The lament of the warrior

by
Chaplain Kathie

If you listen carefully, you can still hear the sound of ancient drums beating in the night. The lament of the warrior pounded to the ears of Great Spirit seeking relief for all they witnessed that day. Ancient warriors in combat, face to face with the enemies of their people did not rest there as the dead were laying on the earth. As they walked looking for their brothers to reclaim them, laying by their side were the bodies of the enemy forces. Suddenly they were not some target to kill while they were seeking to kill them in return. They were just humans like them. They were fighting for what they believed in just as much as the ancients that fought against them. They had families, passions, laughed and cried and the human price paid was not forgotten. In battle the enemy were evil creatures that had to be slain but in death, they were once again just other humans unlucky that day to have fallen by the sword. They carried away the loss of their friends and the loss of the lives of the enemies that day. They needed to mourn for all and for themselves for what they had seen that day in battle.

Read any account of ancient warfare and see what we now call PTSD. The trauma after combat has not changed in the centuries man has fought against man and will not likely change until man goes to war no more. Different years, different explanations, different words used to describe this human wound after different wars by different means. Stone weapons replaced by swords, replaced by bow and arrow, replaced by rifle, replace by cannon and on and on it went. The end result by any means was the same. The wounded had to be found among the dead and among their dead were the dead of their enemies. Momentary lapses of why they fought allowed them to see the enemy looking the same as their friends. Aside from the clothing, they all looked the same. For seconds their minds acknowledged the loss of all life gone that day.

Today the drum beats of the ancients still pounds in the nights of those who experienced the other side of peace and we call it Post Traumatic Stress. This literally means After Wound. Trauma is Greek for the wound. The ancients acknowledged the loss of other humans and the need to recover from the horrors they lived thru. We however with our vast knowledge and technological achievements refuse to face the human aspect. We see ourselves as smarter, more able to adapt, push on, get over it. We think we are mentally more developed than they were. What we fail to see is that we are just as human as the ancients were. The wounded are just as wounded but we are able to save more than they could. The dead however are just as dead and they lay side by side, enemies in life but the same in death.

If the military were really serious about addressing this wounded spirit they would allow all the lives lost that day to be mourned and acknowledged. They would do as the ancients did and have cleansing ceremonies before they walked away for rest. They would pray for the lives of the enemies they had to take that day and for relief from the pain they felt inside. They would acknowledge the innocents lost because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They would face the human inside of them instead of only the warrior they trained to be.

To this day I mourn the loss of my husband's nephew. His name was Steven. I called him Andy in the book I wrote because his death was too recent to the writing of it. Steven was the same age as my husband when they were both in Vietnam. He came home and fell apart, fell into what he used to cope with in Vietnam, heroin. Steven had seen some horrific things but the one thing standing out in his mind the most was tying his boot.

The VC had a habit of playing around with bombs the US forces had placed the day before. Steven and his men were supposed to go out and check to see if they were moved. Having done that for what he thought was successfully, his unit began to move. Two of his friends were ahead of him when he stooped down to retie his boot. They had gotten just far enough ahead with the trigger was snapped and the bomb blew up. Two of his friends died that day and he blamed himself but more, he regretted he was not right by the side of his friends when it happened and was still alive to live with it. No matter what happened before that day or after that day, no matter what heroics he was performing, that was the day that would claim the rest of his life.

He was not allowed to grieve, there was too much more to do. There were too many more days ahead when other lives were at risk and they were supposed to be tough enough to just get over it and move on from there. He was not allowed to face the fact a part of him remained there on that road right next to the friends he lost.

He came home still using heroin to kill off feeling because all the good feelings had died there on that road. He ended up in jail after a drug deal had gone bad. After he got out, he was able to clean himself up and began to find reason to seek help to heal. He got a job, then another and another. He found a girlfriend after and then another and another, until he found someone that was able to break thru to him and he began to heal. He went to the VA, finally had a claim approved for PTSD and the shrapnel still embedded in him. He was alive again but barely.

No matter what I said, tried to say or how much I listened, he looked at me as if I wasn't there. After all, many years younger than he was and not a "brother" he couldn't understand how I could possibly know anything. I could never manage to find the right way to reach him. Years of trying and I failed, just as I had failed for too many years with my own husband to get him to hear me. It had taken me from 1982 to 1990 to get him to go for help. It didn't matter that I was able to get others to go for help to heal to him. He didn't want to know anything I had to say but over all those years he was listening while pretending not to. In 93 I managed to get him to go to a Veterans center and then finally to the VA. Yet Steven had built such a tough wall around his spirit that I couldn't even crack it and neither could his doctors.

After Steven's claim was approved and he was feeling a bit better about being alive, he sent for his records. He was also feeling pain in his back. The VA was sending him for an MRI to see what was going on, but his girlfriend stopped it knowing the MRI could have moved the shrapnel littering his body and killed him. This he took as an attack against him by the VA. Then came the last straw. The Army responded to his records request by telling him his unit never existed. He wondered how that could be true when they approved his claim, he had the shrapnel in his body and his friends died. A little while later, he left his girlfriend because he had reached for his comforter of the past, heroin, and she couldn't take it anymore. He went to his dealer, bought enough to kill ten men, checked himself into a motel room, locked the door and finally in his mind, caught back up to his friends on the road that day and joined them.

His brother called us early the next morning. Another life claimed by Vietnam that would not appear on The Wall in Washington or be remembered as a price paid. To this very day, I wonder what I could have said that would have broken thru to him even though sometimes there are no words to be found. This all goes into what I do because I know they are all worth whatever I can put into this, whatever I can do or say, whatever information I can share and if there is one life I can save, it's all worth it.

The drums of the warriors lamenting the loss of humans they fought with and fought against are beating still in the night but they are now joined by this new generation of warriors, still all so human, still all so wounded and neglected as humans. They do not know the things they need to know to heal the wound they carry inside of them.

They cannot see the courage they showed when the mission and their friends were all that mattered and their own pain they carried that day was pushed back until it was all over. Steven finished the job he was given even with the pain he carried in his spirit after he tied his boot that day. He carried on no matter how much pain and guilt he felt. He was honorably discharged but the pain he felt was never offered to the Great Spirit to be cleansed from him just as the warriors of today are not allowed to offer their's in the same night as the same day they went into battle with other humans.