During the 1960's America was ripped apart by a war in a far off country in Asia. Seeing an enemy that was hoping to gain power and eventually rule the world and the nation stared war against communism in the face. The US was faced with the decision, to watch as its friends in other countries faded into the depths of communism, or to come along side and help its international friends put a stop to communism. The USA sent many soldiers to fight against the enemy, never quite realizing what it was truly sending them against. From the US viewpoint, it was thought that the War in Vietnam would be over and done with rather quickly. How wrong could the US be? Out of the shadows of war came a different enemy, one that had never been accounted for. That unseen enemy was not carrying a visible weapon, nor was it uniformed, but it was an enemy that they had seen before and just never knew that it could be an enemy. For that enemy was the US nation itself. Rejection and exploitation of the Vietnam Veteran by the US caused the veterans to fight a different war, PTSD when they returned home. This war was a war that they fought in their minds and in their hearts. .
From the start problems are not meant to happen, and the leaders who that made that battle plans for the Vietnam war were sure that they had plan to eliminate problems, should they exist. When direct American troop involvement in Vietnam turned into a hard cold reality, our military planners looked to prior war experiences to help alleviate the problem of psychological disorder in combat. By then it was an understood fact that those combatants with the most combat exposure suffered the highest incidence of battlefield breakdown. In WWI and WWII, this problem was known as "shellshock." In Korea this knowledge resulted in use, to some extent, of a "point system." After accumulating so many points, an individual was rotated home, regardless of the progress of the war, or placement of the troops that they were fighting with.
