Veteran’s Experiences
How To Help The Veteran In Your Life
I was getting the kids ready for bed last night when the phone rang. I almost didn’t answer--I didn’t recognize the number, the kids were rebelling like only 3 and 5 year-olds can, and I could feel the chances of getting to bed at a reasonable hour slipping away. As one pants-less monkey jetted down the hall--chased by another with only a spiderman mask on--I answered anyway. I’m really glad I did. On the other end of the line was a Marine I’ve never met--let’s call him Tim. Tim had just finished After Action and found that the experiences I wrote [...]
Line Of Advance: Literary Journal for Veterans
It's no exaggeration for me to state that writing has positively changed my life. Writing became the avenue through which I was able to process my combat experiences and deal with the challenges of coming home. Things I was never able to articulate verbally finally achieved expression through the written word. For these reasons, I am very happy to post this email from Chris Lyke, one of the founders of Line Of Advance, a non-profit literary journal dedicated to preserving the voices of veterans. To make this a reality, Chris is soliciting donations via http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/line-of-advance. I have never met, nor conversed, [...]
Beware The Coming Storm
We've pulled out of Iraq and the politicians are figuring out how to do the same in Afghanistan. Combat deployments for US troops will decrease over the next year and eventually drop to zero. This might sound like great news for the millions of families with loved ones in the military--and on one level it is--but it will bring new challenges that must be addressed. Military personnel and their families have spent the last decade living with repeated combat deployments. After each deployment there should be a re-adjustment period, a time when the recently-returned veteran comes out of the combat mentality, processes his [...]
A Veteran’s Duty
In 2012, more US service members killed themselves than were killed in combat--349 suicides vs 310 KIA. While numbers don’t tell the whole story, they do identify the fact that mortal danger for US service members is not limited to Afghanistan. The statistics on military suicide are sobering and deserve attention--but that’s not the focus of this post. I want to focus instead on the millions of veterans who might be embarking on the same path that those 349 took last year. I’m no expert on suicide, but I imagine the thought process that brings a person to the decision [...]
Move Is Complete
The drive from Virginia to southern California went better than we had any right to expect. The kids entertained themselves with trinkets and books and Kitty, our dog, enjoyed looking out the back window of our aptly named Honda Fit. When we arrived we found our house to be in pretty good order--never something to take for granted after renting it out for 6 years--but we did have to immediately buy a new refrigerator and stove. Joy. I waited a tortuous two days before finally getting in the water. Somehow it didn't feel right to leave Lena unpacking the house [...]
Dr. Seuss Strikes Again
Inspiration comes to me from weird places. I don’t necessarily see them as weird--after all, it is my head--but I can understand how others might see them that way. The inspiration for this post comes from Dr. Seuss, specifically his book Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Even more specifically, it is his description of “...a most useless place. The Waiting Place...” that has reached in and shaken me up. It didn’t happen all at once, but after reading the book to my kids several million times it started to seep in. I was in The Waiting Place. Before I [...]
Grandma’s Last Gift
Grandma at Lena and my wedding in 2005. About a month ago I had the opportunity to give a presentation to a group of Vietnam veterans. They asked several questions at the end of my talk that would be good subjects for blog posts. This is one of them. “Have you ever thought about suicide?” The gentleman who’d asked it hadn’t seemed overly interested in my presentation--spent most of it staring at his plate of half-eaten food. I had the impression it was a subject he was acquainted with. “Yes” I answered. And then I wondered why. I’d [...]
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