Healing Combat Trauma

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. 

 

 

War reporters, combat stress and Ernie Pyle

It's no surprise war correspondents also experience the two so-called 'signature wounds' of this era's conflicts -- PTSD and TBIs as well -- they're exposed like service members are, admittedly for shorter times, to the same stressors in the war zone. 

The McCormick Foundation is hosting a symposium this coming November in Washington, DC on war reporters and PTSD; the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma ("a resource for reporters who cover violence") has already covered this ground exhaustively and well, even issuing a set of guidelines on how not to make the problem worse. Michael Samstag's documentary about combat reporters, "War and Truth," offers opportunities to see the toll embeds have taken on journalists in recent wars. Ashley Gilbertson, combat photographer and outstanding writer, is no stranger to the concept of PTSD, and has both shown and told about it compellingly. (His article, "The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce," is one of the best articles about veterans, PTSD and suicide in print.) Kathy Dobie, who's written two of the best pieces about the same topic, above, here and here -- understands the concept on a personal level as well, which is perhaps how she can be so empathic in print. And favorite journalist -- and Iraq war vet himself -- Carl Prine wrote tellingly lately about his own head injuries suffered in combat, before needing to take a break from writing about it for while. 

Robert Capa, the famous combat photographer who photographed in five(!) wars, and later went on to found the photo agency Magnum, shot photos during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, even under heavy fire. He was once quoted as saying, "If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough." The same impulse is shared of course by war reporters; and whether you're photographing or writing about combat, you're liable to be deeply affected by it in many of the same ways that veterans are.

In the next few posts, we're going to look at someone who was exposed at length to combat in World War II -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ernie Pyle -- and some of his observations about what he saw and how it changed him. It's more than a little ironic that he once wrote a friend, "If there's one thing in this world I hate and detest, it's writing about the Army" --  though he had published extensively beforehand, his columns written while embedded with the infantry in both theaters of World War II gained him a worldwide readership and a devoted following, along with a sense that nobody covered the little guy like Ernie did -- perhaps because he identified with him so much and so well.

As the Dart Center says, "Journalists who are sensitive to the suffering of others and understand the complexity of emotional trauma are often able to write about traumatic experiences in a way that is informative, engaging and often helpful to readers." This is the case with many of today's war reporters, and it was certainly the case with Pyle. A simple comment by Philadelphia artist George Biddle, who traveled to the war zone and sketched Ernie Pyle on assignment, testifies to his appeal across the years in a way nothing I've read elsewhere has done. If you've not read much of Ernie Pyle, it may not resonate with you; if you have, however, I expect that it will:

 "June 15. This morning I did a drawing in red sanguine of Ernie Pyle. I only put into it, I am afraid, a small part of his rare personality. He seems Yankee to the core, though hailing from Indiana farm stock. Ascetic, gentle, whimsical, shy.  Frugal in his habits. Like so many Americans, his expression is fundamentally sad, yet full of tenderness. Of course a stubborn, thin-lipped individualist, and probably hard as granite under his timid manner. I like to think of him as he sits on the beach toward sundown, a white and slender Gandhi, swathed in towels and wrappers, for he hates the cold as much as he fears the sun. He does not swim and dislikes bathing. He sleeps three hours each day; reads for three hours; and then, being at his wits’ end what to do, he sits down and writes a column. He puts his whole life into his column: his shy love of human beings, his tenderness, and his hard, salty, Indiana-farmer humor.” 

 

Quotable Quotes -- American Poet Walt Whitman on the True Nature of War

Famous American poet Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), author of "Leaves of Grass," volunteered as a nurse in the Civil War. He is reported to have been profoundly affected by what he saw, and wrote about it in an essay called "The Great Army of the Sick," published in a New York newspaper at the time, and also in a later book called "Memoranda During the War." He claims to have visited almost 100,000 wounded troops, though that claim is likely to be an exaggeration, and is thought to have sat at many wounded soldiers' bedsides, drafting letters home for them to their loved ones, among many other kindnesses he performed.

In the tone of Vietnam combat veteran Tim O'Brien who wrote "The Things We Carried," who famously said, "A true war story is never moral," Whitman wrote, "The real war will never get in the books."

Whitman had originally journeyed to find his injured brother, George, who had enlisted with the Union Army, traveling to battlegrounds and eventually to hospitals in Washington, D.C. Along the way he wrote his mother, tellingly:

"Now that I have lived for eight or nine days amid such scenes as the camps furnish … really nothing we call trouble seems worth talking about.”

Editor's note: This photo of Walt Whitman during his Civil War years is by the famous photographer Matthew Brady, and is in the archives of the Library of Congress. A collection of his work in the National Archives, online, is linked here.

Freeing Yourself from the Pain in Your Soul: Writing and Trauma

Everyone who writes, it's safe to say, has different reasons for writing. "Every writer primarily writes for the back of his own head," says British author Jonathan Raban. But when it comes to trauma, one of the key reasons people write -- or more informally, journal -- is to attempt to make sense of their own experience, and process successfully what's happened to them. I thought about that this morning, when I read this passage in a book: 

"One author said, 'I can get rid of anything by writing about it,' meaning that the process of externalization could liberate him from the pain in his soul. That realization produced a delicious dichotomy: to free himself, or to hold on to both joys and tortures by remaining silent about them."

That last line is particularly striking: is the choice really between freeing yourself -- by expressing what you've been through, even to yourself -- or holding on to a potentially richer experience, by not sharing what you've been through with anyone? Seems like a difficult choice to have to make. What of it?

Paul Sullivan, Veteran Advocate, Reflects on the Meaning of Veterans Day

Paul Sullivan served our country in the Army, and our veterans in his stint at VA and as founder of the indispensable "Veterans for Common Sense," responsible for many of the advances veterans appreciate today, including the passage of a new law expanding healthcare and disability benefits for Gulf War veterans -– a law that now extends to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

Here he is in an essay from 10 years ago, still relevant today, about what Veterans Day really means. Reprinted with permission.

A Better Way: A Gulf War Veteran Reflects on the Original Meaning of Veterans Day 

by Paul Sullivan 

A Gulf War memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.Ten years ago I served in the Gulf War. Since my return, I’ve had the honor of attending the poignant Veterans Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery.

This solemn day represents a special responsibility and rare opportunity to share with the young people of the world that they are in the enviable position of being able to learn about war and to chart the course of history toward peace far more than they may realize.

In short, empower yourselves. Register and vote. Do not turn away from difficult choices. Do not be satisfied with the status quo. Ask the tough questions leading to a better way to resolve conflict.

Raising Questions is Crucial
Unlike the tidy endings of quickly forgotten 100-minute war movies shown on Veterans Day, the jagged and bitter memories and injuries of real wars last an eternity. This is because warfare cannot be truly captured by Hollywood, where, sadly, the industry often turns warfare into entertainment, glorifying the deaths of innocents.

But there are exceptions. For an unvarnished film about war, consider viewing All Quiet on the Western Front, released in 1930. The film raised such serious questions about World War I that many nations banned it during the buildup for World War II.

The opening 20 minutes of the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan have striking similarities to the trench warfare scenes in the 1930 classic. For a taste of veterans’ post-combat emotions, watch the exceptionally inspiring Oscar-winning film, The Best Years of Our Lives.

View these three films with friends, family, classmates, and church members, not for entertainment, but to ask questions about how the characters and themes relate to Veterans Day and current events.
These films bluntly convey the reality of war. They point to the need for world peace on our small and fragile world. And world peace was the intention behind Armistice Day, the original name for Veterans Day.

What is Veterans Day?
In 1926, in the aftermath of World War I, Congress called for a national day of peaceful reflection to be held on November 11th. In 1938, November 11th was declared a holiday. As World War II loomed on the horizon, it became "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day.’"

In 1958, after World War II, the name was changed to "Veterans Day." In 1978, the official meaning was changed to "a celebration to honor America's veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good."

Honoring and recognizing veterans is important. Yet what happened to Armistice Day – celebrating peace and having friendly relations – especially today, as the Gulf War continues to rage?

What is the Gulf War?
The Gulf War began August 2, 1990, and the bloodshed continues today. There is no armistice or peace treaty ending the Gulf War. Last year alone the US staged more than 1,000 air missions against Iraq. The President and the press never seem to get it right, either. President Clinton, for instance, misspoke when he declared, "America is not at war." (Washington Post, October 15, 2000)

Two laws allow Gulf War killing to continue. The first law "constitutes [a] specific statutory authorization for the use of U.S. armed forces required under the War Powers Resolution." Under it, President Bush authorized the Gulf War on January 14, 1991. This law requires the President to report to Congress every 60 days on the status of efforts to obtain compliance by Iraq with several United Nations resolutions. Congress voted to enter into war on January 12, 1991.

Under the second law, on March 21, 1991, Congress voted to start the Gulf War retroactively on August 2, 1990, the date Iraq invaded Kuwait. President Bush signed this law on April 6, 1991. It also "requires certain reports on costs associated with the Persian Gulf War."

Who will end the Gulf War and when? Where are the reports required every 60 days under the War Powers Resolution? Where are the reports regarding the costs, especially the enormous toll of human deaths and casualties?

What is the Gulf War Casualty Count?
Contrary to the sanitized videos produced by the military and shown on television, the Gulf War was not "smart" bombs striking empty buildings with pinpoint accuracy.

The tragic truth, ignored by the press, reveals that hundreds of thousands of people died, and many more die each day. For the US, deaths during Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991 were more than 300. Others were killed in the region in the bombing of US barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 (19 killed) and the attack on the USS Cole last month (17 killed). For Iraq, 100,000 died between January 17, 1991, and February 28, 1991. In simple terms, the US casualty rate was about 1 per day. The Iraqi casualty rate was about 2,400 per day or 100 per hour.

The war continues through the use of economic and military sanctions which do not allow Iraq to rebuild its devastated infrastructure or to meet the human needs of its people. By 1999, the death toll in Iraq exceeded one million in a country of 20 million, about five percent of the population. If five percent of the US population died, deaths would exceed 14 million, more than all of the people living in the state of Pennsylvania.

Calling the Gulf War by improper names such as "sanctions," "embargo," "blockade," or "no fly zones" is terribly misleading. The Gulf War is death and destruction, period.

We Must Find A Better Way
War doesn’t magically end when the President says, "America is not at war," or when uninformed journalists don’t check the facts or the law. Sadly, the casualty count climbs as the Gulf War continues with little public debate.

Have we lost the meaning of November 11th? Veterans Day, or Armistice Day as it once was called, should be a day to recognize and honor veterans. As a war veteran, I believe the original intent of Armistice Day should be recognized as well. Peace is not a want; peace is desperately needed for the survival of the human race.

My surviving the Gulf War means I have the opportunity to learn from the past and a responsibility to share those lessons with the next generation.

I pray we find a better way to secure peace and freedom as well as avoid war. That’s what I’d like to see this Veterans Day.

Postscript: Paul Sullivan writes, "The statistics used in this essay are from 1999.  The situation has grown much worse for veterans.  As of 2010, after more than 20 years of war in Southwest Asia, VA has treated a combined total of one million new veteran patients from the Gulf War, Afghanistan War, and Iraq War.  VA reports uncovered by Veterans for Common Sense using the Freedom of Information Act reveal that 10,000 new, first-time Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are treated by VA hospitals and clinics each month."  

About the Author
Paul Sullivan served as a Cavalry Scout in the Army’s 1st Armored Division during the invasion of Iraq and Kuwait in 1991.

Editor's note: For more information about Paul's work at Veterans for Common Sense, click here. For information on his "Veterans Bill of Rights" initiative, intended to fix problems with VA, click here. You can also find Veterans for Common Sense on Facebook, linked here.

The Sacred Brotherhood -- and Sisterhood -- of Those Who Understand

We read a few days ago Larry Heinemann's excellent quote about veterans after combat "carrying the darkness with us," linked here. And yesterday, in "War Creates Brothers," we learned about an historic gathering, a sacred ceremony of sorts, where Vietnam veterans like Heinemann met with Russian Afghansti veterans, at least a decade younger, and shared their stories with one another, bonding in the wet blood of brotherhood (and sisterhood, because it now applies to women veterans as well) from war. (That piece is linked here.) Now we synthesize the two together, with a quote from the article Heinemann wrote in 1989 in a national magazine, describing both the gathering mentioned above (lightly), and a much more extensive retelling of what the same Vietnam veterans' trip to Russia to meet with the Afghansti initially was like, a few months before.

Heinemann describes at great length the similarities and the bonds among the men that were formed, and tells the story of how the Russian veterans became involved in their own war in Afghanistan, leaving generally bruised and beaten "after nine years and 15,000 dead." Much of the article focuses on the stories of the Afghansti veterans they met in Russia, the grief of the devastated families of those who'd served, and the generalized indifference of the Russian government -- all of which he can compare, to one degree or another, to situations in our own country, after Vietnam. (As an aside, the bureaucracy of the VA seems to stand in for that of the Russian government in his analogy.)

As clearly as he paints the picture of the Russian veterans' suffering, and how it's mirrored in our own, one of the strongest descriptions he suggests is why the veterans on both sides of the conversation, separated by decades and culture, are nevertheless able to bond so strongly, through telling stories about their experiences, horrific and otherwise. This is the same principle we've been alluding to recently in the series about ritual, and the unburdening that can come from individual warriors when they meet up with one another, and have the safe "container" in which to share their suffering, confusion and grief. Here's Heinemann's remarkable quote:

"These stories and many others, came forward because the Afghansti finally had someone in their midst -- as we surely did not two decades ago [returning from Vietnam] -- who knew what they were talking about. We were fellow soldiers who could listen to the madness and know they were not mad; someone who could validate their worst blood-bath nightmares; someone who had an inkling of the brutality they had endured and inflicted; someone whom they could trust with stories about the deadest, darkest places in their hearts." -- Larry Heinemann.

Circling back around to Heinemann's earlier quote, mentioned a few days ago, we read in this article that it comes at the end of a longer declaration. As food for thought, I now include the full paragraph, in case it now adds fuller context, in light of the above.

"The Afghansti have caused a great many people a great deal of grief and have themselves suffered -- for a lie, let us not forget -- the same was we in the United States have caused much suffering in Southeast Asia, and have also suffered much in return, also for a lie. It was no small betrayal, no small lesson for a man to learn at the age of 19. Any soldier returning home must rediscover his humanity and establish a livable peace with the discovered, liberated, permanently dark places in his own heart --the darkness that is always with us."

Quotable Quotes -- A Spouse's View on How War Changes the Veteran

We wrote about Vietnam veteran, Marine and National Book Award-winning author and poet Larry Heinemann yesterday, and his quote about "War and the Veteran's Heart," linked here. And we've certainly written quite a bit -- as in very often -- about the spouse or partner's point of view, of living with the combat veteran with PTSD. Those articles are linked here. Today we bring those both together, with an excerpt from Larry Heinemann's wife, Edie, about how war and combat changed him. We're sure that many spouses and family members can relate. From a long article about his writing:

"They met at a college dance almost 26 years ago, six months before Heinemann left Fort Knox, Kentucky, for Vietnam. Edie Smith, from Long Island, New York, was doing her undergraduate work at Nazareth College in nearby Bardstown. "He was a clown, very funny and very easygoing," Edie says. "He told some good stories, about his family, about his grandfather." Edie Heinemann says everything about her husband Larry, including his complicated relationships with women, his moods, his present sense of humor, and why he became a writer, was forged by Vietnam.

 "I don't think I've ever told this to anybody on the record, but I married a completely different man than the one I met. Larry had a warmth, a genuineness, a humor about him, even a naivete that was completely stripped away when he was in Vietnam. When he came home all I saw was the bitterness and the edge and the distance. For so long he held so much of this inside, and I don't think I ever fully realized how much pivoted on his experiences in Vietnam. Only recently, with the work he's done, the writing and the other things, has he begun to shed what happened to him, revealing more humor and everything else that was taken away in Vietnam."

Source: "Heinemann's New Style," by Patrick Z. McGavin in the Chicago Reader, (date unknown, but possibly July 23, 1992), linked here.

Quotable Quotes -- Larry Heinemann on War and the Veteran's Heart

"Any soldier returning home must rediscover his humanity and establish a livable peace with the discovered, liberated, permanently dark places in his own heart -- the darkness that is always with us." -- Larry Heinemann, Vietnam combat veteran (Marine) and author, winner of the National Book Award for Paco's Story.

Literary Fireworks! Combat Vets Celebrate the Fourth with 5...7...5...Haiku

War poetry has a long and storied history; combat veterans and haiku, not so much. But that may all be changing, thanks to Susanna Speier's innovative "Politiku" -- the application of the traditional Japanese short-form poem familiar to schoolchildren everywhere, with its three line structure of five, seven and five syllables apiece, which can also be a suitable vehicle for expressing profound and personal reflections on trauma.

Speier has already developed some fans for her Politiku concept -- it appears regularly as a column in the Huffington Post -- but thanks to an introduction by the very kind and genuine Craig Newmark, Speier and Healing Combat Trauma connected this week over Speier's interest in bringing the Politiku work to combat veterans.

Speier has a lovely and appealing presentation she's been working on, but as we discussed it further, one particularly timely theme -- it being July Fourth and all -- leapt into Speier's mind. "Fireworks" would make a perfect theme. To most Americans, celebrating with their families on the Fourth, fireworks represent one gigantic surge of pyrotechnic patriotism, awing small children and grownups alike as they soar into the air and explode with fabulous colors and ear-popping, ground-shaking reverberations. It's America's birthday, after all, but in place of the cake and candles we get...concerts, barbecues, parades and FIREWORKS!

For the combat veteran, however...and only approximately 11% of our population has served in the military...fireworks can remind them a little too much of the sights and sounds of combat. Many combat veterans, especially those with PTSD, find themselves dreading the Fourth and the fireworks in particular; and often find themselves unable to explain this (satisfactorily) to family and friends. Quite a few vets make plans beforehand to "head to their bunkers," and not come out until it's over. Others talk about how their own veteran dads, growing up, spent the holiday every year, in a haze of drugs or alcohol, waiting out the celebration. Some veterans feel bad about not being able to join in the celebration, but they can't; and some families of affected combat veterans wonder whether to leave their veteran home while they go enjoy the show...or miss the celebration themselves while not being able to bridge the gap with what their loved one is experiencing.  

So into this mix comes Speier, Politiku, and the idea of having combat veterans write a haiku, with 5/7/5 syllabication, to express their feelings around fireworks, and what it reminds them of, or what it causes them to miss. We put the post out on Facebook, on the Healing Combat Trauma fan page, as well as my personal page, and got some interesting results. Speier is collecting more over at her site and in the comment section of the Huffington Post article, and assures that the combat veteran/haiku author's anonymity will be protected, if desired.

Here's a sample haiku to get you started, written by, erm, Healing Combat Trauma: 

Blue night red rockets

White sparklers Percussion blasts

Vets feel more than Fourth

And here's a better one, written by Angela Peacock, U.S. Army veteran, who served in Baghdad during the early days of the Iraq war, and who has allowed her name to be used:

Fire lights up the sky

Like old memories burning

Too much for my nerves

If you'd like to be part of this project, go here and read the FAQs on what Politiku is and how to write them; or just dive in and send your Politiku/Haiku in as a "comment" in any of the threads listed above, and we'll make sure to get your poem(s) headed in the right direction. Also add whether you'd like your name on or off the submission, if it's used. (Be wise about whether you want to have your name and PTSD associated in the same subject on future web searches, if you're thinking about employment prospects...)

And, if you'd just like to think more about poetry in general, and war poetry or combat veterans and poetry in particular, there are two sources right here on this site. One is the collection of articles on poetry, linked here; and the other is the list of "war poetry" books, which can be found along the upper right hand side of this website. Enjoy!

Rudy Reyes Has a New Book -- Hero Living -- Coming Out

Rudy Reyes, former Marine recon, multiple tours of duty, and consistent inner warrior, has his first book out, called "Hero Living: Seven Strides to Awaken Your Infinite Power."  You can pre-order it now on Amazon, here.

Editor's note: We've talked about Rudy Reyes before on the blog, here and here. To his credit, as a warrior who's seen intense combat, Rudy understands that not all wounds are physical -- and he's done what he can, throughout his life, to strengthen and balance his inner self with his outer. You can find Rudy's own web site, here. (The slideshow of his life is really quite striking. That's linked here.)

For One Veteran, Writing His Story is "An Act of Spiritual Renewal"

If you're a combat veteran and in the Buffalo, NY area, you might enjoy checking out the writers group at the VA Western New York Healthcare System.  Led by a Vietnam vet, "participants can share their stories and offer each other suggestions to improve the readability of their experiences. The group meets on the first and third Monday of every month from 1:30 to 3:30 p. m. at 3495 Bailey Avenue, Room 422b, Buffalo, NY 14215." All veterans "interested in writing their story" are encouraged to attend.

---
We've talked about writing as catharsis before on this blog, many times, but the above item comes from an opinion piece called "Recording War Stories Allows Spiritual Renewal," published July 5 in the Buffalo News, and linked here.  In it, the unnamed veteran (maybe the print version of the story contains his name; the online version does not) says plainly, "We veterans should break our silence and write about the unspeakable events. I’ve written my stories and they’re more than just about me."

In the short opinion piece, he talks about the deaths of three of his friends in Vietnam, and how "documenting unspeakable memories" like these, "labeling those events and feelings with words and closing the cover" on those stories "is cathartic. The result is a spiritual renewal, a freedom that allows me to choose when to open and close the past while trying to live in the present."

Writing sounds like it's cathartic for this veteran, but it's also a concrete way for him to give honor to the lives of those he loved, and misses.

Escaping from the Bamboo Chest

Every once in a while I come across a book about war and healing combat trauma that's new to me, and such was the case recently with one by Frederick Graham, called "The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War," linked here. Unfortunately, the subtitle is a bit of a misnomer, unless you interpret it in a particularly specific way, in which case it works.  But while it's far afield from actual "healing combat trauma," the reality is, it's an amazing true-life adventure story by someone who understands he's very lucky to be able to tell it. 

For those of us who grew up reading books like Papillon, by Henri Charriere, who uses the opportunity of his captivity in and subsequent escapes from the notorious French prison, Devil's Island, to teach himself some things about himself, or any of the wonderful high-adventure historical novels by James Clavell -- Shogun, Tai-Pan, King Rat, Noble House, etc. -- Graham's book fits right in.  It's a remarkable story about a guy whose dad was a Marine, who grew up in and around Vietnam and Southeast Asia, and then finds himself imprisoned in a South Vietnamese jail in the 1980s, with an absolutely frustrating roommate who he'd been arrested with and grows to really detest, for all the right reasons.  Graham uses the opportunity of his imprisonment to reflect and make adjustments to his character, finds and nurtures his inner strength, and experiences several important insights from his childhood around the war in Vietnam that helps his adult self integrate itself more completely. 

Unfortunately, though Graham is plenty psychologically adept with his own experience, because he wasn't actually involved in the Vietnam war directly as a soldier, the "war" in the subtitle is at a slightly larger remove than it was for the actual participants.  However, as a story about man against the elements -- particularly man against society, and in some ways, man against himself -- it's really quite an exciting tale, and one worth reading.

Hanging Tight to the Narrative, to Pull You Out of Hell...

More Tyler Boudreau, from "Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine," on why he writes:

"They say war is hell, but I say it’s the foyer to hell.  I say that a lot.  I say coming home is hell, and hell ain’t got no coordinates.  You can’t find it on the charts, because there are no charts.  Hell is no place at all, so when you’re there – you’re nowhere -- you’re lost.  The narrative, that’s your chart, your own story.  There are guy who come home from war and live fifty years without a narrative, fifty years lost. They don’t know their own story, never have, and never will.  But they’re moving amidst the text every day, and every long night without even realizing it.  They’re out there beyond the wire, trudging through the sentences, tangled in the verbs, suffocating on the adjectives, wrecked by the names.

They live inside the narrative like a cell, and their only escape is to understand its dimensions.  Once you get it, maybe you can start tearing down the walls.  Every soldier’s mind is different.  There is no single code to break.  It’s ever-changing.  I don’t have a recipe, but there’s one thing I do know, and that is the power of the narrative.  Put the story together.  Understand the story.  Ask questions of the story; make it answer you.  Make it.  You don’t take no for an answer.  You keep building that narrative until the answer comes around.  That’s the low road out of hell."

Okay, the low road out of hell: Maybe. It's not the first time someone's thought that telling their story -- just getting the words down on paper -- would have curative powers.  Read another Marine captain, Nate Fick's, essay for Powells, the great used book store in Portland, Oregon, about why he wrote "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer."  See other veterans from other eras -- for example Claude Anshin Thomas, who wrote At Hell's Gate: a Soldier's Journey from War to Peace -- as they grapple with the narrative, to pull themselves to safety -- or sanity.  See and feel the way they fight for it, with every breath, with every word on the page. The same goes for the veterans who are the authors and the poets in Maxine Hong Kingston's anthology, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace. Many,  many people feel...that this way lies redemption.

Or does it?

A little over a year ago, I was "gifted" with a narrative worthy of a Charles Dickens, if Charles Dickens had been to war.  Forty years the combat veteran had spent, trying to crack his own case (of severe, combat-induced PTSD), trying to get it all down on paper.  To make sense of it for himself, to make sense of it for his family.  And 40 years is not an insignificant amount of time.  He followed the narrative, all right; he clung to it like a rope.  But you know what?  All it did is lead him to the precipice of healing.  It wasn't even the precipice itself. What it did do was, in a way, detail the exhausting of his options, and get him in touch with the many things he'd tried -- including, in his case, religion -- so that he could he could continue the search, this time going even deeper.

Ironically, and we had several conversations about this -- he never finished the narrative, even after 40 years.  He didn't finish it, and he couldn't finish it -- we eventually agreed because it was his LIFE, and there was no real need to sum that up as though it was already over, because it wasn't.  It, and he, were still very much "a work in progress." And there weren't any simple answers, that would put everything into perspective.  Not for the combat veteran, not for his family either.  It was a pretty good narrative of what he endured, and the sense he was able to make of it.  But it was not in any way curative, though getting it down on paper was powerful, and compelling, and both moved his readers -- and himself.  It moved his readers (including his family) towards empathy, or a better, deeper understanding of what he'd gone through.  And it moved himself to continue going after the true prize, which was healing -- not just setting down what he had experienced.  IF writing were truly curative, we'd see more mentally unbalanced, yet otherwise fabulous authors experience "the cure."  (And one has only to think of the great Virginia Woolf, her pockets loaded with rocks, headed into the water to drown herself, to reflect on the apparent wisdom encoded in that statement.) What writing is, or can be, is deeply cathartic.  What it isn't, is the actual "cure."

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.

Writing Workshop Planned on "Trauma, Art & Writing" for June, 2009

Plan ahead for this writing workshop, June 15-26, 2009:

Sponsored by the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences and the Creative Writing Program of the University of Massachusetts Boston.

This workshop - open to writers of fiction and nonfiction, poetry, playwriting and translation - involves one or two weeks of working sessions and individual consultations with distinguished writers. The faculty includes Vietnam veterans and others whose lives have been altered by the experience of war, but applicants with diverse interests and backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

Visiting writers will join the teaching staff in a series of readings, seminars, and panel discussions. Special events held at UMass Boston and at other Boston locations will be open to both workshop students and the general public. This year's faculty reading series schedule will be posted.

Editor's note: Additional information about the writing workshop, including faculty bios, course schedule, accommodations, and application (as well as other materials) are linked here.

Some Things Never Change: Observations of a Civil War Combat Nurse on Trauma

It was interesting, a few weeks ago, reading Louisa May Alcott's first book, entitled Hospital Sketches, about the assignment she sought [as in, asked for -- volunteered for] as a combat nurse in the Civil War.  The work took her to Washington, D.C., where she bandaged and cared for the wounded, and became ill there herself, with a disease whose treatment, years later, many think brought about her early death.  The book was short and and easy reading, written in a mid-19th century style that is not popular today, but it was easy to understand both her motivations for being there; as well as her observations about the wounded who she treated.  It's interesting how some things never change: the acts of bravery, brothery love and kindness, the heartbreak of not being able to say goodbye to your comrades who die; the survivors' guilt, and so forth.  Potent stuff, then as now.  In Balad, at Landstuhl, Walter Reed, Bethesda, the Mologne House, and VA hospitals around the country, these same scenes are playing out, many years later.  And doctors and nurses are no doubt experiencing a fair amount of combat trauma of their own.

(In an aside, too, we know that combat trauma has existed as long as there's been combat.  A study a few years ago even went back to original medical records from the Civil War era, to prove that combat trauma existed then, though called by other names, making that study a first of its kind.  The term "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" has only been around since the 1980s.  The underlying concept, however, is as old as war itself.)

In Alcott's Hospital Sketches, however, the part that stood out the most to me was an item she wrote about a young veteran, clearly suffering from combat trauma.  We'll include that towards the end, here.  First, though, a general observation about her first time seeing the ward of injured veterans:

"There they were! "Our brave boys," as the papers justly called them, for cowards could hardly have been so riddled with shot and shell, so torn and shattered, nor have borne suffering for which we have no name, with an uncomplaining fortitude, which made one glad to cherish each as a brother.  In they came, some on stretchers, some in men's arms, some feebly staggering along propped on rude crutches, and one lay stark and still with covered face, as a comrade gave his name to be recorded before they carried him away to the dead house.  All was hurry and confusion; the hall was full of these wrecks of humanity, for the most exhausted could not reach a bed till duly ticketed and registered; the walls were lined with rows of such as could sit, the floor covered with the more disabled, the steps and doorways filled with helpers and lookers-on; the sound of many feet and voices made that unusually quiet hour as noisy as noon; and, in the midst of it all, the matron's motherly face brought more comfort to many a poor soul, than the cordial draughts she administered, or the cheery words that welcomed all, making of the hospital a home."

"The sight of several stretchers, each with its legless, armless, or desperately wounded occupant, entering my ward, admonished me that I was there to work, not to wonder or weep; so I corked up my feelings, and returned to the path of duty, which was rather "a hard road to travel" just then."

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Here's the item about the young boy suffering from combat trauma:

"The night whose events I have a fancy to record, opened with a comedy, and closed with a great tragedy; for a virtuous and useful life untimely ended is always tragical to those who see not as God sees.  My [nursing] headquarters were beside the bed of a New Jersey boy, crazed by the horrors of that fateful Saturday [in a recent battle].  A slight wound in his knee brought him there; but his mind had suffered more than his body; some string of that delicate machine was over strained, and, for days, he had been reliving in imagination, the scenes he could not forget, till his distress broke out in incoherent ravings, pitiful to hear.  As I sat by him, endeavoring to soothe his poor distracted brain by the constant touch of wet hands over his hot forehead, he lay cheering his comrades on, hurrying them back, then counting them as they fell around him, often clutching my arm, to drag me from the vicinity of a bursting shell, or covering up his head to screen himself from a shower of shot; his face brilliant with fever; his eyes restless; his head never still; every muscle strained and rigid; while an incessant stream of definite shouts, whispered warnings, and broken laments, poured from his lips with that forceful bewilderment which makes such wanderings so hard to overhear.

And another:

"...when the echo of a sob caused us to glance among the beds.  It came from one in the corner -- such a little bed! -- and such a tearful little face looked up at us, as we stopped beside it!  The twelve year old drummer boy was not singing now, but sobbing, with a manly effort all the while to stifle the distressed sounds that would break out.

"What is it, Teddy?" I asked, as he rubbed the tears away, and checked himself in the middle of a great sob to answer plaintively: "I've got a chill, ma'am, but I ain't cryin' for that, 'cause I'm used to it.  I dreamed Kit was here, and when I waked up he wasn't, and I couldn't help it, then."

The boy [had come in] with the rest, and the man who was taken dead from the ambulance was the Kit he mourned.  Well he might; for, when the wounded were brought from Fredericksburg, the child lay in one of the camps thereabout, and this good friend, though sorely hurt himself, would not leave him to the exposure and neglect of such a time and place; but, wrapping him in his own blanket, carried him in his arms to the transport, tended him during the passage, and only yielded up his charge when Death met him at the door of the hospital which promised care and comfort for the boy.  For ten days, Teddy had shivered or burned with fever and ague [chills], pining the while for Kit, and refusing to be comforted, because he had not been able to thank him for the generous protection which, perhaps, had cost the giver's life. The vivid dream had wrung the childish heart with a fresh pang, and when I tried the solace fitted for his years, the remorseful fear that haunted him found vent in a fresh burst of tears, as he looked at the wasted hands I was endeavoring to warm:

"Oh!  If I'd only been as thin when Kit carried me as I am now, maybe he wouldn't have died; but I was heavy, he was hurt worser than we knew, and so it killed him; and I didn't see him, to say good bye."

This thought had troubled him in secret; and my assurances that his friend would probably have died in any event, hardly assuaged the bitterness of his regretful grief."

{Editor's Note: it would be interesting to see if where she served was actually Mologne House.  She describes it as being unbelievably dreary, and the former site of a hotel, and somehow connected to, or on the grounds of, the main military hospital complex in Washington, D.C. Hmmmn.  Trivial pursuit, but interesting nonetheless. Okay, just to me :-)]

Louisa May Alcott -- Beloved Author, and Early Friend of Veterans

Many people know Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) as a famous American woman writer, from the 1800s, the author of the beloved children's classic, Little Women, and a contemporary of Emerson and Thoreau, who were friends of her family in Concord, Massachusetts.  What many people don't know is that Louisa May Alcott was an early "FOV" -- or Friend of Veterans.  Readers of Little Women may remember that the family sewed bandages for Civil War veterans, regardless of the side on which they fought; but Alcott the author also travelled to Washington, D.C. to see how she personally could aid the veterans of the Civil War.  She ended up serving as an Army nurse in the so-called Union Hospital, in Washington, D.C., from 1862 to 1863.  Her little known book, Hospital Sketches, which predates her other works, is a compilation of journal entries, etc., from that time.  Alcott actually became gravely ill ministering to the soldiers, and was given a medication that ultimately resulted in her death, in her mid 50s.  I've got a copy of Hospital Sketches: An Army Nurse's True Account of Her Experiences During the Civil War, ordered from Amazon, and am eager to read what her reflections were on caring for the wounded, when nothing but her conscience and her interest prompted her to get involved. (The photo on the right is "Orchard House," where Alcott and her family lived for years.)