Author: Jeff Seeber

Video: "The Military Salute"

The Wall

Chariots Of Fire

Interviewed by: W. H. McDonald – President of the MWSA

W. H. McDonald: Many thousands of people have watched your video “Military Salute.”  It has moved and inspired people now for at least a couple of years that I know of.  It is truly a wonderfully moving tribute video for all of us.  However, we have been curious about who the man was behind the video.  So, I wanted to interview you so that question could be answered for the many who wanted to ask.  If you do not mind, I am going to pry a little to ask questions (Feel free not to answer what is uncomfortable for you).

Q: What branch of the military did you serve in and where were you stationed during your military career? How long were you in the service?

A: I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1969 and was medically discharged in late August of 1970.  I went to Boot Camp at Great Lakes, IL and ended my “career” at Great Lakes Naval Hospital.  I emphasized the word “career” because I had signed up for 6 years, fully intending to make the Navy a 30-year career.

Q: From reading your emails I know you do not wish to talk about Vietnam and the events that lead to your being injured, so I will respect that wish.  But you did state that you were willing to talk about being in the hospital.  What hospitals were you in and for how long?

A: I was treated in a trauma unit for about two weeks until I could be moved.  I can’t remember anything about it.  When my condition stabilized, I was transferred to the Great Lakes Naval Hospital, where I spent seven months before being discharged into the VA hospital system.  Because my most serious injuries were respiratory-related, I was in a “quarantined” ward for nearly six months of that time to guard against additional infections.

Q: What is the nature of your injuries?  How have they impacted your daily life today?  What changes have you had to endure in your life style and social life because of them?

A: My original injuries included chest trauma and a concussion.  Both eventually turned out to be worse than originally thought.  The serious problems started when I developed pneumonia, which was complicated by the fact that I am allergic to penicillin.  My doctors were forced into using experimental drugs that saved my life.  To make a long story short, I wound up with permanent lung damage.

As the years went by, related problems cropped up.  The concussion was actually a brain stem injury that gradually began affecting my balance, vision, and hearing.  The lung damage turned into chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (including emphysema) by the time I was 40.  I had an acute myocardial infarction (a heart attack) in the mid-90s.  Then a series of cancers were diagnosed, including probable non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and an aggravating case of basal-cell carcinoma skin cancer.  The VA automatically assumes those types of cancers are related to Agent Orange.

I said probable lymphoma because I long ago decided that I would not permit any drastic treatments.  Needle biopsies indicated there was an 80% chance I have lymphoma, but I declined the more drastic surgical biopsies they recommended.  I have also declined recommended neuro-surgery to open up the back of my head.

Because of all the corticosteroids I have taken, it’s just a matter of time before my bones start snapping.  I am unable to maintain my weight despite eating massive quantities of mini-doughnuts and Twinkies, although I cannot seem to get any sympathy whatsoever for that particular problem.

Before I get into the impact of all of this, I should say that I have never missed something I can no longer do.  I simply look for some other way to spend my time.  Because of the types of drugs the doctors at Great Lakes were forced to use, I was not able to have children.  Because of the lung damage, I have not been able to do anything strenuous.

I have not been able to drive since 1990 and I have been virtually housebound since about 1995.  I cannot fly and I get motion sickness when traveling in a car.  Using the telephone is very difficult because I have to concentrate on breathing, listening and talking simultaneously.  The brain stem injury has apparently made doing all of that at once somewhat problematic.

I have a 3 or 4 hours a day when I can think reasonably well.  During the other hours I am awake, I make copies of Military Salute because the computer tells me what to do and when to do it.

Q: Besides your physical injuries I would assume from reading your postings on the web that you have been battling the effects of PTSD.  How has this impacted your life with regards to your family, job, friendships, relationships, religion, etc.?

A: Before I talk about me, I would like to say that I sincerely hope our newest generation of Veterans handles stress from being in a war zone better than the Vietnam-era guys did.  I hope they have competent help available and that they take full advantage of it.  Even if the help had been available to us, almost none of us would have sought it.  I sincerely hope the Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom Veterans can learn from our experience.

Because I have been a patient in the VA health system for over 35 years, I have developed an opinion that Vietnam-era Vets fall into one of three categories.  The first group, the largest group, said goodbye to the jungle and never looked back.  They were either able to forget what they did and what they witnessed or they were able to lock it so far down inside them that it never bubbled back up to the surface.  The second group is the guys who fell apart at some time or another.  Many of them simply checked out of society or ran afoul of it.  The third group, my group, is made up of guys who can function in society but have occasional battles with anger, alcohol, drugs, relationships, whatever.

My very brief military “career” made me forget everything that preceded it and has made nearly everything that has happened since irrelevant.  It changed the way I felt about humanity in general, especially because of the way Vietnam-era Vets were treated here at home.  Because of some of the things I witnessed, I lost whatever religion I had.  Like many other Vietnam-era Veterans, I experienced a series of failed relationships until I met The Woman Who Runs My Life.  I am fiercely loyal to the people I trust, but I don’t trust anyone until I see them in action.

Q: Have you found relief from the emotional hurts of the war harder to deal with then the physical pains?

A: Absolutely.  Give me enough fentanyl and I can handle a sigmoidoscopy and a colonoscopy in the same afternoon.  Throw in a morphine drip and you can add an upper and lower GI series while you’re at it. I can take it.

The emotional hurt, and one hurt in particular, gnawed at me nearly every day until I started assembling the Military Salute video.  I wasn’t physically able to attend the funeral of any of my buddies. I felt guilty about it and I was angry about it.  Not one of their funerals included anyone who was there when he was hit, injured, or when he ran out of energy to fight for his life.  We could have told the family about his last days, hours or minutes.  It wouldn’t have helped right then, but it certainly would have helped a year or two later.

Q: What kind of a background did you have before going into the military service?  Where were you raised and went to school?  Did you play any sports in high school or do other things like playing in the band, plays, clubs etc.?  What was your childhood like in general?

A: I grew up on the East Coast in a Catholic family of five boys.  All of us were raised to be independent, self-reliant, stubborn and cocky.  In the 50s, Catholic kids were taught that we went to heaven and everyone else went to hell.  I was an altar boy and made a small fortune serving at weddings and funerals.  Not only did I get to ride around in air-conditioned limos, but it was a lot cleaner way to earn cigarette money than mowing lawns.

My father’s job kept him away from home much of the time and that’s never a good thing when the house included five independent, self-reliant, stubborn and cocky kids who probably should have had their respective butts whipped much more often than they actually were.  All five of us left home before we were 18.  I took off just before my 16th birthday because my mother insisted that I go camping over Labor Day weekend instead of working at the gas station where I had just started my first real job.

I scraped together whatever money I could get my hands on and boarded a Greyhound bus for Atlanta, GA.  I eventually headed north to live with my brother until I was old enough to enlist in the Navy.  It surprises some people that I am able to write like I do when I never graduated from high school.  That’s the difference between education then and now.  I took the GED exam after being discharged from the service.

Q: What visions of the world did you have at 18 years old just out of high school – what did you want to become and do with your life?

A: I had been supporting myself for two years, so I was deeply in love with capitalism.  I came from a long line of Military people and I loathed communism.  I despised hippies and anyone else who threatened America’s stability.  Draft or no draft, I intended to enlist in the Armed Forces as soon as I could legally do so.

Q: How did you meet your wife?  Were you married more than once or are you in the same relationship now?  Any children?  Grandchildren?

A: My first wife had been married to a paraplegic Vietnam Vet who drank himself to death within months of being discharged from Walter Reed Hospital and the Army.  I met her while attending Junior College after I had left the Navy.  Both of us were there to kill time and collect GI Bill benefits until we figured out what we wanted to do.  Getting married was a mutual mistake, but it made both of us stronger in the long run.

I met The Woman Who Runs My Life in 1985.  She was a waitress in a restaurant that I frequented.  We were married the next year.  We are completely opposite in every way.  She is the most trustworthy, dependable, unselfish human I have ever known.  Her support has never wavered, even as my health deteriorated.  As far as I know, she has never complained or felt sorry for herself, even though I am certain her life has turned out drastically different than the one she imagined or hoped for.

I like to say “we’ve been blessed with no children.”  The truth is that I couldn’t father children because of the drugs I was given while at Great Lakes and a dangerously high fever I endured for several weeks immediately after being injured.

Q: What kind of work do you do or have you done since leaving the military – or what hobbies occupy your time and energy?

A: I haven’t worked since 1990.  When I left the Navy in 1970, my doctor told me I had maybe 15 years to live and the last five or so would be really ugly.  I used that as an excuse to do a lot of traveling.  Whenever the money started to run out, I’d find a job pumping gas or driving a truck, work a few weeks and then hit the road again.

I eventually became bored with sleeping in the car and decided to settle down.  I enrolled in a junior college, got married, quit school, and went to work in an auditing department as a clerk.  We moved to Minnesota in the late 70s and I worked as a mechanic in a small garage.

A guy I knew at an American Legion club asked me to take care of his newspaper motor route while he was on vacation. I loved working at night and especially by myself.  I eventually took his route over and then absorbed several others.  Within a year or so, I was hiring drivers and expanding the operation.  In 1984, a company that sold newspaper circulation supplies hired me as a service representative.  The timing was perfect because USA Today was just about to launch.  I sold my newspaper business and did very well with the new venture.

Within two years, I was being approached by newspaper chains to do consulting and eventually I went to work for Gannett Newspapers and then Knight-Ridder.  In 1989, I started feeling tired all the time and discovered my lungs had started to get drastically worse.  My stamina decreased to the point that I was unable to do much of anything, so I asked the VA to review my disability rating.

While I was going through the VA appeals process, I found out I had worked long enough to qualify for SSDI as well.  After several years of appeals, I won the SSDI case and the VA granted me total and permanent service-connected disability.  Ironically, I felt like throwing a party when I received a letter saying, “Congratulations!  You are totally disabled!  Whoopee!  Have a nice day.”

My one and only hobby for the last two years has been the Military Salute project.  Every time it seems to be losing steam, something happens with the project that restores my energy.

Q: What have you found to be most inspirational to you in your life?  Is there any person, or religion, or music, or special events that come to mind?

A: Shortly after asking the VA to review my case in 1990, I started looking online for help from others who had been through the process.  I began participating in a bulletin board for Veterans on the old Prodigy network.  There was a guy who spent hours answering questions and giving advice.  His name was Bill Smith, a lawyer from southern California.

He would do his best to try to convince Veterans that the medical merits of a particular case had absolutely nothing to do with winning a VA appeal.  The only way to win was to play the paperwork game and live long enough to outlast them.  I paid attention to him and I won my case.  Others did not pay attention to him and they lost. In addition to his online assistance, Bill was also busy setting up a nationwide coalition of professionals to assist Veterans in dealing with the VA, including fighting several cases in the U.S. Supreme Court.

When I received my grant letter, I asked Bill how I could repay him.  He encouraged me to jump in and begin helping other guys.  I still had enough energy and brain power back then to make a difference in the lives of other Vietnam-era Veterans.  I became involved in several bulletin boards and did whatever I could to help.  During the three years or so that I was physically and mentally able to continue, I was able to help about three-dozen guys win their claims.  Some of them amounted to as much as $200,000 in back pay.

I eventually lost touch with Bill and I often wondered what happened to him.  In the summer of 2004, I received an e-mail request for a copy of Military Salute from The Bill Smith Homeless Veterans Shelter in Los Angeles.  I started corresponding with the director and found out that Bill died in the late 90s and had set up a trust fund from his estate to fund the shelter.  In a very real sense, he continues to give even after his death.  If that’s the way it works out with me and Military Salute, that would be the best epitaph I could ever hope for.

Q: I notice that you have a good sense of humor and can at times write very funny things.  You see the funny parts of life even in some of the dark places like a Navy hospital.  Would you be considered the joker of the group that you hang out with?  Have you always used humor as part of your personal coping methods?

A: That’s the most polite adjective anyone has ever used to describe me.  Every situation has as least two sides.  If the reality becomes too nasty to deal with, you can choose to go crazy or you can choose to have some fun with it.  My gastro-intestinal doctor had a sign on his wall that said, “I’m behind you all the way.”  I don’t care what sort of colon disease you have ... that’s funny.

Q: Do you get lots of feedback from people who have read your postings or watched your video?  What kind of remarks and comments do you get?

A: There is nothing I have ever written that I expected anyone to read, much less comment on.  When I assembled Military Salute, it was intended for a very small group of people.  Two years and thirty-thousand-plus copies later, we have received hundreds of e-mails and letters, including one from a Vietnam Veteran who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. We post some of them in our Forum in the “Comments About the Video” section.

We have also received a few responses using the old “baby killer” and “war monger” clichés.  There was one e-mail in particular that infuriated me to the point that I dropped everything and spewed some venom in a piece I wrote titled “I Want One, But Only If It’s Free”

Q: Have you remained in touch with any of the guys from your old military unit throughout the years since getting out?

A: The answer to this question explains, in large part, why I prefer not to talk about much of my time in the service.  I was not able to finish my tour with the guys I started out with.  I left them early.  I know it wasn’t my fault, but I’ve felt guilty about it ever since.  I got out and they did not.  When a guy goes down, someone new takes his place.  From that point on, the rest of the guys took a different path than I did.

As a result, I kept in contact with the guys I met in the hospital who were discharged about the same time I was.  Two of them bought small pieces of property in the western Montana mountains.  I exchanged letters with them for awhile but that eventually stopped.  Two others committed suicide as their medical conditions worsened.  I used to meet up with another guy whenever I was traveling near Maryland but we lost touch when I stopped working.

Now I have a new group of dudes to harass and hopefully I’ll check out before they do.  After all, we have a fairly significant amount of money wagered on who will be the Survivor or, as we call it, the Loser.

Q: If you could do it all over – meaning your service to your country – would you do anything any different?  Would you serve in Vietnam again?

A: The best way for me to answer this is to direct you to a piece I wrote titled “Put On A Uniform”

I should add that I firmly believed stopping the spread of communism was just as right then as stopping terrorism is now.  As long as there are people who want to deny others the freedom of assembly, of speech, of religion, of any of the freedoms we cherish in our Bill of Rights, then there must be people willing to bleed and to die to stop them so that others can remain, or become once again, free.

Should the day ever come when no one answers the call to stop dictators and tyrants, then humanity is truly doomed.  Despite my cynicism about many things, I continue to marvel that this country produces just enough people who will leave everything that is important in their lives to step forward to protect their fellow citizens even though it might mean their own death.  President Ronald Reagan once asked in a speech, “Where do we find such men?”  He answered his own question by saying, “We find them where we've always found them when we need them.  We find them where we found you -- on the main streets and the farms of America.  You are the product of the freest, the fairest, the most generous and humane society that has ever been created by man.”

Q: When you left the Navy, how were you treated by old friends and family?  Strangers?

A: Even though my father was in WW II and both of my older brothers were in the service, one Army and one Navy, no one in my family ever once asked me about my service.  To be honest, I don’t know that I would have answered if they had, but it has always been a sore point with me.

I wrote a piece called “Welcome Home” that explains why I avoid civilians whenever possible and prefer to be around people with military experience ...

Q: Some people wonder why you have not written a book about some of your experiences and share them with others who might be dealing with some of these same issues?  Is there any possibility that a book may be in the works at some future date?

A: I no longer have the energy or the desire to handle anything other than the Military Salute project.  That will always come first as long as there seems to be any interest in it.  It still continues to gain momentum.  I try to write during the months following Memorial Day and Veterans Day when the demand for mail copies temporarily declines.  If someone wants to spend their own time stringing together all of the bits and pieces I’ve written, that’s fine with me.

Q: I noticed that you love to quote old rock and roll songs – almost like poetry – do you sing or play any musical instruments or are you just someone who gains great inspiration from the words to good old songs like “Bad Moon Arising” and “The Sound of Silence”?

A: It’s my opinion that popular music meant much more to my generation than it has to any generation since.  The lyrics I include in my stories are far more eloquent than I am and state my case much better than I can.  The only instrument I am qualified to play is a jukebox and I hope I never run out of quarters.

Q: What inspires you to do a video or to write what you post on the web?

A: I assembled the video in an attempt to get a monkey off of my back.  I desperately wanted to say goodbye to my buddies while honoring them with a tribute of some kind.  I am happy to say that it worked.

Nothing that has happened since I made the first copy of Military Salute would have occurred without the assistance of the four guys who help me, our wives, and everyone else who has donated their time and devotion to a project they have made into something very special.

The five of us nicknamed ourselves “The Minnesota Platoon”. Two of us were in the Navy, two were Marines and one was Army.  Three were wounded in combat and two were injured in field accidents.  We are all rated 100% service-connected disabled.  Each of us takes care of part of the project.  We split the cost of the project, although the Army guy winds up paying a little more because he is such a lousy poker player.

Our wives do all of the grunt work ... buying supplies, running to the Post Office, spending hours processing Customs forms, assembling packages and listening to the cursing when a printer dies when we need 100 CD labels in a hurry.

I have to mention the guys at SoldierGifts.com.  We had decided to shut down the project in late 2004 because it had become too successful.  They stepped in and began offering downloads and online viewing.  Had it not been for them, the project would have ceased.  I have no idea how much time and money they have spent helping us and I’m afraid to ask.

Q: If you could leave some advice to those veterans coming home wounded physically and emotionally from Iraq – what would you like to tell them?

A: I have a great deal I can say because I can clearly remember what it was like to have just been injured and I also have 35 years experience dealing with my injuries.  Because I am at a VA hospital so often, I am in frequent contact with other guys who have similar experience.

About a year ago, I would receive an e-mail every few weeks from mothers, fathers and spouses who had seen the video and decided to write to ask advice from someone who’s been there.  As the months went by, the volume picked up.  Now I receive two or three each week.  The five of us exchange ideas via e-mail and then I respond.  We’re working on a summary of the questions and answers we’ve received to date and I’ll post them in our Library section when we finish it.

Basically, we have two sets of advice.  One is for the veteran and the other is for the family and friends of the veteran.  Perspective is crucial.  The veteran must understand that his family and friends are very concerned about his physical and mental well-being, even though the veteran knows that there is no way he can adequately communicate what he has seen and done to anyone who hasn’t seen or done what he has.  It’s a terrible predicament.

The veteran must maintain contact with one or more guys he served with, preferably within his own unit.  In addition, he will meet new friends while he is being treated, so he has a second pool of people to befriend and rely on.  The veteran must have an outlet.  He must stay in contact with someone who knows what he knows.  There is no way a civilian, no matter how well intentioned, can ever grasp what the veteran really means.

It is impossible to explain 120-degree heat or a sandstorm to someone who has never been in it.  It is impossible to explain what it’s like to go kicking in doors knowing a suicide bomber might be waiting on the other side to someone who has never done it.  There are no words to describe riding in a string of Hummers on patrol and then seeing the vehicle two units up explode into a fireball.  There is no way the veteran can describe the fear, the anger, the smells or the sight of your buddy’s legs being blown off right in front of you.

Here’s a specific example to consider.  Let’s say that U.S. Navy FMF Corpsman John Doe rotates home with what’s left of his Marine platoon.  He has survived.  Some of the other guys have not.  Some are dead and some are in Bethesda recovering from horrific wounds.  His family and friends want to know all about his tour in the Sandbox.  How does he describe reaching into a Marine’s stomach to pinch off an artery so his buddy doesn’t bleed out before the Dustoff chopper arrives?  Where does he find the words to describe the firefight or the IED that led up to it?  How does he tell them that he threw up for ten minutes the first time he answered “Corpsman UP!” and saved a life, or could not save a life?  Civilians cannot comprehend any of that.  The veteran must be able to talk to someone who knows what it was like.

Family and friends, on the other hand, have to understand that the veteran needs some space.  He needs to be able to curse or to throw something or to sit there and cry for a few minutes until he gets used to losing a leg.  They have to understand that watching a football game or going to a movie might not be as important to him as it was before he deployed.  They have to understand that the guy may have killed another human being while he was “over there.”  I don’t give a damn how justifiable it was, it takes some getting used to.

Family and friends must deal with the fact that the soldier who returned is not the same person who deployed.  He is different in many ways.  His priorities have changed.  What may have been important a year ago is now irrelevant.  Only time will help to sort it all out.  I could go on for days about these issues.

Q: Is there anything else that you would like people to know or understand about you and your life or the way you view the world?

A: Somewhere along the way, I learned to stop taking myself so seriously.  I have learned that everyone has a story to tell.  Some of us can form sentences better than others can, so we wind up with the podium, however temporarily.  I intend to use it to benefit others while I can.  By others, I mean my brother and sister Veterans, whenever and wherever they served.

Bill’s closing remarks: Thanks for allowing us to probe into your thoughts and your personal life a little.  I know that you are basically a very private person so this was something that took some effort for you.  We look forward to sharing some of your future writings on the MWSA web pages.