Transcript
Man is not meant to be alone
and I was extremely lonely.
I never forgave myself
for a lot of the things
that I thought
I'd done over there.
I want to share some thoughts
with somebody
about how I feel,
but I can't trust anybody,
and I don't know
anyone that will
honestly listen to me.
I am Michael Hardiman,
I served in the Vietnam War.
Well, as a child,
I grew up in a
very religious household.
I did not believe in killing.
I didn't train in infantry,
but they put a grenade launcher
in my hand
and a 45 across my chest
and told me that
I was going out on a convoy.
I seen hunger and famine.
I seen women holding their dead
children on the side of the road
It was horrible.
You kind of
get numb to everything.
You walk around
kind of mindlessly like a robot,
start losing faith,
because how could my God
allow this to happen?
I was a technician.
My specialty was demolition
and I had a crew
that I was very, very close to,
Brown and Frenchy and Dave.
One time, we got a new supply in
of blasting caps
and grenade fuzes.
On an ammunition site in Vietnam,
there are no trees,
and that sun is beaming down
and if it set off
a grenade fuze,
everything is gonna go up.
So I sent Frenchy and Brown
down there to clean it up.
The bay went up.
When I got there, man,
all I seen was pieces of bodies,
man, wasn’t nothing I could do.
It was too late.
The only thing I could do
is get angry.
When I got home, I was bitter,
I didn't like myself very much.
I can see, because I'm real good
at standing on the outside
looking at that other fella,
and I didn't like him at all.
How can he be
worthy of anything?
I was morally, spiritually, bankrupt.
I had to get to a point
where I wanted
to do something about it.
I've been hearing
about treatment
for veterans
and treatment for alcoholics,
so I wanted to know
if there was some treatment
for somebody who was insane
as much as I was.
So, we start getting into
the meat of the problem,
and that group met twice a week
for five years, but,
I had not learned how to
handle that angry person
that was inside
that lash out sometimes.
A chaplain came to me
and said, you know,
I got a group going on
with a really good counselor.
Talking about moral injury,
and they said moral injury
is that you feel morally
that you did something wrong.
So, let's take a look
at how you got that way,
how you lost
sight of your religion and
your purpose in life.
Being in the moral injury group,
I was listening to
to other Vets talk.
It freed me up to be
someone other than the person
that I was looking at.
I got to hear myself through
somebody else's story.
It’s good to have somebody there
to kind of hold your hand
and guide you through it.
I learned
that there were circumstances
and situations
that I didn't have a choice.
I know why I did them.
I can accept that,
and if I can accept that then
I can go ahead on and be Michael,
and I like being Michael.
Loneliness did go away,
and was replaced with friendship.
Friends, kindness,
hugs, love, kisses,
Man, I got the whole gambit.
Isn't that beautiful?