Reply #6: In Vietnam we had a great "cure" for "combat fatigue."

[Jackpine Radical]

"Combat fatigue." Great euphemism for what amounted to a totally debilitating breakdown of psychological functioning. We didn't even recognize traumatic stress reactions unless they were extreme--and there were definitely some extreme ones.

I remember evacuating a guy during a mortar attack. He was screaming and flailing around and we ended up strapping him between two stretchers in order to subdue him.

I remember others who couldn't even stand up but were reduced to whimpering mounds of human jelly lying on the floor of the psych tent.

Anyway, the standard treatment for cases like this was to shoot them up with massive amounts of chlorpromazine (Thorazine), which would put them into a coma-like sleep for about 24 hours. When they came out of it, they were generally sufficiently coherent to be returned to the field, and that's what happened.

And by the way, in the 1st Cav, most of the helo pilots were loaded on librium.