Memorial Day is almost here. Now, more than ever, our country is turning to our living veterans and thanking them for their sacrifices and organizations are forming across the nation that honors them. The VA is being scrutinized at every turned and being forced to make good on their promises of service to the surviving veterans and their families because of years of abuse have finally caught up with them.
Memorial Day is a day of remembrance of those who made the ultimate sacrifice by paying for our life of freedom with their own. Veterans Day is for us that served and are still living. Many people come to me and say "thank you for your service" when they see me in my VFW or Marine Corps League caps--something that makes me feel good about my own service and, sometimes, even blushes me. I have felt a sentiment toward we veterans I have never felt directed at me before until the last few years. The long wars we have been fighting in the Middle East have brought a hightened awareness and appreciation for veterans of all military branches and people are really bending over backward to do as much as they can for us. Being involved in the VFW and the MCL have really helped me to deal with my own demons. I am one of the lucky ones that was able to live and move forward with life, while others were not so fortunate. So is it fare for me to revel in the dotings of those who thank me for my service on Memorial Day?
Memorial Day has mixed feelings for me because as a boy growing up in Muncy, PA, to the man I have become having been in combat situations on more than one occasion during my military career, things for me are complicated.
I listen to young men who are wanting to enter the military and they talk about "wanting to fight for my country." To them, I say quietly to myself--as this is a very sensitive world we live in where the thought of reality sinking in sends most people into a frenzy of angry and misdirected frustration and drama--that they need to be mindful of what they wish for. I was in that same boat when I was 18. I wanted to be in the front seat going into battle. But when you get there, it's not what you thought it was. It's not the thrill of a two-hour movie that you sit in and see Rambo light up the enemy in a barrage of fire and bullets. It's not the reception of flags and bands playing. It's a lot of fear and stress that you may or may not even realized you endured because while you are there--it's surreal and intangible. Everyone has a different experience. Everyone reacts differently. Time has no fluid dynamic. It changes a person fundamentally.
The effects of being underfire are felt for a lifetime. If the bullet doesn't take your life, the effect it has on you will last a lifetime. That is why we have Veteran's Day. For some veterans, those bullets that missed their bodies end up killing them years later--veterans who commit suicide. PTSD is such a common disorder that it should be a disease for which there is no cure--and for some it is fatal. It can claim a life many years down the road and for families it can be an unexepected and sudden loss of their loved-one. For those surviving families, they are continuing to be participants of a war that may even be long-since over. They are collateral casualties themselves and society is only just now beginning to really acknowledge them.
Thinking back to my deployment in Somalia, Africa, I know that I was a lucky one. I was not one of the men who was murdered and drug through the city of Mogadishu. I was actually out of the country by then, if only by a couple of weeks. I left before the uprising of rebels and insurgents that brought that situation to bare.
I was not hit by the sniper who was aiming to kill me during convoys through the city. I was in one brief fire-fight--something that is rare for a Hospital Corpsman as I was considered to be non-combatant. But that role is fluid in the real world where the Geneva Convention can be loosely applied, especially in a anarchist place like Somalia was in 1993. But when your under fire out in the city standing guard over your hospital you set up for civilians while doing a MEDCAP, you protect yourself (first) and your patients. If you don't live to see life after the attack, who are you going to save afterward?
Or, checking my own pulse before working on a Marine who is in danger of dying on the ground in front of me. A man who is dying of heat stroke in 125 degree weather--having seizures and helpless, Marines around him freaking out about what to do. **No pressure.** Doing the medical evac by myself when there was no-one there advise me. No communications with the BAS because the comms were down for maintenance. Saving the man's life and getting him to the Army surgeons who tested him for every disease they could think of to figure out why he went down suddenly. Had I not been there, he would have surely died, according to the Army doctor who treated my patient. Instead of a "pat on the back" for my industry, that same afternoon, I had to deal with a political issue that came up with my BAS chief petty officer who screamed at me for not getting the info to him about the medevac. He was going to make me fill 1000 sandbags and other EMI for not relaying the message to him that I had a casualty--all because the battalion CO was somehow made aware that it took place and not him and was asked about it at that afternoon's department head meeting. It took the Warrant Officer at my site to remind him that comms were down and that what I did saved the Marine's life. Needless-to-say, I was brought into the BAS the next day and replaced by another corpsman. And then the hazing began for a few days before our Medical Officer stepped in and put a stop to it. I think that chief tried to kill me, because almost immediately after that, he sent me to replace the EOD corpsman who was fragged in an accident. I don't know, maybe he was thinking that I would get blown up to?
The military itself can be hazardous to mental health--just by virtue of the politics that occur in isolated circumstances.
I went to Somalia, with a rose-colored view of the world, and returned with a much different prospective. After that experience, I was not very quick to volunteer for overseas deployments in hostile places. I'm not even going to get into the USS Carl Vinson and the insanity that I was faced with in that command. Surface Navy has it's unique culture and aircraft carriers that are flagships are politically the worst. What I will say is that the only benefit I received from that command was the travel--the rest of the politics I could have lived without. Much of what I endured there was my own doing because of what I endured in Somalia--and that has taken over a year of counseling to finally get a handle on understanding over the past year. I could write a tell-all book about what went on during my time on that ship, but it wouldn't do anything to service the greater good. Sometimes it's best to let dogs lay. Especially the salty ones.
But I am thankful that I actually lived beyond that experience. So many have not. That is what Memorial Day is for. Those men and women that have not lived to have to seek counseling for their emotional wounds. Those men and women that have not had to seek medical or physical rehabilitation from the loss of a limb or mental function do to an IED exploding next to them. Memorial Day is for the legacy of those who died. They are not physically here with us as we've seen them in our memories, but instead, have a legacy that lives in all of us. Their legacy is our country, the most powerful and wealthiest of any on the planet. Despite our economy, politics, cultural adjustments, or other problems I'm not mentioning, we have what millions around the world do not have: freedom.
So, yes, it's okay to thank a veteran for their service any day of the year. Just remember, however, that Memorial Day is for the living to remember the dead. It is a day to celebrate their legacy that, as Americans of any creed or color, can enjoy today. For me, as a veteran, Memorial Day is a sacred trust. I look back on my own service and remember that it cannot be compared to those who paid the ultimate price with their lives so that I can live on and be free to chose my path in life. Though my path has diverged or continued from theirs, I am glad that I was able to cross theirs or traveled with them--even if only for a short time--on my own journey through life. Thank you for your sacrifices, comrades. I am grateful that you have given me what I have for freedom. I have faith that you watch over us all from that place beyond the vale as our watch-standers. You are now our guardian angels as you were guardians of freedom.
