Humility

 

Humility…it is easy for me to slide into humility, regardless the topic, but especially so when the major veterans days come around…Memorial Day, Veterans’Day, Vietnam Veterans Day, Agent Orange Survivors Day, National Purple Heart Day, to mention a few. I post about them not for thanks or recognition, rather to remind readers of the power of invisible wounds…PTSD and its accompanying anger, frustration, fear, suicide. Here’s my story about why I laugh at glory, about why I am humble about the ribbons I was awarded. My first Purple Heart was from early September in 1967, as we experienced an ambush on a road near the DMZ. I had to stay close to our Major, as did our radio man, Corporal White, because I was our interpreter, even as all Marines are riflemen first. So we could not duck for cover if the Major didn’t and the consequence was that one Viet Cong had pretended to be dead, saw the officer and the radio and jumped up and threw a satchel charge our way, something like a large grenade. I saw it coming, knew I was likely gone, but White jumped on it, saving the Major and me. White, a father of two, died, the Major had an injury which ended his war, and I only received a wound which did not end my participation. For that, I was sent to the rear, where a three-star General pinned on the Purple Heart in front of a band, and sent me back to the front, with only a modest scar. My second Purple Heart came at 2:30 in the morning, October 27, 1967, my Alive Day, the one where I met my mother, long passed, was pulled to safety by a young corpsman I have never been able to thank, and began a year of surgery and hospital rehabilitation, with a body like a jigsaw puzzle. For that one, a corporal came by my bed, mispronounced my name, and tossed a piece of cardboard with a bronze star on it to put on my Purple Heart. No band this time.  So, a four inch scar vs. a 100% disability rating with the VA. One has to laugh, so one doesn’t cry. Humility about it all is the best medicine. For a long to, I blamed the Major for exposing us when White died, was angry beyond reason, until I finally accepted that I needed help and got it, in a year of PTSD therapy, during which it happened that our unit had a reunion in San Diego, something I never would have attended, but my therapist (and Barbara) ordered me to go. It freaked me out, but I went, and who was there but the Major, the target of my earlier anger, and I saw that he was just and old man, without pride, seriously injured in our battle, and he had not thought about me at all. Of course, he did not know what awaited me on my Alive Day.  Because of our meeting, I came to understand that my PTSD symptoms were not because of what happened to me, rather about what happened to the young warriors around me, like Corporal White, whose children lost a father. Let me be clear. PTSD is something of a life sentence, and occasionally Barbara has to forgive me my transgressions, but when I lose it for a moment, humility brings me back.