Pure terror. I read over my article just now, from two years ago. I said some things about soldiers, things that had me feeling a bad shake, coming from my ass and down my legs and up my spine. I don’t like people trained in M-16 assault rifles with armor-piercing rounds. They scare the shit out of me. And sitting in that restaurant 10 feet from a good half-dozen of them had put me in some kind of manic high-speed wind shear—I’d just started writing on my notepad, in one sitting, talking about fearing for the lives of children I don’t have yet if they were put in the same room as these soldiers. These were family members of people I’d never meet, and I was glued to my seat, thinking about the death they’d carried with them in every word they spoke and story they told.
The Women who struck back at me had every right to hate me. I’d talked about little more than the feeling I had of wanting to run screaming from the very sight of the people they loved, for the things they’d done before I met them and were going to go back and do again. I’ve opened up this can of worms all over again. More than I bargained for here. Not the shot of adrenaline from being scared that I enjoy; this is mental terror. I’m following the lines, theorizing, contemplating, and not liking the conclusions I’m reaching.
Every soldier, no matter how nice and beautiful, no matter how many candy bars and new pairs of shoes they give to poor Iraqi children, are still in a selected vocation of being given the information on how to best end someone else’s life. That’s a fact. Some of them are unmitigated assholes out for the blood-lust, but most of them aren’t. I know that. But they still know how to kill. Each and every one of them.
************
Lisa Cooper-Murphy sent me to P.J. Kennedy, a psychiatrist at counseling services, who was her liaison to the professional world of mental health here on campus, in the event that anything or anyone came to the WAGE center “support group for those with loved ones serving in Iraq or Afghanistan” that she couldn’t handle. Like I said last issue, I was worried about the fact that a non-psychiatry/psychology major was put in charge of offering emotional support for women with shipped-out loved ones, but I was put at ease when I saw how prepared things were, and heard about the green light Cooper-Murphy had been given from counseling services. Both from Lisa herself, and straight from Kennedy.
“In the WAGE center, they can have a support group—not a counseling group, a support group—for family members. Who are they really going to get their support from? It’d be facilitated by WAGE, but being able to talk to other family members who are going through the same experience is supportive.”
Kennedy himself is a Vietnam veteran. This is something I hadn’t run into yet—someone with a touch, somewhere, of first-hand experience that I could talk to. I hadn’t been able to get an interview with any of the Women yet, and Lisa Cooper-Murphy had no personal connection, no need for support herself. She was just an organizer. But Kennedy put things in perspective, especially in comparison of the homecoming between now and 40 years ago.
“I was a pretty disillusioned person [when I returned]. I really think people returning from this war will be a little different because I think in the nation we’ve made that differentiation between the war and the warrior. Whether we agree with the war or not I think we support him or her. My reading of it is there is more support in society, for people coming back. I think as a nation we are going to do a better job this time supporting our service members and I think for post-Vietnam we did a pretty poor job. And I do think, as a society, we owe it to them.”
On a cursory glance by Wikipedia, I found stats comparing Vietnam and Iraq, parts 1 & 2. On conservative estimate (from the Gulf of Tonkin until full withdraw) Vietnam lasted 140 months, with 553,000 soldiers sent, with 58,209 casualties (10.5%) (1). Iraq 1 was 697,000 over 6 months, with 293 casualties (0.04%) (2). Iraq 2 is on 56 months, with 300,000 shipped out, with 3,833 casualties (1.3%) (3).
“The survival rate is higher in this war [compared to Vietnam]. What does that really mean? That means there’s going to be a lot of injured people coming back. There are many ways that people can be affected by the time they leave that warzone. And the military man today is different from the military man then. There’s a wider age range. It’s not a bunch of 18 and 19 year olds who went into the service right out of high-school. Some of them are 40 year olds. It’s a whole different situation.”
I think about now, in comparison to peace time. At any given time, will you grant me a safe assumption that there are crazy people in the world? A certain ratio of the populace that will always be high-strung, in all the wrong ways. Too stressed, too nervous, too many things to handle on a day by day basis. For whatever chemical reason, we will never have a perfect population of mental health walking the earth. The difference between now and any other time in our country lies in where they come from. The Given Ratio is created from birth, or whatever it is that causes these mental quirks. But, other than the standing percentage of anger management cases, no one is ever born a warrior. And other than the backwoods of Michigan and Montana, there’s no source of militant warfare and the psychological change that comes with it. Except during wartime. A new category is created every time a war declaration is made. A certain group of people leave and come back differently. This new strain needs to be dealt with once the flags are flown at full staff again and the guns are put away. This is point one of my concerns—most people live their lives in Normalcy. They get from one end to the other. Cradle to grave, straight line. But sometimes a large contingent of people, on occasion, do not. And Normalcy needs to deal with this new baggage that returns with them. And as P.J. Kennedy said, “There’s only so much resource to go around. There’s only so much pie to cut.”
************
I don’t want people thinking I imagine killing-squads of ex-marines roaming the streets of America pumping lead into anything walking on less than 5 legs. I know everyone coming back from the front does not live on a hair-thin edge keeping them from blowing off a string of gruesome sprees that would put Manson to shame. I just want information. I want to follow all strings of information that come my way, come up with questions, get them answered, and then come up with seven more that I need answering. I’m not that frantic, even though the first time I wrote that sentence just now I wrote “I not that frantic.” That’s just because it’s 3:43 in the a.m. now. I like each step I’m taking here. I can feel myself getting smarter. I know it’s working, too, because I can read this last paragraph and tell that I’m getting my sense of humor back.
I even know my next move. If you talked to a Veteran Psychiatrist from Vietnam about war stress, where would you go next? Maybe some voices a little more contemporary? I think I can satisfy your hungry little brains with more.
No comments:
Post a Comment