Joining forces helps all of us

Joining forces helps all of us
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
April 26, 2013

There seems to be another war going on the media has not caught up with. It is a battle between this generation of veterans and their families against older ones.

When I wrote my second book, THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR I was getting the word out and received a private email from a person involved with one of the groups I am with. She wrote that I was "unprofessional" and needed to stop writing as if I was "one of them." Considering the book is about military suicides and I happen to be an adopted member as the spouse of a Vietnam veteran, I also have the additional tie to my husband's nephew who committed suicide, my husband's battle with it and 30 years of working with Vietnam veterans and their families.

The woman who emailed me is a member of this generation of veterans. How is it they forget that they are not the only ones committing suicide in the numbers we read about? How is it that they forget had it not been for the battle Vietnam veterans fought back here at home to have PTSD treated and compensated for, there would have been nothing for this new generation?

FOR THE LOVE OF JACK, HIS WAR/MY BATTLE was republished last year but I wrote it well before the attacks on September 11, 2001. I was looking for a publisher before the planes hit the Twin Towers. I decided to self publish to let this generation know what was coming so they wouldn't be as alone and lost as Vietnam veterans' families were.

November 25, 2012
The battle to save the lives of combat veterans is not lost and it is not new. 18 veterans and more than one active duty service member take their own lives each day. More attempt it. Kathie Costos is not just a Chaplain helping veterans and their families, not just a researcher, she lives with it everyday. Combat came home with her Vietnam veteran husband and they have been married for 28 years. She remembers what it was like to feel lost and alone. Everything you read in the news today about PTSD is in this book originally published in 2002 to serve as a guide to healing as well as a warning of what was coming for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

I figured I had a unique view of all of this from living with combat PTSD and working with these veterans helping them understand what I read in clinical books, since we didn't have the Internet, self-help books or groups and virtually no support. The media didn't care about them unless one of them got arrested. Now there are Veterans Courts.

In 1984 after attending a Memorial Dedication in Peabody Massachusetts, I was sitting with some of my husband's friend pretending to not listen to what they were saying. As I listened, their words cut into my brain and I couldn't let them go. I wrote In The Name Of Glory with their words, just rearranged and signed it W.T. Mantiev which stands for We Trusted and Vietnam backwards, also from what they said about Vietnam being a backwards war they had to fight harder back home than they did being there.

IN THE NAME OF GLORY

W.T. Mantiev (AKA Kathie Costos)
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!

They had been fighting PTSD for over 10 years by then. Isolated unless they took the chance of reaching out to other veterans near where they lived, it was hard for them to connect. Even harder was learning to trust after the older veterans turned them away. Yes, the generational battle was happening even back then.

They came home with the same wound but it was called "shell shock" back then. In those days the choice was being institutionalized or the lucky ones were cared for by families. One of my husband's uncles ended up living on a farm for the rest of his life and the VA paid the family to care for a group of WWII veterans. They lived peaceful lives as farmers.

Less than 7% of the population know what it is like to be called veteran. If we are fighting against other generations, that makes us weaker than if we do what the Vietnam veterans pledged to do, never leave another generation behind. If the OEF and OIF veterans and their families keep fighting against the generation that came before them, they will not learn the lessons these veterans have to teach. If newer spouses pretend that no one else knows their pain, they will not receive the support we have to offer or our wisdom. Joining forces helps all of us and makes us stronger. Most of us have been doing all of this before they were even born. We may be gray now but we were also young wives fighting a battle for their lives after combat and trying to keep our families together, so what they are going through, we know all too well. We can help them but not if they will not listen or tell us that we are not one of them. We think of them as one of us.