My Feeble Tribute To Combat Veterans Everywhere
When I was a child in the late 50’s and early 60’s my father would often point out uncles and neighbors and say “He was in the war, but he doesn’t talk about it.”
I took this to mean the Second World War, and presumed these men didn’t talk about it because it was too painful to do so.
As I’ve grown older and learned more about people, and learned of the way many of our Viet Nam war vets were treated, I’ve realized that the pain of the memories is only a part of these men’s reluctance to talk about their experiences.
Although I have never seen combat, I’m fairly certain that what happens in such situations is so completely outside of a person’s imagination that only those who experience it can understand it. That is to say, those of us who have never been to war are at a complete loss to even ESTIMATE what goes on in such situations, and we’re certainly unable to imagine what such things do to a soldier’s mind.
As I suspect is the case in all wars, but particularly in our current war in Iraq, combat troops are often forced, by circumstances, fear, the un-forgiving consequences of error or of granting a stranger the benefit of the doubt, to kill innocent people.
What’s more, those of us who have never seen combat cannot possibly appreciate the way an individual soldier’s mind assimilates all the horror and fear that it experiences and the resultant “mental picture” it forms to provide the soldier with the necessary attitude and mindset to ensure survival.
As an example of how war can change a person’s mind, I’d like to relate a story about a Viet Nam vet who did the maintenance on my air conditioning systems in a house I owned many years ago.
The house was originally a typical, rectangular ranch-style home. Previous owners had added a game room on the back on one end of the house, forming an “elbow” with the main structure about a third of the way along its length. A patio was poured in this elbow, and a steel roof was put over the patio and run up into the original roof of the house, forming a “V” where the two met. A pair of squirrels liked to get up into that “V” and play.
One day, my A/C guy and I were walking along the outside back wall of the game room – he was between the house and me, so his head was turned away from the house as we spoke. As we cleared the corner of the game room at the patio, his head still turned toward me, I saw intense, if very brief, fear flash from his eyes, and then he smiled and said “We have a couple of friends.” He nodded toward the house. I looked past him and saw the two squirrels up under the patio roof.
20 some years after combat service, this man’s mind was still attuned to survival.
How many other soldiers’ minds performed similar “enhancements,” and how many of those changes were dangerous to themselves and others as they returned to civilian life? We have no way of knowing or appreciating that phenomenon - no way of even imagining what their minds did to ensure their survival, and what they still possess as a result of the contortions forced upon their minds by war.
Imagine how lonely these vets must feel! Imagine having memories of committing acts against your fellow humans so horrible that your insides twist into knots each time the images play through your mind. Imagine not being able to talk to ANYONE about them, because only those who were actually THERE can appreciate all the powerful emotions that your words convey, and those guys have their OWN experiences to deal with!
Now, imagine someone who has never seen combat JUDGING you for your actions, and you see what I think is the MAIN reason why men who’ve been in war “don’t talk about it.”
During the Viet Nam war, one of the enemy’s many tactics was to plant grenades on children and send them into the midst of American troops to kill them. Soldiers learned that, in order to survive, they must kill any child that approaches them. Can you say “Horrendous, soul-crushing guilt?”
And then these soldiers come home from the war and are treated like dirt and called “baby killers” by the people who not only sent them INTO the war, but who have absolutely no clue whatsoever of what war is. Indeed, I suppose their cluelessness is what enables them to so glibly call for war when the issue is raised by the government.
Since the Iraq war is more about subduing a populace than actually fighting an opposing army (similar, I suppose, to Viet Nam, only with much greater exposure to civilians), our Iraq war veterans, I suspect, have even more intense experiences (if that’s possible) than soldiers in previous wars.
One Iraq veteran’s parents related that he would often cry out that he could be in a room full of people and feel completely alone. When he’d get real drunk and begin to tell of his experiences, he’d suddenly go quiet, state “You just can’t understand,” and then blurt out “I’m a MURDERER!!”
He went forever quiet some time later at the end of a rubber hose wrapped around his neck.
As I understand it, many Iraq and Afghanistan war vets (and Viet Nam war vets) are homeless, living on the streets. Chances are, many of them are living that way because they feel betrayed by America. And who would blame them?
With the VA system overloaded, along with being in the advanced stages of decline characteristic of any protected bureaucracy, I have no idea how these vets can be reached and helped, assuming we could entice them into trusting us enough to let us try.
But since WE sent them into this war, we owe it to them to see to it that they get the care, love, and support that they need.
And we owe it to future generations to give more thought to the idea of sending our children into war.
Certainly, more thought than many gave before sending them into this one.
Wayne L. Parker