David W. Powell enlisted for a tour of duty in April 1966 with the
US Marines after receiving an imminent draft notice. Believing he
would be able to leverage his existing skills as a computer
programmer, he never thought all they would see on his resume was
his Karate expertise. Even less that he would wind up serving as a
Rocket man in the jungles of Da Nang and Chu Lai for a 13 month
tour in hell.
David's journey from naive civilian to battle-hardened combat
veteran shows us all how fragile our humanity really is. In
addition to killing the enemy on the field of battle, he was
witness to countless cruelties including murder both cold-blooded
and casual, cowardice under fire, and a callous disregard for life
beyond most people's imagination. With each new insult, he lost a
little bit of his soul, clinging to his Bible as his only solace
while equally certain of his own imminent demise. Upon returning to
civilian life after a two year enlistment, he found himself with
nightmares during sleep, intrusive thoughts while awake, a
hypervigilant stance combined with an exaggerated startle reaction,
and a seeming inability to control basic emotions like anger and
sadness.
The price he paid for what would only be diagnosed decades later
as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was broken marriages and
relationships, inability to hold down jobs leading to bankruptcy,
alcohol abuse, and having to hide the service he willingly gave to
his own country.
In 1989, David eventually recovered through a simple but
powerful technique known as Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) and
is now symptom-free. Not just for veterans, TIR has since been
successfully applied to crime and motor vehicle accident victims,
domestic violence survivors, and even children. His story shows
what is possible for anyone who has suffered traumatic stress and
that hope, healing, and recovery can be theirs too.
""His autobiographical work is a must read for veterans who
remain stuck between two worlds. Healing is not forgetting; healing
is making sense of the past in order to live life in the present
with a restored hope for the future. Powell articulates this
process very well and has given a tremendous gift to the combat
veteran community of any generation."
- Father Philip G. Salois, M.S., National Chaplain, Vietnam
Veterans of America
"The connection of David's problems in his current life and his
Viet Nam experiences is one of the clearest descriptions of how
trauma affects our lives I have ever read. My Tour in Hell is a
tribute to David's unwillingness to give up on himself in the face
of great unhappiness."
-Laura W. Groshong, LICSW (Seattle, WA)
"Years in combat zones, group psychotherapy with combat vets
diagnosed with PTSD and TIR training qualifies me to recommend this
book. My Tour in Hell attests to David's journey from the boundary
of a Marine grunt's PTSD despair to the horizon of integration,
risk, and new meaning. Those in the helping professions will learn
how the negative emotional 'charge' of trauma can be partially or
totally eliminated through the adept facilitation of Traumatic
Incident Reduction."
-Sister Kateri Koverman, LISW, ICDC
"Powell presents a brutally honest and riveting account of one
man's descent into the dehumanizing realities of war. However, the
journey is worth it to relive his dramatic ascension and redemption
from the abyss through the life changing, powerful, and therapeutic
techniques of Traumatic Incident Reduction."
- Rev. James W. Clifton, LCSW, PhD
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