The Veteran Poem by Alla Bozarth

' What is admirable on the large scale is monstrous on the small....
Since we give medals to mass murderers, let us give justice to
the small entrepreneur.'
Dialogue in the film, “The Night of the Generals” 1967.

If you know someone and sooner or later discover
that he or she is a veteran of war, look into that person’s eyes
and learn your first lesson of war—
that there is more inside the skull
of someone who has been in combat
than can be known by anyone,
including the warrior.

The secrets held in the skull have to do with the essential conflict
never being over— the personal conflict, the conflict that goes on,
sleeping or waking every hour of that person’s life— the memories,
thoughts, eruptive emotions that go unexpressed
lest others be overwhelmed, lest the veteran be misunderstood.
The horrible Thing Itself that cannot be told, the compelling intensity
of the experience, the faces, the images~ as the medic’s memory
of a woman’s corpse found without her head, but both her hands still
wrapped securely around the body of the baby she was holding in her lap~
the two young “enemy” warriors lying side by side, twelve or fourteen years
old, rifles still clutched in their hands or lying beside them, each shot through
his thin wool cap the day before, the blue matter of their brains still coming out
of a nostril or oozing from under a cap...
the urgency to continue issuing strategic orders from inside the ruined castle
when, a second before, a bomb has come through an opening in the stone wall
and blown a colleague across the desk from you to high heaven, splattering
his brains on your face and the maps at your fingers, but you must not stop telling those in the air what to do because more lives are depending on you
to do your job, and soon the medics come to remove the body parts
of the person who was helping you five minutes ago and wipe them
from your face and from the maps while you go on talking
into your telephone to those whose lives depend on
your full focus and intelligent attention...

The secrets are a mixture of guilt with glory,
dread and terror and the thrill of the compelling intensity
known only in the extreme circumstances of war—
The addictive drama of danger, the intimate devotion
among comrades tenderly serving each other’s broken,
infected bodies and minds, a familial intimacy not possible to express
or experience anywhere or anytime or with anyone else on Earth.
The puzzling bitterness and rage of hate and desire for revenge that mingle
with an increasing repulsion to the slightest violation of another living being.
The nausea of combat conditions and the heartbreaking courage
of those who sacrifice themselves to save others.
The sheer human anger and shame, the bewilderment
that come from being raised to follow the Ten Commandments
that say, “Thou shalt not kill, ” and then trained and paid to be
a legally licensed professional killer for as many years as are necessary,
obeying orders to kill while praying for protection and victory, followed by
the shock of going home to a peaceful, harmonious place innocent of war
where you would be arrested, imprisoned, tried and executed as a mass
murderer or serial killer for doing the same things you did every day
in the years before, the things for which your government perhaps gave you
a medal, knowing that this same government would now shame you
and kill you for any number of things that it trained and paid you to do.

No one else can go into a veteran’s dreams
but another veteran who has lived the same nightmare
and shared the same quirky joys.

Remember a little of this when you look into a veteran’s eyes,
and before you speak, and do not ask any questions unless you are
truly willing and able to listen, and for as long as it takes,
without judgment or fatigue.

If you look inside yourself you will find the willingness and the ability
when you discover the cowering hero that lives in us all,
the ashamed, frightened and vulnerable soldier who may hide but gives all
to serve the greatest good for the greatest number, or for just one child.

Images are from veterans’ memories of World War II as told in the documentary,
The War, produced and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick for PBS,
October,2007, and from unforgettable scenes in several other films.

This poem is from the book Purgatory Papers
Alla Renée Bozarth, copyright 2011. All Rights Reserved.