I’d patent the blowjob.

If it weren’t for that bitch and her Triumph of the Will bullshit, people like CY wouldn’t be lining up to slobber on Mussolini’s rotten dick whenever tax season came around.

The lives you take, and the friends you lose, hard and bloody in the noise and chaos, they stay with you forever. But you can learn to live in the world again. And today? Today they have a chance to get their lives back…

This is the thing I’ve heard most when I’ve heard veterans or veterans’ groups talking about Iraq. The hope is good – it’s the best thing there is about Vietnam, from what I’ve seen, the hope that that nadir of humanity could have at least produced some good, solid knowledge of the shit ‘civilization’ can put human beings through and how to deal with it. But I don’t know.

You hadn’t heard of PTSD, and neither had most of the guys there. And people have now – and it wasn’t an issue of it being shameful to get fucked up by war. But every big modern war has a name for PTSD and it’s common knowledge afterwards – it’s just that military culture, the kind that produces a SUUUUUURRRRRRGE mentality, the kind that is exhibited in the most awful twisted parody imaginable in shit like college football and 300, that insists that if something’s wrong, that’s your problem – you just gotta work at it harder.

You hadn’t heard of PTSD, but you had probably at least heard of the thousand-yard stare – your fathers had stared that stare, and their fathers known of or felt shell-shock in the trenches, and those shell-shock-facing doughboys had been raised around hard, ancient old men who knew they were at risk for something the medical eggheads called ‘nostalgia’ in the Civil War.

The establishment knew about PTSD, and besides the fuckoff Reaganoids, nobody would actually want a good fraction of a generation to go through it untreated. But as much as I dislike the word ‘culture’ in all its forms, it’s just the easiest and best way of explaining the pervasive attitude in the military, especially in the mid-level brass but percolating down to the common soldier and up to officers and public officials, where there’s no problem a little more elbow grease can’t fix. It’s probably even worse when it’s on a sane level, more like America or Britain than Stalinist Russia or the Japanese Empire – where nobody’s going to ask you to charge a big tank with a pike and don’t even think of retreating a damn step – because reality never interceded there. You never had the chance to step back and say ‘Jesus, what the hell am I doing? This isn’t going to work.’

The more “pro-military” we get, the more society adopts that attitude, which is what strangles militaries from the inside out, turns them into overglorified, lethal sports teams without regard for their own safety, the confines of humanity, or ultimately common sense.

I don’t like undermining hope, but I’ve heard so often that the Iraq veterans’ll have it a lot better – they know there’s PTSD and they can get help for it – but I don’t believe it, not all the way, because what makes military PTSD so bad is, if anything, worse now than in the 60s/70s. Stuff like the Surge just goes to show that the brass still believes we’d fix all our problems with a little bit more hustle, and with that attitude flying around, it’s going to take a lot to admit to yourself no amount of hooah is gonna fix post-traumatic stress without outside help.

Hell, stuff like The Secret is a perfect example of American society getting more elbow-grease-fixated. Your life isn’t going right? You just need more hard work and positive thinking – psychology and counseling are for losers.

The suits running the military now have nothing to lose by adopting that damn hoo-ah attitude; the more the military fucks up the more the Pentagon has to spend. Not a bad deal, if you’re rich and don’t care much about human misery.

Malingering, to the 11 Bravo grunt, is the most honorable, most rational thing you can do. If you can spend three days in the aid station for a fake illness, those are three days you will likely not die. If you can avoid an op, well hell, that’s an op you won’t get killed on. See? Malingering is the province of the combat veteran. You have to survive a certain amount of horror before you can make it work. I guess your thousand yard stare has to be convincing. FNGs cannot even try it. They’d get hammered. But after a while, when you shave less and cut your hair less and care more about your weapons than your uniform, in short, you are everything they want you to be in combat, that’s when you start trying to game the game. And there is nothing wrong with that. It’s the most reasonable human reaction…

mikey

I don’t know whether conditions in WW1 were so much uglier than (say) the Crimean war… it’s more that in previous wars, the Brits didn’t care whether the troops came home permanently fucked up, because after all, the troops were only lower-class riffraff… little better than animals. OK, the officer corps were gentlemen, but they were already so fucked up by boarding schools that no-one noticed the difference.

Then WW1 came along, and the citizen army was invented; once it was decent members of the middle class who were waking up screaming or simply not sleeping at all, people started talking about ‘combat neurosis’ or hysteria or shell-shock. Rivers wrote his paper on “The Repression of War Experience” in 1918.

For many generals, and even doctors, most victims of shell-shock were little more than cowards and malingerers who simply ought to ‘pull themselves together’ and ‘act like a man’.
I recall from somewhere that the Austrian army organised a commission of inquiry into this combat-hysteria business. They consulted Freud, who reassured them that it was simply a form of malingering.

It’s analagous (maybe) to the impeachment drumbeat. How many cities have passed impeachment resolutions? More than 80, last time I checked, but each city’s action is treated as some sort of isolated incident. And there’s Conyers saying, “Oh, just three more congresscritters and we’ll start,” immediately followed by “Did I say three? Oh, but them’s fightin’ words.” And everybody who got fired up by the resolutions and the promise of congressional action sighs and sets the alarm in order to head back to the cubicle.

Could be. Maybe Russia has that problem too? Though I think us Americans being very unused to public protest, and being just kinda soft and self-involved, and the harder police response especially since 9/11, and us being more afraid of losing our jobs than ever, and the whole attitude of “nothing matters” that our media promulgates, and finally, the general taboo against speaking of anything political or controversial, explains the problem much more.

I’m not sure that the American public would go for that (nor the Australians, lest anyone think I’m pretending to be superior). I think both our countries have had it far too easy for far too long, and have become accustomed to congratulating ourselves on how much better we are for having democracy. Except that it’s a very pallid, thin, empty form of democracy, although most people don’t notice.

It’s ironic that our pampered western countries, which pride themselves on democracy and ponies, really have little idea of what it means and what it entails. Bolivian peasants know far better than we do. Korean students and labour groups know better. I suppose that being deprived of clean water, or being massacred in the streets, can concentrate the mind marvellously. Hell, Iranians know better.

But we, who’ve been given the whole lot on a plate, are passive and self-congratulatory. It makes me both sad and angry, and unfortunately when I’m angry I tend to be inarticulate. Perhaps I need training from someone like this. (Bit of preening here: the guy in the movie, Stephen Chow, is the most popular comedian in Hong Kong, and has been for years, and I’ve interviewed him. And couldn’t stop talking about it for months.)

Given that their mental health facilities at the time were fairly primitive, they couldn’t do much to help, but they did at least realise by the end of the war that it existed and it was serious. And the civilian population at the time weren’t being subjected to a constant stream of TV propaganda, so they didn’t believe, as some people do now, that they knew everything there was to know about the war. Whereas now, the dickheads watch carefully edited press releases from the armed forces and government media offices, and think that war is a sanitised, heroic, enterprise.

And you don’t even want to know what the old man used to say about…well, just about any other branch of the service. Marines are funny that way. The only squid he ever had anything nice to say was my pappaw, and he never gave my mother’s sister’s husband too much hell for having been in the Army, though.

Tell the fucking jarhead I said Charlie Mike.

See, just because we lost doesn’t mean we didn’t win.

(That’s gonna PISS him off!)

mikey

He had two buddies in his platoon, a pair of wildboys named D.W. and Charlie. My old man’s from south Mississippi and has always had a soft spot for Cajuns, and Charlie was the meanest coon-ass in Monroe Parish, Daddy said. D.W. was from California, smoked pot and was heavy into martial arts. Y’all ever see on “Kung Fu” where Grasshopper has to shove his fingers into sand and rock to make ‘em tough? D.W. did that. Once in Greece, Daddy and D.W. whipped a baker’s dozen squiddies for some reason that probably made sense at the time. Later that same leave, my old man rented a bicycle and bought a bladder of wine, and took in the sights. Eventually, he got so drunk he drove the bicycle slap off the mountain. Luckily, he was drunk enough that he didn’t get too badly hurt. This would be the start of a pattern for my father’s life.

Back in the shit, the platoon was out doing their thing for Freedom And Democracy. Daddy was on point on one end with D.W. and Charlie was on the far end. Somebody on the far end stepped on a bouncing betty, and that was all she wrote. D.W. got some shrapnel. Daddy lost part of his left leg. Charlie probably never felt a thing. That’s what Daddy hoped, anyway.

So the old man never talked much about Viet Nam. He drank a lot about it, though, spending his nights in shit-hole beer joints on the county line. The only time he’d talk about ‘Nam was when he was three sheets in the wind. The drunker he got, the less fun his stories got. The less fun he got, too, and shit got real scary more often than not. You can’t make me go into detail and I can’t explain the exact whys, but it’s probably why I will never, ever get married or have kids. No one understands but my brother, and he was just young enough for it all to be mainly a bad dream. Just 23 months seperates us, too, ain’t that funny.

Eventually, for reasons I won’t explain, he had to quit drinking. And no more was said about a place called Vietnam. He’d watch movies like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, and all he would say is, “They don’t get it.” He never kept up with the Corps after he left. His service medals and Purple Heart was put into a box and stashed away. D.W. died of lung cancer in the mid ’80s, two months after he and the old man talked for the first time in almost 20 years. He was saying goodbye to the last man standing.

For reasons I’ve never quite groked, a few years ago, my old man reconnected with the Corps. The medals came out and were mounted in a nice display. Him and Momma started going to Corps reunions, Momma seeing San Diego and the Grand Canyon for the first time. He worked with the Moving Wall and gave talks to the schools where Momma and her older sister worked. I never got to see one, as I was off in Florida getting educated, stoned and, occasionally, laid. My old man’s a real Gary Cooper type and says maybe a half-dozen words a month (mainly because Momma can’t stand silence and thus sees it continually filled), so it must’ve been something to see.

Just before the Iraq thing started, Daddy told me he wanted to get something like memoirs in some sort of order, maybe something like a book. He wanted me to help him, because I was making my living as a professional journalist and he said he knew I’d do it right. That’s one of the few compliments my old man ever gave me, and it was a “good soldier” compliment. Just his way.

One thing he did was talk to young Marines coming out of Paris Island and Camp Lejune. Regular grunts and young officers would email Daddy and ask him about seeing the elephant. When Iraq started, they told him about what they saw. After a year, my father asked the few Marines who were still able to communicate with him to please stop. There weren’t many left, anyway, and most of them, well…they weren’t insulted and thanked my old man for his time.

My folks didn’t go to the reunion this year and probably won’t go to another. My father’s involvement with the different Vet groups dwindled, and though he still goes to meetings, he’s not taking an active part anymore. In fact, he’s actively refusing to when someone asks him, which is something my father simply never did. That was one of his cardinal rules, you never refused help you could give if someone had enough respect of you to ask.

The old man’s been very lucky in his dealings with the V.A., and they’ve done nothing but right by him. It took him 20 years and the onset of diabetes to make it happen, but damn if they didn’t fall right in line. ‘Course, it helped when they found out the old man’s resperatory problems came mostly likely came from Agent Orange. He’s never done therapy, though. He doesn’t do anything now, just sits and stares at the television. My momma’s at her wit’s end, my brother feels helpless and confused, and me…well, I try to understand and forgive. I encourage therapy or at least talking with someone who might understand, but I can’t make him do anything.

Momma doesn’t know what happened. She thinks it’s her fault. Sometimes, when she’s really hurting, it becomes my fault for a multitude of reasons. Even at the best of times, my father’s waiting around to die and my mother’s heart is shattered and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it. I don’t know why they just won’t listen to me, dammit, they said I was the smart one. Why won’t he just talk to someone? There’s nothing I can do.

I think, though, I know what caused it. The timing’s just too coincidental. My old man isn’t ashamed of ‘Nam. He’s proud of his service. He’s a Marine and Marines do their job, even if it’s an ugly one. Especially if it’s an ugly one, because that’s why you have Marines in the first place. He’s still pro-military and still thinks the best defense is a good offense. He don’t think much of them that play soldier or want to invade anyone who looks at us cross-eyed, but he thinks American military prescence in foreign locals is a positive thing.

He wasn’t angry with Kerry’s Winter Soldier testimony, though Momma was, and he never forgave Reagan for cutting loose so many screwed-up and lost veterans. The thing is, he didn’t blame anyone who managed to get out of serving. He don’t think much of them, but he doesn’t blame them. Soldiers don’t start wars or even win them, really. They just fight them. And then they’re…not needed anymore. My old man was just lucky enough to run into something tougher than Life After ‘Nam: my mother. Steel magnolia, indeed.

But I think I know the why, even if I can’t do anything about it, even if he disagreed with me vehemently when it all started. History does repeat itself, or rather, certain people seem intent on making it repeat itself. Once was bad enough, living it was bad enough. But to see it happen all over again for even worse reasons by even worse people? God damm it. You’d think we’d learn. You’d fuckin’ think we’d learn eventually.

Sad to say, that’s not really true. Modern war and its effects were something new in World War I, and when shell shock / PTSD cases began to appear the top brass didn’t understand what was happening. From John Ellis’ Eye-Deep In Hell:
For many generals, and even doctors, most victims of shell-shock were little more than cowards and malingerers who simply ought to ‘pull themselves together’ and ‘act like a man’.

If I remember correctly, some early British shell shock cases were court-martialed for cowardice and shot.

As the war went on, they finally began trying to treat officers who showed signs of strain, but enlisted men were generally ignored until they completely broke down and became useless as soldiers. Only then were they taken out of the lines.

Grim stuff.

I love it. Truly. I wouldn’t bullshit YOU. Look, I’m on YOUR side.
Two tweaks:

1. Does it have to be a “surge”? Can it be more like, I dunno, Will Ferrell and Owen Wilson have a “splurge” which someone pronounces “splooge,” and so forth?

2. Does it have to be about Islam-this and Islam-that? Why not The Cartel? Will and Owen go to–whatever…Iraq, say–to do X vis a vis The Cartel, and etcetera. Same thing only different, no?

And HURTSDON’TIT uses “chumperoos” as an insult. So stinging.

Illegal war? Sure. Totalitarianism in my back yard? Wait a second…

Call me an optimist.