This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we return to our American stories.

Up next, a story from Carl Morlantis.

Carl is a recipient of the Navy Cross and the author

of the best-selling books Matterhorn and what it is like to go to war. Two books he wrote after

his service in Vietnam. A service he didn't talk about it until after undertaking the process

of putting pen to paper.

Let's get into the story. Here's Carl talking about what he did immediately after the war.

First of all, I hid. I mean, I avoided talking about it with anybody because I did have the feeling. and I think it's shared by a lot of veterans,

not all veterans, but I did have the feeling that people wouldn't understand.

Particularly the dark side of things, there's a thrill to war.

There's a thrill to crack cocaine too, and there's enormous, enormous costs.

I would never want to pay the cost to get that thrill, but to deny the thrill is false.

How do you tell somebody who's, you know, I don't know, somebody that you're trying to date and she's a college girl and you just come back? I mean, how do you talk about that? You don't, because you're just, you're just, you know, somebody that you're trying to date and she's a college girl and you just, you'd just come back. I mean, how do you talk about that? You don't, because you're just, first of all, back in the

Vietnam era, you would be just, you know, people really were horrible to us, you know, like we were really criminals, you know.

So why would you even want to open yourself up to that? So I mean, I just, you know,

I never told anybody I was in the Marines or in Vietnam. Just didn't. So that was one way of handling it.

It's not right because you've got to talk about it for two reasons. One is for your own mental health.

You've got to get these ghosts out where you can see them.

My friend Joe Bobrow calls it turning ghosts into ancestors.

They're part of you, but if you don't deal with them, they'll haunt you.

I mean, the reason that you're getting bar fights and your marriage breaks up and you start doing too much. Alcohol is because you're being driven by a ghost and you're not conscious of it.

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