Word: combats
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...express the clear intent of Congress that all American military personnel be withdrawn from Vietnam on or before December 1, 1970; so that the retention even of non-combat military training personnel in Vietnam after that date would not be permitted without the enactment by Congress of further legislation specifically approving such retention...
...Viet Nam, the fighting man is seldom out of reach of a psychiatrist; each combat division has its own. There are also two fully staffed mental health clinics that accept the disturbed patient in a most unmartial atmosphere. Military ceremony and the rule book are dropped at the door. Says Colonel Thomas Murray, chief Army psychiatrist in South Viet Nam: "Some of our psychiatrists are the most improbable military guys: soft, flabby, unexercised." In this deliberately demilitarized ambience, the soldier's recovery begins...
...there, too, that combat therapy radically and abruptly departs from its civilian equivalent. "Our aim is not to please the patient," - says Murray. "At home, the psychiatrist's orientation is toward kindness, consideration, tender loving care. Here, to be kind would be to send your patient home." The purpose of military therapy, however, is not cure but amelioration. It is to get a disabled fighting man back on the line-or, if possible, to keep him on the line...
...these is known as the f.n.g. (for "f - g new guy") syndrome. Because of the twelve-month troop-rotation policy, each combat unit gets periodic transfusions of "new guys" unannealed by fire. The raw arrival is greeted with naked suspicion and hostility by a fighting force whose very life depends on group solidarity. Field commanders are now encouraged to prepare the new man for his chilly reception so that he will know what to expect. To abbreviate the period of distrust, the most seasoned veteran in the outfit is often made the new man's mentor and supervisor...
...Combat psychiatrists see the battlefield not so much as a special environment but as a kind of telescoped, infinitely more stressful version of ordinary life. For this reason, and to get the men back to duty as quickly as possible, the Army is creating a new breed of lay therapist, from the battalion surgeon to the squad sergeant to the commanding officer. All these men stand on the line with the soldier. If they are taught to understand and deal with the factors that can cripple a fighting man without visibly injuring him, they can provide an effective...