4 minute read
I got that phone call no one ever wants; yet, I had been expecting it for a while. The police found my father dead in his home when they stopped by for a wellness check requested by his neighbor. He had passed of a stroke on the couch and it was at least two weeks before they found him. I hadn’t talked with or seen him for about eight years.
Dad suffered from clinical depression that he inherited from his mother, but it was exacerbated by PTSD from his experiences in Vietnam. A naturally gentle soul, he never could reconcile being taught to kill—to want to kill. One night, when the beer had loosened him up enough, he told me he had passed up a lot of opportunities in life because he was fearful of “going Rambo on someone.” The Pentagon’s minions had taught him to be a monster, but they didn’t return him to his pre-war innocence. (Nor could they, to be fair). He felt that his life was much less than it should have been, and in his latter years he pushed everyone away to wallow in his grief.
Dad was one of thousands of the living dead produced from the Vietnam era. Every war damages its actors, and the management expect it as a normal cost of doing business. The science of logistics provides an understanding of how far a troop can be bent and twisted before breaking, how much R & R is needed and how soon it should be given to prevent permanent damage, etc. The human sacrifice that is required to appease the gods of war is calculated and planned.
The perpetual state of warfare the United States has endured for the past couple of decades has had a higher cost than usual. Troops have been retained in theatre far longer than logistics recommend, and we have witnessed the price. The suicide rate among our veterans is soaring, and, just as with my father, the returning warriors often feel out of place, broken, and abandoned to figure out a complex psychological recovery on their own. What counseling is available is too often rejected. The toll on society has included increased domestic violence, a swelling homeless population, police brutality, postal workers “going postal,” …
When I arrived at Dad’s house with my own son, 21, to clean up after the decay and sort through his belongings, it struck me that he was still just a kid of 18 when they broke him. I found the 1968 yearbook the base commander had commissioned for Camp Eagle at Phu Bai, and looking through it for Dad’s picture so my son could see him as a young Sea Bee tore another little hole in my heart. My father was barely out of high school when he had his innocence stripped away. As we carried the gore-soaked couch to the curb, I reflected on the hard things we are left to do sometimes, some by choice, and often by compulsion. My ire was stoked by the thought that all of the loss our veterans have taken on has been for profit, not patriotism, despite the propaganda that claims otherwise.
Dad was horrified that he was taught to set aside another’s humanity and snuff it out for the sake of the mission at hand: defeating communism. It was actually to support an ally’s colonial grasp and to enhance the business arrangements that profited American corporations. A side benefit was the bonanza for the military-industrial complex and its investors. Spending billions with those corporations to put astronauts on the moon wasn’t enough when there was foreign blood to spill. Worse yet, the returning veterans weren’t even offered stock in those firms to share in the profits.
Today we have a different spectre to defeat. The war on terrorism has substituted the Muslim for the Southeast Asian communist. Oil has taken the place of helping out a colonizing friend. Back home, we have the war on drugs, the war between red and blue political ideologues, the culture wars, the war on crime, holy wars between God’s people and the “demonic hordes,” and on and on. In every case, the dominant trend is to dehumanize the other, clearly making sure that “us” is protected by violently attacking and utterly destroying “them.”
Dad and his cohort of veterans are a visible reminder that the cost of that perpetual sense of war is ruined lives. How long will we participate in it before we come to our senses and get some help? Will we keep playing whack-a-mole until there’s nothing left, or will we stop and think about what we are doing, and why? Are we satisfied with selling ourselves short? Otherwise, are we willing to take a good long look inside and realize how pervasively aggression has been made to seem normal and healthy?
My children have grown up never knowing a day when their nation hasn’t been at war. My son registered for the draft three years ago, filling me with dread at the reminder of my own concerns at his age when Iraq invaded Kuwait and it was looking probable that I could be drafted. He offered to help with cleaning up what was left of Dad’s decomposition out of love for me and for a grandfather he really never got a chance to know. He has a strong sense of duty and self-sacrifice, just like Dad did when he went off to war. I hope and pray that he and his sister, and all of the kids out there with them, can maybe accomplish what we have not yet done: a lasting peace.
Rest in that peace, Dad. You’ve earned it.
