Wounds That Will Not Heal

Even before he went to Viet Nam, Robert Muller, 35, knew he stood a good chance of becoming a casualty. At the Marine platoon leaders' class in Quantico, Va., he learned that during World War II, 85% of all company-grade officers in the Corps were killed or wounded. Crippling injury, not death, was what most worried Bobby and his buddies. "I remember saying that if I lost a leg, I would rather be killed. As to the possibility of being paralyzed, well, that was not even open for discussion." Confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, Muller laughs at the memory.

He joined the Marines in 1967, while a student at Hofstra University on New York's Long Island. Muller, whose family had emigrated from Switzerland when he was one, became convinced of the "inevitability" of America's struggle in Indochina and wanted to play a part. Recalling his graduation from Quantico, he says: "I stood there in my dress whites and cried like a baby when they played The Star-Spangled Banner. I cried out of pride."

Muller saw combat the day he arrived in Viet Nam. "I got off the chopper, walked down the trail, and immediately saw bodies," he recalls. "Suddenly, the reality of war was driven home." Less than a year later, while trying to lead a company of reluctant Vietnamese soldiers up a hill near Con Thien, he was struck in the chest by a Viet Cong bullet that severed his spine.

Muller was airlifted to a U.S. hospital ship, where he awoke in the intensive care unit to learn that he would be paralyzed for life. "The sheer joy of waking up, of being alive, overwhelmed any possible sorrow," he says. It was only after he was brought home to New York, trussed in a Stryker frame like a roasting turkey, and eventually transferred to a Veterans Administration hospital, that his long-pent-up emotions overcame him.

"The VA hospital was a dump," he says. "That was when I cried. I had to beg for a wheelchair. The physical therapy program was a joke." The wound he suffered at the forgotten hill in the Central Highlands left him paralyzed, but the wounds he incurred at home galvanized him into action. Says he: "I had always been respectful to authority. Now I knew that I either had to fight these guys or let them control me."

Muller became active in the 25,000-member Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. He eventually became disillusioned about the movement, fell into depression, and turned to drugs. But on a visit to the family of a Viet Nam veteran who had killed himself, he met his future wife, Virginia. "She turned my life around, and gave it meaning and purpose," he says. Muller graduated from Hofstra Law School in 1974, and three years later founded what became the Viet Nam Veterans of America (current membership: 8,000), to lobby for the rights of all those who had served in the war.

His group has fought for extension of G.I. Bill benefits, a targeted employment program, and improved counseling services. But Bobby Muller also has a broader vision: "What we need to do is put the war in proper perspective and understand the reasons for our failure."

That will mean facing the tough questions about why and how the U.S. became involved in Viet Nam and what went wrong. Says he: "If we try to answer those questions, maybe the service of the Viet Nam veteran will not be in vain. The alternative is to make believe the whole thing never happened. That would be the ultimate insult to the injury."

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