The Trauma of War

By Michael Boyajian

When I was younger I used to watch war movies, mostly John Wayne stuff like his cavalry trilogy, his World War II forays and finally the Green Berets.  As kids we all played with our G.I. Joes dressing them up in Marine dress up or a frogman outfit.  All the neighborhood kids would run around the block playing army with toy guns.  How did we know how to play army?  Well, they were broadcasting the Vietnam War on television every evening.

Later in our teens we would, all us under the drinking age guys, sit in the park sipping beer on Saturday nights even on the coldest day of winter wearing our green snorkel parkas.  Were we alcoholics?  No, we were on deck just waiting.  We were waiting to be eventually drafted into the Vietnam War.

That was our destiny.  My small Long Island town was a recruiting ground.  Have a minor brush with the law the judge gave you a choice, go to jail or go to Vietnam.  Older brothers of my friends went and came back different.  They were violent, cursing around the dinner table and arguing.  Not the smiling boys they once were.  One guy came back and he would be catching imaginary flies with his hand while you talked to him.  Some houses had a gold star in their front window; their son was not coming home.  Those houses remained shut tight with curtains closed tightly in grief.

We missed the draft by a couple of years, they ended the Vietnam War.  We left the parks and went to college or started a vocation.  We now watched movies like Paths of Glory, Coming Home and Deer Hunter.  We realized war was about trauma.  The trauma was to ourselves, to our enemies and to all the innocent civilians in the war zone.

And now we have new wars and new traumas and you can only hope that our soldiers will get the right treatment for their trauma knowing that there is no trauma care for our enemies and the civilians we left behind.

Nations, not just people, suffer trauma also.  North Korea after the Korean War withdrew from the world of nations making its only economic product weapons and its government secretive.  The United States suffered trauma after Pearl Harbor spending the next half century fighting wars driven by paranoia and fear.  The nation was further traumatized after 9/11 allowing some to throw out the Constitution, torture people and launch an unjust war.

So Mr. President, let’s end the trauma and finally bring the troops home.  We have been fighting wars for over 50 years and now our soldiers overseas are like dry logs on a hot fire.  Take out the logs and the fire will go out and the trauma will finally end.

End