As usual, my topic is a day late but hopefully
not a dollar short. Memorial Day has come and gone, all potato salad has been
eaten or thrown out, and creepy Uncle Bob has gone back to Iowa.
For most of us, this is the extent of Memorial
Day. That, and the start of a four day
work week. But to millions of Americans and their families, Memorial Day
reminds of a time when lives were forever changed.
I am not old enough to remember any war before
the “Vietnam Conflict” (read WAR), but that one I do remember. My grandfather
was in the military and I remember him sending me lovely Asian dolls dressed in
satin and pajamas for me made of blue silk. But I also remember the evening
news, during a time when Americans were not afraid of reality, when we took our
news in more than sound bytes, on subjects more important than Lindsay Lohan's
most recent rehab stint, back when simply listing the names of the fallen
during the last 3 minutes of the news simply was not good enough.
As a child I remember sitting on the floor in
front of the TV, rabbit ears with aluminum foil covering them rotating slightly
back and forth, watching actual footage of the war. No music, no dramatic
commentary, only soldiers, in the trenches, fighting for their lives, for their
buddies lives. I was small but I remember a lot of blood, a lot of mud and a
lot of noise, relentless noise; bombs, gunfire, shouting, everything happening
at once. But the worst part, the hardest part, was seeing these men fall. No,
fall is not the right word, seeing these men blown backwards or straight
upwards, sometimes out of their helmets, and no one taking notice, being concerned
with saving their own skin (and rightfully so). To be fair, I have a vague
recollection of a news anchor, (and I am sure he is famous, Donaldson??) being
there, right with our boys in the trenches, reporting live to us the horrors of
what was really happening. Much more effective, in my book, than respectful
dead silence and a list of names scrolling across the screen before a deodorant
commercial airs. Of course these dramatic scenes were not on the news every
time, but enough that I remember them after over 4 decades.
We all are aware of the disgraceful way our
troops were "welcomed" home after that war, something that is a
subject of historical significance but beyond the scope of this post. To say
that the Vietnam conflict was hellish is to grossly minimize its impact on each
human that was involved. Yet though the returning troops were treated unfairly
at best, they did, eventually, force us to realize the horrors of war, both
physical and emotional. They made us face the truth of conflict, that it can be
honorable and brave, but it is mostly bloody and wasteful. The veterans of
Vietnam forced a generation to face reality, kicking and screaming at times.
SILENT HELL - PTSD
My personal experience with veterans with PTSD involved
men with mild forms of it, men who could still function in society and usually
could "hide" their fears. One man I worked with, a Vietnam vet, was
fine except he always had to have his back to a wall. Since that wall could be
7 or 8 feet away no one noticed, but sit at a table with no wall behind him and
you could see him sweat and his eyes begin to dart around the room. Another I
knew had been in the Gulf War and would go into fits of irrational rage for no
reason but luckily he never hurt a person or an object, just a lot of
incoherent shouting and running up and down steps if he could find them, then a
return to normal rationality. Yet another I know still will not admit he has
it, but refuses to speak of the wars in the Middle East he has been in and
cannot watch anything on TV that uses night vision goggles, and has a hard time
with shows about conflicts in the desert as well. But these men are coping.
But what of prior war veterans? What of the
returning vets from Korean? WWII? All
the way back to the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression as these
delusional southerners call it)? These men returned home from battle with the
shadow of romantic war movies following them around. To civilians exposed only
to newsreels and movies of the time, these men fought clean and fair, in dusty
trenches with bullets ricocheting here and there, not in the reality of muddy
trenches made from rain and blood, a sea of bullets swirling around them. To those stateside, these were war heroes, men
who spent most of their time watching Betty Grable in a USO show, not picking schrapnel
from their buddies’ faces. But they were...they WERE. The Hollywood portrayal
of the soldier prior to the Vietnam conflict was a watered down, a sanitized
version of what real life was like in battle. Tell me, have you ever seen a film
or a photo of a WWII vet with no legs? Never. That’s because were none. The
medical technology of the day hardly allowed for your survival if your legs
were blown off or if you lost an arm. You were not put in a wheel chair and
sent home, you went home in a box. And still, no one spoke of it.
But not all wounds are visible. Many, possibly
most, are hidden deep within the minds and souls of these men returning from a
hell they could never have imagined. Because can we honestly be naive enough to
think war was any less brutal and merciless, any less treacherous and painful
in 1775 than in 1975? I once saw a special on PBS where half a dozen WWII vets
were interviewed, most POWs. The stories they told and the scars they showed
were no less horrific than anything Vietnam ever produced. Please don’t get me
wrong I am not comparing vets, I am admonishing society for its poor treatment
of all vets, albeit in different ways. For as distained and ignored as the Vietnam
vet was, the WWII vet was so canonized upon his return that he could not
possibly live up to his image, and certainly had no room in his life to shed
the tears and scream the frustrations society forced him to suppress.
A recently released film from just after WWII
brought this home to me. It was a documentary made by the director John Huston
about what we today call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Back then they had
many names for it, usually with the word "neurosis" in it. Once
produced and then reviewed by the government it was immediately shelved. Bad
for moral, bad publicity, blah blah, same old government image machine churning
away. Then in 1980 the film was rediscovered but, unfortunately, was in such
bad condition, especially the audio, that it was unusable. But now it has been restored,
probably to even better shape than the original. The bottom of this post gives
a link to this film and a few others about the war, showing us things we never
learned about in history class.
If you ever get the chance to go to Washington D.C.
I highly recommend you visit Arlington Cemetery and the Vietnam Memorial (I
have not seen some of the more recent memorials so I cannot comment on them).
Photos of Arlington do not do it justice. Acres of headstones, as far as you
can see, each representing a member of our military that, in some fashion,
served our country. The sheer number is awe inspiring and, for me, sentimental,
since I know my grandfather is in there among the sea of white marble.
The Vietnam Memorial is one of the most moving
places you may ever visit. I have seen many museums, art galleries, memorials,
and battlefields, having grown up in the D.C. area, but nothing, nothing
prepared me for this. Though just a small child during this time in our
history, I immediately felt part of it. Touching the names, seeing the people
frantically searching for their friend’s and relative’s names, only to dissolve
into tears of what seem a mixture of joy and sorrow when they find it. People
making rubbings, leaving notes or stuffed animals, all the while no one saying
a word. I remember feeling my own tears burning down my face for these men I
never knew, men who, in today’s military, are just babies to me now. And my
mother. The memory of my mother looking for her friend's name on the wall,
never saying a word, just searching, hoping. She never found him. Her
disappointment was palatable. Yes, he did die in the war but no, she could not
find his name, and for some reason this was important, for some reason she had
been cheated out of a closure she probably needed more than she realized.
I hope you get to visit these places, I hope you
watch the movie, maybe even two, and I hope they touch your soul, and that next
Memorial Day will really matter to you.
Support the troops, not the wars. Amen brother.
