Psychiatry At the Bronx Veterans Administration
The year was 1951, our country needed infantrymen for the Korean War. My body fulfilled all the requirements for that specialty. For that, I was compensated by being trained as an infantryman at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. Upon completion of basic training, a troop train brought me from New York to Seattle, and then I was sardined into a troopship. As a civilian, my naval experience was rowing a boat on Crotona Park Lake in the Bronx, or going up the Hudson on a Day Line cruise.
After a week, our ship peaked on the crests of colossal waves then roller-coastered down into a deep valley of ocean. On the deck, GIs were embracing garbage pails as the contents of their last meal cascaded into them. Others clung to anything that was clingable. For three days we were not permitted on deck. Why was this ocan called Pacific? Isn’t that peaceful? Finally, we arrived at Camp Drake, Yokohama.
In two days, I was issued an M1 rifle, a backpack, a sleeping bag, an entrenching tool, a pair of fatigues, and a poncho. Is this preparation for the real thing? How do I get out of this? Aha! I found the football coach of the camp.
“I played high school football sir. Could you use me on your team?”
He had a selection of the best college and professional football players in the United States. He looked me over, and then told this 127 pound, 5’ 7” body,
“Sorry son, you’ve got to go to Frozen Chosen (Korea).”
Well, no football, let’s see what Korea has to offer.
In a week, the M.S.T.S. Sadao N. Munemori was heading to Inchon. It was crammed with infantrymen, I was one of them.
The thump of 155mm howitzers as our train passed through Seoul seemed so distant that war was still in the movies, and not fifteen or or twenty miles north of our troop train. Finally, reality set in when I detrained and stood in a rainstorm. Except for the clothes on my back, all my belongings were taken away from me. I kept my rifle, my sleeping bag, a backpack an entrenching tool, and my poncho that was hanging from my shoulders. Sgt. Springer led five of us to Company L’s position on the MLR (frontline).
I experienced the dread that any combat infantryman had encountered. I was enmeshed in a web of What ifs.What if I confront the Chinese will I freeze, What if my buddy is wounded, do I treat him or wait for the medic, What if I am hit, will a medic find me, or will I be abandoned on the hill? What if I am taken prisoner?, What if I forget the password? What if my parents get a telegram, We regret to inform you… Men in my platoon were killed and wounded. When my bunker-buddy, Wayne was missing after a raid, I walked in a trance for days and couldn’t sleep at night. Then I returned to my old self, or so I thought. More raids and more patrols followed.
There were plans to invade North Korea. Veterans in Korea were to be integrated into inexperienced infantry platoons in Japan. I was selected to go with some men from my company because of the skill we gained in combat.
I trained for a few months with the 24th Division. Within a few months my time was up.
A troopship brought me to San Francisco then I flew home. My parents were overjoyed to see me. They were smart enough not to ask any questions, although Ma told the neighbors this wasn’t the same Danny that left our apartment.
I couldn’t speak about it because my entire military experience was a blank. And, if I could, it would have been too painful to agonize through it. I knew I was in the army. I had a bagful of photos somewhere, but the ordeal I went through must have been buried somewhere in my nervous system. Neither my wife nor my children knew what I had encountered.
I spent a productive thirty-five years teaching high school biology, and then retired with my wife to Florida.
Two weeks after we arrived, my wife and I went through the appalling horror of losing a son. Only a person who has experienced this trauma could understand what it is to lose a loving child.
After a few weeks of agony, Sergeant Flaherty called to tell me he had found our commander and forty men from our company in Korea. He asked me to write a newsletter with the intention of having a reunion at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The news deflected the ordeal my wife and I had been going through.
Nearly all the men came with their wives. Beer and alcohol awoke their recall of the patrols, the raids, and the casualties we had suffered. Shrapnel sliced through Konnerth’s rear end and left leg. He came with a leg brace, Truman Bastin’s glass eye, a steel plate in his scalp, a plastic jaw with false teeth and shrapnel scattered throughout his torso announced what he went through. John Hollier’s back was scarred from shrapnel, and Charley Kauneckis came with a total loss of his being. Hey! I was in good shape!
Within a few months, my wife and I moved back to New York City. She frequently accused me of being unable to hear her when we conversed. An audiologist confirmed that I had a substantial hearing loss in both ears, which was consistent with the noise emitted from my Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). Well, the army caused it and they were going to pay for it.
The Bronx Veterans Hospital was a huge building. Where do I go? I was directed to a veteran’s counselor for advice. After a brief summary of my life in the army, he said that many men who were decorated for valor suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and needed treatment.
A psychiatric social worker and a number of psychiatric residents from Mt. Sinai Hospital met me at the VA on a rotating basis. It was a fruitless endeavor. I couldn’t connect with a doctor who saw me for a month or two, and then another doctor replaced him. Finally, it was determined that I needed a full-time psychiatrist.
He was special in many ways. He met my wife, learned about her life with me, thoroughly read my memoir of the Korean War, and after a number of visits, he understood what I had been and was now going through. He prescribed a medication that helped somewhat. I was fortunate to see him for two years, but he decided that he couldn’t afford to live in New York City. A newly assigned psychiatrist seemed to take no interest in my case. I could have been talking to his desk. My wife who also attended, agreed. Perhaps it was my fault, so I brought my daughter with me to observe a session. She also concluded that my visits to him were a waste of time.
I am now visiting a private psychiatrist who has a compassionate understanding of my problem. I know there is no cure, a scar remains where it is, but I can talk to this man with ease, and someday I hope that my Korea will be where it belongs, a peninsula in the Far East.
My previous psychiatrist had returned to the Bronx VA after living, without much enthusiasm for New Mexico. He was aware that the scars of Korea had never left me, but I did get relief from that nightmare after I spoke to him.
For my story of Korea read,
Cold Ground’s Been My Bed: A Korean War Memoir danielwolfebooks@aol.com