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WE DIED FOR YOU
We’re not all dead in clinical ways as the result of war wounds, but there are so many among us who are merely here and waiting to take their place among those who fell around them, performing deeds of extreme valor yet many times filled with moral injury and shame. These few that survive among us are less than unsung or recognized, not individually, anyway. They are ‘honored’ by small and large group presentations by a public that has little understanding or real emotional care. Those of us still dying, one by one and generally alone, from the mental cancer inflicted by the action of real terrorizing and horrid combat do, in our wounded way, understand. America is an intensely competitive culture, possibly the most competitive of any culture surviving on this planet or ever having existed to this time. America has little time to reflect on the past and not much motivation to truly admire or raise to those who performed when they could not, when they would not, or when they did but somehow, through great good fortune, served without having to do more than view the awful results of what was happening to the combatants in the military around them.
Real combatants can go to the memorials in Washington, D.C., and visit, like any other citizen. But can they go to some place like the Vietnam Memorial Wall and stand before the particular block where the names of those who died before them are engraved in granite? Probably not. You see, they also see the names of those who might have had something to do with being up there in those carvings. Can those still living combatants discuss what really might have happened to them and get anyone to believe, care, or want to hear what it was like, what with the phony macho messages of almost all television and movie presentations? Not likely, so they gave up early on, and now they wait.
There’s good news tucked away in all of this discussion about the realities of those reading this today, ninety-nine-point nine percent of whom were never in combat or even know someone who was. One piece of good news is that statistically, combat veterans come home and neither hurt nor kill anyone again. They got filled up with that over there, wherever and whenever there was. Another piece of good news is that those almost invisible combat veterans in society do not generally complain about any of this. They were not used to deprivation nor the deadened lack of any will, good or otherwise, by an unrecognizing or disbelieving public. They drink. They take drugs. They become homeless. They go unemployed and unemployable. They go to the VA to be treated like numbered anonymous patients, and, if they still have enough rationality, figure out the labyrinthine system and get some actual benefits to stay alive for a while.
When they do finally die physically, the cause will not be related to what they went through. The cause will be assigned to some disease or unrelated injury. What could this modern society do, what with its amazing capability to track things down electronically? It could find all of these still living combat veterans, there are only about a couple of hundred thousand among us throughout the country. It could dedicate a team of specialists to work and care for them, but that’s not going to happen. Combat veterans aren’t even guaranteed a job when they get home and out of hospitals. Combat veterans can’t even use their combat experience in a Federal Court as a buffer in sentencing. That’s actually prevented by law. What can we all do about such things? Know, think, and then take some action. Any action. We can do better, or nobody’s going to go out there in the world and do anything heroic again, and this nation badly needs such heroes. We still walk among you. Can you, will you, find us?
