A chat with a WW1 vet many years ago.

Back when I was headed into the service an old WW1 vet offered to buy me a beer and give me some advice. I was under age but neither of us really cared. Back then the cops reigned with common sense and if an old vet wanted to have a drink or two with a youngster going into the service they had better things to worry about. I took him up on it and as I grew I saw some wisdom in his lessons.

He most certainly suffered from what we now call PTSD but was then called shell shock. He told me that after fifty years he still had a few bad dreams but it had been a lot worse in the years before. The nightmares had reduced themselves to rare and occasional visits from the demons of the night.

The old man was pretty compassionate about GIs that were returning from Vietnam. Some returnees were real a real mess. One of my classmates died as a direct result of self medicating for PTSD. I think his name belongs on the wall.

Someone once made a comment about a Marine that had returned. He had been at Khe Sanh during the siege and had returned an angry and bitter young man. The old man charged into that one with a loud and clear "What did you expect when you sent him off to war?"

The old man told me that he would spend waking hours reliving the terrible scenes over and over and that as time passed the memories would soften a bit. He first tried hard drinking but was wise enough to see that it did him no good.

I guess the analogy today would be making a copy of something in a copier and then making a copy of the copy of the copy and so on until things grow fuzzy.

He said that over time it took away the worst of the nightmares.










To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY