The life of George Bracey Jr. always felt like one battle after another.
There were many theaters of war, many points in Bracey’s path. The enemy was always changing — the bartender Bracey whacked over the head with a bottle and landed in jail, the drill sergeants who picked on Bracey’s high voice in boot camp, the Viet Cong Bracey was instructed to kill.
A decorated Army veteran from the Vietnam War who was flown home in chains after a court-martial for misconduct, it seemed Bracey was always in the midst of turmoil.
“I had to overcome a whole lot of stigma,” Bracey said, sitting in the San Francisco office of the veteran support group Swords to Plowshares.
Bracey, who was born male but now identifies as female, not only survived Vietnam but its psychological aftermath. In the jungles of Vietnam, Bracey was assigned to an Army search and destroy unit whose only edict was to kill the enemy and tally the bodies.
“The government gave me license to kill,” Bracey said. “I was there to do just that.”
To back up a bit, Bracey grew up in the Midwest and by her account was a deeply-troubled teenager. At the age of 16, she was serving a prison sentence for armed robbery and prostitution.
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“My mother told me that she didn’t have any money for legal fees and that my best option was to go into the military," Bracey recalled.
Bracey enlisted in the Army, and in 1971 at the age of 18 was dropped into Da Nang in central Vietnam, which was under constant attack from the Viet Cong. Upon arrival in the area, Bracey’s transport plane had to circle until an invasion by the enemy was repelled.
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Bracey never expected to come home from the war. Before shipping out, she didn’t remember ever seeing any other Black military members return from Vietnam.
“The whole purpose of my enlistment was to go to Vietnam and to die an honorable death,” Bracey said.
Bracey said her military unit was particularly vicious, cutting off the limbs of enemy kills and wearing the parts as badges of honor. She became a loner. After witnessing and participating in the horrors of war, her perspective on the objective was shaken one night in a Saigon nightclub while speaking to a Vietnamese man.
“The guy asked me why was I there killing his people?” Bracey said. “And I couldn’t answer.”
The court-martial came after a year and some 80 days in Vietnam. Bracey said she was caught out of uniform by a higher-up. When she landed back in the states, a whole other battle began — this time a psychological one. Bracey said she slept for a year — and didn’t remember anything that happened during that entire period.
Her mother sensed something was deeply wrong and urged Bracey to seek help. Bracey said while transitioning from military to civilian life, she wasn’t fit to even be around the public. She visited the local veteran’s hospital but came up empty.
“I did try to seek help with the VA hospital, but there was nothing available, nothing,” Bracey said. “There was no such thing as PTSD. There was no military trauma units.”
Her story isn’t unique.
“A big part of it was how the military dealt with it,” said Michael Blecker, a Vietnam veteran and director emeritus of the San Francisco Swords to Plowshares group. "They took you and they chewed you up and spit you out. They had no interest I would say in really making sure people landed on their feet. They were just done and moved on.”
Brecker said at one point Vietnam veterans made up 11% of the population but 35 to 40% of the homeless population.
Bracey made her way to Los Angeles but only ended up in trouble with the law again, spending a week on Skid Row and landing in a Los Angeles jail cell. She was sent to prison in Vacaville, which ended up becoming the life-changing event she needed.
Inside prison, she met with an outreach team from Swords to Plowshares that was studying the high incarceration rate of Vietnam veterans. In the early 1980s, they helped Bracey make her way to San Francisco, finding her housing and mental health treatment. For the first time in her life, there was stability.
“My quality of life would not be worth a damn had it not been for Swords to Plowshares,” Bracey said.
Even during the pandemic, the group helped Bracey with financial assistance to pay her rent. She has now survived her youth, war, a bout with cancer and the perils of post-war trauma.
Bracey visits the group’s outreach center in San Francisco often, reminiscing with other vets and pursuing a new hobby of photography.
It seems with each year for Bracey, the shadow of war grows shorter, its painful tendrils of memory becoming more faint. Most recently, she transitioned into a woman — and these days there are fewer battles to fight.
