Credit of flag is to POW/MIA site
"Green Grass of Home" Finally back in the mountains!!!!! Sept. 1990 to Present: North Carolina: Moved of out St. Petersburg, Florida to Moffit Branch Road for 6 months (renting) before finding our home in April of 1991 and buying it in Botany Woods, a subdivision in Riceville Community area. Continued to work for VAMC at Asheville, North Carolina. (As they say you can take the boy out of the mountains but you'll never take the mountains out of the boy.) Today is January 16, 2005. Just to bring things up to date since I wrote the above. I worked at the Asheville VAMC until Nov. 20, 2004 when I had to go out on a Medically retirement due to PTSD and having a Prolapsed Mitral Valve heart problem. With working my PTSD was getting the best of me causing me undue stress that I didn't need mentally or physically. Also having a Teenage son (you fathers will know what I mean here) also caused increased stress on me. ONe of two things would have happened if I had not decided to finally retire. The first was that I would probably die of an heart attack or had become a casualty finally of Vietnam. I don't want anyone to think that it was an easy decision for me even with my family's blessing to go ahead and retire. It has taken me until this time to come to gripes with myself about retiring. I still blow up when I have to deal with incompetent people. I just thought it was with the VA but have discovered that This still occurs in places when and where I least expect it. (Church- the safest place to be, I thought where I could just look God in the face knowing that he would understand the doubts and feelings I was having, only to have run into my former Chief to ruin things for me. IT got so bad I told my wife that I couldn't continue going knowing that He might be there ruining the peace that I felt that I needed coming from just being in the sanctuary of the Church. During that time that I didn't go I felt really depressed. Also since the fall and my wife would have to drive after dark, I have started going again. I have tried to adapt as I did when I first was told about the Corpsman who had a death threat made against him out in the field. I couldn't allow him to suffer the consequences of hif failure to do his job and I forgave him years later for the additional stress this had caused me. I will have to continue to think on this with this last situation (retiring). I know one thing, he will never be my friend. As we all know from our own experiences when someone stabs you in the back, you don't stay around to be continued to be abuse. Enogh said on this subject otherwise I'll start getting depressed again. I have committed myself to trying to help other Medics and Corpsmen as I was once was helped by a Army Medic brother of mine. Only another person in the Medical field who has lost their first patient can know what runs through our minds. Corpsmen and Medics who have worked in Field Hospitals, Medevacs or out in the field with the combat troops have stronger feelings because We not only lost a patient but also a close friend through actions beyond our control. We suffer this guilt for years and many get out of the Medical field altogether in being discharged. Those who stayed in the medical usually pay a big price years later or during their careers. They become causualties of the hate, etcetera that was displayed upon their return to the "Real World, the good ole USA" waiting for the "Welcome Home Parade" in our own hometowns. To this day I'm still waiting to be Welcomed Home by a grateful community that had sent me off to that war. All of the other Welcome Home celebrations that are in the process to do so almost 40 years later don't mean a thing to me until my our hometown and county finally does so. This is the emptiness that haunts me today, being adrift in time and no one cares but me. Just to hear them say to me, "Thanks and Welcome home Doc." St. Eugene's Church- a very special place to me in order to regain my Faith.
"Green Grass of Home"
Finally back in the mountains!!!!!
Sept. 1990 to Present:
North Carolina:
Moved of out St. Petersburg, Florida to Moffit Branch Road for 6 months (renting) before finding our home in April of 1991 and buying it in Botany Woods, a subdivision in Riceville Community area. Continued to work for VAMC at Asheville, North Carolina. (As they say you can take the boy out of the mountains but you'll never take the mountains out of the boy.)
Today is January 16, 2005. Just to bring things up to date since I wrote the above. I worked at the Asheville VAMC until Nov. 20, 2004 when I had to go out on a Medically retirement due to PTSD and having a Prolapsed Mitral Valve heart problem. With working my PTSD was getting the best of me causing me undue stress that I didn't need mentally or physically. Also having a Teenage son (you fathers will know what I mean here) also caused increased stress on me. ONe of two things would have happened if I had not decided to finally retire. The first was that I would probably die of an heart attack or had become a casualty finally of Vietnam.
I don't want anyone to think that it was an easy decision for me even with my family's blessing to go ahead and retire. It has taken me until this time to come to gripes with myself about retiring. I still blow up when I have to deal with incompetent people. I just thought it was with the VA but have discovered that This still occurs in places when and where I least expect it. (Church- the safest place to be, I thought where I could just look God in the face knowing that he would understand the doubts and feelings I was having, only to have run into my former Chief to ruin things for me. IT got so bad I told my wife that I couldn't continue going knowing that He might be there ruining the peace that I felt that I needed coming from just being in the sanctuary of the Church.
During that time that I didn't go I felt really depressed. Also since the fall and my wife would have to drive after dark, I have started going again. I have tried to adapt as I did when I first was told about the Corpsman who had a death threat made against him out in the field. I couldn't allow him to suffer the consequences of hif failure to do his job and I forgave him years later for the additional stress this had caused me.
I will have to continue to think on this with this last situation (retiring). I know one thing, he will never be my friend. As we all know from our own experiences when someone stabs you in the back, you don't stay around to be continued to be abuse. Enogh said on this subject otherwise I'll start getting depressed again.
I have committed myself to trying to help other Medics and Corpsmen as I was once was helped by a Army Medic brother of mine. Only another person in the Medical field who has lost their first patient can know what runs through our minds. Corpsmen and Medics who have worked in Field Hospitals, Medevacs or out in the field with the combat troops have stronger feelings because We not only lost a patient but also a close friend through actions beyond our control. We suffer this guilt for years and many get out of the Medical field altogether in being discharged. Those who stayed in the medical usually pay a big price years later or during their careers. They become causualties of the hate, etcetera that was displayed upon their return to the "Real World, the good ole USA" waiting for the "Welcome Home Parade" in our own hometowns. To this day I'm still waiting to be Welcomed Home by a grateful community that had sent me off to that war. All of the other Welcome Home celebrations that are in the process to do so almost 40 years later don't mean a thing to me until my our hometown and county finally does so. This is the emptiness that haunts me today, being adrift in time and no one cares but me. Just to hear them say to me, "Thanks and Welcome home Doc."
