MUSKEGON, Mich. (AP) — For years, "Doc" Bernie Duff dreamed about Vietnam: the horror of war, the hell inflicted on him and his fellow man.
He suffered flashbacks and recurring nightmares, panic attacks and haunting memories of the men he couldn't save as a 19-year-old Army medic serving in the jungles of Vietnam in 1969 and '70 when fighting was at its most ferocious.
Doc, as everyone calls him, tried to exorcise his nightmares by painting visions of a war he couldn't leave behind, writing poetry and going through intensive therapy after being diagnosed in 1998 with severe post-traumatic stress disorder.
Finally, the former Muskegon resident decided the only way he could find peace was to return to the scene of war.
"I, like many of my Vietnam vets, always stated that I could never return to this place because of the many bad memories I relived nightly in my nightmares," he said.
But in 2005, Doc took an emotionally daring step.
He confronted his memories in Vietnam with 17 other veterans to dedicate a medical clinic for children in Chu Lai, built in memory of Sharon Lane — an American Army nurse killed in 1969 by enemy fire.
So moved by the experience, so touched by the plight of the orphans and abandoned children he met in Vietnam, Duff decided to move to the country in 2006.
"I got a welcome home that I needed, here in Vietnam, the last place on Earth I thought I'd get it," he said.
For the past two years, Doc has used his pension and disability payments, and any money he earns from his paintings, to help support the children at Cay Bang Primary School in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).
The father of four children living in the United States, Doc has decided to devote the rest of his life helping Vietnamese children.
He has provided school scholarships and food for the youngsters he lovingly calls his "Garbage Pail Kids," who eke out a meager living by going through garbage dumps to find plastics to recycle.
"These kids are my heart. They need so much help," he said.
But nobody quite has his heart like the children who suffer from the effects of Agent Orange, many of them born with terrible physical disabilities directly linked to the chemical dumped on Vietnam by U.S. forces almost 40 years ago.
Many of the children — born without arms and legs, born with enlarged heads and distended or deformed eyes — live in what are called "Peace Villages." Not all are orphans. Some live in the Peace Villages, or compounds, with their families. All are poor.
At Christmas time, Doc plays Santa Claus ("No En" in Vietnamese) and passes out presents to the children. But he wants to extend his help beyond the holiday, a former medic tending to the aftermath of war.
"It is time to move beyond old war wounds and stop pointing fingers of blame," Doc said. "It is time to do something about this."
On April 5, to raise awareness and any financial support he can muster, Doc set out on a 1,068-mile "Orange Walk" from Ho Chi Minh City north to Hanoi. He was joined by walkers from Australia, the United States and Vietnam, some of whom planned to walk the entire route; others coming and going as time and physical endurance permits. The other walkers include Bui Thi Bao Anh, a former journalist and charity worker whom Doc calls his "life mate."
In the weeks leading up to the walk, Doc was interviewed by dozens of journalists, all of whom asked him the same question: why?
Exposed to Agent Orange "many times" in 1969 and '70, Doc suffers from chronic skin problems, but he resolutely downplays his own medical condition.
"My reason for taking part in this walk is that I am very tired of adults arguing about something we should just do something about," he said. "This is the right thing to do."
His work in Vietnam shows "what one year out of someone's life can do," said David Eling, a Vietnam veteran who is director of Muskegon County's Department of Veteran Affairs. "Look at how Doc's life has been so totally altered by that experience. It's dominated the rest of his life."
Bernie Duff grew up in Muskegon Heights, the fifth of Adelaide and Bernard Duff II's 10 kids. In high school and on sandlots all over town, he distinguished himself on the baseball diamond, playing hard against another of Muskegon's sons of war — Jimmy Klimo, who has been missing in action in Vietnam since 1969, and Johnny "Shug" Harris, who became a Muskegon Heights police officer and was killed while on duty in 1975.
"I do this work today in Vietnam for the people who died in my arms (in war) and for them ... Jimmy and Shug ... my buddies," he said.
As a kid, people called him Bernie. "Doc" came later, when he was 17 and dropped out of high school to join the Army. His picture from basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., shows a well-shorn and solemn Bernie Duff in uniform, staring straight into the camera.
On his 19th birthday — Jan. 12, 1969 — he landed in Vietnam. He was a medic with the 51st Medical Company, the guy who was supposed to patch up the wounded in the field until they could be evacuated.
He was in Vietnam exactly one day when the carnage caught up to him. He hadn't even made it to the battlefield. He was being transported to his unit in the small city of Phu Tai when he witnessed a scene that still haunts him today.
He saw three teenage boys who had been captured and tortured, their bodies mutilated and hanging upside down in a small pagoda-like building in the city of Qui Nhon.
"They were all still alive and moaning loudly, with blood dripping everywhere," Doc said.
As a medic, he says, he should have stopped, but his driver kept going.
But there was another incident a few weeks later, equally as compelling, that foreshadows his work in Vietnam today. He was wandering through Qui Nhon when suddenly he was surrounded by children in an orphanage who were, miraculously enough, "laughing and giggling."
"They were looking up at me, tugging at my sleeve. I saw something in their eyes: It was the first case of unconditional love I'd ever experienced," he said. "I wondered if I could be so forgiving."
Before he was shipped home, Doc tended to hundreds of young American men who were either wounded or dying. His unit was always under attack, and his comrades were especially protective of him. They'd shield him with their own bodies while he administered aid to the wounded. Some "took bullets intended for me," he said.
Later, he would hear from those whose lives he saved, but he doesn't remember details. "Too much blood," he said. "Too many lives lost."
Doc stayed in the Army for 10 years. He finished his active duty as an Army illustrator at Fort Hood. He went back to school, earned his high school degree, then added an associate's degree from Muskegon Community College and eventually a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the University of Louisville.
He worked at Westran and Howmet Corp. in Muskegon before moving to Grand Rapids in 1995 to work with homeless vets. But that sounds far more stable than his life actually was. He was married four times, moved often, changed jobs. In 2000, Doc was forced to retire because his PTSD was so disabling.
The same year, he was named the Michigan Veteran of the Year by the American Legion.
On his first trip to Vietnam in 2005, Doc and 17 other Americans met with a group of former North Vietnamese soldiers.
"At first, nobody trusted each other. ... We'd been enemies," Doc said. "By the end of our discussion, tears were flowing, and we were hugging each other. We put the war in the past."
Jack G. Devine of Grand Rapids, vice president of the national chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, calls such meetings "healing" missions.
"We saw what it did for the World War II veterans to go back to Normandy ... and now Vietnam," Devine said.
Doc echoes his words: "Funny as it may seem, I am here in the very place where my nightmares began with post-traumatic stress disorder, and it is here that I have found life ... and peace!"
Devine, who is deputy director of the Veterans Home in Grand Rapids, first returned to Vietnam in 1993. He was part of a commission studying the effects of Agent Orange on children born at least one, and sometimes two, generations after the war ended.
Doc calls the phenomenon "Orange Pain." It is why he will walk as long as it takes to make the 1,068-mile trip from Ho Chi Minh City north to Hanoi.
"Our walk is not intended to point any fingers, merely to ask the world to help us," he said. "These kids, like all kids, belong to the world, not any one country."
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On the Net:
Orange Walk: http://orangecarers.com
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