A recent quote from the inimitable Dalai Lama: "To the extent that our experience of suffering reminds us of what everyone else also endures, it serves as a powerful inspiration to practice compassion and avoid causing others pain. And to the extent that suffering awakens our empathy and causes us to connect with others, it serves as the basis of compassion and love."
We've written on the site before about how combat vets "get" what other combat vets go through, and how they share that "wet bond of blood" brotherhood, here and here and many other places as well. (There's even something about it from the Civil War era, here; as well as Ernie Pyle, superstar war correspondent who "got" it, exemplifying it and communicating it from the boys on the front to the families back home, here.) We've started writing lately about "ritual" as a way that "primitive" societies, including sometimes our own, ceremonially bring back in the warrior from the war, embraced by his or her community. The work of Malidoma Somé is impressive as heck; but there are others shortly to speak on this as well, including other veterans who understand it and have lived it, and now want to share it with others.
But if we really want to envision the extent of what the Dalai Lama quote, above, embodies, let's take a look at a cross-cultural, multinational gathering of hard-core combat veterans from more than a decade ago.
“War Creates Brothers”
U.S., Soviet vets share pasts on Peninsula
By Kevin Patterson
Peninsula Daily Times
Port Angeles – Larry Heinemann doesn’t know the word’s Russian spelling; Igor Zakharov doesn’t speak the English translation. But the word “brat,” which sounds like “brot,” instantly brings the two men together in a shoulder-shaking hug.
“My brat, my brother,” Heinemann explains.
There is much that should separate the two men. Heinemann is 45, an award-winning author, a Vietnam veteran.
Zakharov is 25. A machinist. An Afghansti – a Soviet military veteran who served in Afghanistan.
But they sat side-by-side on a rough cedar-plank bench, sharing American cigarettes and talking about coming home from war. Brothers. Soldiers. Grunts.
American “grunts,” G.I. slang for the everyday soldier, have been coming to this place west of the Elwa River for most of the 1980s. Counselor Bruce Webster has gained national prominence for his role in helping Vietnam veterans re-live their war experiences and confront memories that torment them.
Last weekend, Webster’s beachfront back yard ... became a bivouac for Vietnam vets and a handful of Russian veterans and counselors. It was more fruit from a budding relationship borne of war and government indifference to its warriors.
Heinemann and Zakharov met last December, when a group of Vietnam veterans toured the Soviet Union. Their mission was to make contact with Afghansti , while shunning official government representatives. [Heinemann wrote about his visit in a recent issue of a national magazine.]
“Our welcome by the Afghansti – perhaps 30 men in their early and middle 20s – was profuse, prolonged and astonishingly friendly: hand-shakes and warm smiles and immediate conversation,” Heinemann wrote.
Heinemann said the Vietnam vets saw a lot of ourselves in the young Russian veterans. It is a bond that transcends differences in language, culture and politics.
Afghanistan is often referred to as the Soviets’ Vietnam. It was a part-time war waged in a distant land for ill-defined reasons.
Soviet soldiers who fought in Afghanistan came home to discover that most people did not understand what the army was doing there. The government-controlled news media reported that troops in Afghanistan were there as advisers or to build public works.
Until 1985, soldiers killed in action were sent home in zinc coffins to be buried in secret, Heinemann said. Families often did not know how or where their sons died.
“They call it the false face of welcome,” Heinemann explained. “One man we met said his son might as well have been killed in a bar fight, for all he knew.”
The Vietnam veteran has faced an uphill struggle to win recognition of the scars left by the war. Post-traumatic stress disorder – PTSD – is the living monument to men who fought a senseless war against an enemy who played by different rules.
Heinemann knows about PTSD. His novel, “Paco's Story,” won the 1987 National Book Award. It was a fictional account of a Vietnam vet struggling with PTSD.
Help for veterans has been slow. Complaints about the U.S. government’s response to Vietnam vets are common. So are stories of Vietnam veterans wracked by the awful psychological after-effects of war. People’s understanding of what the war did to some of the soldiers is still evolving.
The Soviet veterans now grapple with some of the same problems, including a government indifference to their needs, Heinemann said. Their 10-year war ended in February, about 16 years after U.S. troops began pulling out of Vietnam.
Heinemann said Vietnam vets know some of what lies ahead for the Afghansti.
“I think that the Afghansti have a chance to save themselves a lot of grief, learning from our mistakes,” Heinemann said. “That’s why I wanted to bring them out here.”
Zakharov sat next to his American comrade, listening to a foreign language and struggling to answer a reporter’s questions.
He served two years in Afghanistan, the usual length of service for Soviet troops. He used a stick to draw 1982-1984, his time in Afghanistan, in the sand and sawdust of the outdoor conversation pit.
Heinemann said Zakharov was with an airborne unit. He was a minesweeper, whose job was to probe for landmines. His navy blue and white –striped undershirt, standard issue for airborne troops, mostly hid the scar he carries from a bullet wound to his left shoulder.
On his right wrist is a red band. The name of a U.S. Army sergeant, killed in Vietnam, is inscribed there. It’s a memento of his visit to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.
“These are great guys,” Heinemann said. “They’re young and they’re tough and they’ve been through the mill.”
Reprinted with permission of the Peninsula Daily News.
