By Gayla Cawley
MARBLEHEAD — Lt. Don Sullivan led the final assault on Hamburger Hill during the Vietnam War in 1969, where he saw six of his men get blown up in front of him, splattering gore on him.
The event triggered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an unknown ailment to the 73-year-old U.S. Army veteran at the time, and something that he wasn’t diagnosed with until his first heart attack on May 10, 1998. The date was the anniversary of when his platoon landed by helicopter on a base of Hamburger Hill. Doctors have told Sullivan, a Winthrop resident, that it’s not unusual for veterans to have a health event around the anniversary of a traumatic incident.
He still relives the day in his dreams. In his case, he keeps on missing a train and keeps on running. His men were blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by the North Vietnamese hidden in a jungle above Sullivan’s platoon on the hill during the fifth day of the 11-day battle. But before tragedy struck, the men were heading somewhere Sullivan told them not to go. In Vietnam, he was running after his men trying to stop them from going there and that’s when it happened, he said.
From his platoon, he lost 24 men. Six were killed and 18 were wounded.
“It was the most horrible experience I can even imagine,” Sullivan said. “My good emotions died on that day, love and intimacy, all of those things. Loving somebody is much too dangerous because they’re going to get stolen from you.”
Sullivan will be reliving that day and talking about the PTSD that resulted from it, including his dejection, depression and despair, during a breakfast program hosted by the Marblehead Council on Aging on Thursday at 9 a.m. PTSD: Service, Combat and Recovery will feature keynote speakers, Sullivan and Denise Sloan, Ph.D, a professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine and associate director of the Behavioral Science Division at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) National Center for PTSD.
Sullivan is the recipient of 16 decorations and awards for his four years of military service, including the Silver Star, Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. The breakfast presentation, which will be held at 10 Humphrey St., is intended to provide information, education, support and treatment options for those struggling with PTSD and for area Veterans’ Services officers to gain valuable insight into current VA programs.
Going into the war, Sullivan said he was a fairly happy-go-lucky guy and reasonably bright, but thinks he was unqualified when he was sent to Vietnam as a platoon leader. He spent years blaming his leadership for his men going where he told them not to.
In 1978, Sullivan went to a psychiatrist to see if he could get help for his drinking. After he left Vietnam, he experienced symptoms of PTSD, but the condition was still relatively unknown. He went from being the person who led cheer rallies in high school before the war to returning home and gradually dissociating himself from people, shying away from close friends and intimacy. To help fight his losing battle, he went from having a few beers to drinking heavily to self-medicate.
His psychiatrist thought it was a drinking problem and completely missed the PTSD diagnosis. The doctor wasn’t helping so he stopped going and kept drinking.
After his heart attack, Sullivan said a standard depression screening by a VA-trained doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital showed that he had been suffering from feelings of despair and anxiety long before the health event, leading to further testing and a PTSD diagnosis. A few years later, the doctor persuaded him to go the VA Boston Health Care System, Jamaica Plain Division. Each program there has helped him.
There, he was asked who was responsible for the death of his men. After blaming himself for so many years, he was further asked, what about the man who pulled the trigger, leading him to think differently.
“We tend to get wrapped up in our own guilt,” Sullivan said. “It started me down a path of more acceptance and peace with myself.”
Helped by his treatment, Sullivan no longer drinks and is not despairingly depressed. His anxiety is way down, but as someone with long-term PTSD, he doesn’t expect to ever be cured. With his talk, he wants to raise awareness and get more veterans into treatment. There are 22 veterans suicides a day, he added, citing a study from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
“I hope that my experiences help other vets and their families to see what PTSD may look like and get help,” he said.
Gayla Cawley can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @GaylaCawley.