A Minnesota PBS Initiative
Riddled with PTSD
This video was captured by the Twin Cities PBS Minnesota Remembers Vietnam team in Bloomington, MN at a national 1st Battalion, 1st Marines reunion in August 2017.
To learn more about upcoming 1/1 reunions, visit www.alpha1stbn1stmarines.org.
You can't put someone through all that and expect them to be spit and polish again.
Murphy Williamson was merely 17 when he joined the Marine Corps. His first week in country, he witnessed a night patrol get ambushed by North Vietnamese Army troops. He immediately transferred out of that unit to the rifle platoon and became a machine gunner, which he did for the rest of his tour. It wasn't until the 1990s that Murphy started to tell anyone that he was a Vietnam veteran and to seek help from the VA for his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Biographical Details
Submitted From: Cleveland, OH
Primary Location During Vietnam: Hue, Vietnam 
Story Subject: Military Service
Military Branch: U.S. Marine Corps
Dates of Service: 1967 - 1968
Unit: A 1/1 1st plt guns
Specialty: Machine Gunner
Story Themes: 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1st Marines Reunion, Brotherhood, Coming Home, Con Thien, Hue, Khe Sanh, Machine Gunner, Marines, Murphy Williamson, North Vietnamese Army, NVA, PTSD, Race, Reunion, The VA, Viet Cong, Watch, WIA, Wounded in Action
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