Healing Combat Trauma

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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 -- Sarah Ban Breathnach on Overcoming Adversity

Every once in a while we need to be reminded that there is some benefit to struggle. Here's a great quote about keeping perspective on that:

"Real life isn't always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgment of what is working in our lives can help us not only to survive but also to surmount our difficulties." -- Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of "Simple Abundance."

It's Anniversary Time! Please Support Our Work...

Healing Combat Trauma turns six (6) years old this month!

That's 2,190 days, 52,560 hours, and over 3 million minutes of sustained focus on helping veterans with combat-based PTSD with therapeutic resources and information, focused on integrative medicine and that vital intangible {{{hope}}}. When we started this six years ago, there was literally NOTHING available on the Web on the topic. Hence this site.

If you feel it's helped you, please contribute to our effort by sending a donation. We're trying to get our IRS 501(c)3 designation as a nonprofit, and would appreciate any contributions to that end. Please donate here. Thank you so much!

Quotable Quotes -- Tori Amos on the Hidden Courage that Healing Takes

"Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it." -- Tori Amos, American singer and songwriter.

For more great, thought-provoking quotes about the healing process, read our "Tao of Healing" section, linked here.

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.

Quotable Quotes -- Eleanor Roosevelt on the Human Cost of War

As a nation, we've been blessed to have had some wonderfully enlightened presidents -- and in this case, first ladies as well. (See previous quotes by Eisenhower on war, etc.) But in this case, we've got the prayer that Eleanor Roosevelt apparently carried around in her pocket during World War II, to highlight the sacred responsibilty of sending others off to war. It's both profound and true. Here's what it said:

"Dear Lord,

Lest I continue
My complacent way
Help me to remember
Somehow out there
A man died for me today.
As long as there be war
I then must
Ask and answer
Am I worth dying for?"

Unlike in Roosevelt's World War II era, where almost 25% of the nation served -- today just about 1% of the nation does. That means that hardly anyone understands the cost of war or the sacrifices military families make except those who serve and so have "skin in the game." This prayer is probably more relevant now that ever.

Editor's note: Illustration is the White House portrait of Mrs. Roosevelt.