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.

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