Kurt Turner did not open up about his experience in the Vietnam War until 30 years after his service. Now he dedicates his time to helping first responders share their own harrowing experiences on the job.
As the Belmont County Emergency Services Critical Incident Stress Management Team Coordinator, Turner ensures that local first responders do not make the same mistake he did and leave their trauma unspoken.
The path that led the 76-year-old to his current volunteer work with Belmont County EMA began when he enlisted at 17. The Bellaire native decided to enlist before he turned 18 so he could choose which military branch he served in.
“When I got my second pick of attending military school for psychiatry, that was a dream fulfilled for me,” Turner described. “I always wanted to be a hospital corpsman because I wanted to help rather than kill people, which that role allowed me to do. As bad as things got for me during the Vietnam War, I would do it all over again.”
Turner served as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman during the height of the Vietnam War, with much of his service spent in the psychiatric ward on a Navy hospital boat. In addition to performing psychological evaluations on soldiers in the ward, Turner also performed triage work on the ship.
Though he finished his service more than 50 years ago, Turner still gets choked up when recalling moments from his triage work. Some of these emotional moments stem from the fact that Turner would often be the last person soldiers saw before they died.
One memory from his triage work that remains fresh in Turner’s mind is when an officer told him to take a soldier to the coroner – an order that meant the soldier had no chance of survival. As he stayed with the dying soldier, the man began to make an “odd sound” despite being heavily sedated that Turner could not determine the meaning of.
“I started trying to figure out what he was asking for, maybe asking for his family or something like that,” Turner recounted. “Finally, I asked if he would like to pray, and he squeezed my finger, so I prayed with him until he died.”
In another enduring memory, an officer ordered him to stop removing the bandage from the leg of a wounded Marine. Another officer then informed him a grenade had been planted under the last layer of bandage.
As soon as the last piece of bandage was removed, a 10-second timer would begin to detonate the bomb. Turner was the soldier who volunteered to remove the final strip of cloth.
Once the piece was removed, Turner tucked the grenade under his arm to shield it from other soldiers and ran to the edge of the boat. Turner managed to throw the grenade into the water just before it detonated.
Turner did not share any of these chilling stories following his discharge for one reason – he did not want to deal with the trauma these memories brought with them.
“With my psychology background, I knew how to hide what I was feeling from back then,” Turner said. “I didn’t just suppress the memories, I repressed them. When things started to come out, I intentionally shoved them back in because I didn’t want to deal with them.”
Those moments did not surface until 30 years later when he taught a college psychology class.
“I was teaching a course on PTSD that was mostly adults, and I gave examples of how people can acquire PTSD from earthquakes, fires and other disasters,” Turner recalled. “One man then asked me, ‘Why have you not mentioned war, you’re a Vietnam veteran, aren’t you?'”
At the time, the question was a “slap in the face” to Turner, but years later, he believes the question was “one of the best things” that had ever happened to him.
After letting memories from the Vietnam War remain unspoken for 30 years, Turner began to open up to friends and family about what he went through. In addition to loved ones, Turner also sees a Veterans Affairs counselor and has published a book about his Vietnam War experiences, “I’ve Never Been to Heaven (But I’ve Been to Oklahoma).”
“My advice is to all veterans, whatever happened to you, good or bad, be willing to talk about it,” Turner noted. “Vietnam veterans will talk to me about what they went through during the war, and I always tell them after that to make an appointment with a VA counselor. Often sharing their stories and hearing stories from other veterans will get them started towards therapy.”
Apart from directing fellow veterans on how to deal with their trauma, as the Belmont County EMA CISM Coordinator, Turner makes sure that first responders in the area are also given the tools to help manage traumatic experiences on the job.
As a member of the CISM, Turner is called to the scene after a disastrous event, typically where a death has occurred, to speak with first responders about what happened. The day after the disaster, Turner reconvenes with the emergency departments that responded to the event for a full debriefing.
“When we [CISM members] go to the scenes of disasters, we typically have each member of the response team talk about what they did,” Turner described. “As we talk, we’re usually able to get them to the point where they start to calm down. Our focus is to have the first responders work through those traumatic situations right after they occur.”
Turner noted that for first responders to “fully work through” the disaster event they experienced, they need to talk with spouses, family members and counselors about their trauma as well.
“We do not want them to keep what happened to them inside,” Turner said. “That’s our biggest thing – we want them to talk to whoever they can. That includes them being free to call us back.”
Turner outlined that the longer first responders wait to share what happened after a disaster event, the less likely they are to ever talk about it. In turn, the brain signals that the first responder should be afraid to go to their next call because “the first responder fears the same thing will happen or worse.”
“We’ve dealt with a lot of first responders that blame themselves after a death has occurred, and I tell them, ‘There are no ‘ifs,’ in the work that you do, it’s right there what happened, so it is what it is, and you can’t change it,'” Turner said. “The first responder may respond, ‘Well, if I’d have only got there a little bit earlier,’ and I say to that, ‘When you get there all depends on when 911 was called, there’s just no way you could have gotten there any faster.’ They understand it’s not their fault after that.”
At 76 years old, Turner has no desire to stop his volunteer work with the CISM. Just as he found a purpose in helping out his fellow soldiers during the Vietnam War, Turner has found a purpose in helping first responders work through their trauma on the job.
“What I do makes me feel good, and I’m especially happy at my age that I’m still able to help people,” Turner said. “My goal in life has been to help people as long as I live, and I know I’ve helped someone whenever I leave a disaster scene.”
Source: The Times Leader
Author: Emma Delk
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