Memorial Night More Powerful than Day

Memorial Night More Powerful than Day
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 2, 2014

They are the majority of the VA claims and backlog. The majority of homeless veterans. The majority of suicides. They are Vietnam veterans.

"Vietnam claims make up 37% of the total inventory and 38% of the backlog"

Homeless Vietnam Veterans 47%

The VA study indicates that more than two-thirds of the veterans who commit suicide are 50 or older, suggesting that the increase in veterans’ suicides is not primarily driven by those returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the day they can keep busy, push memories out of their way while they get dressed, get some food in their stomachs, go to work, do whatever they do in a normal day but they usually feel alone. Even in a crowd, they can feel as if they are invisible, detached from others around them. Sure, they want to fit back in, or at least they used to, but for the most part, they gave up on that a long time ago.

Some manage to find groups of other veterans where they fit right in and they know someone cares, understands them and they don't have to explain anything to them. They just know.

At night, that is when their lives get really crowded. Their memories can take control in the quiet of the night as they listen, waiting for a sound they should not hear.

A slamming door. A siren of an police car or fire engine. A car alarm. Neighbors arguing down the street. Barking dogs. Sooner or later they manage to close their eyes and the crowd in their memories awakens.

Some can't figure out how these veterans survived all these years, going to work, taking care of their families but in the years when they are supposed to be taking it easy, they take their own lives. Some can't understand how they can live all that time and still not get over it. They don't understand getting over it is the last thing they want to do. It would mean getting over the friends they lost. The times when they were terrified and the times they were fearless. Getting over risking their lives for someone else. Even the FNG that almost got the killed freaking out with the barrel of their weapon pointed at their back. It is a part of them but some yahoo researcher comes out in a press conference to say they are developing a pill to get them to forget all about it.

If that isn't bad enough they have another yahoo telling them all they need to do is talk about it over and over and over again and then be cured. How? How do they do that? Is there any closure or making peace with any of it? Hell no. They didn't talk to their families all these years so why would they talk to a stranger?

Vietnam veterans don't talk because they were taught to keep it in. They are made to feel ashamed by "polite society" folks that figured it was just a year and they should just go back to normal. Besides, all the other generations managed to get over it so they could too. They just didn't know no generation just got over it. My Dad didn't. He was a Korean Veteran. My uncles didn't. They were WWII veterans.

Home. Such a strange word to them. They left home alone and landed in Vietnam. They came home alone after they counted down the days for DEROS.

Now that we're in the 50th for the Vietnam War people think everything should be fine for them since Vietnam veterans are held in such high regard now but they really aren't.

The press hardly ever mentions any of the facts listed above and few even know that all the research into PTSD started about 40 years ago because of them. All the attention is on the newer generations as if the reporters just don't have time to spare for them, even now.

They are clueless when it some to the most important aspect of all in all of this. If we don't get this right, once and for all veterans, then 30 years from now, we will be facing even more of what is in the above only instead of Vietnam veterans it will be about this generation of war fighters finding the will and the courage to risk their lives for someone else but not finding the will to live for their own sake.

Memorial Day we honor the dead but forget the suicides. Veterans Day we honor the veterans but forget that the other 364 days a year, they are still veterans. That does not end until their grave is decorated with a flag in May after a lifetime of nights with war memorials in their minds.