What were your feelings and thoughts when you first opened your draft notice?

Best get down and see my local Army recruiter.

At the time I got my draft notice I was already in AIT at Ft. Polk. It came along with a letter from my Dad at Mail Call. I was too "green" and scared to ask DS Chandler what to do about it, but I guess they found out soon enough. One day at morning formation after PT I got called to the CO's office, whereupon we went up to Battalion. Met the Battalion CO, who asked me about my Dad, and turns out they served together, the CO as a young CPT and Dad as SGM. After a little chit chat, the BN CO said, "Oh, by the way, WELCOME to the US ARMY and sign this draft notice so we can let Personnel/Admin get their laugh for the day". I still have my card, along with my first enlisted ID card. (MAN, what a picture that one has on it!) I look like a cartoon character after a meeting with ACME explosives. (Road Runner & Wiley Coyote). NO hair, bug eyed, and frightened! THOSE WERE THE DAYS THOUGH. The very best I ever lived. I regret not ever getting to tell DS Chandler THANK YOU! I can still see his face and hear that gravel in his voice. A real MAN among MEN. Korea & Nam vet. And tougher than a hickory knot. But a real teacher/mentor/trainer/father-figure/Soldier. I didn't love him then, but I sure have through all the rest of my years.

Colonel, I hope you read this. You have the credential to get something done that I have been unable to do since 1987 including with a few stints in DC between May of 1995 and 2003 demonstrating for veterans with organic brain syndromes. I like to think I planted the seed for the reporter who wrote the article that finally got TBI disorders moved from adjustment disorder to TBI finally in 2008.

Veteran suicides are nearly 2.5 times the national average and probably even higher among combat ribbon veterans exposed to TBI including from nearby explosive device explosions and artillerymen with 1,000 rounds (perhaps less) outgoing and from cerebral malaria, the primary casualty cause in Somalia.

I was in Navy Boot at the time the Vietnam War is considered to have started in 1961. Drafting didn't start full bloom until later. I bought the military propaganda for the war hook line and sinker. Volunteered as a Navy Hospital corpsman 2nd Class in 1965 and was a plank owner in the China Beach Navy Hospital in Danang (later taken over by the Army on withdrawal of the Marines from I Corps) as a part of NAVSUPACT Danang in October of 1965. Spent 2 years there volunteering for an extension in country. The China Beach Navy Hospital was not on the beach as depicted in the TV series. The Marine helicopter base and the CB base were between the hospital and the beach with the Danang River just over a rise from the hospital.

Suffered a personal assault from an RVN Senior Officer which I suppressed for more than 18 years because of a severe injury to a woman by the assaulter and a feeling of guilt because I thought I had brought on the attack to the woman. It was an error. An Officer at NavSupAct Danang had gotten the young woman pregnant and because I had proposed to the young woman her guardian apparently thought it was me. His security detail held me while a bottle of Vietnamese whisky was poured down my throat. The memory eventually came back though gestalt PTSD therapy but like all repressed memories it is like a night mare of the event. Details have to be sorted out and I still don't know what is part of the nightmare and what is real.

But someone attempted to contact me in 1970 from NavSupAct, Saigon leading me to believe it was either the woman or the assaulting officer. Unfortunately, I didn't respond because the clerk that wrote the message wrote Samuel instead of Lemuel and I hadn't been in Saigon except overnight. I should have realized that the message being routed to me at NH Guam meant I was the individual trying to be contacted. Part of the early stages of CTE from the TBI which led to me quitting the Navy after 13.4 years, believing the Navy had changed when it was me after the 1969 TBI.

The funny reoccurring flash backs were of the calm before the storm at the event site and then the Officer in Charge of the LARC unit taking me aside, on the Cua Viet River, to tell me that a White Elephant Officer (HQ) had gotten a girl pregnant and he was forced to resign and was being sent home. By the time I was told this, about 36 hours after the event, I had blacked out the memory of the event by a combination of guilt and black out drunkenness. It seemed very strange that an officer would tell an enlisted man about officer misconduct particularly since it was the only conversation I ever had with that particular OIC. The OICs switched regularly.

I've never been compensated for PTSD. Part of the problem of recall was the TBI that occurred 2 years later in CONUS for which I am compensated. But my current therapist insists PTSD is still part of my "organic personality disorder."

Personally, I believe the difference in adjusting to a PTSD event and not adjusting is either organic or malingering. But the organic problem could have happened any time in life.

From my research, trying to understand my inability to hold a job, with my residual 126 verbal IQ, 98 visual spatial IQ, down from 140 on induction, I believe a condition called anosognosia is the root of a high percentage of the veteran suicides. At least I believe it is what put me on a suicide watch on VA neurobehavioral wards 6 times since 1990. But the condition isn't listed in the DSM-5 so it is diagnosed as an "adjustment disorder," and considered as a behavioral problem not an organic problem. So victims of anosognosia are left with a permanent adjustment disorder because they don't know what they are trying to adjust to.

An MD psychiatrist told me she didn't know anything about the condition originally recognized by the Greeks historically and identified as the condition causing unilateral neglect. The English definition was defined by Joseph Babinski in 1914. She refused to report my theory upline.

Thanks for being a sounding board. It helps. I've revised my opinion on the need of the Vietnam War. And I believed we were let down by the failure to enforce the peace agreement from the air. But now I think it was for the best outcome.

Never got one. When they did the lottery thing assigning numbers I was in the 300s, so I never was called up. Several years later, when I was 26 years old, I volunteered.

In January of 1969 I was 19 and working in at a steel mill in southern California. I chose not to go to college but got married thinking that would keep the draft at bay. I was drafted 4 months later. I got orders for Vietnam almost exactly 12 months after I was drafted. My dad was a WWII Vet (survived Pearl Harbor) and he instilled duty to ones country and its importance in me. I felt I was well trained as I spent the first year stateside. Off I went and ended up in the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment which was fine as I had trained on the M551 Sheridan Tanks before arriving at Blackhorse (11th ACR).

Fully expected it as I "VOLUNTEERED " for the Draft. I was tired of waiting. That was in Oct 65. Reported 2 Nov 65. I was the very last person processed at the old Main Recruiting Station in Los Angeles. Over 900 were drafted. I had prior Service so I ended up with my Air Force number but placed US before the Air Force number. So I had a US197XXXXX instead of US5XXXXXXX. It even confused the Drill Instructors. " Why do you have a WWII,Service Number?"

Damn,#13. Guess I'm going into the military. What is my best way to handle this without getting killed. One of my good friends was enlisting in the Air Force and said I should check it out. I did and it turned out very well for me. Stance on the war, honestly in retrospect I knew very little about what it was all about at the time. I served more out of knowing it was the right thing to do for me. I don't recall my parents really giving me their opinions about the war.

I had spent the weekend at my in-laws house. I was leaving for San Diego Monday AM. As we were headed out to the car, to go to the Greyhound station, my wife reminded me that we had not checked the mail all weekend. My draft notice was in the mail box. I put some notations on it and put my return address as : Company 714, USNTC-RTC, San Diego, CA. and mailed it back to the draft board. We had a draft card burning ceremony in boot camp.

I was at work at Sander's 66 gas station and my Mom brought it to me at work. She said it looked official and I should see what it was all about. At nineteen years of age I had been drafted.

I watched the news every day on the war and cursed all the demonstrators religiously. I explained to my Mom that I had a reporting date and that I was going in the military. I reported to the induction station in Abilene, TX. along with 20 or so others. They told us to form a rank and proceeded to walk down the line tapping us on the shoulder and designating each of us as Army, or Marine. That's how it all started.

My stance on the war was it had lasted way too long and I had made up my mind that when the time came I would be there to do my part. We had learned about Communism in school and this war was preventing the spread of it in that country.

My parents didn't have an education and therefore didn't understand the politics of it but believed that we should all do our part as Americans and there you have it. The following twenty years I would repeat over again if asked to do so. No regrets.

My reaction was laughter as I got my notice at mail call at MCRD San Dieago - Feb 1966