PTSD and Veterans as Portrayed in
Vietnam: The Battle Comes Home

Long before Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) became a household term, Gordon Baer ran into Ron Kovic of Born on the Fourth of July. Baer subsequently met Robert Miller, Carl Trocki, Robert Lifton, John P. Wilson, Jim Goodwin, Tom Keller, Jerry Atchison, Arthur S. Blank, Jr., Arthur Egendorf, and Peter Marin and a whole host of Vert Nam vets who are being rediscovered in the current news.

US troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to give credit to Baer's work. His book, Vietnam: the Battle Comes Home poignantly points to just what all this post traumatic fuss is all about. Baer's book is a must read scenario for understanding and educating ourselves and the American public to the futility of fighting for peace.

Vietnam: The Battle Comes Home, a Photographic Record of Post-Traumatic Stress With Selected Essays, with photographs by Gordon Baer, is a forceful photographic essay complemented by written essays; all relating to the post-war tragedies suffered by the soldiers who fought in Vietnam and their families.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in its press release about the exhibition of these photos described it as being "comprised of 40 prints representing the culmination of a documentation project lasting 18 months. During this period, Baer lived in a community of Vietnam veterans whose lives had been dramatically changed by the war. The phtotographic series ... mirrors what the vets' lives are really like —conditions that continue to plague the American solder who served in the Vietnam War."

For his work in documenting veterans' struggles, Baer was the winner of the prestigious 1982 Nikon/National Press Photographers Association "World Understanding Award."

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