apartment with the money. Then he got hit again, and now he has a broken back. He is in a hospital and says he might quit drinking, says the nightmares of Vietnam are so vivid. He won't go to a VA hospital. Two more lives ruined.

I grieve now for the veterans who will be returning from this new war.

I grieve for my mom's first cousin, who never got out alive from the Philippines after the Red Cross plane that was airlifting him due to a leg wound was shot down in Linguyan Bay in 1945 by the Japanese. He was twenty-one.

I grieve for my mother's other first cousin, who was written about in Richard Tregaskis's book, "These Men Shall Never Die." He was a flying Marine and the second pilot to land on Guadalcanal. He later became a three-star general. He was proud of the planes he'd shot down, and he was proud of all the killing he'd done. He died an alcoholic with nightmares. His name was Richard Mangrum. He died a few years ago.

Tregaskis was wrong. These men and women do die, and they die badly.

When will wars that are not purely for defensive purposes going to end? When will the needless deaths and disfigurement of body and mind end? Not in my lifetime, if the present administration stays in power. It will be business as usual: lives ruined over oil and money.

Let's show the world we care for our men and women in the service, and bring them home from Iraq.

I only mentioned people I knew and know of. Leaving out the names of women who were mothers or wives or daughters doesn't mean they suffered any less.

My friend Robert Waddell saw the worst of napalm victims, the death and destruction of a country, and then was given the "Nixon Detox" upon his medical discharge: cold turkey and isolation. Is anyone really surprised that he continued his addiction? I am not only sad for him, I am mad for him. No new liver for him. He was a criminal now in their eyes. No rewards for caring for paraplegics or serving his country. Talk about a modern-day tragedy. When will someone write his story? I wish I was capable of doing so. I have the title already: "A Life Ruined."