Soldiers in Hiding

I stumbled across this rarely seen film years ago on A&E or Bravo (when they were first class networks and advertisement free) and have never forgotten it. The details are sketchy now. But the film clearly recorded that, in an effort to cope with unrelenting mental agony, these ex-Vietnam soldiers drove themselves into deep, reclusive wilderness life styles after leaving the military.

What stands out was horror and trauma these men felt from the monster that fighting and killing in the Vietnam War brought out in each of them. I was reminded of someone I knew who, also, fought in Vietnam and there was no comparison between the person who went over and the person who came back.

It's a wonder the film makers were able to locate and connect with these men, so desperate were they to be lost to civilization.

It's a shame 'Soldiers in Hiding' is not televised anymore. Like films such as 'Winter Soldiers' it's a needed, sobering, in your face reminder of the final joke that war (any war) is and the great sadness that this lesson is always, always, lost on the human race in general.

The Oscar nominated documentary "Soldiers in Hiding" gives us a different, unusual yet harsh reality faced by Vietnam War veterans who opted for a different life path after their return to the United States. Instead of the usual routes of committing violent acts to others or themselves, or living in the streets, or even struggling to adjust to the civilian life with jobs and families, the veterans featured in this piece opted to live secluded in the wilderness (all across America, but here it's mostly shown the state of Washington) where their survival skills in the nature and guerilla tactics are useful to provide a living and they can avoid all possible human contact; a few of those soldiers managed to bring their families together, but most of them reject any possible contact with another human being.

They carry lots of PTSD, suffering, and wounds from the battlefield and life at home can't never return to the reality they knew in their final years of adolescence, and to avoid problematic and dangerous outcomes they simply walked away from everything they knew and try to keep a sense of routine formed in the Vietnam. Those stories aren't like the fictional John Rambo acting against everything and everyone, but the sense of being incomprehended and not understanding the world around them feels slightly close.

And to all the sadness and pain expressed by those men, one can sense a certain hopeful glimpse as they stayed alive, survived decades living in forests, and it worked for them. They kept on going without losing themselves completely, without causing trouble to anyone neither themselves, and unlike the veterans featured in "Vietnam Requiem" who all end up jail for series of crimes, the major obstacle they face comes from loneliness, turbulent past memories and dealing with people, if they come their way. In those particular cases, detachment was an act of salvation. It might not look helpful for many civilians, or even military, but it was the way they could deal with themselves, find some balance within the chaos of their shattered minds and souls. There's glory and nobility in that decision they made, and don't think for a second it was an easy way. It takes guts to leave a whole world of things and people behind.

Malcolm Clarke's film is powerful, memorable and haunting, but it also offers a unique view into the lives of those veterans, how they cope with the environment around them, and there's even small moments of help and shared pain that two veterans way apart from each other communicate through letters. And the question thrown at us goes in trying to figure which war and which battles were the heaviest to be dealt by those combatants: the war abroad or the war at home; the one that all kinds of horrors are expected or the one where you simply can't cope with a reality you once knew; the conflict of the body or the conflict of the mind? "Soldiers in Hiding" offer those insights and a lot more, and you won't be seeing the Vietnam War or any other war in the same way. 10/10.