by S.V. Farnsworth

            I see life in metaphors. I recently met and subsequently read a dozen brief memoirs of Vietnam Veteran Ronald C. Mosbaugh who served as a Corpsman (medic) on a thirteen month tour in country. The accounts he gave were therapy for his PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and a means to achieving some degree of PTG(post traumatic growth). Inside the accounts the details were astounding, but one account stood out in its detail and its haunting effect on the man who wrote it. More emotion came through, because he still doesn’t understand it, and that speaks truth to me.

            His memory of two “buddies” assigned to his platoon where one was shot and the other led an enraged charge on a small village where every living thing was killed really moved me, because of the way an older man was killed. “What does it take to kill an old man?” was spoken by the soldier who killed the older Vietnamese man. The words echoed into the present and after reading more about veterans committing suicide I pose the question, “What does it take to kill an old man?”, well, I think it is his younger self leveling his weapon on his older self and pulling the trigger. The expectation that age and wisdom should be able to solve the puzzles of the past dog the older man until he dodges the figurative bullet with something more concrete and ends his fight or flight panic mode with suicide. There is no escaping from one’s self, but resolution is possible.

            I posit this metaphor. The “buddy” killed in action, the enraged friend leading the charge, the followers who also committed the act of vengeance, and the old man who took three hits to kill and died without a word spoken are all the same man who dies today from his psychological wounds. I think that’s why the details of the atrocity, stood out in Corpsman Mosbaugh’s mind and remains unresolved today…he is all those men and needs to survive the mental bullet that his own mind fired all those years ago. Contrary to human instinct, this kind of mental bullet cannot be survived by dodging it, because no one can run forever. One must stand like a man at a mark and be prepared to take the hit, though the impact of facing it is to heal, not to maim, though, one cannot fully realize that until he accepts it.

            Corpsman Mosbaugh seems to feel responsible for all of his experiences in Vietnam, but the burden is not his alone, and he had little if any control over any of what happened; he can hand it to the Lord. He has the opportunity to kneel before his Father in Heaven washed clean by the blood of Christ. If blood requires blood, then let it be the blood of our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Read Corpsman Mosbaugh’s memoirs at www.GhostBattalion.org/DocMosbaugh.html