The Veterans' Plight

[L Verge]

I'm old enough to remember WWII veterans of my parents' generation who returned from Europe, but left their spirits behind. There used to be a joke about mental patients being assigned classes in basket weaving. A member of my extended family through marriage learned that craft and also beautiful embroidery after going through treatments for his "shell shock" while in the European theater of that war.

A friend's father was a survivor of the Bataan Death March and sort of wandered through the rest of his life sad and forlorn and unable to deal with others. My own father came through WWII and the Korean War and turned to alcohol for solace. My generation really brought the effects of war home with the wide publicity they continue to generate about their problems of returning to society following Vietnam. And then, there's the Gulf War and what now seems to be the war that will have no end...

And, of course, the Southern side of me thinks that a similar book should be written on the effects of the Civil War on the defeated soldier who returned with his memories of death and destruction -- and faced both situations again when he got home to find family members dead and once-fertile lands and cities and homes torched by the victors. One can only hope that all-out war never comes to U.S. shores again. We're having a hard enough time dealing with the criminals who are pulling down our society and culture without a declared war. Thanks for allowing me another catharsis.