Soul Repair by Rita Nakashima Brock

Author:Rita Nakashima Brock
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780807029084
Publisher: Beacon Press

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I Will Live with Moral Injury the Rest of My Life

Prepare, my friends, the knight’s return, And pray we are not too blind to learn.

CAMILLO C. “MAC” BICA, philosopher of war, former U.S. Marine Captain, and Vietnam veteran

Veterans often yearn for the pure and selfless love they shared in battle. Returning to the civilian world is an emotionally wrenching struggle that is akin to ending an all-consuming romantic love. Ancient mythologies understand the fusion of love and war and its dangers. In Homer’s Odyssey, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Ares, the god of war, had a long, illicit affair. Ares had failed to win the contest to marry Aphrodite because he relied on his warrior strength. Instead, the lame metalsmith Hephaestus won her through his wits and then exacted his revenge for her adulterous affair by trapping the lovers together.

You will see the pair of lovers now as they lie embracing in my bed; the sight of them makes me sick at heart. Yet I doubt their desire to rest there longer, fond as they are. They will soon unwish their posture there; but my cunning chains shall hold them both fast.

The pressure-cooker of battle compresses the arguments and idiosyncrasies of individuals into a single fighting unit, committed to one purpose and to each other. Personal survival is intertwined with the survival of the unit. If a soldier fails his duty, he will be responsible for the deaths of his friends and live with the shame of his failure to save them for the rest of his life. As journalist Sebastian Junger notes:

The classic story of a man throwing himself on a hand grenade—certain death, but an action that will almost certainly save everyone else—is neither a Hollywood cliché nor something that only happened in wars gone by. It is something that happens with regularity, and I don’t think it can be explained by “army training” or any kind of suicidal impulse. I think that kind of courage goes to the heart of what it means to be human and to affiliate with others in a kind of transcendent way. Of course, once you have experienced a bond like that, everything else looks pathetic and uninteresting. That may be one reason combat vets have such a hard time returning to society.1

Rarely, if ever in ordinary life are people required to focus, with such purity, everything in them—mind, emotions, physical strength, perception, and skill—on the present moment with so many others. In ordinary life, standards of masculinity tend to prevent such intense self-transcending, absorbing bonding among men or between men and women, except in the consuming throes of early romance.

Euphoria is addicting and self-sacrifice is transcending; but equilibrium is life-sustaining and reciprocity is the heart of love. Veterans who seek friendships with former comrades can be disappointed in the long run because battlefield relationships are built on intense danger; on a rapidly induced, temporary construction of unity; and on constraints on emotional vulnerability. Combat forms a tightly closed circle of

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