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And yet, surprisingly,
an account has emerged from the only non-naturalised Englishman to fight there
with the US Army - and he came from Shropshire. Tom
Abraham served as an officer in the American 1st Air Cavalry Division at the height
of the US involvement in the conflict, yet it took 30 years for his mental scars
to take their toll. He
lost almost everything, but thanks to the love and understanding of family and
friends, he's finally coming to terms with the mental demons that have haunted
him for so long - and has been able to rebuild his life. Writing
his book, The Cage - An Englishman in Vietnam, which has just been published,
has been the first part of coming to terms with the events of 30 years ago - a
chain of events which began at a Shropshire public school.
Read
our review of The Cage - An Englishman in
Vietnam | "I
consider myself a bit of a Shropshire lad, as I spent 10 years at Ellesmere College,"
he explained when interviewed on BBC Radio Shropshire's afternoon show by presenter
Jon King. "Shropshire
is more my home than anywhere else because every time I went home on holiday my
parents had moved because of my father's job." In
1964, at the age of 19, Tom left Ellesmere and headed with his family to York,
Pennsylvania, where his father had been offered a job and Tom had a college place. University
didn't last long, as Tom, a 'bit of a dunce' in the classroom by his own admission,
was far too interested in sport and exploring his new-found freedoms in the land
of plenty to be too worried about studying. Lieutenant And
when the time came for military service, he enlisted as an officer in the US Army.
After a year of training, he found himself a lieutenant leading a platoon in Vietnam. The
reaction from his men was, perhaps, to be expected: "When
I arrived in Vietnam to take over my new platoon, I overheard one of the men saying
to another, 'Oh my God - not another green lieutenant, he's a Limey, too!',"
Tom said. The
'green' lieutenant wisely decided to learn his craft from the more experienced
men before properly taking charge, and soon learned that the Vietnam War was not
just about fighting the Vietcong guerillas and North Vietnamese Army face to face. He
said: "The enemy was almost the least of my worries. The booby traps,
the punji stakes(sharpened bambii poles placed in pits in the ground for troops
to stand on) and all the nasties in the jungle were equal to the fear of the
enemy."
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| Tom
Abraham in the field in Vietnam. Note hand grenade at the ready. |
Nasty surprises
came from the most unexpected directions. One day one of his men was killed by
a booby-trapped can of coke given to him by a ten year-old child. The
Americans were facing a foe who watched and picked his moment to fight. Often
the Communist troops would avoid a fight unless they were sure they would be able
to inflict maximum damage on the Americans before slipping away before the Americans
could bring their superior firepower to bear. But
Tom admits to a grudging respect of his old enemy: "They were very tenacious.
They were ingenious. They watched the Americans and used all the Americans' bad
habits back against them. "They
put booby traps where they knew the Americans would go." Maybe
every soldier in war has a moment which stands out even above all the other horrors
he witnesses and will haunt him for years after his soldiering days are over,
and for Tom this came when he was captured by the Vietcong and handed over to
a North Vietnamese interrogator. Tortured He
was tortured during the day, and at night they forced him into a cage four feet
by four feet by four feet and three quarters in the water. Although he escaped
and eventually made it back to his unit, the mental scars remained long after
he returned home. Tom
pushed away all his experiences and refused to speak or even think about them,
even though he was getting nightmares and flashbacks. Finally,
in 1999, things went horribly wrong when he was pulled over by the police who
suspected he had been drink driving. He was roughly treated and thrown into the
back of a small police van used to transport dogs. Locked once again in a confined
space, his mind snapped. He
said: "That caused a complete and utter mental breakdown on the spot -
to the point that when we got to the police station my brain had taken over and
my kind was telling me that these British bobbies were in fact Vietcong. "I
know that sounds remarkable, but that's the diagnosis of all three psychiatrists
they called in to examine me. The case was thrown out at court." But
far from an end to his problems, his breakdown was the start of a downward spiral
which led to him attacking his wife Sally, before having to leave their marital
home and live on benefits in a bedsit. Divorce Tom
said: "Eventually I got divorce papers through from Sally.
It was those
papers that woke me up. "I
thought this shouldn't be happening. What had I done to deserve it and I'm going
to get Sally back, whatever it takes. "People
around me knew that there was a problem. They were either too afraid to approach
me, or they simply couldn't recognise what the source of the problems was." Finally
re-united with Sally, he set about writing down his experiences, as a way of laying
the ghosts of his past. "It
was difficult to write. It took virtually two years, but it laid the demons on
the table, and not only that, but it put them in the public domain." And
now his story is out, Tom has been taken aback by displays of kindness from people
touched by his story. He
said: "I've been absolutely amazed at the number of letters I've received
from completes strangers and from people who knew me who I'd lost contact with.
The level of kindness is incredible."
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| Read
our review of The Cage - An Englishman in
Vietnam and the controversy surrounding the book | | 
