Charlie Company’s Journey Home: The Forgotten Impact on the Wives of Vietnam Veterans

The sound of a breaking twig against a windowpane or a whiff of smoke from a kitchen frying pan sends him reeling back into the gloom of a fire-storm where bullets and shrapnel tear through the bodies of the men he left behind years ago. They live again in his nightmares, only to die over and over, night after night. He wakes up with a start, knife in one hand, pistol in the other, panting with sweat leaking from his face to the sheets. For a minute she is not sure if he even sees her for who she is, his wife, or if he only sees the enemy charging at him with bayonets.

In 1990, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study documented more than 800,000 U.S. veterans from Vietnam with some level of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Up until the mid-1980s, the Government denied that anything was wrong and had no diagnosis for their problems.

As a follow up to his best seller, The Boys of ’67, Weist revisits the wives of the men of Charlie Company. This is their story. Complete with color photos, letters, journal and diary entries, even poems. Wiest peels away the outer crust to reveal the damage done on the inside. None of the men who left returned as they were. Wiest follows them, the couples, the hardships, and the break-ups after they came back with their nightmares.

Written with such compelling narratives, you immerse instantly into one family after another. Unlike tales of war that end with a peace treaty, these battles continue decades later with haunting re-occurrence. The victories are for those that overcome. You will need plenty of tissue before turning the last page.