“Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail” by Chris Hedges is the most riveting and heart-wrenching account of the true human costs of war. Read it all.
My mother, who was a survivor of WWII's Berlin bombing as a teenager, died in May last year at 78 years old. She never talked much about it throughout my childhood, but I picked up bits and pieces she shared when she had too much to drink. She was an alcoholic.
The Berlin Zoo after it was bombed.
“War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation—spiritual, emotional and, finally, physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems, economic, social, environmental and political, that sustain us as human beings. War is necrophilia. The essence of war is death. War is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. It is organized sadism. War fosters alienation and leads inevitably to nihilism. It is a turning away from the sanctity of life.”
My stepfather (I was an illegitimate child) adopted me and my mother when I was four years old. He had enlisted (mandatory) against his will, and eventually deserted the German Army (before the fall) when his unit was massacred in Poland while he was out scouting. When he returned, he found all of his fellow unit massacred and mutilated. He took pictures of the scene.
I found the pictures he took in a buffet drawer in our living room.
My parents were absent parents, and angry at me for anything and everything. I always felt it was my fault for not being good enough, even when I was beaten, restrained in a chair, and put into a closet.
As time went on, I became more and more rebellious towards their punishments, as I never got any answers as to why what I did was wrong. They were now my enemies, no longer my mother and father. Eventially they sent me to Christian ancient Monetary Reform School IN Wuertzburg. My mother enlisted a plain-clothed policeman to get me up from bed at 7 in the morning to take my journey there. To me it was the ultimate betrayal, and it has haunted me most of my life. I was shit. I was bad. I deserved whatever came to me.
I really don't know why I kept going, but I did. After six months, and no visits from my "parents", I escaped from the Monestary. Please know that I know the catholic mass - in Latin - by heart, as I participated in it 4 days a week for six months. However, that did not make me a believer.
Eventually I "escaped" from them - by marrying an American US Air Force soldier, stationed nearby. And I came to America.
This is all so tragic. This never needed to happen. But my parents were so busy trying to function as if they were pre-war folks. Back then there WAS NO TERM for PTSD. The best next thing was Shell-shock.
I guess I better bring this to a close: if you read Chris Hedge's account of war, you can better understand what I'm talking about.
War makes casualties, and not only those on the battlefield, but also their family members and survivors. I am one of them. I now fight for my parents, no matter what they did to me. I now know. Noone taught me. I had to find out, the long and hard way, that there are no easy answers. But then again, there IS one. WARS ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE AS A MEANS TO CREATE PEACE.
I really don't have more to say. Except that I love my mother and stepfather, as they did have me, and somehow managed to get me as far as I've got in my life. I now understand the costs of war, and that none of us should judge those who have participated in them. They too are victims. And most often, there is not much help for them after they return. Read Chris's whole account. Please do.
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