Program at Hurricane Island Outward Bound School Helps Heal Psychological Scars of War : Troubled Vietnam Veterans Learn to Climb Over Mountain of Problems

Nearly two decades after he was jailed on a murder charge while commanding the Green Berets in Vietnam, Bob Rheault is helping fellow veterans deal with the psychological scars of that long and divisive war.

The retired Army colonel is an instructor and program director for the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School. Financed by private contributions, the six-day program offers “action-oriented group therapy” designed to build trust, confidence and self-esteem.

Patients are put through a treetop obstacle course constructed of ropes and logs. They are taught to scale sheer rock walls, including a climb up a 4,800-foot peak in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

To Rheault, it is the best hope for America’s forgotten warriors, caught in a web of anger, distrust and isolation often characterized by drug and alcohol abuse, physical deterioration, family breakups and lack of education and job skills.

Prods the VA

A maverick during his Army career, he is again cast in that role as he prods the Veterans Administration to throw its support behind Outward Bound’s therapeutic program for victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a mental condition marked by combat-induced flashbacks, feelings of isolation and depression, violent outbursts and low self-esteem.

“I’ve spent 26 years in the Army and I’ve spent 18 years with Outward Bound, and what I’m doing now is a way to bring those two pretty powerful threads of my life together in kind of a healing way,” he said.

“The fact that I’ve wound up working with Vietnam veterans is just a way of applying what I have learned in Outward Bound and what I had done in the service.”

Outward Bound, developed during World War II to instill self-confidence, team spirit and the will to survive in British merchant seamen, operates outdoor adventure programs throughout the United States. In recent years, it has offered specialized courses for blind and deaf people, cancer patients, rape victims, delinquent youth and other groups likely to benefit from experiences in which they are faced with difficult challenges that they learn to confront.

First of its Kind

Rheault, who developed the veterans’ course in conjunction with the post-traumatic stress unit in Northampton, Mass., recently oversaw a first-of-its-kind program on Hurricane Island off Rockland for nurses who served in Vietnam.

At 63, his blond hair now turned white, the Massachusetts native and West Point graduate is as fit and trim as he was in 1969 when his face appeared on the cover of Life magazine, the central figure in one of the war’s most bizarre episodes.

Rheault acknowledged the “personal notoriety” that stems from the controversial Green Beret murder case but said he would “just as soon let that incident fade away”--not out of any shame about his actions but because he thinks it gives the Army a black eye.

Rheault was one of half a dozen Special Forces officers jailed in 1969 on charges of drugging and killing a South Vietnamese civilian who was an alleged double agent. He was held for 70 days, 40 of them in solitary confinement, before the Army abruptly dropped the charges, citing the CIA’s refusal to permit testimony.

His arrest came during his second tour of duty in Vietnam and while he served as commander of the 3,000 U.S. Green Berets and 45,000 native troops stationed in Special Forces outposts across Vietnam. He was charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy, although the legal specifications said he did not participate in the actual slaying.

Outgrowth of Friction

To Rheault and the Green Berets, the charges were an outgrowth of friction between the conventionally trained Army high command in Saigon and an elite unit schooled in counterinsurgency and guerrilla warfare.

“Essentially, I just went to bat for my troops, that’s all,” he said. “I ran a bluff, saying, ‘You turn them loose or lock me up.’ ”

After the charges were dropped, Rheault opted to retire rather than accept any of the “cushy jobs” offered to him by the Pentagon. He began a book about the Special Forces, set it aside and joined Outward Bound in 1971.

Since the post-traumatic stress program began in 1983, Rheault has organized more than three dozen courses involving about 300 patients from VA hospitals in Northampton, Tacoma, Wash., and Augusta, Ga., three of the 16 centers with post-traumatic stress units.

Thus far, however, the government has refused to commit its own resources, forcing Rheault to raise $40,000 to $50,000 a year from veterans’ organizations, foundations, corporations and individual donors.

Hopes for VA Help

He has appeared before Congress and regularly speaks at post-traumatic stress conferences, hopeful that the VA will eventually embrace the program as an effective means of helping the war’s psychological casualties, most of whom are now in their early 40s.

“They’re on a knife edge,” Rheault said. “If they fall off on one side, they’ll be OK. If they fall off on the other side, they’ll be alcoholics, bums, suicides, jailbirds or long-term mental patients--at a tremendous cost to society.”

The Outward Bound course is demanding, he said, but those who complete it are more likely to progress than those who remain institutionalized throughout their treatment.

While there is no scientific data on the effectiveness of the program, the director of psychiatry at the VA Medical Center in Northampton said that participation in Outward Bound has been shown to make patients more amenable to other aspects of the treatment process.

Post-traumatic stress patients are distrustful, aloof and unable to interact with others, Dr. William Boutelle explained, citing a symptom known as “emotional numbing.”

“It’s as if there is Novocain in their emotions,” he said.

Re-Create Combat Conditions

The courses, Boutelle said, re-create the camaraderie and mutual dependence shared by soldiers during combat, encouraging the veterans to open up to each other as they sit around a campfire and share their successes and failures during the climb.

Rheault blames institutionalized bureaucracy within the VA for the slow pace at which the program is being accepted.

“If, during all of this time, I had merely been butting my head against the brick wall of the VA, I would have given up long ago,” he said. “But while we were waiting for the glacier to move, we have helped vets.”

At VA headquarters in Washington, a spokeswoman said a study is under way among patients at the Tacoma and Augusta centers to gauge the effectiveness of patient participation in Outward Bound.

“The veterans who are involved in the program have very positive feelings about it, but no one has done a study to determine the therapeutic effect of it, and that is what they are doing right now,” said the spokeswoman, Donna St. John.

Climate of Acceptance

Positive changes in America’s attitude toward Vietnam veterans, many of whom were greeted with hostility or indifference when they returned home, have created a climate of greater acceptance and a willingness to deal with such lingering problems as post-traumatic stress, according to Rheault.

The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, he said, was part of a symbolic change in which “the people were able to separate the war from the warrior.”

“On balance, it is a more accepting society, and the Vietnam vets now dare say they were there, and that’s OK,” he said.

Rheault’s belief in the war waned as the U.S. military buildup peaked during the late 1960s, pushing counterinsurgency efforts to the background and de-emphasizing the social, economic, political and psychological aspects of the struggle.

The turning point came when American troops shifted from an advisory role and became the chief defenders of the Saigon regime, he said.

“Interestingly, in 1964-65 nobody called Vietnamese ‘gooks.’ But by 1968, everybody did,” he said.

Metaphor of the Mountain

To Rheault, the rigorous climb up the mountain while shouldering heavy packs typifies the trail the veterans must take if they are to overcome their deep-seated problems.

The climb is deliberately evocative of the Vietnam experience, placing squad-size groups of veterans in an unfamiliar wilderness environment where they help and encourage each other to reach the top.

“I maintain that the war was evil, stupid and immoral, but their experience as human beings--experiences of courage, self-sacrifice and brotherhood--that was all valid stuff,” Rheault said.