Effects Of Vietnam War On Youth

Not only were the soldiers not received warmly, but they were expected to return to their everyday lives, as if they hadn’t just endured months of war and culture shock. There was no government support for them, no debrief, no time to decompress. Unlike World War II, where soldiers came back by boat and had weeks to work through the trauma they had experienced, GIs from Vietnam were back in America within a day or two. “Not uncommonly, a soldier...[will] travel fifteen hours...arrive on a base and six to eight hours later be on the street as a civilian. Such procedure disallowed the possibility of veterans collectively “working through” their war experiences and possibly resolving or coming to terms with the injuries of self.” During the war, the government could not openly admit as to what a huge calamity the war was without further damaging its reputation abroad, and further provoking the questioning of its foreign policy by citizens within the United States. So they just allowed the soldiers to resume their lives without any help, not realizing how difficult it would be for thousands of them. During the war, drug use, especially the use of marijuana and opiates, was common in Vietnam, and this spilled over into American society when these men returned home. Since there was little support, they depended on drugs and alcohol to self-medicate. According to Solotaroff, there are twice as many survivors dying of drug addiction and homelessness then there were dead soldiers during the war. This was because of the lack of training they received before they went onto the battlefield and the lack of support they received upon their return. The American government knew how the traumas of war could affect GIs. During the Civil War, it was called Soldier’s Heart and during World War One, it was referred to as Shell Shock. The Vietnam War was a guerilla war; filled with booby traps, land mines, and unanticipated enemies. Despite all of this knowledge, the government did not prepare these men for this type of warfare and did not offer services for them when they came back home from the war. According to Yolanda, Ronnie came back a completely different person after the war, closed off from his family and haunted by what he had witnessed in Vietnam. “We all knew that we couldn’t talk to him about his cocaine habit because he would get angry. We knew we couldn’t talk about Vietnam because he would get angry. Everything seemed to make him mad… And his drug …show more content…
The war had far reaching effects the youth of the United States that served their country over seas. The average age of a soldier fighting in Vietnam was twenty years old. This was the generation of young men who should have been entering the work force, starting families, and finishing college degrees. Instead, they became a generation of young men who were traumatized by the war, with nowhere to turn. All because of a government who refused to acknowledge the brutalities of the war when training its soldiers, and all because when the media exposed the truth, it didn’t give them the support that they needed upon their return. And if history does indeed repeat itself, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will prove to be this generation’s