Wizard 6 describes my tour of duty as a psychiatrist assigned 
to the 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam during 1969 and 1970. It 
was another existence. We referred to home as "the world." . . . 
As with any combat environment, there was the irony of military 
psychiatrists helping men adjust to a crazy place.


In 1969 six psychiatrists were assigned to combat divisions in 
Vietnam, charged with treating soldiers showing psychiatric 
symptoms in order to get them back into battle. Doug Bey, whose 
radio call name in the 1st Infantry Division was Wizard 6, was one 
of those psychiatrists.

    Drawing on graphic detail gleaned from a journal Bey 
transcribed when he got back stateside, this psychiatric specialist 
describes the daily life of a military support unit, the boredom and 
mind-numbing routine, but also the social issues and psychiatric 
crises he confronted. In Vietnam he treated people with a range of 
coping mechanisms, including counter phobic reactions, self-
medication with drugs and alcohol, and "gross stress reaction," as 
well as the gamut of psychiatric illnesses.

     Each month Bey and his staff saw some four hundred men, 
including characters like the Vietnam equivalent of Klinger from 
M*A*S*H, a killer dentist, soldiers addicted to killing, and others 
who did not want to go home. He witnessed firsthand black pride, 
Vietnamese prejudice, racial conflict, and the Viet Cong's fear of 
mental illness.

    Bey's book provides a rare and powerful account that views the 
immediacy of combat from the perspective of thirty-five years in 
psychiatric practice and extensive study of combat and post-
combat psychology. Wizard 6 offers new perspectives on the 
Vietnam war and its aftermath and draws cautious comparisons 
with the issues today's troops may face both in the field and when 
they return home.

_________________________________________________________

DOUGLAS BEY completed his medical degree at the University 
of Illinois in Chicago, as well as a rotating internship and a three-
year residency at the Menninger School of Psychiatry, before 
serving in the U.S. Army. He is now semi-retired but continues to 
practice psychiatry on a limited scale in Normal, Illinois. Bey has 
written a number of professional articles about men in battle.


Number 104: Texas A&M University Military History Series


What people are saying about this book

". . . a rare, insightful, compelling, and excellent memoir of the 
Vietnam war. . . . [Bey's] presentation of army psychiatrist 
practices stateside and in Vietnam is informative and contravenes 
popularly held misconceptions about the extent and nature of 
psychiatric casualties in Vietnam. I know of no comparable 
book."—William M. McBride, United States Naval Academy

". . . deals with an important and insufficiently documented aspect 
of the American war in Vietnam. The stories he uses to characterize 
psychiatric work on his watch are always interesting, often 
touching, sometimes hilarious, and occasionally all of those 
simultaneously."—Donald J. Mrozek, Kansas State University

"Doug R. Bey understands trauma and its long-range impact. In 
articulate and sensitive prose, he takes the reader along his own 
journey, from a family affected by mental illness into a world 
trauma of a much larger scope. By mirroring the personal on a 
larger scene, Bey communicates the impact of mental illness on its 
sufferers and all those who care for them."—Clea Simon, author 
of Mad House: Growing Up in the Shadows of Mentally Ill 
Siblings

"The professional and personal observations, with case examples, 
are compelling. . . .The issues [Bey] had to deal with 35 years ago 
are equally relevant in today's world of continuing United States 
involvement in international conflict."—W. Walter Menninger, 
M.D., CEO Retired, Menninger Foundation & Clinic