This photograph of an American soldier displaying his ink about combat is by the noted photographer Zoriah, and is used with permission of the photographer. (Zoriah's blog is linked here.)
The tattoo reads: "Walk peacefully on heaven's streets,You've done your time in Hell."
Ahhh, if it only were that "easy."
I've been keeping one eye on Zoriah's situation lately -- he's the embedded humanitarian war photographer whose iconic images of the true horrors of war apparently got him kicked out of Iraq -- and the other on some writing of Vietnam veterans, all of them Marines (but not for any particular reason), about what it was really like to "be there." The outcome of my faux research? Sounds like up close and personal, war can be plenty of "guts," but not necessarily all that much "glory."
"The flashbacks and the hallucinations manifested themselves while I was still in [combat], says one Vietnam veteran, adding, "They have stayed with me for the last forty years." (Rob Honzell, 1st Recon Marines. Rob Honzell's memoir is "First Person: Combat PTSD.)
Another Vietnam veteran questions why Americans reflexively call servicemembers who die in combat "heroes." He writes,
"Heroes?!! I served two tours in Vietnam including the Tet Offensive of 1968. I killed someone -- a NVA solider -- I was elated -- but years later, I can still see my round hitting this guy. I never see any heroism in war -- just death, dirt, misery and guilt. I have never met a soldier or Marine who felt heroic. We do our jobs to protect our buddies and we want to get home and live our lives as ordinary men not as heroes. When you smell death you no longer have a glorified sense of war. There is honor and duty, but to kill or be killed does not make you a hero. I feel for these young people and their families -- but war and combat are not heroic actions -- they are doing a job and getting home."
(Or hoping to.)
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I've been reading voraciously the accounts of the Marines who survived the ferociously fought battle for Hill 881, part of the battle for Khe Sanh in 1967 -- a particularly vicious conflict. (You'll find out why, in a few posts, but not right now.)
One Marine captain writes about his guys, from there:
"As far as the individual Marine goes, I think I learned to respect the individual Marine -- the 18-,19-, 20-year-old, more in this one particular battle than any other time that I've been in the Marine Corps. He was given a job; he went up in the fact of danger, in the face of just being blown away, more or less, and he went up and did his job. To see the faces of the Marines dragging back their dead buddies, their wounded buddies, you could see how close the Marines really were with each other. It was true brotherhood, and I was really proud at the conduct of the Marines." (Capt. David G. Rogers, C Battery, 1/12 Marines.)
Says another Marine, reflecting on his part in the vicious battle for Hill 881 -- "I should have cried" (at the time), but I didn't. I didn't have time. I would cry later, and when I did - the tears would never completely stop..."
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It doesn't sound like war has changed all that much. Remember Ambrose Bierce, Civil War era journalist and soldier, who we talked about a few weeks ago? He wrote at the end of his highly-charged battle memory / short story, a line -- speaking about himself, after what he'd observed and taken part in -- "the life I should have thrown away, at Shiloh." (Bierce went on to stir things up for a few more years, though...)
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A current veteran and fellow fan of Zoriah, now studying social work in an attempt to ease the burden of his fellow PTSD sufferers, has this to say about combat trauma, on his blog, "PTSD - a Soldier's Perspective," linked here:
"We tell a soldier or veteran of war "welcome home" because the battle never leaves us, as we return from conflict everyday of our lives. This is my story and struggle with PTSD, it affects every aspect of my life. I want people to know what a combat veteran goes through after the media and people forget."
And later:
Taking another's life in the name of freedom, patriotism and because of your job description profoundly changes the person. How do we reconcile the killing of another human being and still maintain our principles and values? Someone who has not done so can say all they want about what they think or believe. When a soldier goes home to his or her family, friends and community, how do we relate to people who expect the person that is no longer us? How do we tell them that each time we took a life that, we too died in spirit a little more? They congratulate us on a job well done and we tell ourselves that we did our job, what we were trained to do. They tell us how proud they are, and we cannot make them understand how we feel guilty for that pride. How do we tell them that we cannot get those faces or images out of our mind?
Dirt, death, misery and guilt -- that's a heavy, heavy burden for any one person to share. Let's hope we shoulder it with them, and NEVER forget.
