The Spotlight

SPOTLIGHT

Marine of the Quarter by Bob Skinder

Ron Zaczek was a crew chief in VMO-3 from December of 66 to January of 68. In 1981 he was diagnosed with PTSD. His book, Farewell Darkness, describes the relation between the two situations.

Bob: Your book, Farewell Darkness, turned out to be two of the best books to come out of Vietnam. Which did you set out to write, the one about the Huey crew chief in Vietnam or the veteran in recovery from PTSD?

Ron: Actually, neither. The years when I had undiagnosed PTSD were hard on my family, particularly my sons Chris and Matt. I wasn't physically abusive, but I certainly was emotionally abusive and my anger frightened them when they were little. I started the book during therapy to show my sons that my anger was not their fault. I wanted to explain why I was the way I was before I died, and I wanted them to forgive me. It worked and I have an excellent relationship with these fine young men. As therapy progressed, and my life improved, I saw that I could help others. That influenced the structure of the book. When you're having your head shrunk, the therapist gets you talking about a traumatic incident, and then asks questions that will lead you to view things from a different angle. He tries to get you to see if, or how, your present behavior is linked to the trauma. When you begin to see connections, you're ready to start the healing process. That's why I structured the book as alternating sections of "war story" and therapy - that's what happens inside the Vet Center. They say you should write what you know, so I wrote about being a Crew chief. I knew that I had to make the book a "good read," so I worked to make the detail and action in the book as accurate and engaging as I could to pull the reader into the story, the same way a novelist develops a plot.

Bob: Looking back, can you, or are you even willing to talk about the darkness? Ron: In therapy, I discovered my PTSD was rooted in four "traumas." You don't get combat PTSD just because of 395 bad hair days in I Corps. PTSD comes from 2, 3 or 4 specific incidents that lasted from minutes to days. The trick in therapy is to discover those specific traumas amongst all the baggage of the war. That's hard to do because the mind wants to protect itself from the pain that comes with remembering. My first trauma was 11 May 67, an emergency extraction of 3rd Recon Team "Breaker" at Khe Sanh. We got three Marines out alive. We left the bodies of three Marines and a Corpsman behind. I've never forgiven myself for leaving them behind, even in death. Every Marine knows what I mean. I've been providing the Joint Task Force with information that has helped relocate the battle site. They will return to do a forensic dig. I have a very intense need to do whatever I can to make up for our failure to bring them home.

The second was on 10 November 1967 (yes, our birthday.) I machine-gunned a Green Beret by accident on a monsoon night in Laos. He lived, and I've pretty well gotten over my feelings of guilt. Most guys I tell the story to laugh because I shot him in the ass, but truthfully I have never been able to take it as a joke. The third was when I learned my friend Ron Phelps had been killed with General Hochmuth when his airplane threw a tail rotor and came apart. I killed a lot of people in revenge for Ron's death. Of course, I didn't think of them as people at the time, and they were armed NVA. But I think of them as people now. I killed a lot of people. It seems like the more I've lived, the more it hurts, thinking about the people I killed. All those lives and generations of lives and hopes I ended with a fucking M-60. Who the hell was I to do that? The way I deal with the memories of the lives I took is to balance them with the medevacs and emergency extracts, and the lives I saved. If I didn't look at it that way, I think I would go insane.

My fourth trauma - I can't talk about that. It isn't in the book. I wrote it and took it out. My counselor knows what it is and would like me to deal with it but I won't go back into therapy. I have excellent coping skills that almost always handle my anger, and I only have one or two nightmares a year instead of most nights, like before. I have a good family, a solid job and people think I'm normal, whatever that is. An author who quotes himself has to be the limit of arrogance, but as I wrote in Farewell, Darkness, 'who can live, what I have lived, and be without dreams?' Mostly, I don't want my head shrunk anymore.

Bob: Does writing come naturally to you? Have you taken many courses on writing?

Ron: I've been an avid reader since an early age and writing has always come naturally to me. In school, my teacher set a minimum page requirement for a term paper on everyone, but gave me an absolute maximum. I took two formal courses in writing at Johns Hopkins University that helped a great deal, and I co-founded a "writers group" that was together for about 4 years. Our leader was a professional newspaperman and war correspondent, and the feedback I received from the group was invaluable.

Bob: Was writing this book easy for you? Was the writing therapeutic? Is it normally prescribed or just something you came up with yourself? If it was helpful, how helpful compared to the counseling?

Ron: The book took ten years to write, because I was still living what I was writing about so that tells you it wasn't easy. The book was my idea and I began it the night I returned home from the dedication of The Wall. That night, I outlined pretty much the entire story except for the last chapter. I had no idea how the book was going to end (nor did I know that I'd be in therapy for 6 more years!) I didn't tell my counselor that I was writing the book for three years, and I never let him read it during my years of therapy. Writing has been used to generate recollections for some years, now, but not while I was in therapy. (In fact, Farewell, Darkness and Soldier's Heart are required reading in the Vet Centers, and are used to stimulate discussion in rap groups. Paradoxically, I received one-on-one counseling for all of my 8 years. I refused group sessions. I could not open up to a group, only in private.) For me, writing was a way of putting into context what I was living, sort of like a diary. It was like putting the finishing touch on some aspect of my counseling. If I could write about it, I was demonstrating that I could deal with it. Writing influenced therapy on only one occasion as I recall. I discovered two letters written home two weeks apart. This was very unusual because I wrote to someone almost every day. It was as if I'd fallen off the face of the earth for 10 days. I used the USMC historical archives to reconstruct my memories and discovered that three of the four primary traumas had occurred within 10 days of each other in November '67. The knowledge that I had received overwhelming body blows of bad hair days in so short a period influenced the course of therapy.

Bob: Has the book changed your life much, and if so, how? Are you still in control?

Ron: I still keep myself wrapped pretty tightly. I still have PTSD but I have very good coping skills and have developed a sort of a sense outside myself that warns me when I am reacting to a traumatic stimulus. I rarely lose control; most times I excuse myself, go somewhere to quietly vent the pressure. I still throw a chair every now and then but I haven't killed anyone in more than 30 years, not even the ones who needed it. I still want to, but I think that comes from being a Marine more than having PTSD. The book is sort of a focal point for the part of my life that I think of as the "spirit of Semper Fidelis." Vets and spouses call or write that the book has made a difference in their lives, has given them hope. I talked one former crewchief with a 357 Magnum in his hand into getting rid of it, and he's still alive today. Through the book, I was put in touch with the Joint Task Force, and if the Breaker men ever come home, I will have had a part of making that happen. Semper Fidelis. Guys who saw me on the History Channel documentary on homecoming call, and tell me that I motivated them to seek help. The book has been my opportunity to take an experience that was intrinsically evil, and wring some good out of it. I turned all that pain to my own purpose; it's how I know I won. Writing the book motivated me to go back to Vietnam and find out what happened. My first night in Hue City, I couldn't sleep - I was so excited about being back where most truly important moments in my life had taken place. I went walking at 2:00 AM, alone and unarmed in Hue! No one hassled me, everyone was pleasant, no one tried to sell me their daughter. At that moment, I realized that I had finally come home - not home to Vietnam, but all the way home. Everything had come full circle. From that instant, I began looking forward to life, rather than exclusively looking back to the war.

Bob: Where are you now in life? Any thoughts of another book?

Ron: Two years after Farewell, Darkness, my wife and three VA counselors (including my own counselor) created a compiled work of poetry, prose and art from veterans from WWII through Desert Storm, and their spouses and children. It's called "Soldiers' Heart") which is the term they used to describe PTSD in the Civil War. Soldier's Heart is also used in therapy, but it pretty well exhausted my desire to write more nonfiction about PTSD. I have a novel in the works with plot line and characters worked out, but am having a difficult time getting off my dead ass to finish it. My return to Vietnam in 1996 provided a wealth of colorful background material to set the scene. Today, I travel a great deal as a project manager for Compaq Computer. I run large information technology projects. My project team members, who are all young, think they are in boot camp. I'm looking to retire in about three years and my desires are to travel and write. I get several invitations a year to speak on recovery from PTSD. I enjoy doing that but I never want to do it so often that it becomes routine. It's too important to become routine.

Bob: I see that you are involved in MIA work. What does that involve?

Ron: I returned to Vietnam in 1996 and became acquainted with Lt. General Ron Christmas. In telling him the story of the Breaker extract, he made an introduction for me to the JTF. (Let me tell you, having a Lt. Gen. write a letter of introduction does wonders in opening doors.) I had the original extraction coordinates for Breaker from the after action report. For some reason, the coordinates the JTF were using had been changed twice since the war, from wrong to more wrong. I provided the correct coordinates, also taped oral histories of the mission, and my own recollection of terrain features. While on vacation on Oahu in '98, I was invited to address the JTF. As I was speaking, a search team was literally on their way to the co-ords I provided. The JTF wanted to surprise me by having the team reach the site during my visit. When the team reached the site, they found remains of 4 American jungle boots. The fighting holes and bunkers were still there and the site was undisturbed because the local villagers thought it haunted. The JTF will excavate the site.

Bob: How can someone get a copy of Farewell Darkness? Do you still sign copies? Ron: Send $28 (includes postage) to Ron Zaczek, 230 Rhett Lane, Elkton, MD 21921. Include outfit, rank and year in country. If for a friend, give me a sense of how you would like it inscribed. Or buy it at Borders, mail to me with return postage and I will return signed.

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Brad Ryti bryti@scarface-usmc.org .

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