As we were soon to learn, the confusion was in the very ground beneath our feet that would give way like loose sand whenever we tried to propel ourselves forward … (Photo courtesy of Bill Thompson)
Epilogue
I saw battle—corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and the debris of all the slain
soldiers of the war,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
The living remained and suffer’d, the mother
suffer’d,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade
suffer’d,
And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
—Walt Whitman,
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
It’s been five years since we returned from Iraq. I think about that country, my platoon, and what we did over there often. Daily. During certain stretches of time, continuously. Every now and then I hear from or about one of my Marines. Last month, as I was completing my graduate school application, I received a text from one Mortuary Affairs Marine after he tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide. “I’ve got $2,000 in the bank,” his message read. “Let’s meet in NYC and go out with a bang.”
The Wound Dresser
But in silence, in dreams’ projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the
imprints off the sand,
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for
you up there,
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)
Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof ’d hospital,
To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,
To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,
Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied,
and fill’d again…
Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,
Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,
(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,
Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)
—Walt Whitman
Afterword
I think of Iraq and my Marines every single day and, still, I cannot understand how we did what we did. The carnage was so pervasive and profound, and most of us were so young. Yet, despite the open option to leave the platoon given us by The Sir, we stayed. Why? We knew we were doing a job that had to be done. We did it for one another, and for our families, and for the Corps. If we were willing to die for each other, we could certainly gather up what remained of each other and send that home.
I also often think about the war itself and the reasons we fought it. Late at night, when I cannot stop the rumination, I try to convince myself that there had to be a purpose that is beyond my knowledge or understanding, and that it is a noble purpose. I pray that we are not killing and being killed for anything as transitory as oil, money, or power. Only then am I able to sleep.
After ending my active service with the Marines, I found myself in a series of situations I did not want to be in. Nothing was right, not the cities, the relationships, the people, or my state of mind. I just didn’t belong and could not figure out how to transition myself to a place where I did. Initially, I believed that a good first step would be to bury, somewhere deep inside of me, the memories of my wartime experiences. I tried, but couldn’t. I hoped I’d repress that entire period of my life, but that did not happen. Finally, I resolved to accept the doubt and guilt and torment as a burden I would bear. Then John Hearn suggested I do the opposite, that I finally talk about what I had been through. He felt that I could possibly exert greater control over my thoughts if I arranged them into a coherent narrative. He also believed that my story could, in a small way, help others. Our conversation became this book.
Jessica Goodell
March, 2011
Postscript
Jessica Goodell enrolled in one of my courses in the fall of 2006. She appeared a bit older than most of her classmates. She was also very thin. When I picture her in that classroom, it’s her posture that I see most clearly. While others had a tendency to slouch down into their plastic chairs or to lean forward to rest their arms on the shared table before them, Jess sat with a perfectly straight spine. She didn’t whisper to classmates, play with her phone, or appear disinterested. She finished the course with one of the few “A”s I assigned. I remember too that she did not say a single word throughout the fifteen week semester. She took another course with me in the spring. Again, a straight back, respectful demeanor, excellent work, and not a single word. When she graduated in May of that year, she was named co-recipient of an award that is given annually to the best student in the college’s social sciences division.
I didn’t see or hear from Jessica again until she appeared at my office door a year or so later. She was on campus and wanted to drop by to say hello. I asked her to sit down and we chatted. She hoped to return to school to become, eventually, a psychologist. Her goal was to one day do research on PTSD and work with its victims. During our conversation she mentioned that she had an “excuse” for being behind schedule educationally. “I was in the military,” she said, “the Marines.” When our conversation ended, I invited her to visit again when she was next on campus. As she was leaving the office, she paused at the doorway and asked, “Next time, can we talk about forgiveness?”
Jess was dealing with the after effects of both living in a combat zone and working with human remains in a Mortuary Affairs platoon, and they were making her adjustment back into civilian life difficult. The transition was further complicated by the fact that she was leaving a social milieu characterized by self-sacrifice for one that tended to emphasize self-absorption. But there was something else at work too. During a late October afternoon chat, as thick grey clouds gathered outside my office window, it occurred to me that a portion of Jess’ trauma stemmed from being female in an environment that was systematically hostile to females. I asked her to imagine herself twenty years down the road, the mother of an eighteen-year-old son.
“What would you tell him if he were to announce that he was enlisting in the Marines?” I asked.
“I’d tell him to go for it,” she replied.
“What would you say to an eighteen-year-old daughter who told you she was joining the Marines?”
“I’d say, No you’re not.”
“No discussion?”
“No.”
“No compromising? You wouldn’t suggest, for example, that she graduate from college first and then decide whether or not to sign up?”
“No.”
“Just a straight-out ‘No you’re not’?”
“Correct.”
John Hearn
March, 2011
Further Reading
Baumeister, Roy F., Laura Smart, and Joseph M. Boden. “Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence and Aggression: The Dark Side of High Self-esteem.” Psychological Review 103.1 (1996): 5-33.
Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology; a Humanistic Perspective. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1973.
Hedges, Chris. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. New York: Anchor Books, 2003.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Notes on the Next War.” Chicag
o: Esquire, 1935.
Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Twenge, Jean M. Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before. New York: Free Press, 2006.
Twenge, Jean M., and Campbell, Keith W. The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. New York: Free Press, 2010.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Scott Wright, René Blew, Jim Berlin, Bob Moore, Anne Luce, Jill Crandall, Doug Berlin, and Connie Pilato for their help. We also thank Casemate’s Steve Smith, Tara Lichterman, and Libby Braden. And special thanks to John Zak of the Dallas Morning News.
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