Vietnam veteran encourages others to seek help after mental battle
GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL)- At 18 years old, Danny Hubbard had just left home in Grundy, Virginia to start a job at Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan. But the Army put a wrench in his plans when he was drafted into the Vietnam War.
53 years later, what happened in the war is still hard for him to talk about.
“You never quit thinking about it,” he said. “It was awful.”
Those 13 months in Vietnam have haunted Hubbard since he left in 1971.
“The day I got there, we started getting sniper fire, and it went on, went on until apparently the day I left,” he said.
Hubbard had just gotten his 90 days in at Ford when he got word that he was being drafted.
“I had a good job, and I thought my whole life was going to be uninterrupted,” he said. “After that, within 12-13 weeks, I was in Vietnam.”
He hauled food, ammo and infantry soldiers.
“I was a gunner on the back of a truck with a 50 caliber and a 60 caliber machine gun, and when someone would shoot at us, we’d have to shoot back,” he said. “And sometimes you didn’t know where the shooting was coming from.”
Hubbard saw a lot in the war zone.
“We’d be driving down Highway One, and we’d be fired upon, and I’ve seen a lot of boys get killed,” he said. “They’d mostly hit us when we’d go up the mountains because we’d have mountains. You’d have to go up through there slow, and I did wreck in Vietnam, and I got my nose broke and stuff like that, shooting at us and stuff.”
He also has a few issues, including neuropathy, that can be traced back to Agent Orange.
“It was so hot over there that our trucks didn’t have a top on it. And what they’d do, they’d go over with helicopters and spray it,” he said. “At the time, we didn’t even think nothing about it because it was so hot 115 [degrees] it felt good. But then when we come back, we found out that’s deadly, that’s making you sick and everything.”
But the psychological issues still linger.
“When I came here, and I found out I had PTSD, you kindly block it out. I blocked my whole childhood and everything out. I don’t remember anything,” he said.
And the opinions on the politics of the war didn’t help.
“They had signs up that said ‘baby killers’ for us when we landed, and that really put you down, really hurt… that you’re fighting for their freedom, then they do that, the people do that,” he said.
He spent a few months stateside in the Army and was a motor pool Sergeant in Rhode Island.
“We’d work on the vehicles that was on the road or we’d start getting the Jeeps back that were in Vietnam,” he said. “They’d get them back and we’d crate them up and ship them off or we’d ship them back to Vietnam. They’d bring them over and let us re-do them.”
Ford kept his job for him, but he had to work nights.
“I worked the midnight shift because I couldn’t sleep in the night because that’s mostly the time we got hit on out there,” he said.
He worked for Ford for 34 years.
When he retired and moved to Florida, he started really getting help and helping other veterans.
“Five of us guys got together in Florida, and we started up a PTSD group talking about Vietnam, what you did over there, and we found out we had a lot of stuff in common,” he said.
Hubbard had lingering thoughts and found out fellow veterans had them, too.
“You wonder, ‘Why wasn’t it me? Why did I get spared for it?’ And it’s still hurtful,” he said.
And now, he has one message for those who are struggling:
“There is help out there for all the veterans; all you have to do is ask for it,” he said.
Hubbard is involved in the local American Legion and VFW. He is a member of Vietnam Veterans of America and stays in touch with the people he served with.
He and his wife are members of Love’s Memorial United Methodist Church, where he says he has great support.
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