Wayne Chevalier's Life Of War: Post Vietnam War

Life of War: the Beginning and End In Vietnam over 2.7 million men served, in that 2.7 million, one in ten died, and over three hundred thousand were injured. Wayne Chevalier was one of those soldiers, he was drafted from a small town in Minnesota. Mr. Chevalier shared his story in an interview, and talked about his experience with war. In remembering Vietnam veterans, it is important to remember the struggles they went through before and after the war, and the memories they made while fighting for their country. Young men during the time of the Vietnam war, knew that they had a possibility of getting drafted, however, many did not want to fight at all. When Mr. Chevalier was asked about whether or not the draft surprised him, he said, “No,it

It is well known that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental health condition that many veterans suffer from, can be directly linked to their time in war. Wayne Chevalier, however, was lucky, he was unaffected by PTSD. When asked about one of Mr. Chevalier’s most memorable times while he was working the high line poles in his division, he said, “Well, I guess most memorable, it was at night, and I didn’t know for sure what to expect. Vietnam, in the daytime, you always looked at Vietnamese and you always wondered which one of you are really Vietcong at night?”(Chevalier). This is an important thing to have as his most memorable moment because, something as simple as the unknown at night and the dark, can leave lasting imprints on a person’s mind, and that war leaves a person much different than the original. For example, an article published by, ‘The Economist’ spoke of the fears of war and lasting mental struggles such as PTSD, “A recent study found that a quarter of American Vietnam veterans have had it [PTSD] and a tenth of those still alive continue to have severe symptoms.” (Fear Itself). Copious amounts of veterans have experienced PTSD because of their time in war and other haunting

When talking about a memory from his time in war that Mr. Chevalier would like to share, he explained a story of a time in boot camp and what he experienced, “I never used to tell people because they would think that I’m really strange but if you heard other people describe out-of-body experiences, and I believe I read something, and this is what I believe is an extension of being unconscious. And I had an experience like that.” (Chevalier). Mr. Chevalier was in an accident where he was pinched under a car and he had the out of body experience mentioned above, and this shows how in an extremely stressful situation a person’s mind copes in strange ways. An article, “Therapeutic Utilization of Spontaneous Out-Of-Body Experiences in Hypnotherapy” explained how out of body experiences (OBE) can help people get over extreme stress or anxiety, “Furthermore OBE may help those patients to cope with strongly anxiety-loaded issues that arise in therapy and may function, through the "body-self" detachment experience, as a therapeutic metaphor for promoting complex separational processes.” (Meyerson). This excerpt helps show how soldiers are rarely the same person they were when they left for war. Two point seven million young men went to war in Vietnam, and few came home as the same person who left. Many veterans after the war had to struggle with an unrelenting mental illness, such as, PTSD. While others