Healing as a Place-Based Act: The Veteran's Return to Vietnam

Kearney Ward is a Vietnam War vetern who served from 1968 until 1969 as a Marine AmTracer. In 2017, Ward was interviewed by Sophie Rupp, a former Southern Oral History Program Intern, about his experience as a soldier in Vietnam as well as his experience as a vetern after the war. It is apparent from the interview that Ward has done a lot of difficult personal work to process and make sense of what drove him to serve in Vietnam, the traumatic events he experienced, and his journey with PTSD after the war. In deciding how to use his oral history for this digital exhibit, the quote attached to the SoundCloud link provided a lot of guidance. Ward is a veteran, but he is also so much more than that; he is a mentor, an active member of his community, a loved one, and a dear friend. Ward was able to fill his life with joy and purpose after the war and this digitial exhibit aims to honor that beautiful feat. Using his oral history, I will explore how veterans returning from war reconcile with the harm that they have caused as well as heal from the trauma that they have endured.

Introduction

For the American veteran, war is a disorienting entanglement with space and time. They are forcibly transported to an unknown land filled with unknown people for a brief span of time, and when their miltitary service is complete, they are quickly returned to the United States left with the impossible task of smoothly reacclimating to a place that they once called 'home,' but now suddenly feels strange and hostile. This process of healing after war often feels disjointed and confusing for the American veteran as they are unable to reconcile with the landscape that they were just deeply enmeshed in. While their body is physically situated in the United States, their mind is still stranded in the violence and trauma that they encountered in Vietnam. This is why many veterans, including Kearney Ward, decide to embark on a journey back to Vietnam after their service; this return to the site of war, which can be viewed as a sort of homecoming for the veteran, plays an important role in the messy, complicated act of healing. Whether it is a brief trip or even a complete relocation, many veterans find it imperative in their own personal search for forgiveness and recovery to reconnect with the nation of Vietnam and the physical spaces of memory it holds. 

The Veterans' Scrapbook

Because I was unable to reach my narrator (Kearney Ward),  I assembled this digital scrapbook using the stories and images of American Veterans that I could find online in news articles. The choice to create a scrapbook was intentional and ladden with multiple meanings. On the surface, the Veteran's trip to Vietnam is a vacation; it is a way to re-experience the landscape in a way that is pleasurable and  enjoyable. At the same time, this pilgrimage has an agenda—not inherently nefarious or self-serving—but an agenda nonetheless.  I will discuss this agenda more in a later section. 


Design by Jenna Land

Vietnamese Reception

The Rituals of Remembering

[INCOMPLETE] 

This section requires more research and is what I will mainly be working on in the coming weeks. 

"This past-present relation reveals how events of the past—whether traumatic or not—have left marks and how repercussions still persist in the present" (Aguir, 2014).

  • Returning to these sites collapses time and memory in a way that intimately connects the past and present 
  • "Memory...is brought back to consciousness and articulation by the stimulants of association, including sound, smell, and sight"

Being Stuck and Other Problems iin the Reproduction of Life (Macleish)

  • "The emotions, like the senses, are involuntarily unleashed as one comes up against the outside world provoking the will and demanding a response" 
  • The temporality of healing (push back against this notion of healing; what does it mean for the body to heal from a lasting feeling that is so disembodied?) 
  • Soldiering -> how does this get tied up with someone's purpose and identity? How does the return to Vietnam reconnect them with this purpose or reveal that they have moved on from this purpose?                                                                                                                      

 

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