As I sit here gently weeping for all the service men and women around the world who have given and risked their lives for freedom and safety, I also think of those who gave more.
Yes, more.
I would like to remember those who gave their health, their minds. I want to remember the individuals who came home maimed almost past recognition, crippled (and I hate to use that word, but it is applicable) for the rest of their days and/or traumatized so deeply that every day is torment.
LAUREN
I met Lauren (not her real name) when I was in my 20's. I was having a rare afternoon away from my children, enjoying a solitary (and quiet) coffee in a little diner not far from the P.N.E. in Vancouver. Alone in a corner sat an elderly lady. She smiled at me and we exchanged a few comments. After a while I joined her, not wanting to continue calling across the restaurant possibly disturbing others. That's when I got a clear look at her face. My shock was obvious from my expression, and Lauren began to tell me her story.
During the Korean War, Lauren had been a nurse in an medical unit near the front. She related several incidents and told me about many of her more memorable patients. One evening there was a bombing run. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time; some fuel exploded and she was burned over about 70% of her body. She was certain that a guardian angel was watching over her, as she had no internal burns at all; hence she survived. She underwent treatment in Asia and was returned home after several weeks.
The burns to her face, torso and arms were so severe parents didn't recognize her. They visited her a few times in the Veterans Hospital and then stopped coming. They never spoke to her again. None of her family did. She never married, nor had children. Lauren gave us all her future working to heal our wounded.
Gregory B.
Gregory was the uncle of an acquaintance. Somehow we got talking about people in our families who had seen war duty. In WWII he was in some kind of reconnaissance plane when it was shot down. His back was broken and his left arm and both legs shattered. He lay alone in the debris of his flight, among the bodies of his comrades for two days. Eventually he was found by an allied patrol and rushed to an aid station and from there to a medical unit. He underwent three amputations. He had to recover for quite a while before he was stable enough to even be transferred to England for further treatment. But knowledge of spinal injury was not then what it is today. He spent the last fifteen years of his life in traction in a veterans hospital and died of massive organ failure. He gave his health that we might be healthy.
Lesley Cross
This tale is very personal: This is my dad. My father went to England at the onset of WWII to join the RAF. After training eh became a reconnaissance photographer, and flew in the tail section of a Lancaster in The Golden Triangle, which is a part of South-East Asia. I know that he did many highly classified things because to this day his records are sealed, even to family members. I do know that these things mentally scarred him for life.
I wish I had known him before mental torment took him when I was 6. Occasionally, though, I got glimpses of his inner struggles. I remember my dad as a drinker. His drinking was so common that I really didn't know it was abnormal. I'm told, though I cannot verify, that he didn't used to drink that much...that it kind of crept up on him as time went by. What I saw was that if he happened to talk about his war service he drank a LOT more! It was like he had to drive the memories away: now we know he was self-medicating. I saw it in his eyes. I saw it in the quiet private tears he shed when he thought nobody was looking. Eventually he medicated himself to death. He gave up his sanity, to return the world to a sane state.
Please remember these selfless souls, the scarred and disabled and demented. Think of the ones who, in the end, gave up so much more.
