VA NY Harbor Healthcare System

Vietnam Veteran Kerry Barnes

Vietnam Veteran Kerry Barnes spent 23 years in the military, serving in both the Marine Corps and later, the Air Force. In looking back to Vietnam, Barnes points to trust in fellow soldiers as a key to survival while in combat. The issue of establishing trust continues to be a challenge in establishing confidence in caregivers, following separation and return to civilian life.

As Barnes, who is Black, describes it, there was extensive prejudice between Whites and Blacks when he served in Vietnam, in situations where trusting fellow troops could mean survival. “Whites stuck together. Blacks stuck together. You had to have confidence in each other or it could be a trip to the body bag. It was bad enough to be fighting and then have to worry about the guys you were with. You could be in a fire fight and then certain people would take off and you were left by yourself,” says Barnes, whose most lingering memory of Vietnam was of the coffins lined up to be transported back to the United States. “I always think about the 1000 mothers,” says Barnes.

If you train a soldier to be a monster and a robot, you have to disarm the bomb (after the fight) instead of just letting him back in civilian life. Barnes is deeply concerned about the Veterans of recent wars who have suffered TBI and may not even recognize that they have symptoms. Barnes did not understand his own fury among other PTSD symptoms following the war in Vietnam. On his return from Southeast Asia, he headed North from the Marine Corps base, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, making a rest stop with fellow Veterans. Asking directions to the Men’s Room, a gas station attendant directed him, ”out back to the place for colored,” he recalls.“ I had just fought for him, for the country, and he was telling me to go out back.” Enraged, Barnes had to be pacified by his fellow Veterans, and they took off to the highway before the matter came to blows. Many people don’t understand. Even now, they see the physical body which heals, not the mental problems that may not. His own father, a WW II Army Veteran, never really recovered from Shell Shock.

Undiagnosed and untreated, PTSD initially changed the course of Barnes’ life after Vietnam. He had joined the military feeling that if he survived, he would get an education through the GI Bill. Once enrolled in college in Brooklyn however, he was confronted by another student who asked him, “How does it feel to kill mothers and children?” Barnes exploded and found himself expelled, a disciplinary action he feels was tinged with racism and certainly a lack of understanding for him as a Veteran. Barnes came to acknowledge and manage his PTSD symptoms later in life, when he found a VA psychiatrist he trusted to help him. This support continued over a period of 15 years.

After separation from the Air Force, Barnes worked as a contractor for the United Nations for three years and for the past decade, in Transport for Engineering. Driving a shuttle with patients and staff between campuses, Barnes is well known for his positive outlook and tough love attitude toward fellow Veterans. His strong, supportive family has helped him through a long and difficult adjustment following his three military tours. Today he focuses on the positives of family life and working in the service of fellow Veterans.“Everyone has to take responsibility and realize that these servicemen who come back have scars that are unseen. We have to be a little more sensitive about their pain and suffering which is the nature of PTSD,” says Barnes. “The ongoing challenge for combat Veterans,” he adds, “Is that you learn to deal with the fact that you are part of the cause of someone else not going home.”