WAR TORN PRODUCER: SARAH HALL REPORTER: KAREN PICKERSGILL Karen Intro: It was an admission New Zealand's Vietnam veterans have waited 30 years to hear. Prime Minister Helen Clark this week conceded the vets have had a raw deal and things should change. For years the men who fought in Vietnam have been worried about their health. Much has been made of Agent Orange and its links to cancers and birth defects. But the wounds of war are not just physical. In a test case, the government is considering paying compensation to a Vietnam vet who has psychological scars, who suffers from severe post-traumatic stress. Graeme Gibson is claiming a million dollars, and has threatened to sue if he has to. But the ex soldier says it's not about the money, it's about the army and the government's duty of care to its troops, then, and now. KAREN (V/O): The debacle that was the Vietnam War still haunts America and its allies. Dirty, mismanaged, futile, it was a conflict fought by soldiers who didn't always know who the enemy was, let alone why they were putting their lives on the line in the jungles of Southeast Asia. And try as they might, many of those who returned cannot let the war slide into the past. GRAEME GIBSON: I’m pleased now that I am starting to get my life back on the water, but it's been, it has been a nightmare. KAREN (V/O): In 1971 Graeme Gibson was barely out of his teens, an infantryman with Victor 6 Company, out of Burnham. Thirty years on, he may be about to become the first soldier ever to sue the government to put right a series of wrongs, which he says wrecked his life. GRAEME GIBSON: New Zealand’s made enormous sacrifices when you look at it over the years, haven't we? KAREN (V/O): Graeme Gibson feels let down by an army he says failed in its duty of care to soldiers who came back from Vietnam, government departments which gave veterans the run-around on war pensions, doctors who failed to identify or treat serious psychological scars. The result, a broken man hell-bent on making someone pay. GRAEME GIBSON: I know now what, finally, after all this time I know what I am entitled to. And I will make them accountable. GRAEME GIBSON: We only lost one guy. KAREN: Who's that? GRAEME GIBSON: Ken Harding, he's from up north. Ken is where the join in the marble is, he's six up. K.H Harding. Last New Zealander to die in Vietnam. KAREN (V/O): Ken Harding who never came home, and Graeme Gibson were among nearly four thousand New Zealanders who served in Vietnam. Around 200 were wounded - 37 died. I/V: Did you have any idea what you were getting into? GRAEME GIBSON: I didn't know what it would be like, no. We trained to a certain level and the men who'd gone before us had trained us. We had a lot of men with us who were going on their second or third tour. But you don't really understand until you're there. KAREN (V/O): Most of the New Zealanders who went to Vietnam were barely out of their teens with no real idea of the issues or the risks. I/V: Why did you go? GRAEME GIBSON: They all sort of said well you didn't have to go, you were volunteers. Well people don't understand when you're in the military though we all volunteered, if you put your hand up and said I am not going, your career was finished. KAREN (V/O): The soldiers lived in constant fear of ambushes by the Viet Cong. Stress levels were extreme. Add to that, the atrocities, things most of these men saw, things some did. GRAEME GIBSON: Probably some of the things in that war would be best left in Vietnam. KAREN (V/O): Unlike any other war New Zealand had fought in, there was no welcome home for our boys this time. Anti-war protesters demonstrated down main streets and at airforce bases when the troops flew in. GRAEME GIBSON: It really sort of shocked me, the look of people, as if we were like, as if we were scum. I think that's what finished me. I decided to get out of the military. KAREN (V/O): So the career soldier quit the service he loved. He became a successful businessman, managing hotels in Singapore and Fiji. But he was a changed man. Moody and isolated he began burning out. There were two weddings, two divorces, the only highlight the birth of a daughter. He didn't know it but Graeme was suffering typical symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. GRAEME GIBSON: No one likes to put their hand up and say I think I’m going crazy, and certainly not soldiers. KAREN (V/O): But Graeme did put his hand up, after hitting rock bottom while watching the Gulf War on television. GRAEME GIBSON: I don't know what it was, whether it was because it came into my home and I was watching it or what. And I started getting nightmares and flashbacks and bits and pieces, and I really wasn't well. I knew there was something wrong. KAREN: People crack up for all sorts of reasons. How can you be sure that it was Vietnam? SABINE VISSER: I guess we look at his history and before he went he was a certain type of person and from the history and the interviews I've had with his family, when he came back he was a completely different person. KAREN (V/O): Psychologist Sabine Visser specialises in treating patients with PTSD. She's worked with Graeme for two years, and sat in on 20/20's interview with him. SABINE VISSER: They actually feel it, physically. They get sweaty hands, their heart starts beating and sometimes it feels like they're there. Most of us in layman’s terms, we call those flashbacks. KAREN (V/O): Formerly with South Africa's defence forces, she has around 20 ex-New Zealand soldiers on her books. SABINE VISSER: When it gets out of hand, they feel like they are crazy, like there is something really, drastically wrong with them. So they have to take a very calculated risk when they put up their hand because they could be told that they are crazy. So it’s very, very difficult. KAREN: What's the worse case scenario? SABINE VISSER: Suicide. GRAEME GIBSON: Believe me, I wouldn't want to wish it on my worst enemy. Break your leg you can fix it. If you get a cold you take some tablets. PTSD is something that's with you all the time. You have your good days, good weeks, good months, and then it can hit you again and you go down. KAREN (TO CAM): Graeme's attempts to seek help did not run smoothly. For seven years, through the War Pensions Office and other government departments, he was referred to a succession of doctors. Some misdiagnosed his illness. One even suggested syphilis. Others suspected PTSD but their referrals for further investigation were never followed up. One of the doctors he was sent to even taunted him about losing the war. GRAEME GIBSON: This is a man that was contracted by War Pensions to do an examination on me. I couldn't believe it, so I, Steve Matheson, who was sitting there, he couldn't believe it, and he just, I just stood and up and I thought, “I've got to get out of here. I've got to do something”. And Steve Matheson pushed me out the door and I went outside. STEVE MATHESON: People say it’s the past, forget about it. But when your past affects your every day, it's not as easy as that. KAREN (V/O): Steve Matheson, Bosnia veteran, now Welfare Officer with the Auckland RSA. It's people like him who help pick up the pieces when soldiers come home and fall apart. STEVE MATHESON: You know the incidence of suicide amongst veterans of any conflicts is very high from that. It happened in Vietnam, it happened on my tour to British soldiers in Bosnia, who just couldn't cope. PTSD will kill you, that sort of stress can kill you as surely as a bullet if it’s not dealt with. KAREN (V/O): The majority of New Zealanders receiving disability pensions for PTSD are in fact not Vietnam veterans but returned servicemen from the Second World War. Few New Zealand families wouldn't know of someone, a grandfather perhaps, or an old uncle who came back from the war unable or unwilling to talk about it. In those days it was called shellshock. These casualties of war haven't suffered any obvious physical damage to the brain, but severe stress can change the way the brain functions biologically. SABINE VISSER: It is a normal reaction to an extremely abnormal situation. KAREN: Which none of us could ever appreciate? SABINE VISSER: No. But that doesn't make them crazy. That makes them very normal human beings. GRAEME GIBSON: The authorities, and the people within the military hierarchy and the New Zealand government of the day, they didn't realise what was going to come out of Vietnam, the scars of Vietnam. And so there was no debriefing, no treatment offered, or nothing. Or if you have this problem, or that problem. KAREN (TO CAM): When Graeme did eventually seek treatment in 1993 he had no idea it would take years for officials to acknowledge the extent of his condition. Under the War Pensions Act, doctors were not allowed to discuss veteran’s illnesses with them. He was even denied access to his own medical records. (I/V): Why do you think there was this secrecy? GRAEME GIBSON: I think it’s all about money. I think it’s all about it'll cost us money. KAREN (V/O): Sabine has another theory. She thinks the army doesn't really want to know if its soldiers are suffering psychologically. SABINE VISSER: You can't tell people on one way to be staunch and go out there and fight a war and you're a hero. And on the other side tell them, well you're going to come back an emotional cripple. Tell them you still want to take that chance? It doesn't make sense. KAREN (V/O): In a breakthrough for Graeme Gibson last July, the Defence Minister Mark Burton said he was concerned at "omissions" in his case. He conceded the soldier had not been referred for treatment as recommended by specialists, that medical opinions had been withheld, that there had been a "lack of case management." GRAEME GIBSON: Prime Minister, how do you do? Graeme Gibson. HELEN CLARK: I've heard about you. KAREN (V/O): This week, further moves to make amends to all Vietnam veterans. Prime Minister Helen Clark met a delegation at Parliament to discuss their concerns. HELEN CLARK: So we're just going to work on a number of ways in which we can make up for what has been close to three decades of neglect. KAREN (V/O): While Graeme believes that meeting and the promises made go a long way towards healing old wounds, he remains concerned about the soldiers of today, and their futures within the service, and when they leave. GRAEME GIBSON: I hope the army has learnt a very valuable lesson about being a good employer. I think you have not only a legal obligation, you have a moral obligation to ensure the well being of our young men and women. If you can't give them that obligation, or can't give them that commitment, you shouldn't send them. KAREN (V/O): The New Zealand Army currently has around 800 troops serving overseas, most in East Timor. Many lessons have been learned since Vietnam. There are now field psychologists and briefings before and after tours of duty. But still, people are falling through the cracks. STEVE MATHESON: When guys come home, out of that close-knit situation they would've been in six months in a fairly dangerous area, back to general military life, that’s when a lot of the cracks start to show. BRIGADIER JERRY MATAEPARAE: I know of a suicide where a soldier who has served in East Timor... KAREN (V/O): Brigadier Jerry Mataeparae. BRIGADIER JERRY MATAEPARAE:...has committed suicide. The link between the suicide and the service in East Timor was not established. KAREN (V/O): In recent years the army has lost three of its soldiers to suicide, while eight others have attempted to take their own lives. One of those suicides occurred after a soldier returned home from East Timor. The army says it also knows of one attempt out of the Timor deployment, but 20/20 has been told that figure is a lot higher, that there could have been as many as six attempted suicides, though the army doesn't like to talk about it. BRIG. JERRY MATAEPARAE: There's the sensitivities of raising something for the families that are still coping with the loss of a loved one. SABINE VISSER: War is a painful experience, even though these people are trained to go. You can't train anybody to accept and be happy with a war. War is a nasty business and it does affect people. STEVE MATHESON: Whether it was fixing bayonets somewhere in Italy or on patrol in Bosnia or in the bush in East Timor or in the Sinai or Rhodesia, or wherever we've been, Malaya and Borneo, and they come back and there's a problem because of that, then you’ve got deal with it. BRIG. JERRY MATAEPARAE: I think we're doing as best we can. I think we're providing the best clinical assistance, we're also providing, I think, exceptional spiritual, medical and command assistance to our soldiers. KAREN: You're happy that if somebody had a problem, a soldier would know where to seek help and would seek help? BRIG. JERRY MATAEPARAE: Yes. KAREN (V/O): All this though comes 30 years too late for Graeme Gibson and the soldiers of his generation. The last battle of his Vietnam War is only now drawing to a close. GRAEME GIBSON: I’ve met a lot of vets who've just given up, gone bush. Let them beat them. Just given up. In my case I’m not going to give up.