Received this via email today. Funny thing about this... While in Savannah, for re-enlistment I took some time off to take college courses at Armstrong State University. It was only a semester but the thought process was additional college hours would help you get promoted, give my body some time to heal and to get off the train for a bit.
While in a Psychology class of some sort, I wrote a paper about combat addiction. Many of the points brought up below were covered in my paper as well. While those of us who fought in the low intensity conflict era, did not spend extended amounts of time down range we still have experienced many of the things in this writing. And to be quite honest, if you've read this blog or know my background you know that life in the 75th Ranger Regiment is 100% adrenaline and as dangerous of a profession as there is. During my time in, the body count of dead Americans was 18. 1 combat KIA.
I'm sure you'll see the salient points. To us and those like us....
THE WARRIOR’S CODE OF HONOR
As a combat veteran who was wounded in one of America’s wars, I offer to speak
for those who cannot. Were the mouths of my fallen combat friends not
stopped with dust, they would testify that life revolves around honor.
In war, it is understood that you give your word of
honor to do your duty – that is – stand and fight instead of running away and
deserting your friends.
When you keep your word despite desperately desiring
to flee the screaming hell all around, you earn honor.
Earning honor under fire changes who you are.
The blast furnace of battle burns away impurities
encrusting your soul.
The white-hot forge of combat hammers you into a
hardened, purified warrior willing to die rather than break your word to
friends – your honor.
Combat is scary but exciting.
You never feel so alive as when being shot at without
result
You never feel so triumphant as when shooting back –
with result.
You never feel love so pure as that burned into your
heart by friends willing to die to keep their word to you.
And they do.
The biggest sadness of your life is to see friends falling.
The biggest surprise of your life is to survive the war.
Although still alive on the outside, you are dead inside – shot thru the heart
with nonsensical guilt for living while friends died.
The biggest lie of your life torments you that you could have done something
more, different, to save them.
Their faces are the tombstones in your weeping eyes, their souls shine the true
camaraderie you search for the rest of your life but never find.
You live a different world now. You always will.
Your world is about waking up night after night
screaming, back in battle.
Your world is about your best friend bleeding to death
in your arms, howling in pain for you to kill him.
Your world is about shooting so many enemies the gun
turns red and jams, letting the enemy grab you.
Your world is about struggling hand-to-hand for one
more breath of life.
You never speak of your world.
Those who have seen combat do not talk about it.
Those who talk about it have not seen combat.
You come home but a grim ghost of he who so lightheartedly went off to war.
But home no longer exists.
That world shattered like a mirror the first time you were shot at.
The splintering glass of everything you knew fell at your feet, revealing what
was standing behind it – grinning death – and you are face to face, nose to
nose with it!
The shock was so great that the boy you were died of fright.
He was replaced by a stranger who slipped into your body, a MAN from the
Warrior’s World.
In that savage place, you give your word of honor to dance with death instead
of run away from it.
This suicidal waltz is known as: “doing your duty.”
You did your duty, survived the dance, and returned home. But not all of
you came back to the civilian world.
Your heart and mind are still in the Warrior’s World, far beyond the Sun.
They will always be in the Warrior’s World. They will never leave, they
are buried there.
In that hallowed home of honor, life is about keeping your word.
People in the civilian world, however, have no idea that life is about keeping
your word.
They think life is about ballgames, backyards, barbecues, babies and business.
The distance between the two worlds is as far as Mars from Earth.
This is why, when you come home, you feel like an outsider, a visitor from
another planet.
You are.
Friends try to bridge the gaping gap.
It is useless. They may as well look up at the sky and try to talk to a
Martian as talk to you. Words fall like bricks between you.
Serving with Warriors who died proving their word has made prewar friends seem
too un-tested to be trusted – thus they are now mere acquaintances.
The hard truth is that earning honor under fire changes you so much that you
return a stranger in your own home town, an alien visitor from a different
world, alone in a crowd.
The only time you are not alone is when with another combat veteran.
Only he understands that keeping your word, your
honor, whilst standing face to face with death gives meaning and purpose to
life.
Only he understands that your terrifying – but
thrilling – dance with death has made your old world of backyards, barbecues
and ballgames seem deadly dull.
Only he understands that your way of being due to
combat damaged emotions is not un-usual, but the usual, and you are OK.
A common consequence of combat is adrenaline addiction. Many combat
veterans – including this writer – feel that war was the high point of our
lives, and emotionally, life has been downhill ever since.
This is because we came home adrenaline junkies. We got that way doing
our duty in combat situations such as:
crouching in a foxhole waiting for attacking enemy
soldiers to get close enough for you to start shooting;
hugging the ground, waiting for the signal to leap up
and attack the enemy;
sneaking along on a combat patrol out in no man’s
land, seeking a gunfight;
suddenly realizing that you are walking in the middle
of a mine field.
Circumstances like these skyrocket your feelings of aliveness far above and
beyond civilian life:
never have you felt so terrified – yet so thrilled;
never have you seen sky so blue, grass so green,
breathed air so sweet, etc.; because dancing with death makes you feel
stratospheric aliveness.
This unforgettable experience of being sky-high on adrenaline is why you come
home basically “thrill-crazy” – that is: crazy for thrills. But do you
know that you are an adrenaline junky? No you do not because being
wacked-out on it 24/7, day after day, month after month becomes the “new
normal.” You do not think anything is wrong with being constantly high as
a kite on adrenaline because it is not un-usual but the usual – the common,
everyday condition of combat.
Then you come home where the addictive, euphoric rush of aliveness/adrenaline
hardly ever happens in the normal course of events. You miss being
sky-high on it and find normal boring. You hunger for your “fix” of
thrills/danger like an addict hungers for his “fix” of heroin. So what
often happens? “Quick, pass me the motorcycle” and /or fast car,
thrill-driving, drag race, speedboat, airplane, parachute, extreme sport, rock
climbing, big game hunt, fist fight, knife fight, gun fight, etc.
Another reason Warriors may find the rush of adrenaline attractive is because
it lets them feel something rather than nothing. The dirty little secret
no one talks about is that many combat veterans come home unable to feel their
feelings. It works like this.
In battle, it is understood that you give your word of
honor to not let your fear stop you from doing your duty. To keep your
word, you must numb up/shut down your fear.
But the numb-up/shut-down mechanism does not work like
a tight, narrow rifle shot; it works like a broad, spreading shot gun
blast. Thus when you numb up your fear, you numb up virtually all your
other feelings as well.
The more combat, the more fear you must “not
feel.” You may get so numbed up/shut down inside that you cannot feel
much of anything. You become an emotionally dead man walking, feeling
virtually nothing for nobody (if you let yourself be stopped in the flow of
fighting by feelings of grief for fallen friends you may join them). This
condition is known as “battle-hardened,” meaning that you can feel hard
feelings like hate and anger, but not soft, tender feelings (which is bad news
for loved ones).
The reason that the rush of adrenaline, alcohol,
drugs, dangerous life style, etc. is so attractive is because you get to feel
something, which is a step up from the awful deadness of feeling nothing.
Although you walk thru life alone, you are not lonely.
You have a constant companion from combat – Death.
It stands close behind, a little to the left.
Death whispers in your ear; “Nothing matters outside my touch, and I have not
touched you…
YET!”
Death never leaves you – it is your best friend, your most trusted advisor,
your wisest teacher.
Death teaches you that every day above ground is a
fine day.
Death teaches you to feel fortunate on good days, and
bad days…well, they do not exist.
Death teaches you that each day of life is sufficient
unto itself.
Death teaches you that you can postpone its touch by
earning serenity.
Serenity is earned by a lot of prayer and acceptance.
Acceptance is taking one step out of denial and accepting/allowing your
repressed painful combat memories, and repressed coming home disappointments to
be re-lived/suffered thru/shared with other combat vets – and thus de-fused.
Each time you accomplish this dreaded but necessary act of courage/desperation:
the pain gets less than the time before;
more tormenting combat demons hiding in the darkness
of your gut are thrown out into the healing sunlight of awareness, thereby
disappearing them;
the less bedeviling combat demons, the more serenity
earned.
Serenity is, regretfully, rather an indistinct quality, but it is experienced
as an immense feeling of fulfillment/satisfaction deep down inside:
from having demonstrated to be a fact that you
did your duty under fire no matter what cost,
thereby proving that you are a Warrior, a Man of
Honor;
and from being grateful to Higher Power/your Creator
for sparing you.
It is an iron law of nature that such serenity lengthens life span to the max.
Down thru the dusty centuries it has always been thus.
It always will be, for what is seared into a man’s soul who stands face to face
with death never changes.
Signed: Paul R. Allen
Purple Heart Medal recipient
Former Combat Infantryman, U.S. Army 7th Infantry Division, Korea
Life Member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart (MOPH)
Life Member of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV)
Dedicated to absent friends in unmarked graves
Jurena... Out
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