The Hidden Cost of War

Soldiers will have nightmares for the rest of their lives as they relive the horrors of war. My brother-in-law was one of those from WWII at the battle for Tarawa Atol. He saw the ocean turn red with blood of soldiers. Tens of thousands of young men in the prime of life. bleeding their life out in the Pacific surf. He dreamed about this until he died forty years later.

The second soldier was in the Korean war. After his return, he went berserk for two years - sex, drugs, homo, hetero and all that stuff. Then he got a grip on himself, got married and had a son (who told me this tale).

But for the rest of his life, he had nightmares - crouched behind the pillow at the head of his bed - firing his rifle at Chinese coming over the footboard,

He lived and dreamed of this for twenty to 30 years. Then on a sunny Spring morning he walked into the yard and dropped dead on the lawn. His son hoped he was at last out of his misery.

The third instance of horrified memories happened to me as I was hitch-hiking from Sacramento to San Francisco. A man picked me up and told me this tale. He was in Viet Nam and his combat unit was assigned to "pacify" a Viet Cong village. They tied the oldest man (Papa-san) in the village to a post and forced the villagers to watch while they bayonetted his belly guts onto the ground for the pigs to eat - live.

He told me - a perfect stranger - this story of horror, then put me out by the side of the road. He told me, a total stranger, his tale of horror. How many strangers does it take to erase one horror?

Another soldier came back from Nam and could not get out of his camouflage uniform for two weeks. When he finally took it off his 12 year old son put it on. But his father made him take it off saying: "I've killed boys like you in combat jackets like this."

How many men are reliving their memories....losing their sanity..... every day?

Over 65,000 divorces have have happened to soldiers who lived through the horrors of war... to come home with a broken life. How many women have seen the man they once loved come home a madman? How many children have a living dead man as a father?

One of the novelties of this war is the use of nuclear refuse in daily warfare. The nuclear refuse is a very heavy form of metal and when fired at or forced against mere iron will penetrate the weak iron easily - like a bomb would. It is used in Iraq to blast holes in walls and buildings.

There is a difference however - the nuclear metal turns to dust as it explodes. The dust is very fine and floats merrily along its way over hill and dale, river and stream. It gets breathed into a soldier's throat and windpipe and sticks to the nice warm moist tissue there. A few months later cancer appears in the soldier's throat and chest. It also gets into the throats of all breathing life: man, woman, Christian, Muslim, Kurd, cow, goat, pig and polliwog. It comes home in the soldier's clothing.

When will it vanish?

100,000 years - more or less.

An Assiciated Press release (lost the date but sometime between 1 and 10 Nov '07.) was about a Veterans Administration report that there 500,000 veterans of wars homeless on the streets right now. Yes - one half million!!. Apparently these veterans are from wars BEFORE Iraq as there is only a "trickle" of Iraqi vets beginning to show up now.

How many more of our children are we going to make "homeless" - living in the sewers and underground tunnels in the big cities and sleeping on the grates over warm air vents in the side walks of every large city.

How many?

I can't write any more of this....It's driving me nuts    morose    despondent.