His mother's words echo down to us, twenty-seven years later, 'Sometimes I wonder if Skip tired of this life and needed someone else to pull the trigger' (Nordheimer, 1971). In the exchange, Dwight Johnson, an experienced combat soldier, never fired a shot. ' I kept pulling the trigger until my gun was empty'. The store owner told the police, 'I first hit him with two bullets but he just stood there, with the gun in his hand, and said, 'I'm going to kill you. On April 30, 1971, Dwight Johnson, now married and the father of a little boy, was shot and killed while attempting an armed robbery of a Detroit grocery store.

He wondered if he was sane' (Nordheimer, 1971). Why had he been ordered to switch tanks the night before? Why was he spared and not the others? He experienced guilt about his survival. 'Since coming home from Vietnam the subject has had bad dreams', read the psychiatric report, 'He didn't confide in his mother or wife, but entertained a lot of moral judgement as to what had happened at Dakto. In September of 1970 he was sent to Valley Forge Army Hospital where the psychiatrist there diagnosed him with depression caused by post-Vietnam adjustment problems. But his body and mind started to give way. But, according to the psychiatrist that saw him several years later, it was this soldier's face that continued to haunt him.Īfter receiving the Medal of Honor, Skip who had been unable to even get a job as a simple veteran, became a nationally celebrated hero. Dwight, or 'Skip' to his family and friends, had always been a good kid, an Explorer Scout and an altar boy, who could only recall losing control of his temper once in his life, when his little brother was being beaten by older boys.īut in Vietnam, when the men whose lives he had shared for eleven months, were burned to death before his eyes, he suddenly became a savage soldier, killing five to twenty enemy soldiers in the space of half an hour.Īt one point, he came face to face with a Vietnamese soldier who squeezed the trigger on his weapon aimed point blank at Skip. One of those heroes was a young African-American man from Detroit, Sgt. President Johnson was addressing these words to those gathered for the Medal of Honor ceremony in honor of five heroes of the undeclared war in Vietnam. But in this company we hear again, in our minds, the sound of distant battles'. 'All our efforts are being bent in its pursuit. 'Our hearts and our hopes are turned to peace as we assemble here in the East Room this morning', said President Johnson on the morning of November 1968. Published in the International Handbook of Human Response to Trauma (2000), New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

Home > About ISTSS > History History Our Hearts and Our Hopes are Turned to Peace: Origins of The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studiesīy Sandra L.

Call of duty ed vanderhart