Nervous Breakdown In The Vietnam War

Imagine seeing a person having a nervous breakdown or just out of control every time they hear an explosion of some kind. Welcome to the world of John Smith, he is eighty-five and lives in the UK with his son Kyle. When he was in his twenties he served in Vietnam and was ranked at Corporal. One day when he was going to destroy some ammunition and while he was on his way he was ambushed by Vietnamese forces. The sergeant of his squad called a retreat but John said, “we have to destroy them by nightfall or they will light up the skies with artillery shells and rain down bullets when they invade the camp.” So, John’s squad continued through the artillery barrage and they saw a bunker with munitions, John placed a thermite grenade in the bunker and in seconds the bunker was destroyed. When the squad was heading back they had to fall into a bunker because they were getting bombarded by bullets and artillery shells. Then all of a sudden John went crazy and went into a nervous breakdown. …show more content…
When they got back to camp John heard guns firing in the distance so he went into a nervous breakdown again so the sergeant brought John to a hospital tent. Next, the doctors could get him under control; It took the doctors one hour to get him under control and to put knock out drugs in him. The next day when he woke up the commander of the camp was standing over him and gave him papers. one of them said that John gets a ticket home and another said he gets an honorable discharge and a bronze medal. Later that day went back to America and was diagnosed with shell shock, a form of Post Traumatic Stress