Healing Combat Trauma

Living in the Prison of PTSD - a Poem by a Vietnam Vet and Suicide

I received a photo of this poem, by a Vietnam veteran who committed suicide shortly after he wrote it, in the manuscript of another Vietnam veteran's memoirs from his time as a Marine in Vietnam, and after homecoming.  This poem is apparently up on the wall of the "Post Traumatic Stress Unit" at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Waco, Texas.

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(It's easy to understand honoring the vet who wrote this poem as one of his last pleas, but seriously -- if I were being treated for PTSD and were struggling with some of the same issues, I'm not sure it would be that perky to go by this particular wall art regularly and remind myself, oh yeah, right after that guy wrote that -- well, he ended things.  Even though it's perfectly understandable why he felt things had gotten to that point; and equally well how the other vets and the staff there would want to honor his passing with this tribute.  People who believe in the ancient Chinese art of placement, feng shui, would say, never hang anything on the wall that brings your energy down, not up, when you look at it.  But I'm sure they did it out of love and respect for the guy concerned...)

As for the poem -- well, it's not gonna win any awards as a poem, but in terms of conveying one man's brokenness and pathos, it does that really well. Very sorry the story had to have such a sad ending, and not just for this veteran, but for many others like him, from Vietnam and other wars.  Here's what the poet, known only to us by his initials, "A.W.D.," wrote in 1989:

Solitude

I have lived in this prison I built for most

        of my life

And I have blocked out all reason, all guilt

        and all strife.

No one may enter this prison of mine

For I have failed at life,

        now I resign.

Now as I sit here too cloudy to think

My mind and body, they no longer link

My life I see before me, like old movies that

        aren’t real

But that’s what I see and

        that’s what I feel.

May God have mercy, may He not be cruel

May He understand the prayer of a fool

Inside of me, I hear the screams of distress

Let me out of this prison

        Please let me rest.

-- A.W.D., 1989

British Poetic Verse about PTSD

A smart lad and upstanding too
decided what he'd like to do
of years he had, he'd spend a few
protecting the likes of me and you

His friends all thought him barmy
when he signed up for the army
got a uniform and he was trained
he played in all the army games

Then off to war this boy was sent
proud member of his regiment
but soon was shamed by things he did
his job forced him to kill small kids

The things he saw in battle zones
made this boy wish he'd stayed at home
the things his comrades often said
the times he almost wound up dead

He didn't easily take fright
but being shot at every night
landmines, missiles, homemade bombs
attacked, it seemed by everyone

Call it shell shock
call it battle fatigue
post traumatic stress disorder
it's really all the same to me

There had been no preparation
for this mental situation
he had chosen his vocation
now he can find no consolation

Now all that keeps him calm
in a world he's sure will cause him harm
a firearm by his side
his sanity has been denied

Every night the nightmares come
his friends all fear what he's become
he tries to live on civvy street
suspecting everyone he meets

We trained him up, we taught him well
now every day he goes through hell
every night his mind in shreds
where's the cure to fix his head?

-- Anonymous

Editor's Note: If you happen to know who actually wrote this, please let me know so I can attribute it correctly.  But no guesses, please.

A Poem for My Father

Medic! Medic!

I wish I could yell, and someone would come,

But they don’t

I call in air support but the pilots are all stricken too

The infantry has gone into the bunkers

MIA in their own wars like yours …

Forty years after ...

Under a hundred starry nights … stained with blood

Comrades lost, in the winds of Battles gone

In a war over there, in the napalmed jungles

Where Agent Orange still stains the ground

A million screams now silent,

Except those in your mind, which will echo

For all time

We are alone

And we fight the war, together, after you’ve come home

Medic! Medic!

You were wounded in the Nam

Spiritually, wounded, for a country that has forgotten what you’ve done

And what was done to you

Medic! Medic!

Nobody to help us, just you and me

You are wounded, and I your son, a warrior too,

Help you carry on

Though I have never seen the jungles

I am there with you

Fighting a war

In jungles of PTSD, anger, fits of rage

Flashback ...

Incoming, again!

You duck into your psyche until choppers pass

Ones you hear, though we are standing here in suburbia

Guns firing, shrapnel flying,

Once again ... it happens often

We go on, me carrying you, and you wounded

Through the battle under the blood stained heavens

Fighting the war together, the one they forgot

The war you still fight, I fight with you

Medic! Medic!

© 2007 by Jeremy Hogan, photojournalist, son of Jerry Hogan, a Vietnam veteran with longtime PTSD.  The photo is of Jerry Hogan.  Used with permission.

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Editor's Note: April is National Poetry Month.  We're initiating it with this poem, written by a son about his Vietnam veteran dad's experience with PTSD.

"The Hell Where Youth and Laughter Go" -- Young Veterans Suicide in War Poetry

Troubling as the rash of young veteran suicides is, and we need to be extremely troubled by it as a nation -- troubled enough to fundamentally believe that there's a problem that needs fixing -- and it isn't the veteran, but how he or she is treated as expendable by the same system that sends them to war -- here's a wonderful poem by one of the famous WWI war poets, Siegfried Sassoon, that speaks to the essence of the topic:

"Suicide in the Trenches"

I KNEW a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,	5
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.     .    .    .    .
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,	10
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

--Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967).  from Counter-Attack and Other Poems.  1918.

Editor's Note: For a link to Sassoon's poetry on Amazon, click here.  We will also increasingly be listing the work of war poets in a book sidebar as they're mentioned or discussed (see right hand side of page).   Oh, and P.S. -- no ageism intended or implied.  The suicide of older veterans is also tremendously troubling.  Each life taken is a profound loss to society, whether old or young.

Writing Down the Bones

If you're in the San Francisco/San Jose Bay Area this weekend, you might think of attending the Mindfulness & Writing Retreat, led by Maxine Hong Kingston, Wendy Johnson, & Therese Fitzgerald to be held Friday, November 9th through Sunday, November 11th at the Ben Lomond Quaker Center, in Ben Lomond, CA.  For further information, contact the Community of Mindful Living, at (831) 338-8026.  There's a Zen Buddhist / silent meditation retreat component to this, but my understanding is that it's also about veterans and writing out the painful experiences they've endured, to the degree they feel ready or interested in doing so.  The cost is under $200 for the three day retreat, and the accommodations are intentionally fairly bare-bones.  And it sounds like it's an annual Veterans' Day weekend event for Maxine Hong Kingston and the writing group of veterans.

Maxine Hong Kingston's recent book, an anthology of pieces by veterans and interested others, is called Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace. It's the winner of the 2007 Northern California Book Reviewers Special Award in Publishing, and was recently featured in a special by Bill Moyers on PBS.  The publisher, Koa Books, calls it "a harvest of creative, redemptive storytelling—nonfiction, fiction, and poetry—spanning five wars and written by those most profoundly affected by it."  And Moyers says, ""No one I know personally has done more to help veterans themselves bear witness to unspeakable experience than Maxine Hong Kingston."

For more than twelve years, National Book Award-winning author Maxine Hong Kingston has led writing- and-meditation workshops for veterans and their families. The contributors to this volume—combat veterans, medics, and others who served in war; gang members, drug users, and victims of domestic violence; draft resisters, deserters, and peace activists—are part of this community of writers working together to heal the trauma of war through art. On Friday, May 25, 2007, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS featured Maxine Hong Kingston and Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.

Reading their words, we witness worlds torn apart then rebuilt. This epic and timely work is the distilled wisdom of warriors and their loved ones, expressing themselves with breathtaking artistry and truth.  Maxine Hong Kingston’s books—The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey, The Fifth Book of Peace, and others—have won critical praise and national awards. President Bill Clinton presented her with a National Humanities Medal in 1997.

"The Gentle Heroes Left Behind"

In the Wikipedia entry about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., also and previously known colloquially at least as "the Vietnam Wall" -- and whose 25th anniversary is coming up SOON -- there is a beautiful photo of the back of a Vietnam vet, in silent contemplation at the Wall itself.  The photo, reproduced here, is by French Canadian photographer, Patrick-Andre Perron, whose website is here.  Interestingly, on Perron's website, he "illustrates" this photograph with a poem he must particularly like, that he apparently saw on the wall.  We include it here:

"If you are able, save for them a place inside of you
and save one backward glance when you are leaving
for the places they can no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say you loved them,
though you may or may not have always.
Take what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own.

And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind."

Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam
Listed as KIA February 7, 1978

[This poem is not included here to express any particular pro-war or anti-war sentiment, but to honor the feeling of brotherhood among those who fought and died.  It's also possible that in the case of PTSD, veterans and their families consider themselves unfortunately to be "the gentle heroes" left behind on the battlefield...]

Perron also links on his website to a stunning collection of Vietnam war photographs by combat photographer Richard Calmes that are well worth viewing.  We include the link here.  If music is more your thing, the Vietnam Veterans of America is promoting a CD of music that brings back the in-country experience, both good and bad, with classic rock tunes from the era, and proceeds being shared with worthy charitable causes for vets.  That link and more information about the music is here.

The Vietnam Memorial - Sacred Ground

Thinking about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial lately, and how it's coming up on its 25th anniversary, it was interesting to read the following in the uniformly stupendous small book, 365 Tao, by Deng Ming-Dao.  The reading for the other day was about "history" -- and although the Vietnam Wall wasn't built on the battlefields of Vietnam, but thousands of miles away in America, the reality is, there will be much that resonates with what he says, because the outpouring of grief that happens in Washington, D.C. around the Wall must surely be cathartic as well, addressing as it does a very melancholy piece of our recent human history.

The reading was called "History," and it opened, like the other readings in the book do, with a short poem, followed by a more expanded thought.  Herewith the poem and the discourse.

"Autumn trees swept with dawn.  Look as if they've been lacquered.  Rooted around an old battlefield.  The mists linger here like ghosts."

"There are still places where you can walk and feel a profound bloom.  Such is the case with old battlefields.  People died there.  The force of their determination still resonates.

You can find such places in every country.  Often no one builds anything there, even when the land is [expensive nearby.]  We say that we do not want to forget our dead.  We say that there should be a memorial.  Others say that the disturbance there is so great that the living cannot abide with the dead.

History is essential to our understanding of the present.  Unless we are conscious of the way in which we came to this point in time as a people, then we shall never fully be able to plan the present and the future.  We need to know what roots are still alive.  We need to know how things came to be so that we can project from here.  We also need to know the failures of the past so we can avoid repeating them.

History is not always glorious.  Sometimes our history is melancholy.  We must accept that.  This life is terrible and people do terrible things to each other.  If we are to live for the sake of the good and strong, then we should have as much of a background as possible."

How Do Veterans Want Us to Listen to Them?

As the Christian existentialist philosopher (how do you combine those two widely divergent concepts in a single sentence, or a person? Ahhh, never mind) Paul Tillich once said, "the first duty of love is to listen."  The question of the hour should be, how do returning combat veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq want us to listen to them?  What would that be like? Undoubtedly, with compassion, concern, empathy over sympathy, nonintrusive listening versus active probing, and certainly, without judgment.  As we learn more, we'll share it.  Undoubtedly many veterans (especially from Vietnam, and others who have been home a while) will have ideas on how best to listen and care.  On what listening would look, feel, sound like to them.

Good Compassion and Bad Compassion - Worry

There's such a thing as "good" concern for others -- compassion -- and "bad" concern -- worry.  One of the most interesting explanations for this somewhat obscure or initially hard to follow concept is here, in 365 Tao, by Deng-Ming Dao.  He writes, "Worry is an addiction that inferences with compassion."  And explains it further:

"Worry is a problem that seems to be rampant.  Perhaps it is due to the nature of our overly advanced civilization; perhaps it is a measure of our own spiritual degeneracy.  Whatever the source, it is clear that worry isn't useful.  It is a cancer of the emotions -- concern gone compulsive.  It eats away at body and mind."

So if that's what bad compassion is, and we've taken a look at what good compassion can be -- how do we manifest this best with the veterans in our lives, either personally or as a community among whom veterans live?  For this, we turn to combat veterans for their own advice.  And thank you for providing it, to those who only hope to understand.

Here's a great description from Bay Area poet and Vietnam veteran, Ted Sexauer:

We will soon be welcoming home the first of another generation of emotionally damaged veterans. Many will have trouble relating to people who have not seen what they've seen.

How shall we honor them without endorsing the inhumanity that all war -- including this war -- embodies? They will need deep understanding. If you know returning veterans, don't press them with probing questions, but give them room to talk. Listen even when they tell you things you don't want to hear. Let us, if we can, move beyond "us versus them" thinking.

(Sexauer, who is now a peace activist -- though that's not the point of his inclusion here -- is one of the veterans whose work is featured in the anthology edited by Maxine Hong Kingston, entitled Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace -- listed in our sidebar, and featured in a recent Bill Moyers documentary on PBS.)

Compassion and Empathy

"Once or twice this side of death, things can make one hold his breath" -- from "Crystal Moments," a poem by Robert P. Tristam Coffin.

Last summer when I had moved back briefly to New England, I made a point of every weekend going to art museums in the area, because there are so many and they're each so good -- and art is one of those treats I always want but rarely allow myself.  So it was a great experience "catching up," so to speak.  I saw a lot of great work that summer, but one item in particular stands out.

As I rounded the corner in the basement of the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in the Boston's Fenway, a museum a fellow "Books for Soldiers" volunteer had told me not to miss, I saw something that absolutely took my breath away, and on reading the inscription, the experience only sharpened.

What I saw was a full-size, or maybe even slightly larger than full size, wooden statue, covered with gilt, of an androgynous-looking woman, with a very open body posture much like the statue in this photo.  Like a person in deep conversation with someone, listening intently but with concern and feeling for who she was speaking with.  Remarkable!  And like nothing else I've seen in art.  Who was it?  Well, it turns out to be "Kuan-Yin" - a diety of compassion - and the statue is from the 11th century in China.  It turns out "she" has a long and storied history, being also known as the "Bodhisattva Guanyin."  Wikipedia provides more information about who she is, but one of the most salient parts is that she is one who "observes the cries of the world," in suffering.

This brings up the question of what is "compassion," really.  Sometimes in the West we've mistaken that, wrongly, for pity.  The original meaning, in the Latin, seems like it has more to do with "suffering with."  What do veterans need from us?  They need to be heard, and more from empathy even than sympathy.  I once had a veteran tell me that what he appreciated most about my concern was that it came from empathy -- feeling with -- not sympathy -- feeling for. He said there were way too many people wanting to offer sympathy -- and if they really wanted to offer sympathy, they should have gone.  But someone who takes the time to understand what they've gone through -- that's more valuable, in the veterans eye.  Interesting and thought-provoking.

The dictionary says compassion is "deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it."  From the Latin, it means something like, suffering with.  The reality is, we can't always relieve others' suffering -- but at least we can listen, and care what others have gone through.

NOTE: Sadly, the gift shop at the Gardner Museum didn't sell anything to do with this statue, not even a postcard.  Perhaps the fact it was positioned outside the Ladies' Room had something to do with its respective honor among the diverse collection.  But apparently the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City also has a statue like this, and there may be others.  And here's a link to a physical statue online that can be purchased, along with a little more description of who the statue represents -- large statue and smaller statue.  Ironically, a stylized version of this statue is the cover art of the Tao of Healing, a cd by Dean and Dudley Evenson that we've listed in the sidebar, that's highly rated for its therapeutic properties.