Article May 5, 2003 Issue

A return to Vietnam

Confronting long-held feelings of guilt, resentment, and anger through prayer

By Steve Thorpe

Sometimes after a war experience , people have painful memories that take time to heal. When I was a soldier in Vietnam, I had too many distractions to sort through the feelings and intense emotions I was experiencing. I had to have time to get some perspective and to work through the anger, resentment, and guilt that I was feeling by the end of my tour.

Going to war

Less than a year out of high school, I had been drafted into the army and sent to basic training and then to a medic-training program. Immediately after that, I was sent to Vietnam to work in a medical aid station. Even though I had been raised as a Christian Scientist and had listed Christian Science as my religious preference in my records, apparently draftees were not asked their preferences for job assignments. At the time, I just resigned myself to the fact that as a draftee, my personal decisions would no longer be my own.

About the author

Steve Thorpe left his tenured faculty position in December 2000, at the University of Tennessee law library to become the senior librarian at The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity, in Boston.

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