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Re: D-Day
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Binecon
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Jun 7 11 10:52 AM
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My Recent Posts
Bubba's photos bring back memories for me too.
My father was a pilot deeply damaged by his experience in war, as were millions of other combatants.
When the subject of war comes up, I generally tend to focus on the civilian millions left maimed, scarred, sexually assaulted, displaced and/or dead, but perhaps it's time to speak of the cost of war on a more personal level.
This is one of many excellent discussions of the psychological cost of war to soldiers (in the statistical minority in terms of horrors experienced when compared to civilians, but still constituting millions affected worldwide):
http://www.warandgender.com/wgptsd.htm
The names given the profound psychological - and inevitably/connectedly physical - burden of war to the combatants has had many names through the past century, with "shell-shock" giving way to "combat fatigue," and now "PTSD."
Here's another excellent piece:
http://blog.cleveland.com...tic_stress_disorder.html
Reading the attached - along with Bubba's photos and the discussion here - causes me to pause and yet again reflect on the horrors of war for all concerned, and the lasting, often hidden, devastation.
My father was left physically scarred, but far more serious were the experiences which left him - like millions of his brothers in arms - unable to function without the self-medicating effects of alcohol.
A quiet boy made violent by war, he tore a lonely path through the lives of those he encountered after the war, and died with only my mother by his side.
I loved my father, and I'm left with many questions.
Was it some personal weakness on his part that rendered him a hungry ghost? (If so, then why were so many other members of the "Greatest Generation" rendered similarly enraged, empty, confused, wounded, wanting?)
Would I become an angry spirit like him?
Could anything have been done for him once his conscience and his body were so beaten down by war?
But once I began struggling with these questions, larger ones arose.
Questions about the why and the how of war; the men who - in the words of Bob Dylan - "hide behind walls" and "hide behind desks" and "never done nothing' but build to destroy."
And while I still struggle with the "what ifs?" of my father's life, I'm fairly certain of the larger answers I've found.
How diplomatic and monetary games played by fools and charlatans at the highest levels of government and commerce created - and continue to create - instability and disaster in the world, and how the so-called "common" man is left to pay the price (often with his life, or his happiness) of his "masters'" games.
Like the wars which preceded and followed, World War II was a war created by the rich and powerful, and paid for in the blood of the working and starving classes.
The disaster of depression created by these men in Germany and the world prior to war?
No problem - the lives of 50 million peasants will balance the books in just a couple of decades.
I see war as a sham; a lie; a disaster; and a failure of decency, right, and common sense to prevail in the affairs of humanity.
I do not see its glamour.
I do not see the tumescent guns and feel some secret thrill.
I see war as the terrible lie it is, and I recall the terrible price paid by most of us for the evil and the folly of the ruling classes of all nations.
There are more questions - and more answers - but for now, Dylan says it best:
"You that never done nothin' but build to destroy
You play with my world like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand and you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther when the fast bullets fly.
Like Judas of old you lie and deceive
A world war can be won you want me to believe
But I see through your eyes and I see through your brain
Like I see through the water that runs down my drain.
You fasten all the triggers for the others to fire
Then you set back & watch when the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansions as young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies and is buried in mud."
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