It is said some wars were won.
But many did not win, in earthly terms. We can hope they did win in heaven. But they never returned to people who desperately wanted them to return.
And many who returned never completely returned. Some left literal pieces of themselves on foreign soil.
Some were changed forever mentally and emotionally. The up close and personal encounters with death, the unpredictability of life second to second, the things they were forced to do that they did not want to do, but did because they obeyed commands, faces and bodies of suffering. It all became a recurring storm inside them. And it never went away.
Nightmares of unbelievable intensity. Being labeled, not as a hero, but a victim of “shell shock,” later called by a nice clinical sounding name, post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. It sounded better, but it did not make the symptoms better. Hell was still hell, even with a flower bed out front.
And then there were the ones who came home and tried to make sense of it all. They bonded with buddies and tried to distill something good from the bad. They became a support group for each other. No one could understand quite as well as someone who had been there.
In times where war was justifiably protested, people sometimes turned against the soldiers coming home from the war. It was a war they did not create or in some cases, even choose to fight (There was once a draft.). It was not the welcome home they had hoped for.
How do I know? The stories I heard would fill volumes. I was a family member, a friend, and even more, a recipient of more than 30 years of stories from veterans, their families and survivors of war.
Their stories became a part of my story.
I grew up in a peaceful world in the late fifties and sixties. But by the end of the sixties, there was Vietnam.
Some of my high school classmates went there right after graduation and never returned. The boy with the winning smile who always laughed and had big dreams for the future. My friend’s sister, who was among the first nurses to die.
People were scared. Many did not want to go to war. But there was the draft. If your number came up, that was it. You were going wherever they said go. And families were left to keep the home fires burning.
I went to college. I knew many boys from the Citadel who graduated and went to war. They were added to the stories of never returned or returned, but on a totally different path from what they had planned in college.
After college, I became a military wife. My husband was assigned to a unit in Germany. Then came my next exposure to the dregs of war.
I was amazed to discover there were some wounds unhealed from wars long declared over. There were Germans who had lost family and friends at the hands of Americans long ago. Some were not kind to Americans.
One of my German friends explained it this way. She said, “You have to understand they were raised to hate Americans.”
Think about that. Some people today carry battle wounds that have not healed. And some children and young people around the world are being raised to hate.
I worked at an American dependent school. There were two secretaries. One was an elderly German lady. The other was an English younger lady. She was Jewish.
She talked of the terror of hiding under the streets of London as bombs were falling. She asked our German friend how it was possible they could have ever followed Hitler.
Our German friend cried. Today her words still haunt me. She said, “We believed what he said. We thought he would make Germany great again.”
The two women supported each other, both locked in a different kind of grief. They found peace in trying to understand the other side of their war experiences.
Then came my husband’s orders to Vietnam. I joined a Waiting Wives club. We waited together for our husbands to return. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t.
And some lived the life of never knowing. Their loved ones were missing in action or known to be prisoners of war. Lives permanently in a stall. Those waiting had nightmares too.
My husband did come home. And I began the next chapters of my life. I spent the next thirty years as a nurse at a VA Medical Center.
As much as I hate war, I love veterans.
I heard stories over and over again of heroic actions never recognized with parades and medals. No buildings named for them. Just people who believed they were doing something that would somehow be good for someone.
And whether they chose to go to war or not, they were willing to give their all for someone else. They are certainly deserving of being thanked for their service.
The most gut wrenching stories came from veterans who were dying, some from illnesses related to their war exposures. Their last agonizing words were often prayers for forgiveness for what they did to the ones called enemies.
One man said, “I still see them. When you look face to face, you can’t forget it. They are people, like us in some ways. I think we all just wanted to go home.”
So what can we do now that once again, war has become an American reality?
Pray for everyone involved on all sides — decision makers, participants, victims, families, those who wait through an uncertain future.
Never forget the humans involved. This is not a sports event to be cheered. This is not an entertaining video game. Look at the people. See the faces. Hear the stories. Let yourself share in the human feelings out there in the world.
Remember the veterans who are still with us. They may never let you know about that lump they get in their throat when someone wants to know what it was like in war time.
They may not let you know their heart rate speeds up when they see the bombs drop as reported on the evening news. But it’s there, somewhere in that place in their memories they wish they never had to go.
No way around it. War is Hell and no one wins.
Pray for Peace and then work on achieving it wherever you are, one person at a time, one kindness at a time, one more act of forgiving and moving toward what Jesus prayed for.
“Your Kingdom come,
Your Will be done on earth,
as it is in Heaven.”
Matthew 6:10
And raise your children to love and not hate. Teach them peace is still possible. Let them know they are our hope for the future.
