You Can Never Be Ordinary Again

[Are_grits_groceries]

From Daily Kos - blueness's diary :: ::

The centrality of war is the intentional killing of human beings: the healer is charged with preserving life, to "abstain from doing harm." When these worlds collide, when a healer is tasked with applying the healing arts to those deliberately damaged by war, then, as one nurse learned, "you can never be ordinary again."

The note quoted above, left by another nurse at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, speaks to that. Below are more such voices. Many more.

"We did what we could but it was not enough because I found you here. All of you are not just names on the wall, you are alive. Your blood's on my hands, your screams in my ears, your eyes in my soul. I told you you'd be alright but I lied. Please forgive me. I see your face in my son. I can't bear the thought. You told me about your wife, your kids, your girl, your mother. Then you died. I should have done more. Your pain is ours. Please, God. I'll never forget your faces. I can't, you're still alive."

<snip>
Pediatrician Ronald J. Glasser in 1968 was assigned as an Army major to a hospital at Zama, in Japan. He never got near Vietnam. His initial assignment was in fact to treat people clear out of the war: the children of Japan-based American officers, and of other high-ranking government officials living there. But with six to eight thousand wounded Americans flowing out of Vietnam each month, Glasser, like every other available physician, was soon called upon to treat them, too.

And so, there in Japan, every day, Glasser encountered the war: "the blind 17-year-olds stumbling down the hallway, the shattered high-school football player being wheeled to physical therapy."

Glasser had trained to heal children; in Japan he found himself, in fact, treating children. Children sent to kill, returned mangled and maimed. Children broken, who would always be broken. As Glasser himself broke.

"At first, when it was all new," Glasser wrote in his memoir, 365 Days, "I was glad I didn't know them; I was relieved they were your children, not mine. After a while, I changed."
<snip>
Glasser's life was utterly changed. He is today, more than 40 years on, still wedded to those wounded in war: he recently wrote another book, Wounded: Vietnam To Iraq. Wherein we learn that there have been more amputations in Iraq than in any American conflict since the Civil War. That 30 percent of those wounded in Iraq suffer traumatic brain injuries. That physical injuries combined with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder place the number of Americans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan at well over 100,000. That "eaths have traditionally been viewed as a measure of potential victory or personal danger in any military conflict . . . But in this war the use of death as a function of peril is not only deceptive, it’s delusional. Death in Iraq is no longer the real measure of risk. The story of this war cannot be told solely in the count of its dead. Whatever else may be said about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is more a war of cripples and disabilities than it is a war of death."

In his first book, Glasser wrote this about combat medics:

A tour of Nam is 12 months; it is like a law of nature. The medics, though, stay on line only seven months. It is not due to the good will of the Army, but to their discovery that seven months is about all these kids can take. After that, they start getting freaky, cutting down on their own water and food so they can carry more medical supplies; stealing plasma bottles and walking around on patrol with five or six pounds of glass in their rucksacks; writing parents and friends so they can buy their own endotracheal tubes; or quite simply refusing to leave their units when their time in Nam is over.

And so it goes, and the know it. They will drop the point, trying not to kill him but to wound him, to get him screaming so they can get the medic too. He'll come. They know he will.

<snip>
There is a lot more in this article, and all of it should be read:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/11/802516/-You-Can-Never-Be-Ordinary-Again

"He'll come. They know he will."

I don't think the people of the US have come for the wounded and others.

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Not that I'm trying to excuse the murderous rampage of Maj. Hasan

but I believe his work with those suffering from PTSD needs to be considered in order to avoid a repeat occurrence. Until evidence to the contrary comes to light, I consider his 'PTSD by proxy' to be a bigger factor than religion in his murderous spree.

[Are_grits_groceries]

2. It doesn't excuse it,

but I hope the military helps all their counselors in some way.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. That, combined with 'disgruntled employee' made for this shooting, IMO.

I read that 3 of the 12 military killed were themselves counselors, like him. He likely knew them. When 25% of the dead are known to be acquaintances of the shooter, that makes it much more like an office rampage than any terrorism event.

[grasswire]

4. thank you

That full Kos post is outstanding. I sent it to a Unitarian minister who is working on a sermon on the damage done to our soldiers. So sad. So sad.

[phantom power]

5. "it is more a war of cripples and disabilities than it is a war of death."