This is the three-day weekend where we celebrate Memorial Day, on which we remember those who gave their lives in military service for this country. It began as Decoration Day, with the decorating of graves, especially in national cemetaries — think Gettysburg.
And it is true that we have other days in which we honor military service, notably Veterans’ Day in November, another holiday which we renamed — it was originally Armistice Day, the 11th day of the 11th month, where in 1918 at the 11th hour the combat in the Great War, the War to end all wars, ceased, and a silence rolled across Europe.
But the cost of war is not merely the expenses of the material — fuel, equipments, ammunition, etc — and of the the lives lost. It is of those lives forever changed by their service, even as, given the improvements of combat medicine and the ability since the advent of the helicopter to more quickly evacuated the wounded to fully equipped medical facilities to keep them alive.
There is an op ed in today’s New York Times that addresses this. Written by Roger Boas, a man now in his 90s who is a survivor of World War II — so called because its predecessor turned out not to have ended war, despite the many international agreements in between the conflicts intended to prevent another major outbreak. It is titled Our military spends a fortune on war but little when our forces come home, and it should be required reading — especially for those who bloviate about a more aggressive use of our military yet they themselves have never served, much less seen combat up close.
I am a veteran, but all of my service was in states of the Old Confederacy — boot camp in South Carolina, infantry training in North Carolina, then my actual service in Virginia — with computers and in the base band. Yet despite that stateside non-combatant service, I saw up close some of the impact of war in those returning from Vietnam, relatively early in the full force of that conflict. I was out of the Marines before Tet, and the number of survivors of Vietnam at Quantico during my tenure there was small — but it was already significant. And we knew we would see more, because while I was in bootcamp at Parris Island the training regimen was getting accelerated to produce more men more quickly for the combat theater: when I began it was 12 weeks, when I ended it was 8, and I went through in 10.
At Quantico, we saw some with the thousand mile stare. We saw others who reacted almost violently to any loud sound. We saw still more quickly flip into aggressive stances and body postures, as the flight or fight syndrome kicked in, and their training meant it would be fight, not flight.
Looking back, it was PTSD, although it was not then so labeled.
That is the starting point of my personal context in reading the op ed in question. The starting point, but not the ending point. As our national obsession with military adventurism has continued, I have had students I taught do as many as 5 tours in combat zones. I have worked with teachers who were yanked out of their civilian lives as they were reactivated and sent to Iraq.
I can only know through what I read, and what they are willing to share, and for too many who have seen combat, they will not — or can not — talk about it except with others who have experienced it.
Or perhaps are trained to deal with it, to help them.
Except that we do not provide that service for them on a regular basis.
Let me turn to the op ed. Here are the first three paragraphs:
A recent study by the Rand Corp. concludes that the U.S. military is unable to provide adequate therapy sessions for thousands of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The February study of 40,000 cases, the largest ever, found that only a third of troops with PTSD received the minimum number of therapy sessions needed after being diagnosed. As a veteran, I am appalled.
Though my war experience was 70 years ago, it haunts me to this day. I can still remember the sound that froze my blood. The stomach-churning whistle of a field artillery round, like a thousand shrieking pigs, increasing in a ghastly crescendo until it finally explodes — and bodies fly in every direction.
Anyone who has served in ground combat knows that sound. It’s our worst nightmare. You never know where the incoming projectile is going to hit. You’re either dead or you’ve managed to squeak out alive one more time, deeply shaken. It happens nonstop, any hour of the day or night. It seeps into your bones.
Perhaps nowadays it is not the sound of field artillery. But the sense of not knowing is equally applicable and palpable — be on a motorized tour through a city in Baghdad, or walking around a neighborhood in that nation or Afghanistan, and one never knows when the next Improvised Explosive Device or Rocket Propelled Grenade will come your way.
Boas served in Patton’s Army, for 11 months of unceasing conflict. He acknowledges that the war in which he fought was necessary. But then there are two sentences, ending one paragraph and beginning another, that powerfully frame the issue he is addressing:
Only those of us who have been in combat know the true price of war. The lives and limbs lost. The psychological scars.
The Army spends a fortune training its troops to kill but almost nothing to train us for coming home.
I remember reading a column by Bob Herbert when he was still at the Times, where he interviewed Paul Rieckoff, who said the hardest order he had to give as an officer was to tell his men to open fire on a target they could see. The implication of such an order is that they would see the person they killed, and unless they were a psychopath or a sociopath, would be affected by that for the rest of their lives. Then think of being the person responsible for that for one’s men, and the impact it has on you.
The impact of combat, whether you can see who you kill or not, whether you never experience an IED or RPG destroying your vehicle or killing your buddies, is permanent. As Boas writes
Humans aren’t wired for war. We’re survivors. We’re programmed to run from danger. When we are forced into a war zone for extended periods, it messes with our minds.
Not only minds, but also souls.
I have acquaintances who have experienced the full horrors of war. I have on occasion been given some insight into what it was, and what it does to their souls — I think of one highly decorated former special forces operator who had a long struggle with drugs and alcohol, has overcome that, but still is haunted by what he saw, experienced, and did.
What he did.
Another part of the psychological and spiritual damage we demand of those we send into combat on our behalf.
I think of someone whose unit was activated and sent to Afghanistan. As its commander, when they returned he wanted all of his men to get screening for PTSD and if necessary the appropriate counseling. He was told he could get that, but that it would mean retaining them on active duty for at least 90 additional days after they returned to the States before they could return to their lives and families — it would be at a base more than 1,000 miles from their homes.
War is an unfortunate necessity — some times, although the resorting to military force is far too frequent, and done far too quickly and without consideration for the total costs.
Towards the end of his piece, Boas reminds us that what we now call PTSD (and which in his time of service was known as “battle rattle”) has been recognized in one form or another for more than two millennia:
It goes back to Shakespeare and even Homer. You find it in the Book of Job and the Mahabharata from India.
He then quotes from Shakespeare, the words of a spouse to a soldier just off the battlefield. These words (which as Shakespeare’s should not count towards the limits of fair use) are as follows, using the same italics as does Boas:
Tell me, sweet lord, what is’t that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sit’st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks,
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy?
Perhaps it is with those in words in mind, we can now consider the final words Boas offers us, and then finally act appropriately on behalf of those whom we send — still far too frequently and unthinkingly — into combat:
That’s a mental state that sounds a lot like my “battle rattle.” It happens every time you ask humans to kill other humans. And yet our soldiers’ reentry into society is rarely factored into the cost of war. There’s little buffer in place to help us unwind. With all the money it spends on our training, why doesn’t the Army provide training for the other side of our service: “civilian” training camps to facilitate our return to life at home? It’s not such a far-fetched idea.