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The Endless Tour: Vietnam, PTSD, and the Spiritual Void

by Rev. Amy L. Snow, M.A.

249 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0383; ISBN 1-55369-570-4; US$25.50, C$33.50, EUR21.80, £15.10

A heart-to-heart commentary on spirituality after war from a Vietnam Veteran's wife and Community Pastor. To share hope with families, friends, and care-givers who witness daily the challenges facing a combat veteran whose wounds of war extend far deeper than what meets the eye.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts and Table of Contents      catalogue info

About the Book The war in Vietnam ended in 1973, but in the bodies, minds, and spirits of thousands of Vietnam combat veterans, the war relentlessly rages on. The on-going war they face daily is known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. By definition, PTSD in combat veterans is a delayed response to the trauma of war. It is estimated that as many as 30 to 35% of Vietnam veterans have significant PTSD. According to Veterans Administration authorities, approximately 1.5 million Vietnam veterans eventually will need psychiatric help based on delayed symptoms of PTSD. The greater, yet often unrecognized tragedy of PTSD, however, is that it also affects the wives, partners, children, and other loved ones of combat veterans. It is estimated that 900,000 wives and partners of Vietnam veterans and approximately 1.1 million children may also be affected, not to mention the approximately 4.7 million members of veterans' extended families. The author's husband of twenty years, Dwight Snow, is a Vietnam combat veteran with permanent and total disability due to PTSD. Treatment for combat veterans with PTSD primarily consists of antidepressants and talk-therapy. These only go so far. Family members seldom are included in the long term care the veteran receives. Psychological care falls far short of the need, and there is no long-term care for family members, who must learn through hard experience how to live day to day with the PTSD-wounded veteran. Psychological care is inadequate to the needs of combat veterans like Dwight and to the needs of their loved ones, and a yet deeper wound has been left untouched. That wound is a spiritual one. "Call it intuition, if you will, but I have a theory about Vietnam combat veterans and their spiritual histories. I suggest, based upon my experience with my husband and with his Vietnam veteran friends, that those combat veterans whose spiritual life and faith-ethic were the strongest prior to their traumatic combat experiences were the ones who suffered the greatest long-term damage," writes Rev. Snow. THE MISSION OF THIS BOOK: to share hope and healing with families, friends, and care-givers who witness daily the challenges facing a combat veteran whose wounds of war extend far deeper than meets the eye.

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About the Author Rev. Amy L. Snow, M.A., is well qualified to write this book. She lived it! She is the sixth and last wife of Vietnam combat veteran, Dwight N. Snow, who is 100% permanently and totally disabled with PTSD. Through twenty years of observing her veteran husband's rarely verbalized but intensely felt memories of war and those of his veteran friends, she has learned much about the realities of PTSD. She has grown greatly in her appreciation and understanding of its manifestations. She has seen Dwight through some of the worst of his post-Vietnam PSTD struggles and has learned much in the process. She shares that learning with her readers here. She holds several academic degrees: an Associate in Applied Science Degree in Nursing from North Iowa Area Community College, Mason City, Iowa; a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota; and a Master of Arts degree in Religious Leadership from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, New Brighton, Minnesota. She is also an ordained minister in community-based ministry. For twenty-five years she was in active practice as a Registered Nurse in hospitals, clinics, and home-care facilities, including the VA Medical Center in Iowa City, Iowa. She is involved in her community through The International Order of the Eastern Star, through Youth work, and through officiating funeral services and providing pastoral care for families without a church-connection.

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Reviews for THE ENDLESS TOUR

This is a must read for anyone living with a Vietnam veteran with PTSD. How is one to understand the erratic behavior, the sudden overwhelming anxiety and unprovoked angry outbursts, and the general difficulty of living with someone suffering from PTSD? Amy L. Snow, an ordained minister with degrees in nursing, psychology, and religious leadership, ought to know, for she married Dwight who is 100% totally disabled with PTSD. Amy is apparently a kind and compassionate person who can be gentle when appropriate and firm when necessary. Her secret weapon is love, but not love alone, for the love is combined with understanding and an ability to protect her own integrity. She is also an astute observer of human behavior. She tells her story of what it is to live with Dwight and how she tried to understand and help him. In the process she has acquired a great deal of knowledge about the nature of PTSD and she has gained wisdom about how to live with someone suffering from severe PTSD without being overwhelmed herself. Dwight has had five wives before Amy. He and Amy have now lived together for 20 years and they are raising a family together, so it is apparent that she is doing something right, and what she is doing right is well communicated in the book. I enthusiastically recommend this book all those who wish to understand and be helpful to loved ones with PTSD. I also recommend this book to professionals who I am confident will find they have much to learn about the nature of PTSD from someone who has been living day in and day out for many years with someone suffering from it.

    - Seymour Epstein, Professor Emeritus of Psychology a University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA and author of Constructive Thinking: The Key to Emotional Intelligence

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Excerpts

Introduction

The Vietnam War lives on for the families of combat veterans who witness daily in their Vietnam veterans a ceaseless, nameless anguish as the legacy of combat.

For the veterans who fought it, the war in Vietnam did not end with the end of combat. For them it lives on in intrusive horror-filled memories called flashbacks. It lives on in nightmares, in the physical pain of old injuries, and in the pain of PTSD.

"War is hell." Say that to any combat veteran, particularly a Vietam veteran, and if you get any response at all, it might be something like this: "How would you know? You ever been to war?" That's definitely a "Catch-22" for most of us who live with a combat veteran. There is no way we could know!

"If you've been there, no explanation is needed. If you haven't been there, no explanation is possible." A combat veteran can't tell you what war is like, because you couldn't understand. You haven't been there...

A combat veteran might talk about the war, though, with another veteran. Another guy who's been there understands, and even without words he can relate to the experience, because he knows. Talking about the war with another veteran is painful enough, but with a non-veteran it's next to impossible.

It's true...most of us who are nearest and dearest to a combat veteran have no way of relating to what our men endured in the Vietnam War. We have never experienced the horrors of combat trauma, nor would we want to. You and I who haven't been there don't know what war is like, and there's no way we can know.

I once naively thought I knew the meaning of trauma. While working as a Charge Nurse in the Emergency Room of a major metropolitan trauma center, I saw trauma every day. I expected to see major injuries, and I was prepared for them, but what I saw could in no way compare with the horrific trauma of war.

Compared to war, the city Emergency Room is tame. In the ER I never saw injuries at their worst. EMTs (many of whom, incidentally, are former combat Medics) usually had cleaned things up by the time I saw the trauma victims. By the time the accident victims reached the ER, their wounds were far neater than they had been at the scene. I never saw anything really gruesome. In Vietnam, gruesome was the norm.

In the ER, I could trust the fact of my safety. The building was solid, and my shift lasted eight hours. After work I went home. I wasn't being bombed and shelled and sprayed with toxic chemicals. I wasn't reeling with the bone-deep exhaustion brought on by working for days on end without sleep. Neither was I endlessly vulnerable to crawling vermin, drenching rain, knee-deep mud, and the invisible, elusive enemy known as the Viet Cong.

No... I don't know what war is like, and I don't want to find out. Maybe you don't either, but Dwight knows war intimately. What I've learned of war I can know only from what I see in him. Because he's been there, he's different from the man he was before Vietnam. The bright, enthusiastic, promising young man who went off to war came home changed. His face looks much the same, and his voice sounds much the same as it did before the war, yet in countless ways, he's not the same man.

He's often moody. He's restless, irritable, depressed, angry, sleepless, and primed for a fight most of the time. He hears every faint sound in the darkened house, and he reacts with an exaggerated startle response to sudden loud noises. Silently, he paces the house at night, to fall asleep only as dawn approaches. In public places like stores or restaurants, he sits only where he can see the entire room at all times. He avoids crowds... says he feels closed in. He keep guns and knives where he can reach them in a hurry. his temper flares easily. he provokes verbal fights and barroom brawls, unconsciously hoping the biggest guy in the room will knock him senseless.

"Before Vietnam he was never like this," I hear his sisters say. "He was a caring, young gentleman who would do anything for anybody. A bit rowdy and fun-loving, but a gentleman no less. Why....he was supposed to become a pastor!" What happened to him to change him so radically?

Vietnam happened to him. Vietnam wounded him. It wounded his body, it wounded his mind, and - worst of all - it wounded his spirit, with the deepest, most painful of all his wounds. His wounds gave rise to all the strange and frightening behaviors he brought home from Vietnam in 1968, but not until 1980 did anyone know how to name them or what caused them. Dwight has PTSD.

Why Talk Now About Vietnam?

Though war has been part of the human experience throughout recorded history, and men in all times and ages have suffered the ravages of war, this book focuses on the Vietnam War, the men who fought it, and the families and friends who love them. Why am I writing this book? Because I am the wife of a Vietnam veteran with PTSD, and I'm struggling to make sense out of our life together in the aftermath of war.

It's been a long time since Vietnam, but my husband still cannot get over the war... and he never will. It's hard for me to accept that my children's father is a wounded warrior, and that our lives, too, have been deeply scarred by the war wounds he carries.

Dwight's life is but one example of the lingering, devastating legacy of war. In his own mind, his life means nothing. It hurts to realize that he devalues himself. It hurts because I love him, and it matters because my only knowledge of his war comes from watching the devastating changes I see in him. The young man with the promising future that his family knew before the war is gone. A sometimes frightening stranger occupies his place. I love him, but how do I deal with this frightening, wounded, ex-soldier stranger? I deal with him by learning all I can about Vietnam, about PTSD, and about all his war wounds. His wounds are far more than just the obvious physical injuries. They are physical, true, but they are also psychological; and the worst wounds of all are the spiritual.

Since 1980, psychological literature on PTSD has proliferated. In my search to understand Dwight's PTSD and to help us both heal, I have read tons of it. Most of it, however, fails to give me the answers I need.

Researchers at major universities are now delving into PTSD more than ever before. One study in particular clearly identifies the cause of the changes I see in Dwight. This study came to such a logical conclusion that it's almost a no-brainer:

"These changes (in the combat veteran) are the direct result of his combat experiences." Through this study, Kenneth Fletcher, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts, concluded that "the degree of hostile mental and emotional states which manifest in Vietnam veterans are directly proportional to the extent of their horrific combat experiences." In other words, the worse the combat experiences, the worse the PTSD. It helps to know that.

One other helpful piece of information is often overlooked in psychological discussion about PTSD. I emphasize it here because it matters. PTSD is not a mental illness. Rather, it is the result of a normal human response to horrific, traumatic, fear-inducing stressors. It helps to know that Dwight's PTSD after Vietnam is normal. Anyone who has endured what Dwight had endured would have it. If he didn't have PTSD after all he has been through, then I would question his sanity!

Because severe stressors compound and accumulate, it's no surprise that Dwight has PTSD. Even one instance of trauma can be enough to account for it, but Dwight has endured many. How many such incidents does it take before a man develops PTSD? A recent issue of a VA Regional Magazine carried the story of a Desert Storm veteran. His PTSD stemmed from just one traumatic incident. Driving along a dirt road the soldier spotted a child's tennis shoe lying by the road. Still in the shoe was a severed foot. For that veteran, that incident alone was enough to induce nightmares and flashbacks.

What Happened to God?

In many ways, Dwight and God are both still lost in the jungle. Vietnam trauma wrenched from him his sense of his life's meaning and value. It stole from him his primary spiritual foundation: his God. His sleeping mind cries out, "Where was my God in Vietnam?"

Survivor guilt overwhelms Dwight; he cannot reconcile it. He avoids church. Though his spiritual life was active, and he was involved in church before Vietnam, today he cannot even attend a worship service without severe anxiety. He would never admit to fear of any kind, but inwardly he fears God could never forgive him for the horrible things he had to do in Vietnam to survive.

Because of that fear, he suffers severe impairment in his ability to function normally in the world on a daily basis. He has the gift of creativity, the ability to build something out of nothing. Early in life, his uncanny ability to take things apart and put them back together again put every appliance in the house in jeopardy. With his ingenious talent for mechanical things, he even created his first bicycle out of abandoned scrap parts he found in a junkyard. He can fix anything; yet, he's frustrated and angry, because he can't fix himself. Rarely will he ever seek any kind of help for himself. Rarer still are the times when he can accept help.

Talking about anything related to Vietnam brings back the pain. His PTSD symptoms and behaviours multiply. He can't hold a job, because he is functionally unemployable. Many days he simply has to disappear from life in order to survive. PTSD takes him back to the jungles, where, alone, lost, and uncertain whether he would live or die, he relives the horrors in painful memories over and over again.

Physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual pain are his constant companions. Pain isolates him from those who love him. By isolation he unconsciously attempts to protect his loved one from the anxiety-producing symptoms and aggressive behaviours that are part of PTSD. It's hard enough for him to deal with them, let alone to know that they spill over onto us. The protector part of him -- the part that led him to serve his country in the first place -- wants to shield his family and friends from the worst of his symptoms.

Spiritual Wounds

The DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders- 4th edition) lumps PTSD in with mind disorders of all kinds. If PTSD is indeed a normal response to trauma, why should it be catalogued with psychiatric disorders? I think there is a better way to look at it.

I believe PTSD is a spiritual wound, and PTSD care would be more successful if the condition were regarded as such. Spiritual wounds involve experiences in which one's actions conflict with one's faith and ethics, call values into question, and cripple the ability to find meaning in life. When seen in this way, it becomes obvious that PTSD cannot adequately be treated by psychological means alone. As a spiritual wound PTSD demands spiritual care.

Table of Contents

The Endless Tour: Vietnam, PTSD, and the Spiritual Void

Prologue: Spiritual Wounds and PTSD

Chapter 1 - Primary Spiritual Wounds

Chapter 2 - Spiritual Wounds in Depth: When Johnny (or Janey) Comes Marching Home Again... No Hurrahs

Chapter 3 - The Color Red Love: Trust vs Distrust and Fear

Chapter 4 - The Color Orange - Religion/Spirituality: Acceptance vs Rejection & Betrayal

Chapter 5 The Color Yellow - Seasons: Hope vs Futility

Chapter 6 The Color Green Immortality: Mending Relationships vs Alienation & Estrangement

Chapter 7 - The Color Blue - Faithfulness: Mourning & New Life vs Loss & Grief

Chapter 8 - The Color Indigo - Patriotism: Forgiveness vs Guilt & Shame

Chapter 9 - The Color Violet - Service: Connection vs Isolation & Withdrawal

Chapter 10 - Out of the Darkness, and Into the Light

Epilogue - "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again... Hurrah, Hurrah:" A New Homecoming.

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Catalogue Information

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