It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn't know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about

It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn't know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about

And I think that it's - the military has actually made improvements, so people are considering post-traumatic stress disorder as, at the least, a possible psychological problem. You know, when I was in Vietnam, it was just considered malingering. And we're making progress.

The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn't teach me how to deal with killing.

When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.

I mean, if you're proud of what you've done when you've served in the military, well then we call that bragging. And if you are unhappy about what happened, we call that complaining. And so what are you going to do?

The time for debilitating fear is before and after the mission.