The tape of that moment of that day keeps playing: the woman's screams, your shouts, and your bullet to her brain. It's Ground Hog déjà vu all over again. No one can make it right. You can't make it stop. And you damned sure can't tell anyone.

::::::::

To disclosure, this old army infantry vet is unlike many with whom I've conversed and others whose views I'm aware of: those who react Skinner-like (Google B. F. Skinner and/or operant conditioning) to the proposition of war and to the use of violence with “Just say no.” There are times when the reality is such that no other tools are available to resolve an intolerable circumstance. An example: I'd have had then no reluctance, nor would I have suffered the least guilt, pulling the real life trigger of Burt Reynold's crossbow in the 1972 movie Deliverance. Nor would I hesitate today, in a similar exigency. Nonetheless, as the instances when pulling a trigger and taking a human life are necessary, or sending Americans to do that on our behalf, are so rare that it is every American's moral obligation to know what they're demanding of those we send to do our dirty work.

This is dedicated to the veterans of this country's combat arms, those who have served on the fields of combat, and who have fallen there . . . whether or not they now sleep in the ages or awake with nightmares or struggle with limbs missing. And it's particularly dedicated to the veterans we're day-by-day manufacturing. The goal here is to honor them all by diminishing their number.

I've one preliminary request. Read it as you read something when you were first learning how to read: slowly, mulling every word for context.

***

With what it called Cinemascope, in 1953 20th Century Fox revolutionized commercial movie making by doubling the width of its films. The greater width of the screen had two immediate results: it more intimately brought the audience into the movie itself, and the so much wider canvas demanded to be filled, thus ushering in movies that were hawked as “. . . with a cast of thousands!”

In 1956, Cecil B. DeMille gave the world The Ten Commandments, and in fact did fill the screen with thousands of what are known as extras. In Commandments those thousands were the Pharaoh's army that pursued Moses' army of exiles from Egypt, all the way to the parted waters of the Red Sea. And not a single member of the audience either knew a thing about even one of the soldiers, or cared.

For all except a few percent of the US population who are literally very intimately involved in this country's wars, nothing is much different about how we perceive the cast of thousands in a war movie and how we feel about the cast of players who fill the slots in our two combat arms, the army and the marines. The country's total military is comprised of only about one percent of the country's population. Winnow that further, considering only those who are in the army and marines, and the likelihood any of us actually knows a member in either branch becomes less and less. Subtract out those in support roles — supply, stateside command, etc. — who either never leave stateside or who don't come within a couple hundred miles of a combat zone and . . .. Well, you know where I'm coming from: Objectifying the combat soldier — psycho-speak for depersonalizing, dehumanizing another, for truly not putting oneself emotionally in someone else's shoes (boots in this case) — is what we've been up to since the conversion to an all-voluntary military service . . . and it's what has enabled us as a society to rather easily and thoughtlessly ask and to expect them to do what we won't while we sit relaxed in front of our television sets.

An army or marine expeditionary force is a cast of thousands. But zoom in for the close up, to the individual. Because that's what the cast is composed of, not a mechanically moving horde of automatons, but individuals as unique human beings. Each soldier and each marine is as different, one from the next, as any of us are from any of our siblings, or our neighbors, or the worker in the adjacent cubicles. Each of us has been cued since before birth to react differently to the different situations in which we daily find ourselves. Sometimes we're strong. Sometimes we aren't. We can be surprisingly brave one moment and utterly fearful the next. No reaction we might have is ever completely predictable. And so it goes.

If this is any good it will have the effect of acting like a metal splinter that has somehow insinuated itself below the skin. Taking all the time necessary, you'll very carefully examine the surrounding area — the full context in this case — before rushing in with that old pocket knife, the one with the dusty, and, in some spots, rusty blade that you've been carrying in your pocket.

***

Aside from doing what I can to not increase the population of them, I don't spend time concerning myself with the concerns of our fallen dead. Their struggles have ended. But the struggles of those we lightly think of as “wounded” — the ones we do not see, even when they're square before our eyes — do not end until they too join their quiet and forever still comrades.

So here's how it's going to work, using two analogies.

In the first analogy you're the parent of a 4-year-old. You've just returned from grocery shopping. You've parked the car in the front drive, and have taken the child inside and have situated it in the living room, in front of the TV. You then begin to busy yourself with fetching the bags of groceries, racing as quickly as possible so as to not leave your youngster out of your sight any longer than is absolutely necessary. You're at the refrigerator putting the milk away when you hear the front door creak open, then slam shut. You call out your child's name, but there is no answer.

It's when you get to the front door that the greatest horror you will ever experience begins to play: the child has seen something in the middle of the street and has scampered after it. And the driver coming down the street has had no chance whatsoever to stop in time. The entire world in that moment flashes blazing white. The sound of tires screeching are louder than a cannon's roar. The ‘thud' of the youngster being bounced off a front bumper and the horrifying screams issuing involuntarily out the child's lungs and throat reverberate a thousand times louder than even that. Time has stopped.

You burst from the door. You're hysterically shouting your child's name and for someone to call 9-1-1at the top of your lungs. Into the street, you scoop your child into your arms. Eyes you love more than your own life look pleadingly into yours for the answers to what happened, why, and what's happening to me? The child's cries turn into whimpers, and then bare whispers. With every part of every second the breathing becomes more difficult, less strong. And all the while you're pleading “Oh God, oh dear God, please God . . .” You'll make any deal. The legs of the child that you, in raptured tears of joy, welcomed into your life begin to tremor. The little arm that's grasping your shirt begins to quiver. And the gaze that's clinging to yours for dear life grows dimmer and dimmer and dimmer until a blank film falls over the lens, and it's all over.

Tough to handle? The single most unthinkable, most obscene moment a parent can ever suppose, and one no parent ever wants to live, let alone relive? But let's get even more thoroughly obscene, if that's possible.

And it is . . . for many combat veterans. Many have been witness to a comrade's making the transition from vibrant to vacant and lifeless. Many have experienced it more than once, and to more than one member of the squad. And the transition is rarely without the accompaniment of bodies that have been gruesomely opened up or without limbs having been ripped from the parts of the body that were never intended to be ripped off. But now let's play Groundhog Day, as in the movie. Every morning that you awake you know that at some moment in the day, a moment that will strike without warning, you will go through it all again, and that each time will be as crystalline grotesque and as suffuse with terror as the first. Although years may intervene, and the revisiting may become less frequent, sometime during that year, or the next, you will be back in the middle of the street once again, exactly as it was the first time.

What would you take, what substance or potable would you ingest, or what activity would you engage in the vain effort to make it stop? Anything? Everything you could? Would you pause to ponder the first damn whether what you were imbibing or what your were doing was legal, or acceptable in polite society? The military's suicide rate among combat soldiers and veterans is higher today than at any time since records were first kept. So again, you're not a soldier, nor are you a marine, you're just a parent who cannot make the reel stop replaying. Think about it, because for many of our men and women in uniform and now out, it's all they can think about. That and the vain pursuit to stop thinking about it.

Ready for the next analogy?

Winston Churchill quipped, “There's nothing quite so exhilarating as being shot at and missed.” The “exhilaration” Sir Winston was referring to was a product of the body's involuntary saturation of the nervous system with epinephrine (adrenaline) when an individual is suddenly in a crisis situation. It puts every sense on heightened alert, and is a prime motivator in the “fight or flight” response.

How long can anyone stay there before fatigue counters the life-saving mechanism, leading not to life preserving behaviors, but to life endangering ones? A made up game in the mind. You're in a reasonably spacious room, the floor of which is covered by water, and you're barefoot. From your shoulder has been hung a bucket of common baking flour. And in one hand you're grasping a 1-quart jar which has a 2-inch opening at the top. In your other hand you've got a teaspoon. Your challenge is to transfer constantly (no time outs), one teaspoon at a time, the flour into the jar. As either the bucket is emptied or the jar is filled they're replaced. But if so much as a few grains of flour fall to the floor, en route to the jar, an electric switch will be activated and you'll be electrocuted. The room has a chair upon which you can sit down and rest, but for no more than 10 minutes of every hour.

How long would you be able to keep it up, not spill any flour? The very first moments of the very first day might be easy. No problemo. Perhaps, but will it be just as easy two hours later? What about six, or eight, or ten? Keep moving and keep spooning. Stay alert. Just one mental slip. Just one.

And oh yeah, your young child is sitting at a desk, and whether it will be you or the child who receives the deadly voltage . . . you don't know. But it'll be one of you. That much you do know. You also know that this is not a one-day challenge. Next day, same thing. And the day after that, and the week after that, and the month after . . . Remember: Stay alert. Just one mental slip. Just one.

Whether it was in Vietnam or in Iraq or in Afghanistan, going on patrol was much like that, with but a single exception: the area you were patrolling either frequently or all the time had folks hiding — whether in the jungle underbrush or in homes or in stores or in cars or in heavy apparel — who wanted to kill you, and probably would succeed. That's what you think anyway. Not the statistical odds that are overwhelmingly in your favor. But the odds the statistics of which you know too well: become a statistic and be hamburger; either with some part of your body that looks like it, or your brain that will function like it, or your deadness that will have no more life than does it. But if it's not you, absolutely the squad member with you. Nerves fray. Good judgment is oftentimes the precursor casualty to death and dismemberment.

It was either bad luck or it was worn out wits, but one of your buddies in the patrol paid the price: his belly was ripped open and he slowly, quite agonizingly died with his intestines trailing into the dirt, and no one that moment was interested in scrutinizing things for contributing mistakes. To add to the mix, that was the third time in a month you've seen something like that, and you've had it with the Geneva Convention niceties. Sorry to break it to the yet-to-be-baptized among us, but that's the way it is: You eventually reach that point where maybe you just don't care about the rules any longer.

For months you've been hot. For months you've been swatting fleas and ticks and mosquitoes. For months you've been eating uncooked meals from tin cans. For months you've been filthy, unable to shower. For months you've gone sleepless. And for months you've been scared . . . and now, in this one moment, you're just plain angry. Angry at everyone. You hate almost everyone. You hate your president. You hate the lieutenant in charge of the patrol. You hate your wife. But most of all you hate those whose land you're in. In that moment, that very special but not wholly uncommon moment. You've had others. And you're looking for someone to make as a receptacle of all your hate and all your discomfort and all your frustrations. You're looking for someone to kill. Don't even need all that much of a reason — any one of a hundred will do. Pick a card, any card.

Then: chaos. The distinctive crack of a bullet and the idiosyncratic high-pitched ringing whir passes within inches of your head. It came from over there: that hooch or that house or that store. . . So you unleash every round in your weapon, then slap in another magazine. There's small weapons noise and folks screaming and shouting everywhere.

Then, as quickly as it began it stops. Everything is in dead silence. Except for one woman who's kneeling, facing you. For whatever the cause, she's wailing hysterically at you, cursing you in a language you don't understand but one that's laced with the most foul profanities you've come to recognize as such. Your reflex response, “Shut up! Shut up!” is punctuated with every verbal obscenity you know as well as those in that strange language that you've learned since your first week of deployment. But she just won't. The haranguing is a butcher's meat cleaver to your brain. “God damn you! God damn you! Shut up, or I'll make you goddamn shut the hell up!” But on she goes. Almost daring you. She is daring you. And then you squeeze the trigger one more time. Her screaming stops. And for just that one fraction of a second you feel no part of guilt or regret. Thank god, she finally stopped that damned screaming is what you're thinking. Except you're not thinking. You stopped that a long time ago. It's just feelings now.

And no one in the squad rats. “Collateral damage” is how the report read.

But now it's been a while. Not only are you not in a combat area, you're no longer in the service. And the tape of that moment of that day keeps playing: the woman's screams, your shouts, and your bullet to her brain. It's Ground Hog déjà vu all over again. No one can make it right. You can't make it stop. And you damned sure can't tell anyone.

***

This is the best I could do. Fault the men and women who turn momentarily into savage beasts if you will. I won't. I can't. But that's a part of the deal. It comes with every hand. Maybe not that bad. Hopefully not that bad. But it's there: the chance. And it is because we asked them to take the risk of facing it, and to do our dirty work when they were confronted with it. Just don't tell us about it. We don't want to know. Heroes don't behave like that.

This Veterans Day, please, think about what you're asking, and what the price may be to some soldier or marine for fulfilling your request. And, if we can, can we try to not make so many veterans?

— Ed Tubbs (Sgt E-5, RA 16 805 398)

Authors Bio:
An "Old Army Vet" and liberal, qua liberal, with a passion for open inquiry in a neverending quest for truth unpoisoned by religious superstitions. Per Voltaire: "He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity."