Healing Combat Trauma

Three Wars, Three Voices: PTSD and the Catharsis of Writing about What You've Seen

Two Marines and a soldier from different eras, separated by generations, write about what they've seen in different wars, and find their way to catharsis, through writing.  At just over 500 posts on this blog, over the last two years, we take this occasion to also take stock on what catharsis there can be through attempting to touch the darkness, and come away unscathed.

We've been reading the superb "Eyewitness to Combat" recollections of one young Marine Vietnam veteran, Pat, who spent 40 years trying to put together his story -- ostensibly to leave it to his family, but I believe, equally as much, in an attempt to explain what he endured to himself.  Pat was kind enough, and courageous enough, to send me his story -- and it was hard not to be affected deeply by the story that he told, about his wounds of war.

Another former Marine, Nathaniel Fick, is whose inspiration I followed to start this blog in the first place, when he came back from war -- in his case, Afghanistan and Iraq -- and kept on caring about the state of his Marines, setting a powerful example in that regard which still echoes today.  Fick is a great writer, and a great leader, and it's hard to settle on just one inspirational aspect of what he has to say.  But here's an excerpt from a little-known original essay he wrote for the bookstore, Powells, in Portland, Oregon, linked here, that talks about some of his motivation for writing the exceptional, award-winning, "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer."  See how he talks about catharsis, the theme of this blog:

One Bullet Away started as a personal collection of stories. I wanted to write them down before they faded, and thought I'd slide the stack of papers into a desk drawer to show my kids someday. Gradually, though, I realized that something more than an archival instinct inspired me to wake up every morning and write. I began to see the book in terms of what it could mean for four concentric rings of people.

Perhaps self-indulgently, I put myself at the center, at least in the beginning. Writing was cathartic. There were days when I could barely see the computer screen through my tears. In time, I was able to look at the story more objectively, but I hope the emotional immediacy of those early days remains.

Next, I felt that my family and friends had to know about the things I'd done, how I'd changed. Otherwise, there would forever be a gulf between us. Many of the stories in the book don't lend themselves to dinner-table conversation, so writing became my way of telling the tale.

I was also thinking about the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines who were in Afghanistan and Iraq with me, or will be there in the future. I hoped to write a book that any one of them could hand to a friend and say, "If you want to understand what it's like, read this."There are older combat stories I feel that way about, books like "With the Old Breed" and "The Naked and the Dead." You read them and feel that you've glimpsed something that transcends a particular time and place. Their human stories are identical to the human stories in Afghanistan and Iraq, and probably to the human stories at Thermopylae and Cannae, too.

The last and largest group on my mind was the huge body of American citizens who care about what's happening in the Middle East but are dissatisfied with the perspectives available to us. As a junior officer, I had just enough rank to see a bit of the big picture and to feel the weight of responsibility. But I was far enough down the food chain that One Bullet Away is still very much written from a grunt's point of view, where life is invariably hot and cold, dirty and dangerous. I think many of the tactical problems we faced ... continue to resonate at the strategic and political levels. In fact, I've already found the book to be a catalyst for discussion about topics like these. It's a jumping-off point, and people are eager to talk about what's happening ...[in the war].

Finally, a warrior from a third war, the Gulf War, Scott Lee.  Social work graduate student, familiar with PTSD from his own case, son, boyfriend, dad.  Scott has a lot on his plate these days, but he chronicles his struggles, victories and defeats with PTSD at this blog, linked here.  Scott is at that very difficult juncture in the road, when you wonder how much truth you should really tell, and at what cost (primarily, to your own psyche).  While you may long for release, each sentence takes its toll -- and ultimately needs to be paced out over time, balancing the desire for purging the horrors of war with the need to retain some semblance of wholeness for tomorrow.  Rob Honzell, like Nate Fick, a First Recon Marine, but from the Vietnam war, understands that intimately: writing his book over the course of two painful years could not be done without setbacks in his own struggle with PTSD.

Valiant warriors, all.  All with a story to tell.  All deserving of our various attaboys: for their courage in battle, for their desire to help the next generation and their fellow warriors, and their bravery in facing down their own demons to tell the story only they could tell.  Is writing, on balance, an effective way to achieve catharsis? Only somewhat.  At the very least, it puts the past into some sort of perspective, to allow the combat veteran to approach tomorrow as a brand new day, where he may make another survivors's attempt to touch the darkness, and return to tell us what he saw.

Eyewitness to Combat - Misplaced Guilt Trip - Even the Survivors Lost (Survivor's Guilt)

This is possibly the most intense and heart-wrenching of the reminiscences of Pat, the young Marine who served two tours in Vietnam, whose recollections we are excerpting in this "Eyewitness to Combat" series.

 

He is shot five times, in the arm, leg, back and head, seriously wounded, medivaced out of Vietnam, and recovering stateside in Balboa Naval Hospital, when he gets some news that will change his life forever. If you read the foregoing episodes in the series, you learn a little of what the combat he saw was like. 

 

But let's pick up in his own words with how that affected him:

 

"Almost everything that I had done and experienced generated a corrosive guilt that continued to diminish any hope of a joyful life that I could have had. But the one event which brought overwhelming guilt and probably attributed more to my “death wish” than anything else was the one event which I had not even taken part in.

My unit had been completely destroyed and I wasn’t there to die with them. I was a coward: I had run away and hid and because of this, I was responsible for the complete elimination of “Bravo” Company.

 

That is what my mind was telling me -- even though I was stationed in the Balboa Naval Hospital, being treated for severe wounds that I had received when my platoon had been ambushed and annihilated on Hill 861 S. in Khe Sanh, South Vietnam.

 

I was notified of this event when a Navy Corpsman came into the ward that I was confined to and said “Weren’t you in Bravo Company, 1/9? I found an article in Time magazine that has an article about them getting wiped out. I thought you would like to read it.”

 

He could not have affected me more if he had hit me in the stomach. I read it and I silently cried for the first time since I had returned.

 

I was completely overcome with shame, and survival guilt took up permanent residence in my heart: I swore that I would never let the memory of them get lost, and that I would always carry the torch for them.

 

I looked out the window and there on the street outside of the Hospital entrance a large “anti-war” demonstration was in progress and the hatred was directed at the wounded vets while my beloved Bravo Company was gone, they were all dead, wounded or missing. I was twenty years old and I absolutely hated America.

 

The article epitomizes what the misplaced guilt trip was all about: “115 Dead, 276 Wounded, 26 Missing, A Battle Without Victory: The Wipe-Out of Bravo Company.” There were no winners, only losers again; even the survivors lost."

And then, in an echo of why other teenagers self-harm, such as by cutting themselves, in an attempt to "balance" the pain externally with the pain they feel within, we hear Pat describe the aftermath for him:

 

"I spent the next 35 years trying to find out “why some people survived and others didn’t”. More specifically, I needed to understand why I had “dodged the bullet” when so many other Marines had “bought it”. I constantly sought a place where the pain going on around me and outside of me matched the pain inside my head and which was literally eating me alive.

 

As weird as this sounds, the more I hurt physically, the calmer I felt. Only physical pain could suppress the mental pain that was always present. It was as if I had to be constantly punished just to survive. "

Despite the thousands of words that Pat has written to describe his experiences, his description of this episode in his life made me wonder if it in fact was the pivotal episode of all.  As to why he didn't deck the world's most insensitive human being -- the Navy Corpsman who "dropped" that bit of "news" in his lap?  Pat says that if he hadn't been lying in the hospital bed, shot up and paralyzed on one side, he would have been happy to.  I can easily see why.

The Pain of Injury - "Weakness Leaving the Body," or Outrageous Endurance Contest Few Can Win?

I've known enough Marines to know they all love that saying, "Pain is just weakness leaving the body," or something like that.

Personally, that just sounds like something a particularly sadistic high school gym teacher or coach might have thought up, to help his students puking in the bushes after a particularly hard race or fight, to "reframe" what had really happened, so he wouldn't lose them on the team when they suddenly wanted to run away and quit. 

I don't have any real expertise in the area, but my gut-level sense is, that's just a quote; not a truth.  And a sufficiently-inspiring "quote," that those who hear it can hold onto their status among other people who learn to handle pretty outrageous amounts of pain, all in the guise of being warriors.  (And the congregation said, "OoRah.")

Here's how Pat, our Marine from Vietnam who we've been excerpting material from in the "Eyewitness to Combat" series, and who was seriously wounded in combat, described his own experience with that.  See if you "read" it as "weakness leaving the body," or else, as I do, as tremendous courage that someone could endure that level of outrage/assault and not lose their mind.  If it still isn't shocking/impressive enough, maybe additionally picture that this is happening to someone still in his teens at the time, and functionally cut off from all possible love, support and comfort -- except his other warriors, and, erm, supposedly the hospital staff -- but they're seeming none too warm and fuzzy:

"When I was shot in the arm and leg they were both "through 'n through wounds": meaning they went completely through the limbs.  I also had a head wound and therefore could not (would not) have any anesthesia or pain medications to reduce the intense, awful pain. 

Each morning they would roll me into the cleaning room, put me onto a stainless steel table completely naked (no one had any clothes on except the bandages and a blanket in this field hospital -- a MASH unit in the Army).  The corpsman would then take a stiff brush and dip it into iodine and run it through each wound to the other side to scrub out all dead and infected flesh.  I would pass out from the pain. 

On the first time, I started to cry, tears rolling down my cheek, and looked over to my side.  There was another Marine about my age who almost had no flesh on one side of him.  They were doing the same procedure on him and he just stared up and let the tears flow.  He made no sound, no quiver, just laid there and stared at the ceiling.  After that, I got calm and did the same from there on out. 

I remember a general coming through the cleaning area on one of the occasions and the head of the medical doctors present, probably a colonel, was explaining how each of us "felt no pain" while this was going on, the general was pleased: BullFuckingShit.  But we were MARINES.  "Take pain and embrace it and make it your friend" kind of shit thing.  Oh well, it gave me a perspective of how much physical pain I could endure and I have actually had to endure it several times since leaving Nam.  It never bothered me after that because I knew I could "hack it".  I did and I have..."

Really, what is even possible to add to that?  Just about nothing, except certain and really involuntary respect for what it took to undergo that, and not just shatter into a million pieces, like the shards of a mirror.  "Courage": the dictionary defines it as, "The quality of mind enabling one to face danger or hardship resolutely."  I think that's what we have here, multiplied by every combat veteran who ever endured it, but maybe didn't have the ability of Pat to describe it for you, so you could if not relate, at least possibly understand and respect or admire it for what it is.

Eyewitness to Combat: What Fluttered in the Trees

Another installment in our ongoing "eyewitness to combat" series.  Beware that this materail contains graphic images of war, not for the squeamish or the faint of heart (although the image to the left that appears to be a human being's body is actually a strangely human- shaped tree root):

During June of 1966, the entire Battalion was committed to Operation Liberty.  I was detached out to Foxtrot Company for this one.  We had been running County Fair Operations throughout the 2/9 TAOR and much of the northern part of it was declared as cleared of V.C. 

However, the southern portion south of the La Though River to the Key Lam River was still not cleared and was literally crawling with the V.C. This operation was supposed to be an on line sweep clear to the Key Lam River with each company having their own objective area of responsibility. 

 

We were to secure Route 4 to the river.  This area was where we had made contact with a large V.C. force in April and it really made me jumpy.  Mines and booby traps were everywhere and the area was covered with punji stakes and spider traps. 

 

As we moved across one rice paddy through a tree line to the next rice paddy, we had cleared a safe area. 

 

However, Nick Sparicino or some reason just cut through an unsecured brush area before we reached the cleared area.  He had just stepped into the tree line when he dropped and screamed in agony.  He had stepped into a punji pit.  The bamboo stakes had impaled his lower leg and calf and the punji stakes around the sides of the pit and pointing down had impaled his thigh pinning him there. 

 

He screamed; “Pat, Help Me! God Dammit! It Hurts. Hurry!”  I ran to him and Bradford and I grabbed him under the arms and tried to pull him up enough to get the pressure off of his leg.  Another guy started digging around the outside of the pit to get him out.  This took a really long time because he was so stuck and bleeding like crazy.  

We were all sweating like pigs and he kept slipping.  We would just about have him out and then he would slip and fall back full weight onto the punji stakes and he would scream out in pain.  The muscles in my arms were starting to cramp us but I couldn’t let him go until we got him out.

 

He continued to scream and started really shaking.  This made it harder to hold him up.  We finally got him free and were able to pull all of the stakes out of his leg.  One went up through his foot into his leg; another went up through the calf and ripped it completely open to the bone. He had three really deep punctures in his thigh where the lateral spikes had got him. 

 

Doc gave him morphine, the chopper came in and just like all of the others, he was gone, never to be mentioned again as if he also never had existed.  I had allowed myself to get close to him and we had been through a lot of shit together and he was gone.  I did not like making friends.  I was feeling very alone as we all did.  Hadn’t had been killed in the last of May, and now Nick was gone.

 

The next morning, around the 11th or 12th of June we moved across one large rice paddy, over a dike across a shallow channel and onto a grassy field bordered by very thick and dense tree lines.  The flanks and point squads had already moved across and then the center portion of the platoon came onto the field.  I was still carrying a flame thrower and could not clear the ditch in one jump, so I jumped into the bottom of it. 

 

When Nick had been wounded, I had to take the tank again and its weight caused me to bend at the knees and waist when I landed in the ditch.  There were several loud simultaneous explosions and dirt pelted me all over.  My ears were really ringing.