BLOOD BROTHERS

When Larry (Bear) Hughes came home in 1969 from 23 months of service in Vietnam, he had become one of California’s most decorated Vietnam veterans: 15 Bronze Stars, 5 Silver Stars, a Distinguished Service Cross and 5 Purple Hearts.

But a chest full of service ribbons and a wall full of medals weren’t the only souvenirs brought home to La Habra by the former Golden Gloves state boxing champion.

He also had a classic case of post-traumatic stress syndrome: nightmares of combat, flashbacks, nervousness, crying jags, difficulty being in crowds and a fear of enclosed spaces.

Over the years, Hughes attempted to put Vietnam behind him and get on with his life. He got married, had a son and daughter, got divorced and remarried. He worked briefly as a police officer in Texas and, back home in Orange County, landed a job in store security. He also joined the Purple Heart Assn. and rose to the rank of commander of his Disabled American Veterans chapter and senior vice commander of his Amvets post.

But still there were the lingering emotional problems from his combat days. After the Veterans Administration opened its network of storefront Vet Centers in 1980, Hughes went in several times for counseling. Each time, he quit going after a couple of months. “They didn’t counsel you,” he maintains. “They just went through the motions, but they never did anything.”

So, “after talking with umpteen number of guys who got the same treatment,” Hughes last April decided to create his own support group devoted exclusively to Vietnam-era veterans.

(Ken Flint, team leader of the Vet Center in Anaheim, where Hughes had sought help, said he was unaware of any dissatisfaction members of the Brothers of Vietnam might have with the Vet Center. “I’d certainly be willing to sit down and talk to them if they have problems or complaints,” he said.

(The Vet Center, which offers private and group counseling, has dealt with nearly 4,000 county veterans since 1980. “I think we do a great job,” Flint said. “I’ve run surveys and the surveys indicate we’re doing a good job as well.” Although he said he was not familiar with the Brothers of Vietnam, Flint said that the idea of a support group for Vietnam veterans “sounds good.”)

The Brothers of Vietnam, which conducts a biweekly meeting and rap session in La Habra, now boasts 157 members.

Although primarily a support group for Vietnam veterans and their families, the Brothers of Vietnam has donated food and clothing to needy families, helped raise money for handicapped children, spoken to high school students about the Vietnam War and performed guard duty on the traveling Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The group is also committed to the POW-MIA issue, lobbying city councils throughout Southern California to fly the POW-MIA flag over their city halls as a reminder of the 2,383 U.S. service members still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. To date six cities, including Huntington Beach, La Habra, San Clemente and Westminster, have agreed to fly the flag.

Hughes and three other members of the Brothers of Vietnam--Ed Ramsey of Cypress, Steve Gale of La Habra and Bob Kakuk of Huntington Beach--met recently in Hughes’ Fullerton home to discuss the group.

Hughes, who sports a bushy Fu-Manchu mustache and rides a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, is a drugstore receiving manager. He is currently on disability, having undergone his sixth operation to repair nerve and ligament damage in his arm--a result, he says, of exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam.

As they always do at their meetings or when talking with city officials, the men wore their Brothers of Vietnam caps, T-shirts and jackets for the interview.

Q How are the rap sessions conducted?

Hughes: Everybody says something. The way we do it, since we’re not professionals, is I say, “You guys can talk about anything you want. You can talk about Vietnam, your work, your car, your home--anything--but it stays here. Once it’s said, that’s it.”

Q How often does the subject of Vietnam come up?

Hughes: All the time. Every guy in the club’s got problems (concerning Vietnam).

Gale: There are several people who have brought out things at our meetings that they have kept inside ever since they came back. It makes them feel a lot better.

Hughes: One guy opened up last night on something that he’s held for 20 years, and he cried, cried and cried. But afterward, he felt really good about it. See, we’ve developed a brotherhood--a trust, a camaraderie--just like we had in Vietnam, and so it’s much easier for these guys to open up and talk.

Ramsey: And not just about Vietnam but personal things. I lost a son I buried a couple of weeks ago and these guys have been family to me. They supported me. They’ve made phone calls. They’ve just been there when I needed them. So we not only handle the Vietnam problems, we also handle the personal problems.

Q What led to the formation of this organization?

Hughes: We still get a lot of static from members of the DAV, the VFW and American Legion about being Vietnam vets. They still look at Vietnam like it was a police action: It wasn’t a war like they were in. So we’ve been stung by all these different organizations, and one day I just stood up and said instead of me generating all this energy in these organizations that really don’t care about us, I’m going to generate my energy into something that does.

It (The Brothers of Vietnam) is not political, and there are no doctors or shrinks picking on our heads. It’s Vietnam vets dealing with each other. It’s a support group from our hearts.

Q How did your counseling experience at the Vet Center contribute to your decision to form your own support group?

Hughes: My wife will tell you; she gets very upset: I’d come home more (times) depressed and upset than I would feeling good. They’d always shine everything on: They (counselors) would ignore the situations I talked about. They were too busy answering the phone or talking to other people and not giving my hour of time to me. What I got most depressed about and upset about was I’d lose an hour of my work and I’d just sit there. Everybody in my club has been that route.

And then this (one counselor) lays on all this war stuff to me about Vietnam and the heavy fighting he did and how he’s well now. And then you’d find out he was there at the end of the war and never seen any combat or anything and couldn’t even relate to what you went through. When I’d go in there, he’d say I have a death wish. I wear black (motorcycle) boots and have tattoos. I had these tattoos before Vietnam. I wore these boots because I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was 10 years old. I ride Harleys. It’s a hobby. How can you say it’s a death wish?

Q How long has it been since you visited the Vet Center?

Hughes: Two months almost. I still had that hope I’d get some counseling because I do have problems. I won’t fly. I won’t get in elevators. I have a lot of problems. I see things, like if I’m going down the road and see a (Vietnamese) or something I flash on it (the war) right away. I did 23 months of hard-core fighting over there and saw a lot of ugly (things). I tried dealing with it, but it’s still not right. I don’t like being in enclosed spaces. A doctor I saw back in the ‘70s says it’s not claustrophobia, it’s just that so much danger and stuff had happened to me and traumatic things that my body, if I can’t control it, I panic. Now, I can ride that Harley like a maniac because I’m controlling it. But if I get in an elevator or a ride at Disneyland or an airplane or something, I’m not in control and I get scared. In Nam I was a team leader. I was always in control.

Q Has the Brothers of Vietnam helped you?

Hughes: It has helped me a lot. For the first time I went just me and my wife--on my own to Arizona. All these years after Vietnam, this has been my perimeter--Orange County and L.A. County. I wouldn’t go outside my perimeter. Scared to. Now my next thing I’m doing is--some of the brothers are going to do with me--we’re going to get on that train from here to San Diego. We’re going to do it together because there’s some of the guys who have the same problem. We support each other. We trust in each other.

Ramsey: I didn’t go through the vet counseling. I thought about it one time and I called . . . but their hours were like 8 to 5 and General Telephone (where he worked) didn’t recognize post-traumatic stress, so I couldn’t meet their hours. These guys (the Brothers of Vietnam) are 24 hours a day.

Q Gale said he never joined any veterans organizations and never sought counseling at the Vet Center. What prompted him to join the Brothers of Vietnam?

Gale: I wanted to be with other vets because other people don’t really understand, and it seems like I’m more comfortable with other vets. I can’t maintain relationships. . . . I don’t get along with people that much. I get angry, and sometimes I get sad and weepy. I didn’t understand why I felt that way. I heard about post-traumatic stress, but I did not think I had it. But I started coming to these meetings and (discovered) there’s other people that feel the way I do, and I started to understand better.

Kakuk: The main thing is you can’t talk to (other) people (about Vietnam). You can’t talk to your family, you can’t talk to your friends who haven’t been there.

Hughes: My wife backs me in everything I do, but she still fights me on it. She says, “Why do you watch the (Vietnam War) movies? Why do you always do this?” And I said, “I’m trying to find out an answer: Why? Why? And I still don’t know anything. Why did we fight? Why did we lose our guys? Why do we still have guys over there as prisoners? Why did we allow this to happen? Why do we let the (Vietnamese) in town here and give them special treatment and they (the government) shine us on. What did we do wrong for the government to turn against us? . . . Why?”

Q Do you believe your support group is more effective than the Vet Center?

Hughes: We can prove it. I mean we’ve had guys kick the drugs and the alcohol. We’ve got one guy that’s given up hard drinking and turned his life around. His wife comes crying to us, thanking us and everything. He’s got himself back to being human again.

Q In terms of support, all you can really offer members is advice.

Hughes: From ourselves, yeah. We share. Like last night (one member) has held this thing in for 20 years. He’s been coming to our meetings since we started. That’s the first time he really broke down and cried about what he did (in Vietnam). He accidentally killed a guy--one of our guys. It wasn’t his fault. . . . He says he sees that face every day. It really tore him apart. Well, last night, he just broke down and cried. He said he never brought that up--only once to his wife. Other than that he never talked about it. Well, we’re not professionals, we’re not doctors, so we try to take everything very softly. We do it from our hearts.

Kakuk: When somebody says something like that you don’t even really need feedback. What can we say to somebody like that except, “It wasn’t your fault.”

Hughes: We had a couple of brothers go over and stand beside him and hold him. I said to him, “You didn’t do it on purpose, buddy. It was an accident. We were kids then. You did not do it on purpose. Poor communications. That was a very confusing war. So hold your head up. The man’s upstairs now having a good time now. He’s in good hands. You did not kill him on purpose.” That’s all that we could offer him. You try to show sympathy. And he appreciated it. He said he felt much better.

Q Describe the main function of the Brothers of Vietnam.

Hughes: Support. It’s a support group, and we involve the families. We had a wife last night break down, and she said her piece for the first time to her husband in 11 years. And she wasn’t hateful or being sarcastic. She just said her piece, and she started crying. It brought them right together, and it kind of opened his eyes and made him understand what he was doing was wrong. We have a very positive thing going. Other than that, we try to stress to the guys there’s more to life than Vietnam. We gotta push forward. I guess Vietnam’s our issue. Vietnam’s in our bodies. Vietnam’s in our heads. We gotta learn to keep that and work with it, but we gotta keep going forward. And we have.

Kakuk: I found with this club, you can be yourself, you don’t have to put on any airs. If you want to cry, cry. If you want to laugh, laugh. If you want to curse, curse. I get a little angry sometimes, and I come off the wall.

Hughes: That’s what it’s all about.

Kakuk: We rarely even talk about Vietnam. I think it’s mainly because maybe we don’t have to talk about it. We know that somebody else is there that’s been through it. Last night we got pretty heavy into it, and I think it started mainly on my part out of anger that got me to open up. I’ve gotten really gung-ho on the (POW-MIA issue).

Hughes: You’d be surprised. No one really cares about the POW.

Kakuk: It’s not so much people don’t care, people don’t know. I’m a Vietnam vet, and I didn’t know there was any kind of POW-MIA organization until I went to a club meeting.

Hughes: We’re not a political group, but we’re going to fight for the POW-MIA issue and (Vietnam veterans’) rights no matter what.

Q What was it like when you got to Vietnam in 1967?

Hughes: When I got to Vietnam, I became a team leader and it was scary. When I first got there I was a hard-core, lean, green fighting machine. But after awhile I started realizing, Whoa, this is real. Guys were dying. I mean they were trying to kill me. We had eight five-man teams, so we were always on the move. I got real hard. The whole unit did.

Q What was it like when you got home?

Hughes: When I came home I was a scared kid. I was 20 years old. My mom and dad didn’t even recognize me. I had malaria, dysentery. . . . I was scared to death. I had a hard time dealing with crowds. They found me sleeping on the floor, crawling around . . . it was kind of rough for a while and then I became Macho Man, you know. One day I woke up and realized I’ve got a problem, I’ve got to get off this macho (attitude) and face facts that I’ve got problems. All the traumatic, gory things I saw were now eating on me. I killed a lot of people there. One of my Bronze Stars I got was for over 300 known personal kills. But I can say without feeling bad, I never, I don’t think, killed an innocent person. Everybody I fought had a weapon. So I can feel good about that. I feel bad that I killed these guys because they believed in what they were fighting for like we did. I never knew them and here I took their lives. That ate on me. I wasted a little kid that was trying to do a thing to us. That ate on me. A lot of things ate on me for a long time.

Q Is Vietnam still eating at you?

Hughes: No. I’ve realized I was sent over there to do a job. I tried to do it to the best of my ability. I was just a kid. Some things I see or smell I flash back on it. Like if I see a little Vietnamese kid that bothers me because it makes me think back. But I saw a lot of good in Vietnam too. I delivered a baby there. I had a lot of good times there, too. They weren’t all bad.

Q Do you think at some point, members of the Brothers of Vietnam will no longer have to dredge up memories of Vietnam, good or bad?

Hughes: My big dream is that people out there see the Vietnam vet as a human, as an American kid who did a job. Not a bunch of drug addicts. Not a bunch of alcoholics. Not a bunch of sadistic animals. Not a bunch of losers but as humans. We signed a contract to go over and do the fighting. They (Vietnam veterans) just want to be recognized that they’re human.

Kakuk: We were no different than any other war. It’s just that we got more publicity.

Hughes: It’s really sad and it still goes on today. This (Brothers of Vietnam) hat got knocked off my head by some man awhile back. He said, “I get sick and tired of hearing about you Vietnam vets.” And he just started in on me, and my wife told him, “Sir, you gotta leave while you can.” I said, “Friend, let me tell you something. Whatever you say don’t mean nothing because you’re a sick individual. You don’t know nothing about me or the Vietnam vet, so out of respect I’m going to walk away, but the next time I see you, you might get hurt.” So we take a lot of static still today.