Membrerjewett79695

Russell Jewett was born in the isolated town of Fort Bragg and lived with three generations of relatives on the Mendocino Coast of Northern California. At age seventeen, unlike the majority of his relatives, he enlisted in the military to see what the world had to offer. By age twenty, he had been stationed in Japan before assignment to the Fleet Marine Force Vietnam as a combat corpsman with an infantry battalion. Rus lived, ate, fought, and slept in the mud and jungles on the DMZ with a remarkable company of Marines who became known as Ripley’s Raiders. During the entire time in the service, He corresponded regularly with his high school sweetheart Louise. Those letters surfaced thirty-eight years later, and he used them as a framework to chronicle his memories. At the end of Rus’ enlistment, he decided not to make a career of the navy and was honorably discharged. In the subsequent years, he used the GI Bill to fund his education in the Los Angeles area and married his first wife. The marriage soon ended, and he decided to return to Fort Bragg where he met his second wife. That marriage only lasted a short time before it fell apart. He then married his third wife who had two young children. That marriage lasted until both were in college, and after the youngest left home, they discovered they had nothing in common to hold the marriage together. After ten years, he married his fourth wife, and that marriage lasted only four years before they split up. Rus was always able to justify that all his unsuccessful marriages were his spouses’ fault.. While married to his fourth wife, Rus started receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Though it didn’t save the marriage, it put him on the road to understanding what was driving much of his life. Prior to accepting help for PTSD, he had always assumed that because he was never without a responsible, well-paying job that he wasn’t as bad off as those other vets with PTSD. After all, he did not display any of the outward symptoms or substance abuse issues of those who lived on the streets and were unemployable. After all, Vietnam “crazies” did not become president of the local Kiwanis Club. His intrusive thoughts, avoidance of sleep, chronic depression, and self-medicating with beer or wine to aid in falling asleep seemed pretty much normal. His elders would never condone family seeking psychological help or counseling for depression; those who did were turned into fodder for discussion in whispered gossip within the immediate family. No one outside the family should ever know. It might put a stigma on the whole family. In the past decade, Rus decided to break from tradition, seek help and learn how to better understand living with PTSD. He now attends reunions with his combat unit, which previously he was never able to do. By preserving his memories in some other media than his brain, Rus no longer suffers from intrusive thoughts or sleepless nights. He states “Somehow, writing about my experiences has moved them from my conscious thoughts to the files further down in my brain, to be recalled only when telling war stories with my fellow Marines.” In 2009, Rus and four other Ripley’s Raiders returned to their battlefields of 1967. They went without their loved ones, and by not having the distractions created by those not having been there, they were all able to banish some old ghosts. Rus currently lives with his soul mate, Tereza, and Ringo, their Australian kelpie shepherd in his hometown of Fort Bragg, California.