(From our ongoing series on ritual for cultural healing after war; again written by the longtime Navy vet who was a leader in the men's movement.) He asks:
"How can we heal the wounds of warriors that are so deep and mystifying that the only solution is to end all consciousness, via suicide?
Vietnam veteran and therapist Arthur Egendorf in his book, Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam," states that "Healing ins't complete when the pain subsides." He later quotes a Vietnam veteran, Bill Broyles, as saying, “Men love war.” One only has to read a little further to find he states this “is a deep dark secret” that men “don’t dare admit.”
War is combat -- and combat is the "arena of the Gods" -- where the ability to take life from another comes into play. It's the mystical world of life and death, decided in battle or struggle. Perhaps myths of the gods originally came from the miracle of birth, and the unknown of death. Where there was a blow to the head in anger, in play, or happenstance, and death came, unexplained. To cope with this unknown required the evolving human mind to accept the phenomenon of sudden death, such as happens in combat.
We know that combat preparation requires the transformation of a person from the everyday world of youth, which is mostly ignorant of mortality, its own or others', into a god-like position of “Life-Taker and Heart-Breaker”. In the military, this transformation is accomplished through ritual.
The effect of this ritual can be illustrated in writings of many veterans in speaking of their first Drill Sergeant or Company Commander. This induction into the world of “Life-Taker and Heart-Breaker” leads one into the Realm of the Gods. The power to deliver death or grant life extension, and be the harbinger of wrath and destruction, by the simple movement of one digit of the hand, is sanctioned by the indoctrination ritual.
This reinforces the ritual in the body, mind and psyche of the warrior. Each sunrise, combat ration, sunset, night patrol or watch increases the intensity of the initial ritual. An additional ritualistic enforcement is the individual performance of cleaning weapons, combat ammunition load, water, stimulants, checking twice or more that everything is in place, and ready to complete the ritual of “Life-Taker and Heart-Breaker”.
Returning warriors come back to land of difference. No longer do they have the power of the Gods. They are returned to a strange land, whose customs are unfamiliar and the people are foreign. There is no ritual of forgiveness of the sins of the soul. There is no magic balm to heal the sin-sick soul. Only loss of life intensity. The skills that were necessary to stay alive and protect comrades are no longer needed.
The ancient way of ritual would be to get the village together and tell a “dilemma story,” and create movement from one world to another. By embodying the dilemma, displacement would occur, allowing the warrior to take a rightful place in the village, or society.
While the ceremony of returned warriors brought back under their shield is the most moving of military ceremonies, the grieving of remaining family and friends must be done outside the government care. One only has to read the stories of destitute loved ones of the abandonment of the relatives after the burial ceremony is complete to hear the angst of unresolved grief.
Unfortunately alternative healing professions, or Medicine Men and Medicine Women, embodiment through movement, and other non-medical therapeutic modalities are not recognized by the government, the military, or some circles of society.
We lament about suicide but are unwilling to accept spiritual rituals as healing, in the face of veterans utilizing their own resources to obtain better health, through alternative, non-traditional, non-medical or non-Judeo/Christian methods."
