Life After War
The Mirage of Coming Home
After a 24-hour flight on a Flying Tiger DC-8, I was back. My uniform was the worse for the long flight, but my first tour overseas was behind me. I deplaned at Norton Air Force Base, where Terri met me, eyes alight with excitement. It felt surreal, having a woman in my arms after so long.
She insisted on driving, convinced I guess, that my year away must have erased everything I ever knew about navigating the freeways. On the upside, being a passenger allowed me to soak up the concept of “home.” Beyond gas prices, not that much has changed, I thought, gazing out the window. I could not have been more mistaken. As I would later realize, I was looking in the wrong place.
Terri and I would last another year before we both acknowledged it wasn’t working and never would. The fall of Vietnam and my assignment as Camp Pendleton’s Deputy Refugee Affairs Officer only hastened the inevitable. My rotation home had been automatic, a simple matter of survival and the calendar. “Reentering society,” on the other hand, proved more complicated. The changes for which I’d been alert on the drive back from Norton weren’t “out there.” I’d struggled seeing them because I’d brought them home with me.
The Vietnam Hangover
I experienced none of the acrimonious recriminations other returning vets reported. But my haircut was an unmistakable brand setting me apart. A brand the more conspicuous given the prevailing hairstyles of the day. Predictably, people drew inferences about me from that haircut.
An incident a little more than a year after my return illustrates. I’d always had a fascination with surfing, and being stationed at Pendleton provided me with the opportunity to learn. I progressed quickly, from a shaky kook riding a 9' 11" Hansen “Superlite” longboard to a full-on stoked surf dog riding a 6’ 2” winged swallowtail.
Toward the end of the summer of seventy-five, I was surfing Lower Trestles at the northern end of Camp Pendleton. A strong southwest swell generating overhead waves wrapped around the point with machine-like precision, groomed by offshore winds lasting all day. About noon, a young woman paddled out next to me, glanced at my short hair, and shoulder-hopped me on the next wave. I stuck with it and apparently surprised a Marine could actually surf, she kicked out, leaving the wave to me.
When I paddled back into line-up, she complimented my surfing and we struck up a conversation in between waves. After a while, she nodded at my haircut and asked me if I was stationed at Pendleton. I told her I was, and she immediately asked when I was getting out.
My confessed status as a career Marine officer earned me a subtle shake of her head and an indecipherable smile. “You’re too cool to be a Marine,” she said. I guess she meant it as a compliment? I was spared a response as she slipped prone, paddling out to meet a large set wave. “Welcome home, Jar-head,” I muttered to myself.
Coming Home in the All-Volunteer Force
By the end of the seventies, the Vietnam hangover had become more or less a thing of the past, but my encounter with the woman at Trestles came to symbolize a subtle attitude that seemed to pervade much of “mainstream” society. I didn’t quite fit. I was from — but not part — of whatever America had become.
I would deploy and return several more times, during my 20-plus years in uniform. In common with my brothers and sisters in arms, I became adept at the mechanics of deploying and returning to what we euphemistically referred to as “The World.” But with each return, my homecomings were progressively less about “reentering” American society and more about reconnecting with my “tribe.”
Without conscious thought, the all-volunteer force of which I was part had morphed into a pseudo-professional warrior class — living apart from and largely independent of — mainstream society. And on balance, society seemed to be okay with that.
Was it America’s discomfort with us and the mystical world “behind the gate?” Or did we unconsciously self-segregate, vaguely aware of an apartness we sensed without fully understanding? Even today I remain uncertain.
Nobody asked me, but…
In recent days, the dizzying collapse of Afghanistan has given rise to comparisons with the fall of Vietnam, in seventy-five. The similarities are striking, complete with the often-sophomoric recriminations ricocheting around Washington and on cable news. Still, there’s some comfort in knowing that we have at least learned not to blame the returning veterans for our leaders’ errors in judgment. But surely, I’m not the only one who thinks our returning veterans deserve better than the bitter tribalism now manifesting itself in who we’ve become.
I’ve been out of uniform a long time now and can’t claim to speak for most or even some of the veterans reentering “The World,” post-Afghanistan. Still, it’s hard to miss the problem hiding in plain sight. The all-volunteer force has placed the burden of repeated and rapid returns to combat zones on a tiny fraction of our population. Less than 1% of U.S. adults are currently serving on active duty. Less than 7% of U.S. adults are veterans. (Down from 18% in 1968).
We are asking a dwindling segment of America to fight our optional wars of interference. Have we grown too comfortable with armed conflict in the name of national security? If you’re like me, you probably don’t want to believe that.
Nevertheless, the toll is considerable, and the general population lacks an understanding both of the nature of counterinsurgencies and the emotional demands they place on the men and women fighting them. And given how long we’ve allowed the “war on terror” to continue, it shouldn’t be too difficult to understand why the suicide rate among veterans since 9/11 is four times the rate of combat casualties.
Whatever our motives behind the mission creep that have kept us in Afghanistan for so long, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that we are failing the men and women we’ve sent in harm’s way. For too many of them, there is no clear path leading home. Or coming home, they find less refuge than they have a right to expect from the consequences of the war (or wars) we’ve sent them to fight.
“Thank you for your service…”
Fortunately, not every returning veteran comes back irreparably damaged. But the suicide rate among post-9/11 veterans is a sign that we need a whole-of-nation effort to bring our veterans the rest of the way home — to a legitimate shot at life after war.
The orchestration of the effort on behalf of veterans probably belongs in the hands of other veterans. Nor would I presume to advocate a laundry list of direct actions each of us should take to contribute to that effort. But we all have representatives to whom we can write, demanding better than the cumbersome bureaucracy that too often delivers help too late, if at all. Should we not be demanding that we provide our veterans struggling to reenter society with the responsive and accessible assistance they need — in whatever form they need it?
Not all will manage that transition successfully. And even more who appear to do so will never be entirely whole, in the way we are inclined to think of wholeness. Not unlike Vietnam fifty years ago, the “war on terror” has stained more souls than we’d like to count. But whatever we individually and collectively do, can we all at least agree that — by itself — “thank you for your service” just isn’t cutting it anymore?
D.B. Sayers is a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel, former corporate trainer, and manager turned full-time author of both fiction and non-fiction.
