Twilight of Glory

Twilight of Glory
by
Chaplain Kathie

While most people in their 20's are talking about movies in the Twilight series about vampires, there is another meaning to the word "twilight" and they live it everyday.

twilight
1.
a. The diffused light from the sky during the early evening or early morning when the sun is below the horizon and its light is refracted by the earth's atmosphere.
b. The time of the day when the sun is just below the horizon, especially the period between sunset and dark.
2. Dim or diffused illumination.
3. A period or condition of decline following growth, glory, or success: in the twilight of his life.
4. A state of ambiguity or obscurity

Young men and women go off to other nations serving in the military everyday. They are sent off with people lining the roadways of military bases waving flags and praying God brings them home safely. In communities around the country we send off citizen soldiers leaving their jobs, families and friends to join the regular military in combat. Our neighbors going away from police, fire departments, offices, hospitals and yes, even unemployment lines, while we cheer for the sake of their devotion to duty.

Many of these men and women die while fighting the battles the nation decides need to be fought. They don't bother themselves with worrying about the politics involved. They have enough to worry about like staying alive and trying to keep their friends alive. They worry about being wounded and what will happen to them the day after they return with their lives changed. When they are deployed, all is taken care of for them. They are fed, given clothes and have a family surrounding them. We call them heroes and glorify their devotion. Yet when they are wounded, by body or mind, they enter into the twilight of glory, when they are in need of someone taking care of them. But we don't want to talk about them.

Thousands of Soldiers Unfit for War Duty
David Wood
Chief Military Correspondent
More than 13,000 active-duty Army soldiers -- the equivalent of four combat brigades -- are sidelined as unfit for war because of injury, illness or mental stress.

In an unmistakable sign that the Army is struggling with exhaustion after nine years of fighting, combat commanders whose units are headed to Afghanistan increasingly choose to leave behind soldiers who can no longer perform, putting additional strain on those who still can.

The growing pool of "non-deployable'' soldiers make up roughly 10 percent of the 116,423 active-duty soldiers currently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands more Army reservists and National Guard soldiers are also considered unfit to deploy, a growing burden on an Army that has sworn to care for them as long as needed.

"These 13,000 soldiers, that number's not going to go away," said Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, who heads the Army's Warrior Transition Command, which oversees the treatment and disposition of unfit soldiers. "If anything, it's going to get larger as the Army continues the tempo it's on.

"This is an Army at war.''

Among these "non-deployable'' soldiers are those recuperating from combat wounds, some severe, and various forms of brain injury. Far more numerous are soldiers with non-battle conditions, including cases of coronary disease, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, acute anxiety, kidney disease, leukemia, chronic back pain and dozens of other maladies. Sometimes, these cases are complicated by drug or alcohol abuse, according to senior Army officers and internal Pentagon documents.
read more here
Thousands of Soldiers Unfit for War Duty

We don't want to talk about those in need. We honor glory for however long it lasts when we can feel as if we were a part of success simply by offering words of support or showing up to give the impression of really caring. The wounded are past their glory days in our minds. There is no longer a reason to cheer that same devotion to the nation that caused them to be wounded. If they bleed, well we give them a Purple Heart and then send them off to the abyss of the VA. A few communities band together at the urging of some charity to renovate a house to accommodate wheel chairs when they no longer have their legs. Some people really do care but we as a nation on the whole care more about TV shows, celebrity gossip and our own lives as we glorify our own sacrifices for the sake of our own families. While we know what it's like to be unemployed and worry about paying the bills, we forget they end up with the same problems the rest of us have but unlike us, they are suffering for being unselfish.

When what they have to go through is brought to our minds, we get angry but that fades as soon as the DOD or the VA says they will take care of filling the need. We go back to our own lives without every thinking of them again until a news report comes out that one more of them have taken their own life. We fail to understand few families are willing to talk about the circumstances of the death when suicide is involved, so there are many, many more we will never know about. We know the reported number of 18 veteran suicides a day but they represent the number of veterans in the VA system. We know about the reported number of suicides in the active military but we don't know about the deaths "still under investigation" or any of the deaths by their own hands after they leave military duty. We can try to count the number of attempted suicides, arriving at about 12,000 per year, but there are many more we will never know about.

Suicide hotlines report numbers of callers and the "rescues" they arranged, but no one is talking about the fact these men and women feel so hopeless they reach the point when they have to reach out for someone to talk to on a suicide prevention hotline.

Twenty-something year olds fill the beds at Walter Reed and Bethesda but few in this country, other than family members, have ever seen the inside of a military hospital.

One of the perks of being a Chaplain is that I was treated to a VIP tour of Walter Reed during the Memorial Day trip to Washington. There were 5 young soldiers from the same unit, wounded at different times to different degrees. There was a young female MP feeling blessed the RPG only took off one of her legs instead of hitting her higher. Another young soldier talked about how the people of Afghanistan were mostly good people with very little to live with and how he believe he was helping them to live better lives in their future. He wanted to go back as soon as possible. All of them are the same age as my daughter. They all deal with the same problems all others at their age deal with but then they have the added burden of not only risking their lives, but risking their futures. All of the soldiers I met at Walter Reed will live with the wounds they received for the rest of their lives.

It's really hard to believe I'm sitting here after all these years still doing what I began when my Dad met my husband for the first time. I was 22 when I asked my Dad what he thought of Jack. "He's a nice guy but he's got shell shock." Coming from a Korean War vet, I took it seriously but no one knew at the time it was mild PTSD issuing a warning for him to get help. By the time we met he had been home for 11 years. To this day, young men and women are receiving the same warning about getting help now instead of later so that the ravages of PTSD can be prevented, but too few listen. For those who do listen, they end up discovering that help is something they have to not only wait for, but have to fight for in long lines and paperwork.

None of what they are going through has to happen but they are no long in their glory days of deployment when at least some in this nation want to know what's going on. They are in the twilight of their glory when few in this nation will bother to notice them at all and even fewer will feel compelled enough to try to make this right for them.

twilight
1.
a. The diffused light from the sky during the early evening or early morning when the sun is below the horizon and its light is refracted by the earth's atmosphere.
b. The time of the day when the sun is just below the horizon, especially the period between sunset and dark.
2. Dim or diffused illumination.
3. A period or condition of decline following growth, glory, or success: in the twilight of his life.
4. A state of ambiguity or obscurity

They are in the twilight of glory because when they can't risk their lives, they are no longer of use to us but need us instead.


I wrote this poem with the words of Vietnam veterans back in 1984. These are their words. I just arranged them. This was their lives. I just listened. I revised it for today's veterans.

Twilight of Glory

by

Chaplain Kathie
The things I’ve seen and done would boggle your mind.
I’ve seen the death and destruction created by mankind
in the living hell that I walked away from but could not leave behind.
It all comes back to haunt me now and makes peace impossible to find.
The ghosts of the past that find me in the night
make me wonder if my life will ever be right.
I have tried to forget what I have done,
and now there is no place left to run.
All this in the name of glory!
There is no end to this horror story.

It still does not make sense even now that I am older,
why, when I was so young they made me a soldier
and why I had to be a part of that war
when I didn’t even know what we were there for.
At eighteen I should have been with my friends having fun
not patrolling through a jungle with a machine gun.
I did my part just the same, just for my country
and stood helplessly watching my friends die all around me.
I felt a surge of hate engulf my soul for people that I did not know
and saw children lose their chance to grow.
All this in the name of glory!
There is still no end to this horror story.

There was no glory for guys like me
only bitter memories that will not set me free.
I can never forget the ones who never made it home
some of them dead and others whose fate is still unknown
and the stigma that we lost what was not meant to win
most of us carry that extra burden buried deep within.
All this in the name of glory!
Will there ever be an end to this horror story?

In the twilight of glory
there is an unwritten story
each warrior keeps within.
Going back from the wars we are sent to fight
like going from sunshine to the darkness of night
we fade away from the public's mind
and wonder when glory was left behind
as we struggle to find reason to go on
back in a world where we no longer belong.



revised from IN THE NAME OF GLORY
@1984 Kathie Costos
I signed the poem W.T. Manteiv for We Trusted and Vietnam backwards.