Day 24

Lost Battalions: The Vietnam Vets Who Walked Into the Wilderness and Never Came Back

We often talk about the heroes who returned from war and the ones who made the ultimate sacrifice. But history is also written in the silences—in the stories of those who simply vanished. After the Vietnam War, a curious and sombre phenomenon occurred in both Australia and the United States: a notable number of veterans returned home only to eventually disappear, opting for a life completely “off the grid.”

The question isn’t just a matter of historical curiosity: Just how many ex-servicemen from Australia and America went off-grid after dabbling in drugs in Vietnam, and why?

While the romanticised image is of a lone vet building a cabin deep in the woods, the reality is far more complex, tragic, and rooted in the unique trauma of the Vietnam experience.

The Uncountable Numbers: A Statistical Ghost Story

First, the hard truth: we will never know the exact number. By its very nature, going “off-grid” means severing ties with official institutions—no census, no veterans’ affairs paperwork, no tax records. These men became statistical ghosts.

We can, however, look at the clues:

• Rough Estimates: Some researchers and veterans’ advocates have suggested that in the US, the number could be in the tens of thousands over the decades following the war. This doesn’t mean they all fled immediately; for many, it was a slow, painful fade from society after failed attempts to reintegrate.
• The Australian Experience: Australia sent nearly 60,000 troops to Vietnam. While the numbers would be proportionally smaller, the pattern was strikingly similar. Reports from the time and subsequent decades tell of veterans retreating to the vast Outback, the tropical Daintree, or isolated coastal regions to escape the world they no longer recognised.

The common thread in these disappearances? For a significant number, it was intertwined with their experience with drugs during the war.

The “Why”: A Perfect Storm of Trauma

To understand the drift towards isolation, you have to understand the Vietnam War’s psychological battlefield. The decision to disappear wasn’t about a single thing; it was a cascade of factors.

1. Self-Medication for Unseen Wounds: In Vietnam, drugs—particularly marijuana and heroin—were cheap, potent, and astonishingly prevalent. For many young soldiers, substance use began as a way to cope with the unbearable daily stress of guerrilla warfare, the fear of booby traps, and the moral ambiguity of the conflict. They weren’t using it for a high; they were using it to numb the horror. This created a physical and psychological dependency that they brought home.

2. A Society That Spat, Rather Than Embraced: Unlike the heroes’ welcome of previous wars, Vietnam vets returned to a deeply divided society, often facing open hostility and being branded “baby killers.” There was no parade. There was no understanding of PTSD (a term that wouldn’t even be officially recognised until 1980). This profound rejection made “the World” feel just as hostile and alien as the jungles they had left. Why stay in a society that hates you?

3. The Failure of Traditional Support Systems: Many vets found the VA (Veterans Affairs) systems in both countries overwhelmed and ill-equipped to handle their specific trauma and substance abuse issues. Feeling failed by the very governments that sent them to war, they concluded that no one could help them. The only solution was to rely on themselves, away from everyone else.

4. The Lure of the Familiar Unknown: The jungle was hell, but it was a hell they understood. It was a place of hyper-vigilance, self-reliance, and stripped-down simplicity. For some, the logical escape from the confusing noise of modern society—the traffic, the bureaucracy, the crowds—was to return to a wilderness they could control. The Australian bush or the American backcountry became a substitute for the environment where they had last felt a grim sense of purpose and competence.

5. Guilt, Shame, and the Desire for Erasure: Many veterans carried immense guilt for things they had done, things they had seen, or simply for having survived when their mates did not. Coupled with the stigma of addiction, this created a powerful desire to erase themselves. Going off-grid was the ultimate form of penance; a self-imposed exile to escape the demons within and the judgmental eyes of the world without.

Beyond the Myth

It’s crucial to move beyond the romanticised “Rambo” narrative. These were not action heroes. They were deeply wounded men, often self-medicating with the drugs they first encountered in the war, failed by their societies, and crushed by a trauma they had no name for. Their flight to the wilderness was not an adventure; it was a last resort—a desperate attempt to find a peace that society could not, or would not, provide.

Their legacy is a stark lesson. It underscores the critical importance of mental health support, the devastating cost of societal rejection, and the lifelong battle soldiers face long after the final shot is fired. They are the starkest reminder that some wounds are invisible, and some battles are fought not in foreign jungles, but in the silent, lonely woods of a soldier’s mind.