No More Tears for the Dead!
Publisher: PublishAmerica
Published: April 3, 2006
Place of publication: USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 527
ISBN-13: 9781413778878
Subjects: Biography: general; General; Biography & Autobiography; Biography / Autobiography; Biography/Autobiography; Biography & Autobiography / General
Description: Review Written By Bernie Weisz,  Vietnam War Historian, Pembroke Pines, Florda May 25, 2011 Contact: BernWei1@aol.com
Title of Review: I Am A Vietnam Vet Outcast; Trying To Fit Into A World That Just Doesn't Care If I Do Or Not!
Jim Albrigtsen, the author of this scathing denunciation of the treatment afforded to Vietnam Veterans upon their return, spins a 527 page outrageous tale that will bring you to places rarely visited by most. The reader goes with Albrigtson from Vietnam's adrenalin rush to a monotonous stand down non-combat unit, to various women, marriages, divorces, using heroin and smoking angel dust, sniffing gigantic amounts of cocaine, to riding with outlaw motorcycle gangs and rotting in a jail cell. For good measure, Albrigtsen throws in what he calls "the jazz," i.e. sleeping with 80 women in ten months, not wanting to leave jail because he is embarrassed at his haircut, strippers and strip joints, battles with VA doctors, crooked cops, dealing coke, guns, etc. However, this is all in an attempt to cover the wound of being rejected by every single person he meets upon his return from Vietnam. This long list includes former girlfriends, his parents, potential employers, army personnel that had never been to Vietnam, VA doctors, etc. Yes, the book is long, and no, Albrigtsen is not a professional writer, so despite the typos and the length, there  is not a dull page in this book. Albrigtsen also writes exactly like he is talking to you, many times challenging the reader by asking outright: "I know what you are thinking, but let me explain further." The book's dedication reads: "This book is dedicated to a certain few that did make a difference in my life and to all the living members of the 187th Assault Helicopter Company and especially the 46 men who made the ultimate sacrifice, along with all the men and women who served their time in hell." Albrigtsen's respect and ironclad admiration for those he served with is displayed here. However, the author's disrespect and animosity towards the American public that shunned him upon coming home, which is the motif of this book, can be found right on the 187th Assault Helicopter Company's web site dedication, asserting: "The American fighting force left Vietnam in 1972. We did not leave because we were loosing in Vietnam by any stretch of the imagination. If we lost anything it was the support of the United States Government that sent us over there and the United States civilians who sat securely at home in a "Free Country" cursing the American fighting force. Cursing the very people that would be the first to die to protect their freedom and their right to act like morons. To all of you who hid in colleges and ran to Canada, you will never understand what it means to be a winner in the defense of our country, our freedoms, our way of life. You will never know what true honor and courage is or understand why we offered our lives for what we believe in." 

The prospective reader will wonder before reading this book why Albrigtsen feels the American public is his enemy, and the reason why he would never fight for this country again, regardless of the cause. Whether you agree or disagree with him, by the last page of this book, besides all the violence, jails, outlaw motorcycle gangs, drugs and promiscuity, all used to distract and dull his pain, you will have some compassion and empathy for Jim Albrigtsen's plight and comprehend why he feels as such. If you are looking for a war story, forget it! Jim returned from Vietnam in 1969, and the first thing he noticed was that no one wanted to talk or ask him about it. In that regard, Albrigtsen both explains and asks the reader: "No one wanted to hear about the pain and anguish of seeing friends torn apart by pieces of hot jagged metal flying through the air. Or how one minute you could be talking to someone and the next second a flash of light and an explosion, such as smoke and clear dust, you find a few body parts. Nothing else, a living breathing person a few minutes ago and in seconds gone forever. Maybe you'd find a boot with a foot still in it or a smoldering body part that you can't tell what part of a person it is, only that you know it belonged to your friend. Or, seeing someone shot in the head and they still have the same expression on their face as they did in the middle of a sentence they were in. So now, tell me how you tell someone those things." Treated like a pariah, Albrigtsen saw the indifference, ingratitude, as well as the occasional morbid curiosity seeker. He commented: "Some people asked me out of morbid curiosity, questions that sounded as if they were pertaining to me, but there was no real concern for me or the truth. I learned early who those types of people were and when if asked anything about Vietnam, all I would say was, "It was bad," and leave it at that. I was soon learning fast who really wanted to know the truth and who didn't. I could see I was leaving myself open to other's opinions then, like how they would win the war or how America didn't belong in Vietnam. We had too many "sofa soldiers." 

This total lack of America's regard and disrespect for our soldiers plight has led to Albrigtsen's silence about the war that is shown in his book. The first thing Albrigtsen learned upon returning from his tour in Vietnam was who his real friends were. Explaining, Albrigtsen wrote: "The one thing from Vietnam that I did learn was that when young men go to war they build a bond that can be stronger than blood. This is what I called "brothers of blood!" These men I fought and cried with and laughed over things that would turn most people's stomachs, they were my family. Albrigtsen lamented that if he went to a restaurant or stood in line, people gave the "baby killer" a wide birth. People were intimidated and didn't want to talk or get near him, thinking he was crazy. Albrigtsen asserted: "I have heard people say, "watch out for him, he just came back from Vietnam!" or "Since he came back from the war, he isn't right in the head," or the best one, "He wasn't like that before he left, was he?" In regard to why the author refused to tell "war stories" in this book, Albrihtsen explains that when it comes to the subject of the plight of Vietnam Vets and  cliches such as "time heals all wounds" and "closure," he retorts: "If after 40 years the healing hasn't happened, then what is going to make it start now? Some wounds heal, but those to the mind are more often not healed." If anything bothered Albrigtsen, it was his guilt after he came back to the world, finishing his tour as a door gunner of a Huey. Albrigtsen took part in some of the most heaviest fighting of the war, participating in countless combat assaults near Tay Ninh and what was considered the "Parrot's Beak of South Vietnam. "Survivors guilt" is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives himself to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not. It may be found among survivors of combat, natural disasters, epidemics, among the friends and family of those who have committed suicide, like those that survived the Holocaust, or the September, 2001 World Trade Center attack. Sufferers sometimes blame themselves for the deaths of others, including those who died while rescuing the survivor or whom the survivor tried unsuccessfully to save. 

The author, upon reaching his DEROS, was placed in a non-combat unit in Maryland. Aside from withdrawing from the ever present adrenalin of Vietnam, which he found impossible to replace, he was told by his superiors that he was stricken with PTSD from combat, and was not allowed to return to Vietnam. Upon learning this, Albrigtsen wrote: "I couldn't understand at first why leaving my brothers behind was tearing my insides apart. Here I was safe from rocket attacks, being shot at, getting sick from jungle diseases, and not seeing my friends die, but tortured by this guilt of being glad to have made it back. I really think this was the worst feeling for one to have to admit that you are thankful it was him that got shot and not you, which adds more guilt on top of what is already going inside. "How can you dare be so selfish?" you ask yourself. But you do and so the cycle is never broken , you go back and forth with this guilt and nothing can make the pain go away." Give credit to Albrigtsen for trying. Riding at 100 MPH on his motorcycle on icy January roads, bedding countless women, bouncing and fighting at strip bars, displaying his colors with outlaw motorcycle gangs, using angel dust, cocaine, heroin, then VA Hospital prescribed anti depressants, the pain never went away. Aside from the survivor guilt, Albrigtsen also suffers from Agent Orange poisoning, explaining he had been sprayed with the deadly Dioxin in Vietnam. No one would listen, however. Desperate to get back to combat, the author went to Washington to talk to a legislator as well as agreed to convert to Judaism and join the Israeli military, all for naught. This book also explains Albrigtsen's biggest demon, flashbacks, which he interprets as such: " I can be sitting in a room reading or even talking to someone, and then with no warning I am in Vietnam. It is so real, I can taste it and smell the burning residue of gun powder, the sensations of explosions all around me and the sights and other sounds are as real as anything I had been through before. Then, as fast and as furious as it came, it is gone. By that time I am totally drained and exhausted and scared. It becomes harder each time to distinguish what is real and what isn't." 

However, the main theme of "No More Tears For the Dead" is how after Jim came back from Vietnam, his world was neither recognizable nor welcoming. Although it might seem unpatriotic to make the statement that he would rather die than fight for the U.S. again, consider Albrigtsen's perceptions: "I knew I was different when I came back from the 'Nam. I guess I should have taken the hint when most of my friends wanted nothing to do with me. I was still the same teenager as before I went to Vietnam, or at least that was what I was telling myself. Yet, it was as if I had some communicable disease and everyone was afraid of catching it. I was really starting to see that I didn't fit in or belong back here. I was learning that most Americans just wanted to go about their business and the hell with the past and the government at the time wasn't any better. Government officials made all kinds of speeches and promises and pretended to care about those of us that returned. But, they also looked at those of us that fought and came back as if we were lepers. Sure they made all kinds of promises about our health and welfare and about returning back to our families and friends, or getting jobs and living with the American dream. Truth is, it was all a ploy and when the camera lights went dim, so did the promises and everything else. The way the country treated 'Nam vets was, to say the least, that we should go somewhere and die. We represented an ugly truth and it was becoming an ugly truth that no one wanted to admit. Because of this, many in America treated returning soldiers as if we started the war and were the cause for all that was wrong." This is not empty dialogue, as Albrigtsen take the reader on job interviews, whereupon as soon as the potential employer found out he had been in Vietnam the position became mysteriously filled, or how he was only offered security jobs, as if he was only good for violence, enforcing security. You will also go with Albrigtsen to the VA, where foreign doctors look at their watch as Albrigtsen talks uselessly to them about his flashback problems and his fevers, inexplicable rashes and boils on his body. When you complete this book, you really have to ask yourself how you would feel if you were treated this way. And what about the returning soldier that was told to fly military standby in civilian clothes so that they wouldn't be spit on, pelted with feces and urine upon their arrival stateside from their tour? Would you still have confidence in this country? This book raises many disturbing questions and issues rarely discussed in open forum when the subject of Vietnam comes up. 

Jim Albrigtsen's memoir is aimed at the majority of Americans who neither wanted to talk or think about their nation's longest and most debilitating war, the only war the U.S. ever lost. Albrigtsen espouses his belief that the Vietnam veteran took the blame for the humiliating defeat imposed on the U.S. by a "fourth-rate power" which resulted in a loss of pride and self-confidence in a people that like to think of the U.S. as invincible. And what about today's economic crisis? There was an estimated $167 billion spent on the war. President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision to finance a major war and "The Great Society" simultaneously, without a significant increase in taxation, launched a runaway double-digit inflation and mounting federal debt that ravaged the American economy and eroded living standards from the late 1960's into the 1990's. Who do you think unfairly shoulders a portion of that malfeasance? Vietnam continues to creep into America's conscience today. Before America endeavored to go into Panama, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, the Vietnam remembrance of the "Domino Theory," and the aftermath of the Tonkin Gulf Incident ensure that America has to be careful that truth is never the first casualty. Because of Vietnam, the U.S. should ideally use military force only as a last resort and only where the national interest is clearly involved. Other lessons from Vietnam are to engage in armed conflict when only when there is strong public support and only in the likelihood of a relatively quick, inexpensive victory. In the final analysis, this book would have never been written if Jim Albrigtsen came home from the war prior to 1968. History teaches us that after the My Lai incident and the Tet offensive, anti-veteran sentiment rose throughout the country. Prior to those two events returning soldiers were subject to different experiences. In all the memoirs I had reviewed, after 1968 the negative experience of the returning Vietnam Veteran is unanimous. Because of the media's interpretation of the Tet Offensive (which in reality was a clear cut military victory) the U.S. was destined to lose the war in Vietnam, and nobody wanted to believe it. The country's ego had been dealt a blow that would prove to be difficult to overcome, and the war protesters and politicians made sure there was a scapegoat, which would prove to be Vietnam Veterans. 

Things would get worse for Jim Albrigtsen and his fellow Vietnam Veterans. Two decades after the war ended, the media bombarded America with visions of the Vietnam Veteran as exactly what Albrigtsen wrote about. Disturbing images of a drug induced, crazed or excessively violent, unpredictable Vietnam Veteran were shown on films such as "Born on The Fourth of July, Hamburger Hill, The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now." Prior to My Lai and the Tet Offensive, the media offered John Wayne pro military films such as the W.W. II "The Longest Day" or even the patriotic "The Green Berets." All of these films added to it becoming taboo for the Vietnam Vet to discuss what went on there. While I will not give away Jim Albrigtsen's incredible story in this book, he did have some final thoughts on being cheated by the VA, spit on by peace protesters, denied jobs and treated as if he was a criminal for defending America. In finishing this book, one can empathize with why Jim asserts the following: "As for myself, I will not display the flag, the true meaning of it has been being lied to, spit on, cursed and trampled on and not by a foreign power, but by many of this very country. They have never shed a tear for those that gave all they had for this flag and I truly doubt they ever will for those who are dying now for it. When I started on this story, I was told by some that I had to watch what I said or that I shouldn't editorialize in it or tell you, the American people what I think of many of you in fear you won't read this book. Ever since I came back from Vietnam, the vast majority of people and government have made my life a living hell. You took all your anger out not at the enemy or even our government. No, you took your wrath out on those that did the fighting in Vietnam. You protested against us, you spit on us when we came back. You mocked, labeled and discriminated against us and told us you didn't care or even want us. Yet. you seemed to forget that we were Americans and we answered the call to duty, whether right or wrong. The majority of young men and women that fought in Vietnam volunteered and the heroics of those that answered the call cannot be slighted." 

And what about today, 2011, where a softening of attitudes has occurred and now Vietnam Veterans are looked at in a more dignified, heroic light. Albrigtsen feels that it's too late, the damage is done, and the insult is unpardonable. As such, he wrote: "Today, there are some Americans that when or if they know you're a 'Nam vet, they will say, "Welcome Home." Some even say, "thanks for your service." However, this is 40 years after and where were you in 1969? There have been parades held and Vietnam Veterans march in them, but for myself and many other veterans, parades just don't get it." Albrigtsen feels that recognition for the Vietnam Vet today is all because of collective American guilt over unjustifiable and shameless mistreatment of those patriots that answered the call to arms. His sentiment is: "It is far too late. You ignored our plea for help when we fought the government and the chemical companies and you told us that Agent Orange and the other herbicides were safe. You allow those in power to cut our medical care and benefits, but you refuse to see that when they do this to those who fought for all of these, they in turn see it as a starting block and then take it from you. You practically deleted a war that raged on for 10 years right out of nearly all high school history books and you still give praise to Hanoi Jane for her acts of treason and others that led to protests." Jim Albrigtsen has a point there, and this is a small sample of what he presents as clear and lucid arguments of disgraceful actions toward those that answered what U.S. President John F. Kennedy asked of Americans in his only inaugural address in 1961, immediately after taking the presidential oath of office. The Presidents' impassioned plea  was "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" and "Let the word go forth.....that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." What happened when this "new generation" came back from Vietnam will go down in the annals of history as one of the most ignominious and reprehensible periods of American history. This book is an absolute must read for any Vietnam Vet or anyone interested in this war.