Right now Perry admittedly can't be helped. He relies to a great extent on alcohol to dull the pain, shut out the nightmares, stop his constant trips back to Vietnam, to battlefields, to experiences he can't tell, he can't escape. I still do, but when the whiskey wears off, it's still there. The patrols, the killing. It comes back to him at night.
Some nights are worse than others.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and see people crawling in my bed. Jenkins said he has been working since 1985 to qualify Perry for disability benefits from the Veterans Administration. The benefits have been continually denied. They're waiting for vets to give up, to go to jail or to die. First, he went to jail.