As young teens on warm spring and summer nights we often congregated in parking lots. Our town was long and skinny and we’d usually meet somewhere in the middle. For a while, this mid-point was the parking lot by the railroad station. The tracks were elevated. There was a station at ground level that reeked of cigarettes and urine. Stations of all kinds seemed to reek of cigarettes urine. They sometimes still do, even though smoking has been banned from public places.
This particular summer, though, there was an added attraction—better described as a situation. Every evening at the same time—8pm or so—a man with long reddish hair and matching beard would climb the stairs to the elevated platform, take off all his clothes, and pace back and forth. The light was dim when he did this, somewhere around sunset. And we would see him, this lonely, naked figure walking. Pacing. I remember sometimes the police would come, convince him to get his clothes back on and drive him home.
It turned out he lived with his mother in the northern section of town, not far from where I lived. People would say "hello" to him with a half smile on their faces. "We have to greet the crazy guy..." He was very, very quiet. He’d wave if you greeted him. He walked up and down the main street of the town in his old army jacket. I always said hello to him. I felt so badly, as though there should be something I could do. His illness was beyond my comprehension. But I knew it was a result of his having been in Vietnam. Everybody knew that. It was this whisper and a knowing look when, like clockwork, he ascended the train platform, put his clothes in a pile, and paced.
My mother was very much against the Vietnam war. She was no pacifist, but she saw the war as unjust and unnecessary on many levels. My earliest political memories are of her working to elect Eugene McCarthy president because of his anti-war stance. As a child I was afraid to watch the news because of the war footage. I remember the photo of the Vietnamese girl, screaming, naked, her back on fire with napalm. I saw that photo and thought, "That could be me". I knew she was my age (and she is). It very much touched me when, years later, she was somehow found and she said she forgave the people who did that to her. But she still has the burn scars. And so did the naked man.
When I look back over history, it seems that human beings just aren’t cut out for war. As many of our activities, war has become increasingly mechanized, dehumanized. This began in earnest with the wars of the 20th century, especially WWI and WWII. Mass killing. Biological and chemical warfare. Camps set up to exterminate human beings.
We’re very far removed from the days of ancient Rome, when combat was mostly hand to hand, where generals had to fight on the front lines alongside the soldiers, or lose all credibility. Those were times when human beings really did not consider people of other countries and cultures to be fully human. It wasn’t part of their consciousness back then. But now we know differently. And there’s no going back, not really. We have to seriously seek other ways to solve conflicts and crises. We have to find other ways for people who wish to serve their country to do so. The veterans I’ve met are the most civic minded people. They volunteer for many things, populate service clubs and continue to do all they can. And it breaks my heart to read how they’re coming home from today’s war zones with physical and psychological wounds that may never be healed.
A major difference between WWII and the wars that came after it is that in WWII there was a clear threat, a clear mission and clear steps taken after the conflict. Even with that, many came back with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It wasn’t talked about much, but the inner struggle of these vets was beautifully portrayed in William Wyler’s "The Best Years of Our Lives."
The naked guy didn’t end well. He committed suicide a year or so after I left my hometown to go to college. I’ll never forget that specter of a lonely lost soul, stripped bare, pacing the platform waiting for deliverance from a train that never arrived.