Only The Dead Came Home: Vietnam's Hidden Casualties

For many Vietnam vets, the end of the war was only the beginning of another-a war within themselves. This is an account of one soldier's struggle to come home. It is the story of combat and of the harassment at home that followed. Together they resulted in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a disease affecting an estimated fifteen percent of all Vietnam Veterans.

The sixties changed American politics, and the rules by which the game was played. Those who had shouldered the burdens of war returned to find an America changed. Hoping for the validation their fathers received on return from WW II, they found instead condemnation and a universal rejection that seared their souls. The peace movement, liberal activists, and student radicals who personalized the persecution of veterans, together with the media, popularized the perception that the war was immoral, and so maximized the harmful effects of PTSD on returning soldiers, soldiers who found themselves branded murderers.

JFK's noble and stirring words touched a generation of young men and women who were thus inspired to serve their country in a distant war. Andy O'Meara was one among many who answered Kennedy's call to Counterinsurgency. For them the price was steep, and the burdens were not shared by a public who rejected their sacrifice. The result: fifty-eight thousand slain, and countless walking wounded bearing the psychological scars of a brutal war. Their suffering is here in the words of one who survived the war only to find upon his return, that for him and other vets, a new war had only just begun.