I have heard it for years, it’s that time of year. It isn’t a concern about pollen, planting season, or yard work; it’s a concern about the fighting season. For those who have spent time at the VA, with therapists, counselors, or psychiatric professionals due to combat stress the “fighting season” is a familiar term. The fighting season follows the seasonal changes from winter into summer months. Much like the United States, the weather patterns in the Middle East transition from cool/cold to gradually warmer (a little more abrupt and extreme than in the states as you can imagine, however). When the weather gets hot in the Middle East tensions run high. In Afghanistan, we hear this referred to as the Taliban’s Spring offensive, which kicks off their fighting season. For combat veterans this means that around April until about October many of those memories come streaming back, even flooding back. Many times these memories come flooding into one’s conscience at the most inconvenient time and are triggered by the most inconvenient means.
A few years ago while working as a police officer a partner of mine set off our siren horn as I was assisting a tow truck driver with a vehicle. It was not intended maliciously, it was only a common prank many officers would perform to give the other a jolt. That horn triggered me and I lost it. Needless to say, he and I never worked as partners again. Things have gotten better over the years, but my time in seminary has helped me deal with these triggers. I still have nightmares, memories, and feelings, however. The other day while working in the yard a car backfired. No one was around, I was working by myself. Regardless of the the solitude, once I swallowed my heart back down I leaned forward onto my hands and breathed a deep sigh as tears welled in my eyes. It never goes away, there is always a piece that we carry with us. It haunts and lurks in the places we hide from others.
When I first returned from Iraq, I very intentionally avoided my triggers. One of the first football games I attended upon returning home honored veterans with a 21 gun salute and a flyover as I was entering the stadium trapped by a large crowd at the gate. My girlfriend, now my wife, knew my reaction was not positive and offered her support with a loving squeeze of the hand. My reaction was utter embarrassment. I was an alien in my own land. As tears welled up in my eyes I hung my head in shame. I was ashamed. For many years after, I avoided my triggers. I refused to be embarrassed, so I followed a strict policy of avoidance.
It has only been recently that I stopped seeking the solution to the triggers and instead sought the root of the triggers themselves. This morning I awoke and it was that time of year. A trigger went off last night and I couldn’t shake it. I fed the kids breakfast, smothered them with affection, brewed a pot of coffee, kissed my wonderful wife, but I couldn’t shake it. Nothing worked. I was stuck in that rut. I relived the worst moment in my life.
Not everyone who died in Iraq and Afghanistan has come home in a wooden box. Many came home on their own two feet. Myself included. The man I was believed in love, light, truth, justice, and joy. It wasn’t naive, no more than the high schooler that falls in love the first time and believes that is the person they will marry. It might happen once in a while but it is rare. It is in that moment that a little bit of innocence dies. Just as the innocence of the high school sweetheart is destroyed, so too, is the innocence of the young infantryman who sees combat the first time. Heroism, courage, and chivalry are all part of the vision for the future, but that vision is most often ripped from the grasp of the idealistic infantryman by the reality of actual combat. When that young man dies, a new vicious one arises, cloaked in angry opposition to the world he now fully emerges into. What is worse is the young man who has died is left crippled and wasting away in the heart of the new broken man. He harbors the dying man in hopes he could be him again.
What this means is the man who rises is death, hate, anger, and revenge as the most common replacements. The man who dies is idealism, mercy, joy, and compassion. The man who dies envisions ticker tape parades, sweethearts waiting with open arms, and free beer for the hero. He envisions the smell of fresh cut grass, the sound of waves crashing on the beach, and the feeling of condensation from a cool glass on his fingertips. The new man rises unaware of the fresh cut grass because he is cursing the palm trees above his head that remind him of the Euphrates river. The new man rises unaware of the waves on the beach because he is appalled by the touch of the sand on his feet reminding him of the thin substance that jammed his rifle. The new man rises ignoring the condensation on his glass because the glaring sun reminds him of the 130 degree days that melted the tar on the roof that gummed up all his gear while set in a defensive position on a rooftop. The joy turns to bitter and burning hate.
What we consistently seek is healing of the man who died. We can’t find him. We never will. He is dead. Let him die. The new man, however, is not lost. The new man is broken. He has to be introduced to new joy. Maybe a new hobby, a new love, a new dream, but if he is left untouched, unloved, outcast, he will wallow in the darkness and only seek a darker seclusion to bury himself. He will seek solace in alcohol, violence, even revisiting the memory of his birth. “You don’t know, you weren’t there” is a demand others acknowledge that the birth pangs of the new man are not only foreign to others but also a punchline around the office that the new man finds offensive and weak gestures by the unappreciative. It is in this punchline the new man resents and recluses himself.
So what do we do with the new man? Abandon him? We created him. Many pacifists demand to know what they owe the new man. What they fail to recognize is that the new man has fought to support their choice of pacifism, protecting their opportunity to avoid violence and the horror of war. The new man has taken the place of the pacifist behind the sandbag. What is more, it was not the new man’s choice who or where to fight. The new man didn’t have the right to protest, write a congressman, or sign a petition; only to vote quietly behind a curtain. That is the responsibility of the people. The new man was an expression of the people, the choice of the people. If the people were opposed, yet failed to seek measures to sway the opinion of the government, they failed the new man, not the other way around. The new man is the Frankenstein of our society, he is our creation in our inability or refusal to do justice and implement righteousness. The pacifist can protest a standing army but when that army falls so will the pacifist’s continued existence as a pacifist.
This isn’t an attack on pacifism but a call to recognize the need to care for the new man. Just as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was not a monster, neither is the new man. He is our own creation. What he needs are the resources to recognize himself for who and what he is. Once he acknowledges what he is, he must receive the love, attention, and redirection he needs. It is in that redirection he can find new joy, a new light to shine in his dark world. It could be a canine companion, a new education, a new hobby, a job opportunity, or maybe just the self restraint of not making an inappropriate remark about his experience. It cannot happen unless he seeks it out, however. If he seeks it and it is not there, he will most likely abandon his efforts and recluse himself again, deeper into the darkness. Every time he recluses deeper, he will be harder to find and his world will only grow darker.
We owe the new man. We don’t owe money, honor, fame, or even happiness. What we owe him is the means, the means to find his own joy. His smile may only be half cocked, his laughter may be rare, and his touch may be hesitant and cautious. He may be callous, cold, cautious, and quiet. It isn’t for us to judge his disabled emotional reactions to the world he only recently realized was concealed by a curtain of idealism. He is a realist in a world most others do not acknowledge for its brutality. This doesn’t mean we accept it, it means we equip the new man, we love the new man, we brush the scars across his face and we welcome him home. He doesn’t always need to be healed medically, but every man, and now woman, that dies in the reality of combat needs to be welcomed home for what they are, aliens. They are new people in a new land, unsure of where to go, what to do, how to live in the midst of the darkness they never knew existed. We have a responsibility to hold their hands on this path as they seek a new way to find an old sense of joy in a world where joy may not be found around every corner anymore. Your corner might be a good place to start though.
שלום ,سلام, and Peace
