Healing Combat Trauma

On the Shelf: Great Books on War Photography

A short list of great books on war photography, recommended by photojournalists, war correspondents and museum curators/consultants.

The items cover Civil War-era photography (Matthew Brady); through World War II (Robert Capa and the Magnum book); the Vietnam era (Requiem); and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (almost everything else).

Two are produced from museum shows, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas (finished earlier this year) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (ongoing).

The recommended books, alphabetically:

"Deeds of War," by James Nachtwey;

"Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer," by Alan Huffman;

"In the Wake of Battle: the Civil War Images of Matthew Brady," by George Sullivan;

"Magnum: Fifty Years at the Frontline of History," the story of the legendary photo agency, by Russell Miller;

"Photography and the American Civil War," by Jeff L. Rosenheim. (Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

"Photojournalism: 150 Years of Outstanding Press Photography," by Reuel Golden;

"Photojournalists on War: the Untold Stories from Iraq," by Michael Kamber;

"Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina," by Horst Faas, editor; foreword by David Halberstam;

"Robert Capa: Photographs," by Richard Whelan;

"Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection," by Richard Whelan;

"Shooting under Fire: the World of the War Photographer," by Peter Howe;

"This is Our War: A Soldier's Portfolio: Servicemen's Photographs of Life in Iraq," by Devin Friedman;

"Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq," by Thorne Anderson;

"War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath," by Anne Wilkes Tucker. (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.)

Editor's note:

For more on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit on "Photography and the American Civil War," which runs through September 2, click here. If you want to read about the Houston Museum of Fine Art's "War/Photography" exhibition, now over, click here.

 

 

 

David Halberstam on "the Most Relentless of Forces, the Power of Memory"

In honor of the panel discussion on war correspondents and PTSD taking place at the National Press Club in Washington, DC today, some brief remarks by noted war correspondent David Halberstam, in the introduction to the coffee table book, Requiem, about the war photographers who died in Vietnam and Indochina:

"Our memories of Vietnam are too mixed, and there is altogether too much sadness in most of them; we have spent much of the last twenty to twenty-five year learning to forget or at least learning to soften those chapters in our lives. Saigon is mercifully distant, a place that belonged to the younger men and women we once were, the young, eager, scared journalists clad in Catinat fatigues, scrambling to get to Tan Son Nhut to get aboard the Hueys going into battle, terrified we might get there too late to get aboard, terrified we might get there in time to get aboard.

We are all older now, sedate men and women in our fifties and sixties living in civilized settings, leading ordinary, rather mundane lives. Yet for most of us, the memory is always there, just beneath the surface; when we open a book like Requiem and read it now in our handsome apartments in the Western cities in which we live, the past still lurks. And as we read, we are at first flooded by these images of the past, and then we are surrounded by a terrible stillness, a special silence produced by the most relentless of all forces, the power of memory. We are quiet as we turn the pages of this book, as befits a special act of homage to those we knew so well.

The silence stands in sharp contrast to the terrible noise that was a defining part of those days and accompanied so many of these very scenes: the racket of infantry weapons and artillery, the harsh clamor of the helicopters. We read it, of course, now safely distanced from our own terrible fear that was the constant of those days. But in some ways the remembrance of another time is more powerful than ever, not just because of the photos but, more important, because of the memory of the young men and women who women who took them, since they themselves, in the most final and terrible way, became part of what lay before them. Looking through Requiem, we remember not just what they did, but now we know, as well, the price they paid."

Ernie Pyle on Transformation in Soldiers about Killing

I've been reading a great book about Ernie Pyle's war correspondence in World War II lately, and have been struck by many of his observations. In this passage below, the book's author quotes Pyle describing the transformation he sees in the soldiers he's "embedded" -- a transformation he doesn't completely share, despite his genuine love for the men. It's a great passage about how even moral horrors can become what amounts to "just another day at the office."

Ernie Pyle "felt bonds of kinship tugging him toward these men...but he perceived a change in them that he had not undergone. Before Kasserine they had been merely civilians thrust into Army green. Now they were soldiers. He heard the transformation in 'the casual and workshop manner in which they now talk about killing. They have made the psychological transition from the normal belief that taking human life is sinful over to a new professional outlook in which killing is a craft. To them now there is nothing morally wrong with killing. In fact it is an admirable thing.' He didn't hear this sort of talk in the rear echelons, only among the rifle companies at the tip of the spear. The front-line soldier 'wants to kill individually or in vast numbers. He wants to see the Germans overrun, mangled, butchered...' It was a profound difference, shocking yet necessary. 'All the rest of us -- you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa -- we want terribly  yet only academically for the war to get over. The front-line soldier wants it to be got over by the phsyical process of his destroying enough Germans to end it. He is truly at war. The rest of us, no matter how hard we work, are not.'" 

Source: Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II, by James Tobin. 

 

 

Happy Veterans Day 2011 -- Joe Galloway on the Experience of War

"War is about men who love their country but even more than that love each other. I left that battlefield knowing that they will continue to sacrifice for me. There are some events that are so overwhelming you can't simply be a witness. You can't be above it you can't be neutral you can't be untouched by it. You see it, you live it, you experience it and it will be with you all of your days." -- Joseph "Joe" Galloway, from "Vietnam in HD" on the History Channel. 

Editor's note: Longtime journalist Galloway, who served as a war correspondent in the battle of Ai Drang during the Vietnam War, has been decorated for his bravery under fire. He's also the author of "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young" with Lt. Gen. Harold Moore (Ret.), which has since been made into a movie; and he's featured in the excellent Michael Samstag documentary about war correspondents in the current era, called "War & Truth." 

From the Canadian Side of the Street: A Military Author's Take on Veterans Suffering from War and PTSD

One of the many blessings of the new media -- social media like Facebook -- are the interesting, talented people one meets within that. One such person is Bonnie Toews, a Canadian former journalist and novelist with a longtime background in writing about the military. I forwarded her an article from the Montreal Gazette last week about social workers quitting because of burnout in Canada, meaning that fewer will be available to serve returning veterans with PTSD, and this is what she wrote on her website in response:

Outrageous failure of government assistance to returning Afghanistan vets

"It is wonderful that we celebrate the lives and courage of fallen soldiers when they are repatriated to CFB Trenton and paraded down the Highway of Heroes, but the question that is never answered: who looks out for the returning vets? Especially those whose minds, bodies and spirits have been shattered on a continual rotation of tours through the past eight years.

It is disgusting and absolutely unacceptable to hear that Canada's Veterans Affairs is cutting back on social workers because WWI and WWII vets are dying off. 

Excuse me, but Canada has a whole new generation of vets who have served in Afghanistan for eight years. By next year it will be nine years. The war in Afghanistan has lasted longer than either world war in the 20th Century and soldiers have been repeatedly rotated through three and four tours because our forces aren't large enough to handle a deployment this long and this demanding. These vets and their families need help to mend their lives back together. 

Kevin Dougherty in Montreal's newspaper, The Gazette, writes that soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can wait up to four months before seeing a social worker, a necessary step to integrate them back into society and return them to the labor market. 

Why? Because federal social workers each have a caseload of 40 clients to their provincial counterparts, who carry a caseload of 20 clients each. There are not enough social workers to contend with the need, and under such strained resources, these caregivers burn out, depleting veterans' social services even further. 

People forget that soldiers returning home are not the only victims of the wars they've fought. So are their loved ones, families and friends. They need as much social assistance as the soldiers themselves. Those coming home are forever changed. They have experienced things the rest of us can't imagine. They carry this psychological burden for the rest of their lives. 

In 1994, in Rwanda, I was briefly introduced to that world of theirs. I was one of the few North American journalists covering the massive humanitarian effort following the genocide against the Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. One peacekeeper after another told me what they saw, incomprehensible mass slaughter with no human respect whatsoever and they were forced to observe because the UN didn't give them the mandate or size of force to quell the madness. Soldiers trained to fight and defend forced to stand down. Can you imagine the helpless rage they experienced? Yet, when I came home, I faced the same apathy from friends, co-workers and the public as they did. My husband proudly explained that I had been in Rwanda and time and time again I was asked, "Did you go there on holiday?" 

People didn't even know what was going on, and were indifferent when I chose to explain. I, like so many soldiers, learned not to talk about it because no one really cared to listen. 

This time the public must get behind their vets and demand the social services they deserve and need. This is the most important tribute we can give our returning vets for the sacrifices they've made on behalf of our country."

 -- Bonnie Toews. A longtime journalist reporting for logistics and private security magazines and now a novelist, speaks out for the victims of genocide and war, from the peacekeepers and coalition forces trying to save suppressed peoples to the children and innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of opposing powers, ideologies and cultures. Current writing "Trilogy in Treason." Member of Military Writers Society of America, American Authors Association and ACFW. Her website is linked here.

Editor's note: Find us on Facebook, here; follow us on Twitter @HealingPTSD.

News from Hell before Breakfast: Journalists, War Trauma and PTSD

"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast." -- attributed, perhaps erroneously, to Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman.

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A different quote:

"On Thursday, June 26th, I witnessed the immediate aftermath of an Al-Qaeda suicide bomb attack.  Several dozen people lost their lives... children, old men, civilians, police, and military men.  The scene was horrific beyond words, even for someone like me who has a fairly high threshold for such things.

I found it nearly impossible to look through the viewfinder.  What I saw was abhorrently graphic, yet far too important for the world to ignore.  I present images that provide an uncensored view of a terrible event, and some small measure of dignity to those who lost their lives."

-- Zoriah, international humanitarian photographer, whose gripping images from that event were later censored by the U.S. military, and he was evicted from his embed assignment with the Marines. (The link to the post where he talks about those images, and shows them, is here.)

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PTSD from being a combat journalist of photographer, embedded or otherwise:  Not everyone who's exposed to combat trauma develops PTSD, as we know.  Recently, Kimberly Dozier, CBS correspondent and author of Breathing the Fire, says she didn't develop it from her horrific near-death incident in Iraq in May of 2006, though ironically -- according to Dozier -- almost everyone she interacts with believes thatshe must have.  (See article to that effect by Dozier, linked here.)  However...many do; and for others, the signs and symptoms take time to manifest themselves. 

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Journalists bear witness, both to some of the most savage atrocities of wartime, though without the training and the mindset of combatants, and also to the suffering of the survivors, military and civilian.  Says one photographer who served in Vietnam:

It has been very difficult for me [to recount some of his memories from the past] as it has brought back many of the horrible nightmares that I had thought that I had finally put away. It did get them out in the open and off my chest so to speak and now my family now knows why I sometimes have to take those walks out into the woods alone to just get away. Hard to explain. I do have severe survival guilt as I have lost far to many friends in combat in up close and personal confrontations. I have many photos of me smiling and yes there were many good times. However; there were enough bad times to more than compensate for the good ones. I have learned to cope with this new world that I came home to only because I still feel a great need to help my fellow veterans. We 'Nam veterans are all but forgotten in my eyes.

Two significant resources: Dr. Anthony Feinstein's work, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Two excellent books:

Dangerous Lives: War, and the Men and Women Who Report It, by Anthony Feinstein (2002); and Journalists under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War, by Anthony Feinstein. (2006).  (Recommended by Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D., noted PTSD expert.)  Shay wrote: "the first and only book about the occupational [psychological] hazards of being a war correspondent.  Published in Canada, will come out in the US next year from Johns Hopkins UP with a new chapter on embeds."

Dr. Anthony Feinstein is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and a neuropsychiatrist at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. He is an expert on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in war journalists. Feinstein received a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue his research. Dr. Anthony Feinstein's bio is linked here.  Much better bio, linked here.

For reporters: War, Journalism and Stress: The Self-Assessment Test, linked here. (General description of the test, linked here.)

What Feinstein has to say:

More than anything, says Feinstein, he’s learned that, “War is not good for journalists. They suffer from it.”

Specifically, they suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and anxiety disorders. One in five journalists, over the course of a long (15-plus-year) career, endures significant PTSD, says Feinstein. That means, among other things, bad dreams, flashbacks, numbness, an overly sensitive startle response and an inability to get close to others emotionally. One in four experiences depression. “And a number drink very heavily as well,” says Feinstein, “but I don’t know how many, because I never know for sure what they’re telling me.”

The most surprising revelation of the research for Feinstein? “I didn’t realize that the journalists were in such great danger. You see them when they report the news: cool, collected, with everything seemingly going on behind them. But these people are really right in the middle of it all.”

He is particularly sympathetic to still photographers. More than anyone, he says, these professionals have no choice but to get into the thick of things to do their jobs well.

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, located on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, is a particularly good, targeted resource for journalists about reporting and trauma: both externally reporting, and internally experiencing trauma from reporting in war zones.  Click here to look through their extensive offerings, which are really superb.

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Who's the handsome young man in the photo? 

That's Robert W. "Grif" Griffin.  Griffin says, "I was a combat photographer with the 1st Cavalry Division Airmobile from 1966 to 1968 and 1970. I was in country [in Vietnam] as a photographer from 1966 to 1968, and back again in 1970."  (He was shot down near Quan Loi in 1970.)  He adds that he "spent 20 years in the Army mostly as a photojournalist/motion picture and still photographer."

According to Griffin, "the photographer who took the photo is Jere L. Smith, a fellow combat photographer and a Specialist E5 at the time. We were both assigned to the 13th Signal Battalion, which was part of the 1st Cavalry Division Airmobile."  At the time the photo was taken, Griffin was duplicating some slides for his Command for a Division briefing that was to take place in several locations at the same time: hence, the dupes.

Books Fall Open, We Fall In: Reading to Better Understand the Vietnam War and Its Veterans

The kindly and indulgent boyfriend, GuvBoy, left for the local library book sale with instructions to purchase anything that looked good about the Vietnam war and several other blog-related topics. As a former journalist and all-around smart person, he knows how to figure that out, so I knew I was in good hands.  As it turns out, he returned with some good ones, that seem to have been lost to history.  So I thought I would point them out here, in case they help anyone else who's interested in digging deeper into what went on and what the combatants experienced. 

(In case it's never been clear what orientation the categories of books in the various columns flanking this blog have, here's the breakdown:

The column to the right here on this blog lists various books of poetry about war, any war; followed by a section of all sorts of excellent first-person narratives about various wars, the better to give us an understanding of what veterans went through.  Those first-person narratives are organized by war, to make it more self-explanatory.  The column to the left here lists therapeutic resources for dealing with combat trauma up on top; and various miscellaneous things that get mentioned on the blog further down).

For Vietnam-era veterans who want their families (i.e., children and grandchildren) to better understand what the war was like, I'm still recommending "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement," by Gerald Nicosia, because while he's talking about the veterans movement, in 700 pages, he's capturing all sorts of history of the era and feelings for and against.  The book is actually pretty neutrally, historically written, and it's a very good resource.  I've blogged about it earlier, here.  Except for its oversight of the extremely impressive (to me, anyway) Lawrence Kolb, M.D., I can't say enough good things about Nicosia's book.  There's a fascinating wealth of information about the legitimization of the PTSD diagnosis in the book as well.

Here are a few others:

Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History, is also good.  The cover calls it "The first complete account of Vietnam at war" -- maybe it should actually say, the first complete account of Americans at war in Vietnam -- so it has its place.  It was written as the companion to the long-ago PBS series of the same name.

Plus three new finds, though, thanks to the pleasantly-disposed boyfriend and his handful of small bills:

"Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation," by Myra McPherson; "Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam," by Arthur Egendorf; and "Vietnam: the Valor and the Sorrow" (from the home front to the front lines in words and pictures), by Thomas D. Boettcher.

Each of these books has a particular reason why it's good and worth perusing.  McPherson was a Washington Post and New York Times reporter who carried on 500 interviews with veterans and others to get her material; Egendorf, who Nicosia writes about in his history, was a Harvard graduate, Vietnam vet and psychologist who became one of the founders of the first rap groups to help veterans deal with the personal fallout from the war; and Boettcher was a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy who served in Vietnam in the press corps.  His book has more than 500 photographers, many never before published, which adds greatly to its interest (it's also very well-written and well-paced, not deadly.) 

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Additionally, we've already blogged about Lori Sekala's great bibliography on PTSD and war in the blog post entitled, "A Good Librarian is a Wonderful Resource," linked here.  (Sekala is the collection management librarian at the U.S. Army War College library).  But here's something we haven't talked about yet -- possibly THE definitive bibliography on books about the Vietnam war, to better understand the experience.  It's linked here.  Enjoy :-)

Lisa Chedekel, Veteran Reporter on Veterans Issues, Allegedly to Take Courant Buyout

In the "Another One Bites the Dust " Dept., it's discouraging to learn that Lisa Chedekel, one of only a handful of truly great reporters on veterans issues – and by handful I really do mean, five or fewer -- is apparently taking a buyout offer from The Hartford Courant, the newspaper where she has reported for years, at least according on media-watcher blog, linked here.  (Sorry, Lisa, about the dismal, DMV-ish photo -- it's all I could find to identify you with to readers. )

 

This is particularly sad news for veterans, their families, and anyone else who wants to learn about the perils of their frequently inadequate mental health and treatments, because Chedekel, who specializes in what she calls "in-depth, old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting," has provided wonderful coverage of these topics over the years.  It’s disappointing to learn that Chedekel will be leaving the Courant, because it means one fewer voice covering this subject well; and perhaps no one to replace her who can do it nearly so well.

 

(There are others, of course, who do a great job covering veterans and mental health issues, but they are few and far between: The Washington Post's reporting duo of Anne Priest and Dana Hull, who did the seminal Walter Reed series; independent journalist Aaron Glantz, who's a new Rosalynn Carter fellow in mental health reporting this year; Mark Benjamin, who wrote about this topic in Salon and elsewhere well before it was popular on any level to do so; and Kathy Dobie, who seems to have a trauma survivor's insider's take on why this topic is so important.)

 

A 1982 grad of Wesleyan University, Chedekel's work has frequently been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  Her fantastic investigative piece, Mentally Unfit, Forced to Fight, is fortunately still available on the Web, as is her recent article, "Mental Health Providers Too Few for Troops," linked here, and another titled, "Army Sees Record Number of Suicides in Iraq," linked here. 

 

Mentally Unfit, Forced to Fight, is one of the best articles to date that covers the murky ground where mental illness and military readiness co-exist, and specifically covered the U.S. military's cavernous gaps in mental health care for its soldiers.  Calling Chedekel's "Mentally Unfit, Forced to Fight," an "impressive investigation," a reporter at the renowned British paper, The Guardian, summarized its impact when he wrote:

 

The Hartford Courant found that, despite an order by Congress that the US military should assess the mental health of all deploying troops, fewer than one in 300 US personnel saw a mental health professional before deployment.

 

The paper says there is evidence of the US military "recycling" troops with mental health problems, redeploying them even if they develop PTSD. It also notes that the number of troop suicides in Iraq reached a high of 22 last year. The Courant says at least 11 of the soldiers who killed themselves were kept on duty "despite showing signs of significant psychological distress".

 

(This was news at the time, and we owe Chedekel’s reporting, and the  Hartford Courant’s resources, for contributing to growing public awareness of the problem. In the mostly misplaced anger that particularly military bloggers direct at the alleged "main stream media" -- sorry, that's two words, not three -- reporters come in for a lot of flak, as though inferior coverage starts and ends with them, as opposed to also the commercial concerns of running a newspaper, often one allied with business interests.  Since many of these disgruntled types seem reasonably unaware of the part that good journalism can play in helping move society forward -- by spotlighting a problem that needs to be solved, and writing persuasively about it so that people start to care -- I sometimes feel the urge to spell that out.  That's what Chedekel's work did for veterans, and we're thankful that at least some important changes came about, because of it.  Here's what that effort took.)

 

According to the Courant's website:

 

To report this series, The Courant obtained records under the federal Freedom of Information Act, including never-before-released pre-deployment screening data for nearly a million troops and investigative reports into dozens of service members' deaths.

The Courant also interviewed more than 100 mental health experts, service members, family members and friends. The military does not publicly identify suicide cases. But The Courant was able to identify -- in most cases for the first time -- the service members who killed themselves in Iraq through records and interviews. Details of their deaths came from investigative reports and interviews with family, friends and fellow troops.

(The series was first published in May 2006.)

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Here are some articles from Lisa Chedekel and the  Hartford Courant's coverage of PSTD and the military, hyperlinked so you can go right to them:

 

Mentally Unfit Soldiers

The military is focused on retaining troops in combat, even when they exhibit clear signs of psychological distress, a Courant investigation uncovered in 2006.

Army Sees Record Number Of Suicides In Iraq

The Army is losing its battle to stem suicides among troops serving in Iraq, with a new report showing that 32 soldiers killed themselves in the war zone last year — a record high since the war began five years ago.

Special Report: Mentally Unfit, Forced To Fight

The U.S. military is sending troops with serious psychological problems into Iraq and is keeping soldiers in combat even after superiors have been alerted to suicide warnings and other signs of mental illness, a Courant investigation has found.

'Jeffrey Was Really Messed Up'

There is not enough guilt to go around here, so intent is each woman in Jeffrey Henthorn's life on owning a piece of the blame.

Slipping Through The System

In the 17 months after their son, Eddie, announced he was heading off to fight the war on terror, Margaret and Edward Brabazon of Bensalem, Pa., had held their breath.

Potent Mixture: Zoloft & A Rifle

When Army Sgt. 1st Class Mark C. Warren was diagnosed with depression soon after his deployment to Iraq, a military doctor handed him a supply of the mood-altering drug Effexor.

Amid Patriotism, Anger And Questions

Just off the two-lane main street of this southern Maryland town, a couple doors shy of the big lumber mill that rumbles all day like thunder, Ann and Jim Guy's modest dwelling is the picture of a patriotic American home.

Still Suffering, But Redeployed

Eight months ago, Staff Sgt. Bryce Syverson was damaged goods, so unsteady that doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center wouldn't let him wear socks or a belt.

Use Of Unfit Troops Blasted

U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman called Wednesday for a federal investigation of mental health screening for troops deploying to Iraq, after The Courant reported in a series that mentally ill service members are being sent to war and kept there, sometimes with tragic consequences.

An Unprecedented Aesthetic Triumph: A War Poet (Jarrell) on a Combat Journalist (Pyle)

Randall Jarrell is famous to many (okay, I'll say it, so you won't have to) ex-English literature majors, and other fans of poetry, including war poetry.  His poem, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," is one of the more famous war poems around.  What I didn't realize until I read more about Ernie Pyle was that Randall Jarrell made one of the more profound quotes about why Ernie Pyle's contribution as a journalist in wartime was so important.  He wrote:

"We felt most the moral qualities of [Ernie Pyle's] work and life; but we could not help realizing that his work was, in our time, an unprecedented aesthetic triumph: because of it most of the people of a country felt, in the fullest moral and emotional sense, something that had never happened to them, that they could never have imagined without it -- a war."

Never read Jarrell's famous poem?  Here's your chance, then: It's pretty short and to the point in its ability to communicate, elliptically, the experience of war on the individual:

 

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

The two men -- one a poet, who had served briefly in the military, the other a journalist who had embedded at length with the troops, and considered himself one of them -- both served to "amplify" the experience of serving in combat for those to those who stayed at home.  Interestingly, for our purposes on this blog, no one is clear whether Jarrell's "accidental" death at 51 (he was hit by a car while walking) was actually accidental, or in fact a successful suicide attempt.  He had struggled with mental illness (depression) before his untimely death. 

As for Pyle, he died in combat, with the troops he loved and whose individual experience he communicated so successfully to the folks at home.  According to Pyle's obituary in the New York Times, Eleanor Roosevelt herself wrote of Pyle, "I have read everything he has sent from overseas," and, the obituary states, "recommended his writings to all Americans."

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Just because I can't get enough lately of this journalist with the compassion for those he encountered in combat, I have to add one more quote from his (excellent) obituary.  How I wish we had someone like this today.  See how very much his point of view is needed among veterans today:

Said General Mark W. Clark, from Fifteenth Army General HQ in Europe:

 

"A great soldier correspondent is dead, perhaps the greatest of this war. I refer to Ernie Pyle, who marched with my troops through Italy, took their part and championed their cause both here and at home.

 

"His reporting was always constructive. He was "Ernie" to privates and generals alike. He spoke the GI's language and made it a part of the everlasting lore of our country. He was a humble man and in his humility lay his greatness.

 

"He will be missed by all of us fighting with the Fifteenth Army Group. There could have been only one Ernie Pyle. May God bless his memory. He helped our soldiers to victory."

Shaking Off the Blues: Two New Books Help Veterans and Others Get "Unstuck"

A well-regarded psychiatrist who thinks there are other-than-pharmaceutical antidotes to biochemical depression?  Rank heresy!  Oops, actually we meant -- how very refreshing indeed. 

A soulful journalist who's lived and worked in war-torn countries, and knows what it's like to be a survivor -- who then turns her attention to helping veterans and their families come home from war and rebuild the pieces of their often-shattered psyches? Again, a wonderful suggestion.

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NPR the other day published a great interview with none other than James S. Gordon, M.D., author of the new book called "Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression." Depression is an important topic, because many people who are risk for suicide have depression as an underlying state.  According to one psychiatry textbook for medical students, "A majority (60% to 80%) of people who commit suicide carry a diagnosis of depression."   

If you remember, we've talked about Dr. Gordon on this blog before.  He has an impressive, very talented background academically (Harvard College, Harvard Medical School), and is the founder of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., as well as a frequent lecturer at the Smithsonian, and the former chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, also known as "CAM."  (We've blogged about CAM, also known somewhat misinformedly as natural medicine, and its opportunities for treating PTSD here on the blog, at length here; and also about the varieties of mind-body medicinethat might show some promise for treating combat trauma and PTSD, here.)

To listen to the NPR interview, or to read the accompany material on getting unstuck -- in Dr. Gordon's words -- click here.  To read Dr. Gordon's bio -- click here.  To read our previous posts about his work on "Healing the Wounds of War," click here; on "Healing the Troops," click here; and on his and the Center for Mind-Body Medicine's annual conference, planned for October 25-29th in Minneapolis, Minnesota this year, click here.  The topic of this year's conference is the highly-appropriate "Integrating Mind-Body Medicine into Clinical Practice, Medical Education & Trauma Healing."  As Dr. Gordon's website says, "We're teaching thousands to heal the world's millions." Indeed -- and what a noble task that is; and how very, very vital.

If I had ONE RECOMMENDATIONfor the Pentagon, the DOD, the VA, the various branches of the military (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, National Guard) that frequently comb this site, looking for answers to the questions they have -- it's that they would get to know Dr. Gordon's work, and send representatives to this conference in late October, 2008.  Check into mind-body medicine, with a credible expert, and somehow who's already worked with, and proven his work with, the war-torn and traumatized (troops and civilians) here and abroad.  Broaden the outlook on how to treat PTSD and combat trauma, by returning people to themselves, and helping them to learn to manage their own stress in creative and supportive ways.

Dr. Gordon says his book, Unstuck, goes into many of the same principles that his trauma work does. I can't wait to start reading my copy, which his office promises to send.

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In the meantime, I hope Dr. Gordon gets to cross paths professionally with Minnesotan Britta Reque-Dragicevic. I have read her book-- devoured it in one sitting is the more accurate description -- and think it has lots of potential to comfort, support and nurture returning veterans and their families in putting the pieces of the puzzle back together.  (One thing I love about both Dr. Gordon and Britta Reque-Dragicevic -- they both "get" it.  They've had a personal experience with what they're talking about; it's not just academic.  And they're both driven to help others heal from their suffering -- the not exactly unspoken single purpose of this blog: there's synchronicity.)

Reque-Dragicevic has written a completely soulful manual on getting unstuck herself, and with her profound understanding of the needs of trauma survivors, as a longtime journalist in post-war Saravejo and Bosnia, I sense a little (**magical?!**) professional matchmaking going on that would only serve to increase the amount of healing and overcoming in the world, especially among trauma survivors and veterans with PTSD.  If you want to read more about Reque-Dragicevic's marvelous book, Close to Home: A Soldier's Guide to Returning from War, click here.  Her book is endorsed and recommended by Dr. Edward Tick, among others.  At a mere $10 as a download on the Web, you really can't go wrong.  (We'll be quoting from Reque-Dragicevic's book on this blog in the future, with her permission, because it's wonderful stuff and she really "gets" it. Veterans and their families need to experience this.)

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If you have $10 to spare, or as a gift for someone else, buy Britta Reque-Dragecivic's book.  It's a download, and you can have it in your hands within minutes, from anywhere in the world, and start the healing process today.  If you have about $18 and shipping, buy Dr. Gordon's book, and start the healing process when it arrives in the mail -- or at your local bookstore.  If you have about $40, buy them both :-)

The Journalist as Witness to "The Powerful Fraternalism of the Ghastly Brotherhood of War"

 

I knew a trial lawyer once who had won hundreds of cases in his time, and who had -- as anyone does who primarily makes his living talking -- a few really memorable quotes, culled from various places over the years, and very useful for making certain points to juries and his peers.  Here's the best one I remember of those, which I've had opportunity to use myself over the years since.  It's allegedly from the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, and it basically says, "Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked, and being tripped over."  All too true.  And all the persuasion in the world isn't gonna convince you otherwise -- if you're the dog, that is.

The world at large may always be able to debate, fairly inconclusively, whether a journalist is, or even should be, a thoroughly impartial observer to others' suffering - and what changes if and when the journalist becomes part of the story.  That indisputably great humanitarian of our time, Oprah Winfrey, started as a broadcast journalist, but had to give it up when she realized she was more interested in holding a victim's hand and comforting them than, say, aggressively interviewing them for the "story."  It makes sense, given what she was able to morph into being, that she would have had her misgivings about being there "just for the story."  Journalists like Daniel Pearl (sadly), and Zoriah (lately) can inadvertently become the subject of a story themselves, when circumstances present themselves or change so that they become the focus of the news, instead of reporting on the news.  Fundamentally, though, journalists are witnesses -- witnesses to history, of which they are often writing the alleged "first drafts" -- given that they're on the scene at the time.

Now here's someone interesting who basically confirms the paradigm of the journalist as witness/observer, but explodes the myth of being the impartial onlooker: Ernie Pyle.  Ernie Pyle is known as the greatest war correspondent who ever lived, and the reality is, he earned that accolade for many reasons.  But perhaps the biggest was this: he took a genuine interest in his subjects who -- like the celebrated dog in the quote above -- certainly knew the difference.

In the introduction to Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches, David Nichols writes:

"Ernie Pyle covered World War II the way the infantry soldier fought it: on the ground and on the move, subject to fear, filth and the capricious fates that dealt death to one man, life to another.  Pyle was a novelty as a war correspondent.  Only rarely did he write about the so-called 'big picture.' Rather, Pyle focused on the individual combatant -- how he lived, endured by turns battle and boredom, and sometimes how he died, far from home in a war whose origins he only vaguely understood."

Ahhh, I think I'm in love with him already...

Studs Terkel, who, along with David McCullough, is one of America's foremost oral historians, writes this about Pyle's ability to touch "millions of readers" with his dispatches, from the same book:

"It is an exquisite irony that this journalist became celebrated for celebrating the non-celebrated.  It is further irony that his deeply moving pieces became dis-remembered at war's end.  So did the war, for that matter.  We may be the richest country in material things and possibly the poorest in memory."

But, he continued:

"Ernie Pyle was painfully aware of this.  In writing of the footsloggers, the grunts, Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe, he let us know it: "All the war of the world has seemed to be borne by the few thousand front-line soldiers here, destined merely by chance to suffer and die for the rest of us."  He sensed immediately what [war poet] Wilfred Owen, who died in some other war, called Chance's strange arithmetic.  [Editor's note: In an resonance across the generations, some of the Recon Marines in Evan Wright's Generation Kill discuss a similar phenomenon that they call 'the sacred geometry of chance.']

"He knew, too, that it was neither God nor Flag nor Mother that impelled a pimply faced kid to risk, to lose his life in an obscene adventure.  He did it for the kid next to him; he couldn't let him down.  They needed one another so bad.  'I lay there in the darkness ... thinking of the millions far away at home who must remain forever unaware of the powerful fraternalism in the ghastly brotherhood of war'.

"When they found Ernie's body on Ie [an island in the Okinanawan chain, where the battle was being fought], they came across a rough draft of a column [that he had with him.]  Fragments: 'Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.  Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.  These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand.  To you at home they are columns of figures."

When Ernie Pyle died in combat, the whole country reached out to offer their condolences:

President Harry Truman said,

"No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen."

Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal said,

"With deep regret, the Navy announces the death on Ie Shima (Island) of Ernie Pyle, whose reporting of this war endeared him to the men of the armed forces throughout the world and to their families at home.

"He was killed instantly by Japanese machine-gun fire while standing beside the regimental commanding officer of Headquarters Troop, Seventy-seventh Division, United States Army. At the time of his death he was with the foot soldiers, the men for whom he had the greatest admiration.

"Mr. Pyle will live in the hearts of all service men who revered him as a comrade and spokesman. More than anyone else, he helped America to understand the heroism and sacrifices of her fighting men. For that achievement, the nation owes him its unending gratitude."

Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall said,

"Ernie Pyle belonged to the millions of soldiers he had made his friends. His dispatches reached down into the ranks to draw out the stories of individual soldiers. He did not glorify war, but he did glorify the nobility, the simplicity and heroism of the American fighting man. The Army deeply mourns his death."

And according to an AP report at the time, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said of Pyle, "The GI's in Europe--and that means all of us here--have lost one of our best and most understanding friends."

The Colonel who was with him in the jeep when they were shot at, and Pyle was killed -- who in fact had just met him, yet instantly had fallen under his spell -- was reported to say, with tears in his eyes:

 

"I was so impressed with Pyle's coolness, calmness and his deep interest in enlisted men. They have lost their best friend."

(All the last five comments, starting with President Truman's, are from the New York Times' obituary of Ernie Pyle -- whose exceptional length testifies to the nation's love for him. That obituary is linked here.)

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Two observations:

One, we'd be hard-pressed to find a journalist today who could fill even a portion of Pyle's shoes, and be thought of - by veterans themselves - as their greatest friend.

And two, it's incredible what a difference one man's empathy for his fellow man, journalist to soldier, meant for communicating what combat veterans were experiencing to those who were safe at home.  I wish we had such a journalist today.  In the thicket of journalists and bloggers filled as it is with surfacey reflections and reflexive back-patting about how wonderful they are, generally without confirming evidence to support that point of view, I really don't see anyone who combat veterans would consider their authentic, genuine friend.  And without a voice like that, I wonder how well their causes and concerns are really being communicated.  Not in a "want list" for legislative action -- that's being done powerfully by groups like the IAVA and VoteVets -- but in simple, human terms: communicating the cost of war by those who are paying it.  I sure miss Ernie Pyle, even though he was long gone before I ever heard of him. 

Don't you?

Ambrose Bierce - Cynic, Soldier, Journalist (and Early TBI / PTSD Sufferer)

You may already know who Ambrose Bierce is -- contemporary of Mark Twain -- American "humorist" -- but with the most dark and biting, bitter humor around.  (So bitter, in fact, that in his later life, he was known as "Bitter Bierce."  He's famous for some short stories, including the inimitable "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge," which occasionally salvages an otherwise-deadly literature anthology for high school and college students, and also the Devil's Dictionary, which is truly just one of a kind, from which come many of the best "definitions" I've ever seen, about the out and out hypocrisy of language and typically revisionist history, written by the victors.  In fact, though they were rivals, the sentiments behind Mark Twain's famous "War Prayer" -- "Oh, dearest God in the heavens, smite down the other side, mainly because they're not US" (I'm paraphrasing) -- fit right in with Bierce.  While literature types make much of Bierce's cynicism -- he's been relegated to the "humor" side of the aisle, in theory, because of it -- the reality is, he was a soldier who saw many battles, and saw some truly horrible things, in the course of his serving in the Civil War.  Things that jump right out of the pages of his writing, and underscore realities from Vietnam -- like the impetus behind fragging -- and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- including what must have been a "traumatic brain injury" or "TBI" -- when he was shot in the head with a musket in one of the battles in which he participated.

If you fast-forward to the 1980s, Bierce's eventual disappearance in Mexico -- he had gone there to fight -- is chronicled in the fictional movie treatment, "Old Gringo," starring the eclectic cast of (erm) Jane Fonda, Jimmy Smits, and Gregory Peck, as Bierce (he's the "Old Gringo" of the title.)  (The movie was based on a novel by Carlos Fuentes, called The Old Gringo.) Ironically, Bierce's decision to go to Mexico and fight in yet another war seems quite reminiscent of combat veterans today, who agitate on the home front for the battle-fueled adrenaline they can't help missing when they're back.  If you haven't taken the opportunity to acquaint yourself with Bierce's dark humor and realistic depictions of war (as a combatant), do yourself that favor.  And in the meantime, I'll leave you with one of the funnier quotes I've seen in a while, courtesy of the one and only Ambrose Bierce -- "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

Editor's Note: Thanks to Chris Lombardi for reminding me this week of the singular, terrible beauty of Bierce, and encouraging me to read his devastating battle account -- "What I Saw of Shiloh" -- which concludes with the highly memorable line about the life that he "should have thrown away, at Shiloh."  Yikes.  He gets it.

When the Marine Corps Misses the Bigger Picture -- Zoriah, Eric Acevedo, and Censorship

It's discouraging to even have to post about this, but there it is:

In a fight between the Marine Corps and freedom of the press, the Marine Corps seems like it wants the win.  According to Google Playfights (see gimmicky graphic illustrating this post) it already has.  (Learn more about Google Playfights elsewhere: it's not central to this post.)

Following the recently-embedded independent photojournalist Zoriah's travails on his blog, it seems that he's just now been kicked out of Iraq, and risks being completely blacklisted as a war photographer, because of at least some higher-up Marine Corps officers' displeasure with images he posted.  Images that centrally could help America to really get a better grip on the true cost of war for its participants.  If you believe the experts -- and the poets --no one comes back from war unchanged.  Whether it's what you've done/seen/participated in or not been able to do/see/participate in, it exacts a tremendous psychic cost.  That doesn't mean we should stop fighting in wars -- just that we should be more aware of the actual costs to those who do.  For every combatant killed, so many more are injured, and will come home with injuries that in many cases will profoundly transform their lives, and that of their families, for decades to come.  It's a shame the Marine Corps doesn't seem to really want the rest of us wrap our brains around this concept more fully.  It would help make us better empathizers with the true cost of war to its participants.

I had my own experience with Marine Corps censorship, earlier, on this site.  In an attempt to humanize the story of an apparent PTSD sufferer who'd killed his girlfriend, I dug through the Marine Corps (public) archives on their website, and found a little backstory about the Marine, Eric Acevedo, who'd been accused of the crime.  In and amongst the materials were some very key items: a photo that showed the human side of his grief and pain; and some material -- if you knew where to look -- that explained just what he'd been exposed to, in terms of combat trauma, while he was on the deployment that apparently harmed him the most.  It was a tragic tale, but it was also public knowledge -- at least, information accessible by the public, that could be pieced together by someone like a journalist who knows how to dig and highlight the important parts of the story.  I posted what I found, in an entry linked here -- and within three days, the Marine Corps had taken pains to scrub ALL identifying information about this poor guy, Acevedo, from their site.  The photo was gone, the article about the memorial service he attended, for the multiple guys KIA from his battalion on the tour in question -- all gone.  I learned about this new development when a reporter from the Dallas Morning News contacted me and said that all my links were down (I'd included them in the original piece, so anyone could follow and see what my sources had been).  Together, we backtracked through the Marine Corps archives, and found NOTHING -- the site had been scrubbed clean of multiple mentions of the accused -- and has stayed that way ever since.

Nobody likes bad publicity, of course, including the Marine Corps -- but really, there's so much more at stake than that.  When it comes to combat trauma and PTSD, the focus of this site -- it's important as a society that we see, learn, and otherwise come to understand what veterans go through -- or we won't have the compassion that we need to, and we won't pull for them to get the services they deserve, otherwise.  We also need to see more clearly the link between instances of combat trauma, and ultimately developing PTSD.   Not so that "no one else will join the military" -- not at all.  So that those who do can get the help they need, and those in charge can allocate their resources accordingly.

It's my firm conviction that combat veterans don't "give" PTSD to themselves.  They "get" it from what they've experienced.  And this is a true cost of war, for the Marine Corps and others to "count" in advance, so that the right opportunities for treatment and ideally recovery can be provided.  We can see from the late SSgt. Travis Twiggs' battle with PTSD -- or many others like him -- just how powerful, thorough, and deadly an opponent it really is.  What we're not seeing, unfortunately, from the Marine Corps -- in these two instances -- is a reasonable, big picture view on how the horrors of war are not something the American public needs to shy away from, but embrace.  And where the two may be linked up, as in the Eric Acevedo story, it's crucial that the Marine Corps not distance itself from its warriors, even when they're dented with significant wounds, visible and invisible. Sanitizing war?  Why bother... Actually supporting the troops who go? Oh, definitely.  If knowledge is power -- we need more, not less - in order to do so, more effectively.

In the Zoriah situation, it sounds like someone may have snapped under the strain and started a bad ball rolling with that -- created a polarized position that no one could retreat from, gracefully.  If that's the case, that's a real shame.  There's a much bigger picture here, and finding a workable compromise would be greatly important.  I remember reading one Marine officer's published dispatches from Iraq, which got progressively darker and unpleasantly snappier as his tour went on, to the point that it sounded like another person writing them.  I commented about this to someone who knew that Marine, who told me a little side story that explained a lot.  Things had been going well until that Marine's superior, to whom he was very close, was seriously injured and almost died, taking part in a humanitarian mission with the Iraqi government.  At that point, the junior officer hit a wall, got bitter, and got very angry with the Iraqis who could have done that, while the Americans were just trying to help.  What I had been picking up in the Marine officer's writing reflected the personal struggles he was genuinely going through -- struggles which are highly understandable to anyone interested in human nature.  My guess is here, someone who felt very stressed and angry because of Marines he cared about being injured and dying, snapped down on the whole situation instead of privately (or publicly) processing his natural grief -- and the ultimate impact might be, if this continues to go wrong, to keep the rest of us from being able to experience war a little bit more, even vicariously - in order that we better understand, and grieve, with those who suffer.  I hope the Marine Corps finds a way to resolve this situation that respects the points of view of all sides involved, including the American public, which does have a need to know.  The same goes for the Eric Acevedo situation, and scrubbing the information from their archives.

The American public pays the bill for these wars: we have a right to know what they're like for those fighting them.  And those who fight them pay the ultimate price: and we respect their efforts and the character it takes to be warriors, very much.

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I shared a very bleak, grim quote with a Marine Corps Vietnam vet the other day, from an Italian in the Middle Ages who said, "Life is a voyage on uncharted waters, ending in shipwreck.  There are no survivors."  The former Marine, still struggling all these years later with PTSD, said the quote was almost right -- but would be better if we switched out "life" with "combat" or, "war."  Then, he said, it would be more accurate, because, quoting him, there are no true "survivors, only shipwrecked lives..."

Editor's Note: You can read about Zoriah's developing situation on his blog, linked here.  You can also read previous entries on this blog where we've mentioned him, here and here.  You can read about the Travis Twiggs story here, and in many other entries on this blog; and the Eric Acevedo story here; both as I've blogged about them. 

And while you're at it, considering asking the Marine Corps to put the Eric Acevedo material (and anyone else's they've removed, in similar circumstances) back on their publicly-searchable archives, as it was before.  I'm sure his defense lawyer would appreciate it, because any good defense of this client is going to need to advance theories that involve his extenuating circumstances (combat) and things that speak to his state of his mind (PTSD), both of which it's hard to picture were NOT service-related.  Acevedo's crime?  A  truly terrible one.  The combat trauma he experienced, and the PTSD he likely developed?  Also terrible.  Without war coverage like Zoriah's "tragic and amazing" photography, also a big picture we're likely to miss.

Journalism As the First Draft of History

"Journalism is the first rough draft of history" -- attributed to Phil Graham, publisher and co-owner of the Washington Post.

I read this quote for the first time today and just loved it.  In the context of all the good journalism that's come out lately, particularly from the Washington Post and the Boston Globe and NPR, but also CNN and CBS and others, documenting the plight of returning combat veterans and the care they receive (or don't), it's wonderful to know that ultimately what the journalists are doing is writing the first rough draft of history.  In the case of the recent series in the Boston Globe by Charles Sennott, the Globe gave Sennott a year to cover the return of a Marine battalion, the 1/25th, from Iraq -- and really absorb the adjustment experiences of the group, in order to write a full, comprehensive and compelling series of stories about them. 

In the future, we're going to be able to look back on this time as when individuals who maybe didn't have any direct relationship to a returning combat veteran nonetheless got educated, informed, or even become activists for the cause of veterans issues, particularly as they concern aftercare for combat-related injuries, both bodily and psychological.  Wouldn't that be a wonderful turn of events?   Making history is better than reading about it, certainly, but interestingly enough, journalists get to write its first draft.  We owe them a certain amount of thanks for that effort, especially when previously dark areas like veterans' care have the blinding light of public criticism finally shone upon them.  Not everyone looks up to notice how often it was journalists holding the spotlight.

Trauma Affects War Correspondents Also

The Dart Center for Journalists and Trauma, housed at the University of Washington's School of Communications in Seattle, WA, has a website and blog about trauma resources for journalists who have worked in war zones.  As you may already be aware, the war in Iraq has been a deadly assignment for many journalists already.  The link to the Dart Center's blog is here.

Another good place to read about effect of the current war on reporters worldwide (with a more international focus than that Dart's information), is the organization, Reporters without Borders, whose website is here.  They have a grisly graphic on their site of a long-lensed camera covered in blood, with the count accelerating of how many reporters have died or injured in the Iraq war so far -- 82 to date.  I realize this doesn't compare with the incredible sacrifices of the military, but journalists generally don't expect themselves to be targets in wartime, and in this war, they've been exposed to many of the same dangers and trauma as the military themselves.

For an example of how reporters following the story get caught up in the relationship with the people they've covering, even when the subjects are the military, take a look at photographer Rob Curtis' site.  He's been following a number of new Marine officers into combat for his recently-released documentary, "Class 186: The Making of a Marine Officer" (no connection with the similarly-named book by Nathaniel Fick).  One of the young officers whose career he profiled in that documentary, 2nd Lt. Almar Fitzgerald, was recently killed in Ramadi, Iraq, just a few weeks before his combat tour was up, and you can read Curtis' heartfelt, touching tribute to Fitzgerald on his blog, which also includes a video tribute to Fitzgerald.