Okay, Uncle, Now I Get It

Sometimes, you find out a lot at funerals.

My godfather died the other day. Good man; police officer. Dad was his Best Man. Four kids, all nice people. Thought a lot of me, and I will take that with me for the rest of my days. Thanks, Dick. Back atcha.

Beyond that, though: had a chat with an aunt and uncle, and another uncle came up. In the service in WW II; Dad ran into him on one of those Pacific islands through sheer serendipity.

They drank, which is what servicepeople do when they want to forget the thousands of miles they are from home; from what might lie ahead of them; from what they've already heard.

But my uncle had another, really good reason to drink. He was on burial patrol.

That's right. You dig holes and stick dead guys in them. Dead guys with all kinds of things blown apart, all kinds of limbs and body parts missing, all kinds of animals having already begun to feed on them.

It gets hot out there, too. It doesn't smell very good.

Go and read All Quiet on the Western Front, about another war in which dead bodies are allowed to remain in the open for days, about what happens to them and about what happens to the minds of those who have to watch it. My uncle had to do that because somebody told him he had to.

He kept right on drinking after the war. He died of complications of cirrhosis of the liver in 1969, far before his time should have been up.

I always wondered why he kept on drinking. My aunt told me. I didn't know. Now I get it.

Post-traumatic stress disorder has been a malady of the homecoming servicepeople that has had, and rightfully so, a great deal of attention paid to it in the last three of our wars: Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War. No doubt much will be paid to it in Afghanistan.

Think, though, of the hundreds of thousands of our people--just ours, not anybody else's--who saw and experienced the terror, the utter horror, of war. Does it really matter who won it, when all is swept away?

Did that take away my uncle's nightmares? Obviously not.

For the most part, we ignored those issues with World War II veterans. We thought everything was okay, since we'd fought the greatest war in the history of humankind and won it.

We walked right past soldiers and sailors and airmen and nurses and others who were, and are still (thousands still left) suffering from those ghastly images. How did they make it this far?

When I taught, I showed the kids a National Geographic special on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Guadalcanal. It had reminiscing from people who fought on both sides--Americans, Australians, Japanese, even islanders. Many cried when remembering those who had died. It was just as if it had happened the day before.

Another uncle fought hand-to-hand against the Germans in France. Still alive, he didn't talk about it until 1978.

The Greatest Generation believed it was a good idea not to discuss the war, that somehow, the killing would be inappropriately rendered. What incredible internal suffering they have endured.

How many more met my uncle's fate--alcoholism? How many others succumbed to drugs; broken lives; suicide? Did anybody keep track of them?

War: The gift that keeps on giving. I kept saying it in my classes. I say it again.

Mister Mark