As former Sen. Bob Kerrey faces accusations of leading a massacre of innocent Vietnamese villagers, so much hinges on the reliability of individual memories. But psychologists, historians and Vietnam War veterans say even the most vivid battle memories are obscured by time, stress and, sometimes, the guilt of having killed or survived. The passage of three decades dulls and distorts perceptions.
Psychological blocks prevent a stitching together of details.
Some veterans embellish or mentally edit their experiences, and then become so trapped in these distortions that they come to believe their own fabrications. A lot of things you remember clearly just didn't happen that way. And Vietnam, where the Viet Cong enemy could be indistinguishable from ordinary civilians, was a new kind of battleground. Vietnam as a counter-guerrilla war was very different from the world wars and even Korea. You never knew where anything might come from.