| Facing the mountain, confronting one's past By Jackson Day  'Why on earth would you want to go back to Vietnam?' exclaimed a fellow veteran. Why, indeed did I spend two weeks in June visiting Saigon, the MekongDelta, the Central Highlands, Hue and Hanoi?
Was it the natural beauty of the Delta's hidden waterways or the misty mountains of the Central Highlands? Was it the chance to see water puppets in Hanoi, or set candles afloat one evening on Hue's Perfume River? Surely it wasn't in order to be reminded of the end of our war efforts in 1975 with North Vietnamese tanks crashing through the fence of the Presidential Palace, or to view pictures of American atrocities, or to see Stalinesque memorials to the victor's war dead. Why indeed? It was a good trip, and it seemed terribly important to do. But why, I've puzzled. One answer that came to me builds on John 17:23, 'that they may all be one!' I'm sure John was referring to the oneness of many people — the unity he wished his disciples would have with each other. But his words could equally well mean internal unity. We move from place to place and leave fragments of ourselves scattered about. When we pull the fragments of our lives together, we have integrity. But some fragments, like the intensive experience of fighting a war in a distant place are harder to bring together. When we resume our normal lives those memories lie in a special place, orphans that don't belong, but can still throw a tantrum. As we accumulate bits and pieces of orphaned memories, we find we are not one, but legion. And thus a trip back to the scene of such memories is a way to heal. And so late one afternoon in early June our tour group, half veterans and half scholars, stood beside me on the fragments of an old air strip's remaining pavement. Behind us was the tour bus and Route 522 from Tan Canh town west to the Laotian border. In the foreground was a flat area overgrown with bushes.  | | Dak To Base Camp of the First Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, 35 years ago. | Thirty-five years ago we would have been facing the Dak To Base Camp of the First Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, standing on a busy airstrip teeming with supply helicopters, attack helicopters, and small aircraft. Facing our group standing there was a mountain I will never forget; Rocket Ridge, we called it then, and nearly every day I stood there to go by helicopter to Firebase 5 and Firebase 6 on its peaks or the many other mountaintop clearings where our soldiers could be found. Now the mountain's vast quiet masked the presence of so many ghosts. Of all the possible reasons to take this trip, here was mine; I needed to face this mountain and call these ghosts home. Psychological trauma has a tremendous impact on our lives. Domestic violence, rape, child abuse as well as combat trauma leave scars that are with us for life.
Now it is not Vietnam that is in the news, but Iraq. You can count on all of our troops returning from Iraq seeming in at least some ways like different people than went over. Perhaps one in seven will be diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Not everyone can go back to the scene of their trauma. But everyone who has experienced trauma has to deal with pieces of their lives that just don't fit.
Our trauma stories are stories not only of pain, but of changed relationships. Our relationship with God is always impacted somehow by trauma, and often suffers as a result of it, because an essential ingredient in trauma is betrayal of our understanding of what the world is like. Being with a supportive group that has a clue what our trauma is about and is willing to hear our story can be healing to any of us, even if it doesn't involve a return trip overseas. The Rev. Jackson Day is pastor of Grace UMC in Hampstead. He was an Army chaplain during the Vietnam War. Photos of his June 2004 Vietnam trip can be seen on the Web at http://www.vietnamveteranministers.org/chaplain/today.htm. | 
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