Wendell Affield served two tours in Vietnam, the second with the Mobile Riverine Force where he was wounded in an ambush. Affield is the author of four books and a member of American Legion Ralph Gracie Post 14 in Bemidji, Minn.
2022 is the 10th anniversary for my Vietnam War memoir, MUDDY JUNGLE RIVERS. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the early 1990s. I come to therapeutic writing as a person who has dealt with trauma memories for more than five decades. I discovered that writing my memories helped make sense of my Vietnam experience.
After retirement, in my first college class, I recall the writing prompt: “What would you like to write about?” My response startled me. “I want to write about life on a riverboat in Vietnam. About decomposing bodies and bodies blown beyond recognition. About soldiers, sailors and Marines dying. About friends drowned, sniped, burned, maimed. About crawling a riverbank toward a medevac chopper and nightmares. About loss and guilt.”
I learned the power of poetry. British poets were most compelling. Sassoon, Graves, Owen - Owen wrote with a power I hoped to emulate. Over the next several years, I wrote hundreds of stories and poems and revised them thousands of times. I wrote in first-person point of view, in the voice of a 20-year-old member of a seven-man riverboat crew. As I gained tools to tell my stories, an interesting thing happened. I began to make sense of my experience.
I believe that one is not “healed” of PTSD, but can learn to integrate old trauma memories into total life experience and move beyond. There will always be a trigger - olfactory triggers are powerful. A whiff of diesel fumes or decomposing flesh, I’m back on the rivers of Vietnam. But there is life beyond PTSD.
Post-Traumatic Growth is a theory developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun. Growth after trauma (apa.org) PTG recognizes five primary areas of positive response: appreciation of life; relationships with others; new possibilities in life; personal strength; and spiritual change.
In our local Veterans Writer Group I facilitate, we are currently working our way through "The Posttraumatic Growth Workbook." I encourage you to explore writing your trauma memories. On paper, you can organize and rearrange memory fragments. No longer will they be a jumble of snippets ricocheting around in your head.
Muddy Jungle Rivers - Wendell Affield