When I wrote my investigative report on Iraq war suicides, I did not expect that the issue would suddenly become very personal, but it has. A reader wrote me about his brother’s suicide. His brother was an Iraq War veteran suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
I did not sleep much that night, finally awakening as one day became another, moved by the impulse to write. This death asked me to try to put its meaning into words, because this soldier and his family deserved as much.
I finished writing to the chirping of birds as the sun came through my window. Then I sat for awhile and thought about what I had done. Last fall one of my son’s closest friends came home from Iraq and in the essay “Veterans Day Reflections” I wrote about how at first I was tempted to publish what I had written about his return, but then did not. At that time I wrote:
We have had too many people appropriating the lives of servicemen and women in Iraq to make points that maybe those people themselves would not want to make. Clint Eastwood got it about right in Flags of Our Fathers, his film about the Medal of Honor winners who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. If you’ve served in a war there are those who think they own you.
I had a similar ambivalence about this death. I knew that family, friends, and those who served with this soldier were all trying to find an answer to the why of it all. That why also gnawed at me, but I wondered if my words were true to what I had written in November.
I decided to put the piece away. But the why would not let go of me, especially after midnight, when it would call to me as I lay awake because the pain of my own disability would not let me sleep. I would turn on the computer, its multicolored glow penetrating the darkness, and reread the essay, then start rewriting it again and again. Finding words that might help the family and others to sort out PTSD obsessed me, perhaps because I felt a sense of guilt that the report came out too late to help this soldier.
Finally the insight that unlocked it all came from an unexpected source so intensely my body shook uncontrollably from everything that had been pent up. Wet circles formed on the keyboard. I sent the draft to the brother who had written me and he answered that he thought the essay might help others and bring some attention to PTSD.
The insight that had come that night came from a place near where I live: a memorial to Medal of Honor winners in World War II. I used to take my son there when he was little, in part because he liked to play on the old Sherman tank they placed nearby. It was covered with graffiti and smelled of stale beer because people had stuck beer cans down the gun barrel, but to him it was great to climb on.
One day when I thought he was old enough to understand, we walked over to the Memorial and I tried to explain it to him. Four of the six men who had earned our nation’s highest decoration made the ultimate sacrifice, throwing themselves on live grenades to save the lives of their fellow soldiers. What research I have done tells me there is no other instance of four men who lived within miles of each other all sacrificing themselves like that. I always have wondered not only if I would have had the courage to do what they did, but whether I would have done it quickly and instinctively enough to have saved lives.
My home town has an admirable record of citizens serving their country in time of war. With that service comes a code that every soldier absorbs into the very wiring of their brain, so that when the time comes they don’t even need to think about what to do. Those men who threw themselves on live grenades did not have time to ponder anything. They had to act in a split second.
Although the code is most familiarly associated with the famous Marine Corps imperative, “Leave no one behind,” it means something to every branch of the military. Everyone who goes into battle knows what that code demands of them and also what it promises them.
This code is more than a military imperative, it reflects the most basic values of our society, for America as a country has always striven to make sure that everyone could expect that someone would come to their aid, just as the Marines would come to the aid of a comrade. We have not always lived up to that ideal, but it continues to stand as a commandment to honor. I’m not a military historian, but offhand I know of no country whose soldiers carry that imperative with them into battle.
Because of that commandment people can draw meaning from death in war because those who died, died to preserve the lives of others. As everyone knows, this tradition extends even to the dead. That is why almost half a century after Vietnam and long after World War II, we seek to bring our soldiers home to a proper and honored final resting place.
But who goes for the suicides? And who comes for those with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Right now there are no easy answers to those questions. But there is a greater understanding than we had a few decades ago.
We know that for some soldiers the battles never end. Over and over they replay the awful nightmares of scenes no human being should have to see or be a part of. These soldiers remain unable to leave those battlefields, as if they had to perform some unending mission with no relief, without any hope that someone would come for them.
Those with PTSD served in battles that put a bullet in their brain that defies the attempts of even the most expert of physicians to remove it and the most skilled of counselors to help the victims to cope. It lodges in a place that impacts synapses and pathways so their minds replay those moments over and over, the synapses crackling and sparking the way a high tension wire severed by a severe storm jerks and twists. Like bolts of lightning those sparks can jolt unexpectedly, even in quiet moments or in times that for most of us would bring smiles and laughter.
In some ways the victims of PTSD have internalized the code so deeply that they cannot let go of it even when they are out of harm’s way. In this sense they represent the best of the military and the best of America.
That is why to me the victims of PTSD–especially the suicides–represent true heroes because that part of them that is always in battle is always striving to uphold the code. Those for whom the code is strongest and the battles the roughest can suffer mortal wounds, fighting to the last.
Our country needs to ask, “Who comes for them?” Until we realize that the minds of some veterans will always remain on a battlefield which they never can leave, especially at night, especially as they dream, then some of us will get letters like the one I received.
The only way to stop those letters is for each one of us to also honor the code, for in it there is an implicit understanding that the country that has sent its citizens into war will come for all combat soldiers. We need to do a better job of bringing all of them home, especially those whose minds still are on the battlefield. Above all, we must never forget them.
You can help: This essay is dedicated to that soldier who died. I gave his family my promise I would work to bring more attention to PTSD. This is a bipartisan issue all Americans can and should support. Volunteer to work with veterans who have PTSD. Contribute to any veteran’s organizations working with military service personnel suffering from PTSD. Make others aware of PTSD. Write your Senators and Representatives to better fund PTSD services.
Print Posted by: liberalamerican
