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When we first came back from Vietnam, all we wanted to do was blend in, because people didn't understand. People called me "baby killer" and people hated the soldiers. It was not a good thing to talk about. There was a lot of rioting. You just didn't talk about it. When you did talk about it, I used to think about it sometimes at night and I would get very depressed and I would actually cry. I had some mementos that I would look at. So you tried not to think about it more than you absolutely had to.

I used to talk to my dad about it. I knew and understood from him, that when you serve your country, especially in a war zone, there are a lot of unpleasant things that happen and you deal with it the best you can. I didn't know that they had a name for it.

Today I have counseling and I take medication. Today I have control. But for a lot of years, I lost jobs. I had uncontrollable anger. I would have flashbacks.

When I got so sick. I was already divorced from my husband. But I went to see him and told him what was going on and asked him if he had it too and he said, "Yes." We sat and talked about it. That was like 18 years after we came back. There were a lot of forces in our marriage that were beyond our control. It was the first time that we had talked about having flashbacks.

+ ADOPTING

Name: Kathy Oatman
In country: Long Binh, February 1969 to May 1972
Rank: E6
Age in Vietnam: 35
Job in Vietnam: Senior administrative sergeant in data processing unit
Current age: 63
Current home: St. Petersburg, Fla.

Most of the groups over there sponsored an orphanage one way or another. And we went into the Tam Mai orphanage. It was a little town. It was right off of Ben Wai Air Force Base.

I got attached to one little boy there and I started paying a lot of attention to him. One day we had a staff picnic at the barracks, and we'd go out and get the kids and keep them there in the barracks with us for the day. When it became time for them to go home, my commanding officer asked me, "What are you going to do about Kevin? If you don't get started you won't be able to get that baby out of country."

So I went to work on getting the paperwork going. I got him out of the orphanage and he stayed with me at the barracks for about a month. The orderly room would babysit while I went to work -- the rest of the time he was in my room. I always laugh about it because when I had him at Long Binh and I would take him out at night, the other [women] in the barracks would say, "Get him out of the night air." And if I didn't take him out, they would say to me, "Take him out. Quit keeping that baby locked up." He had so many mothers it wasn't funny.

Then I decided I didn't want to raise him by himself, so I thought, "I'll have to go find me another one." I come from a big family myself and I just couldn't imagine a kid being raised on its own. I went to World Vision and I found my daughter there, Kimmy. They had a little hospital there. The Vietnamese government would bring their babies with medical problems to World Visions to get help. [But] the orphanages would try to take them back when it came time, [because] the Vietnamese government paid the orphanages by [the number of children they had in their charge].

Well, when I decided on Kim, I asked one of the ladies who worked there, "What are we going to do? When they come to take her back to the orphanage, I'm not going to get her back?" ... So I found a Vietnamese lawyer who could speak English, and I got the paperwork and I let him take over. He got the birth certificate and everything. The military changed the rules real quick after that, changed the policy on single parents adopting kids while you're in the military. Now, you can't do it.

I extended my time by another six months because it took a while to get this done. So my next step was to go to the American Consulate and get them on the visa list. If I had been married, they could have immediately left country as soon as their paperwork was finished. But because I was single, they had to wait for a visa ... I was frustrated.

When I went in with Kevin, to get him on the list, [the vice consul] just fussed over him and she thought it was wonderful that I was doing this. I went back in and said, "I'm taking another one." And she couldn't believe it. But what I found out later is that she put Kimmy on the list at the same time she put Kevin. It was so they could leave the country at the same time.

Kevin is now 30 and Kim is 29. I used to wonder about [whether] either of my kids had any desire to go back [to Vietnam]. In the town we used to live in, there was a little Vietnamese lady who used to run the alterations shop. And Kim went in there the one day, and the lady asked her if she ever wanted to see her real mother. And she pointed out to the car to me, and said, "That's my real mother. That's the only mother I know." So I realized I didn't have anything to worry about.
salon.com | Nov. 11, 1999

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