Reflections on the Healing Wall

Not too long ago, I visited the Healing Wall, a three-quarter size replica of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, commonly referred to as The Wall. I needed to go. I was connected to it indirectly through my friend David O. Chung.

When I met David, known better as Doc (for his initials), I didn’t know how he would affect my life. It took us about five years, but we finally published his memoir in the Fall of 2023. I was the ghostwriter. I wrote every word. Through interviews and writing about his time in Vietnam (and also about the time after he returned), I learned how Vietnam had changed his path. Changed how he sees the world. Changed how he interacts with the people he meets. And Doc was only in Vietnam for slightly more than a year.

The Healing Wall made me think of how shared experiences can bind us together. With The Wall, Vietnam veterans recognize a common pain in each other’s eyes. Their families often join them to visit the monument, and are prepared to hear stories they’ve never heard before. Memories can be overwhelming. No, it isn’t the memories, it’s the anguish, anxiety, and fear that are inseparable from the visions in their minds.

Those of us in 911 can have similar shared experiences. How good are we at seeing the signs of stress in our co-workers? I would say it’s hit or miss. My career in public safety encompassed 911, emergency management, EMS, and incident management teams. I’ve experienced periods of very high stress along the way, yet not many people approached me to ask how I was doing. Lots of people are really good at hiding their stress, are you one of those? Do you work with someone who never seems to be bothered by anything?

Doc hid his PTSD—most of the time. In fact the term post-traumatic stress disorder wasn’t even used until the 1980s (see Cherie Bartram’s blog post “What does resilience have to do with 911 mental health”). PTSD has always existed but has been known by different names: shell shock, battle fatigue, soldier’s heart. In hushed tones we may have said someone was just plain crazy. I remember the first time I thought I was going crazy.

It was after a fire incident that lasted almost three weeks. We were all too stressed to support each other. I didn’t think I could approach my peers about my craziness. How I’d snap at people for things I normally wouldn’t. How I’d cry at unexpected times, or how I was always antsy and couldn’t relax. When a friend of mine stopped by about a month after the fire was over, I told her I thought I was losing my mind. I chose this friend because she was part of a team that helped with critical incident debriefings on large multi-casualty events. If anyone could understand, it was her. That was the day I learned how long it takes to detox from a long-term, high-stress incident. It takes time for the body to clear out all the adrenaline that’s been pumped into your system. It can take a year, she told me. And she was right.

We didn’t have any formal debriefings for that incident. Instead, I was left to seek the help I needed on my own, through my own support system. To have thoughts about how I’m losing control and that something was wrong with me for an entire month? That’s inexcusable. I should have done something sooner. My agencies should have done something sooner.

As humans who deal with critical incidents, we need to do better. Fortunately, I was able to be part of a better way to handle critical events when I was on a fire with my incident management team a couple of years later. We had a firefighter drown in a river which ran alongside the park where we camped. The firefighter and his crew weren’t on the fire that day, they were on days off. But members of our team were the ones who pulled the body out of the river and tried to resuscitate him. We were forever tied to his untimely death. Instead of leaving us on our own, we had a defusing. A defusing is one step down from a formal debriefing and not quite as in-depth.

The discussion we had during the defusing was so important. It was a safe place we could talk about what we did, what we didn’t do, and what we thought. It is through these focused discussions where you may come to realize that you aren’t this crazy outlier who thinks self-loathing thoughts because you blame yourself for what went wrong. All of us need to understand that it’s human to think like this from time to time, you just can’t let those thoughts persist. After my experience with the defusing, I was always staying in contact with agencies so that dispatchers would be included in their debriefings. It can make an impact in the short and long term health and morale of the comm center. Besides, it’s the right thing to do. Dispatchers belong in debriefings when it is appropriate. Dispatchers must always have the choice to participate, and must never have the requirement to participate.

I never had PTSD. It is a disorder with very specific symptoms that we have little control over. I didn’t experience those symptoms like Doc did (and still does today) due to his time in Vietnam. I remember a conversation I had with him where he spoke about his “ghosts.” How they visit him in his dreams and sometimes when he’s awake. The ghosts wear the faces of those he lost, and those he feared were lost because of his actions. When I asked if he was ever able to get rid of them, he told me that he finally made friends with them, that they’ll never be completely out of his life.

And it was at that moment that I realized that for some things there is no healing as we traditionally think of it. The Healing Wall is a misnomer. The scars that remain from our experiences can rupture without warning. A smell, the sight of an injured child, the sound of an alarm, or of helicopter rotors, can all trigger a memory, a fear. The only choice we have left is to manage our symptoms. Doc has done this by making friends with his ghosts. I learned to manage my stress by talking to my peers, opening up to my friends. Keeping it inside only makes it worse.

That’s what The Wall is really good at. This inanimate object where the names of fallen soldiers sprawl on for what seems like forever, has helped so many form the words to describe their memories. To let them out. That was part of the benefit of writing Doc’s memoir. When the printed words describing what he lived through went out into the world, it made it possible for people to find him. Some are those who had lost touch with him over the years. Others are family members of those who passed. And now his story has been used in veteran support groups to help them discuss their shared experiences.

Yes, our book, Face of the Enemy, An American Asian’s War in Vietnam and at Home, hasn’t healed anyone. But it has fostered connections. It connected me to The Wall which made me reflect on my own incident stress. And I hope it encourages us all to turn, look at those we care about with a critical eye, and ask “are you really OK?”