J.C. Dye was just 19 when he signed up for the Marines and got shipped to Vietnam to serve at fire support bases. Two years later when he came home, he started to grapple with what he’d just experienced.
“Life just starts over,” he says in a forthcoming documentary. “I didn’t realize I had PTSD. We didn’t know what that was.”
An excerpt from “Crossing the Threshold” is touring the state, with stops on Nov. 10 in Riverton, Nov. 11 in Jackson and Nov. 12 in Lander. It highlights six Wyoming veterans from diverse backgrounds, as they reflect on their service in the military and what it’s been like to come home. A few months ago, we heard from one featured veteran, Hudson resident Hannah King.
Now, we hear from Dye, who grew up on a ranch in Montana before his military service. He now lives in Fremont County and is a nationally-acclaimed painter and sculptor. Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann sat down with Dye in his art studio on Main Street in Lander in June.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Hannah Habermann: Growing up on a ranch in Montana, what was that like?
J.C. Dye: Well, I suppose at the time I thought it was brutal hard work, but when I look back, it was the best years of my life.
HH: Then you grew up, you got married, you went to Vietnam. I'm sure that is a really difficult experience to describe, but what was that like?
JCD: Fortunately or unfortunately, I got a head wound about halfway through my tour, so I can't remember a lot of it. Although it was [a] traumatic brain injury at whatever degree, I was not in the hospital [for] a long time, maybe a few days.
After that, I don't remember much. I was back on duty, and one of the places was a really bad place. It was called the A Shau Valley. I remember one night we got overrun. A pretty hectic night, but after we left the A Shau Valley, I have no memory of anything that happened in the next five months. I can't remember one thing.
HH: Coming back home after your service, what was that process like?
JCD: I think I jumped right into life. I got a job back on a ranch within a few days after I got back, and life was just busy and hectic trying to make a living, and I never thought much about Vietnam at all for a long time. Again, it's kind of a blur and not a vivid memory of that either. Then I had kids and just seemed really busy.
HH: You are a very talented artist. You're a sculptor, you're a painter. How has art been part of your journey of processing those experiences?
JCD: I don't know that this is fact, but I'm sure that it was some sort of a sedative that occupied my mind.
I always ask myself, how could I work on a ranch for, I don't know, 10, 12 years on other ranches? Then my dad got cancer, and then I had to buy the ranch from my family, and then I had a budding art career that took quite a bit of my time. Ran that ranch, and sometimes worked on another ranch while I ran our own ranch.
Then [I] was a town drunk in seven different towns. I don't know how I did that. I must have been a really high energetic person to do all that. The drinking just came on pretty soon after I was back from Vietnam and just escalated over a period of many years until my body gave out.
I drank enough that my pancreas quit working, and I ended up in the hospital. But some days I ask myself, how did I do that? There's a lot of guys that come back from Vietnam, and I'm not putting them down, 'cause their experiences may have been way worse than mine. A lot of them just can't function at all.
HH: You are part of this film that's coming out. There's a preview of it going to be touring around this summer. It's called “Crossing the Threshold.” What inspired you to tell your story as part of that film?
JCD: I have an open mind, and I want to share with the world our experiences, and the biggest reason I want to share that is I wish we could stop all wars throughout the world. We call ourselves civilized. I'm not sure we are. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could spend all our time and resources for the good of people instead of destroying people's lives? That's probably why I wanna do that.
HH: What do you hope people around Wyoming who might see this preview, might see the full film when it comes out later, what do you hope they take away from that experience?
JCD: I would really like to say that people would be more involved and care, but the truth of the matter is – I believe this – that in World War I and World War II, almost every family was touched by a loss or having a relative or a friend in the war.
I think this is calculated, that as wars progress, we have less people involved in it and we kill more people with drones and machinery from people pushing a button a thousand miles away. Part of that is our military complex and our media does not show war, so people think it's just a game. They don't realize the suffering of it.
My post-traumatic stress is mostly caused by watching little kids burn to death from napalm. I think if that doesn't touch you, you're not human. Maybe our society has taken the humanness out of the human spirit away from us, and we just don't care anymore, because it isn't happening to us.
HH: What words of advice do you have for people who are just recently coming home from service?
JCD: I can't speak for those people because when I came home, like I said before, I just went on with life.
I didn't realize I had post-traumatic stress, because number one, I never heard of it. Number two, they didn't talk about it. They knew that in World War II they called it shell shock.
But it's funny how our government supposedly loves its soldiers [and] won't take care of them. They have plenty of money to spend billions of dollars on a new war, but they can't take care of the veterans from the old war.
I know this sounds unpatriotic, but I don't know why anybody in their right mind would serve this country anymore. I did because I really believed in America back then, but I don't so much anymore. I love this country, I just don't like our government.
HH: Are there things about spending time in Wyoming, about spending time in Montana, that bring you a sense of peace?
JCD: I don't think I have that. I don't think I have any peace no matter where I go. I went to a counselor for a couple years, one in the VA system and one out. They both said they could make me feel happiness again. They can't.
At the end of the time [they] were wringing their hands and shaking their heads, said, ‘Well, we can make you happy by putting you on drugs.’ I chose not to because this is what I do, and I don't want my mental stability to change. I know I'm sad. I've been sad since I came home.
Have you laughed until you laid on the floor and you couldn't stop laughing? Well, I never have. I haven't had that for 50 years. I guess some people would say, ‘Well, you're dead inside.’ Maybe I am, but I'm not harming anybody. I'm kind to people, and that's what the world should be like, is everybody should be helping anybody that is needing help.
HH: Anything else you wanna add?
JCD: You'd think with one or two trillionaires in America and 900 billionaires in the world, we could help the poor get on their feet. If I were a ranch manager and I had 500 cows to take care of, and the owner of the ranch expected me to take care of things and I gambled and drank, and half the cattle were starving to death, would he give me the job again and raise my wages? That's what we do to politicians. We raise their wages and give them the job again when half of their people are starving.
