VietNow National Magazine

Here's my story. Don't be ashamed to tell yours.
Do you think your Vietnam story isn't worth telling? If you think that, maybe you should think again. If you were in the service, you have a story to tell – and here is the story of one man who was there.

By Carey J. Spearman

When I came back from Vietnam, I was called every name in the book, and was hated by my own countrymen. They had no idea what I had done in Vietnam, but no one asked me what my job had been.

Twenty years later I became a "hero." The word "hero" didn't mean anything to me, because I had to live with the hatred and anger my countrymen showed me for all those years after I returned home from Vietnam.

Becoming a hero

How did I become a "hero"? I don't know how I changed. At that time, I didn't go back to Vietnam and undo anything.  I was still the same soldier who came back in 1968, and faced all the hatred.

Before going off to war, we had watched all the movies, and had seen what "heroes" did. Subsequently, that was where the focus was – on killing. A lot of us soldiers didn't fit into that characterization. All people seem to want to hear about is "killing." I didn't kill anybody or blow up anything, but I fought with death.

I was a medic. I wasn't in the field, I was in an evac hospital. Until "M*A*S*H" came out on TV, no one other than the soldiers who came to us knew we (medics) existed. Years after my return to the States, I found myself in PTSD groups, listening to what other veterans had gone through.

I thought my story didn't fit in

There weren't any medics in the groups, but what they talked about fit into what everyone had heard about. So I kept quiet for a lot of years because I felt I didn't belong there

What I went through was very different, and I couldn't tell them because I wanted to belong there with them. So, for many years, I didn't say what was hurting me. I would sit there, listen, and not say much. One year, I went to D.C. I had on my BDUs, and went to The Wall, where I met a veteran who was in a wheelchair. We greeted each other, and he asked me what unit I had been with. I told him I had been a medic, with the 44th Medical Brigade and the 91st Evac.

He rolled the wheelchair right up to me, reached out and hugged me, and said, "Thank you." That day I became a veteran, but still did not feel that I had a story to tell, although I felt better.

Later, I was asked to sit in on a group of college kids who were going to do a play about Vietnam, and they wanted to talk to a medic. When I went into the room, there were a lot of veterans who were mostly infantry. There was one other combat medic who had been in the field, and the kids asked us questions.

When I was asked what I had done, I told them I had been with the 91st Evac Hospital. A veteran who was sitting right next to me said, "You don't know anything. You weren't in the field." That hurt me.

On the other side of me was a veteran with a Purple Heart medal. He asked the first veteran, "Were you ever in the Evac Hospital?" The first veteran answered, "No." The veteran with the Purple Heart said, "I have. I know what they do. That's why I'm here." Across from me, there was another -veteran who reached out to shake my hand, and he said he had been a medic in the field. I told him, "You had a rough job." He replied, "No, you did."

He said, "When I got to the wounded soldiers, either they were dead, or I put them on a helicopter, and I never knew if they lived or died. But you were around them when they died." Then I realized I had a story to tell.

Tell your story, and someone will finally listen to you

I would tell people, "This is my story," because people have a habit of listening to a veteran, and they think he or she speaks for all veterans – and sometimes, it's easy for us to let them believe it because we don't have to tell anyone what really hurts us.

The only way we can heal is to say, "This is my story." In Vietnam, I showed up every day and did my job. I am Doc, Soldier, Medic. I earned these names, and no one can ever take that from me. Don't be ashamed to tell your "story." It's your life.

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