United States Army

The United States Army is presented through its role in Herbert Richardson’s wartime service and the long aftermath of that service. His trajectory—from enlistment at eighteen, through devastating combat and an honorable discharge, to a difficult recovery at a veterans hospital—shows how the consequences of war followed him home and shaped the circumstances that later brought him into the criminal legal system.

Herbert Richardson’s enlistment and assignment

Richardson enlisted in the United States Army in 1964, when he was eighteen and the United States was heavily involved in combat. He was assigned to the 11th Aviation Group, 1st Cavalry Division, and sent to Camp Radcliff in An Khe, Vietnam. The camp was near Pleiku, an area marked by intense fighting in the mid-1960s.

Combat trauma and discharge

Richardson’s missions were perilous. In one ambush, his entire platoon was killed and he was severely injured. He regained consciousness covered in the blood of fellow soldiers, disoriented and unable to move. He soon suffered a mental breakdown and attempted suicide after experiencing severe headaches. His commanding officers referred him for psychiatric evaluation multiple times, but he remained in combat for seven months. In December 1966, crying outbursts and withdrawal that left him uncommunicative led to his honorable discharge.

The long aftermath of service

The discharge did not end the effects of Richardson’s combat experience. Back in Brooklyn, New York, he had nightmares and disabling headaches, and sometimes ran from his home screaming “Incoming!” He married and had children, but post-traumatic stress disorder continued to undermine his ability to manage his behavior. At a veterans hospital in New York City, he slowly recovered from severe head pain associated with his war injuries.

Veterans and incarceration

Richardson’s story is situated within a broader account of veterans returning from combat and later entering jails or prisons. By the mid-1980s, nearly 20 percent of people in jails and prisons in the United States had served in the military. That rate declined in the 1990s as the Vietnam War receded from public life, then rose again amid the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The account uses this pattern to place Richardson’s experience in a larger, often overlooked postwar problem; it does not treat his later incarceration as a consequence attributable to military service alone.