Welcome Home, Sir
a sermon given by Claire Phillips-Thoryn
on November 12, 2006, Veterans Day Sunday
at The First Parish in Lincoln
First Reading:
Garry Trudeau has been writing the comic Doonesbury since 1970. The first comic strip opened with the character B.D. sitting in his dorm room, inexplicably wearing a football helmet. Since then, the character B.D. was never seen without his helmet—until recently, when as a member of the National Guard he lost both his helmet and his left leg in the Iraq war. Now Trudeau is following B.D.’s journey through physical and emotional rehabilitation. B.D. is a fictional character, but his story is in many ways as true as a real person’s—and much of this truthfulness comes from Trudeau’s commitment to hear the stories of real veterans. Our first reading comes from a feature article on Trudeau in the Washington Post by Gene Weingarten. Gene writes:
We were just a few blocks from the White House, at Fran O'Brien's Steak House. Fran's was hosting a night out for casualties of the current war, visiting from their hospital wards.
It's hard to know what to say to a grievously injured person, and it's easy to be wrong . You could do what I did, for example. Scrounging for the positive, I cheerfully informed a young man who had lost both legs and his left forearm that at least he's lucky he's a righty. Then he wordlessly showed me his right hand, which is missing fingertips and has limited motion -- an articulated claw. That shut things right up, for both of us, and it would have stayed that way, except the cartoonist showed up.
Garry Trudeau, the creator of "Doonesbury," hunkered right down in front of the soldier, eye to eye, introduced himself and proceeded to ignore every single diplomatic nicety.
"So, when were you hit?" he asked.
"October 23."
Trudeau pivoted his body. "So you took the blast on, what . . . this side?"
"Yeah."
Brian Anderson, 25, was in shorts, a look favored by most of the amputees, who tend to wear their new prostheses like combat medals. His legs are metal and plastic, blue and knobby at the knee, shin poles culminating abruptly in sneakers.
Trudeau surveyed Brian's intact arm. "You've got dots."
"Yeah." Dots are soldier-speak for little beads of shrapnel buried under the skin. Sometimes they take a lifetime to work their way back to the surface. At this, Brian became fully engaged and animated, smiling and talking about the improvised explosive device that took his vehicle out; about his rescue; his recovery; his plans for the future. Trudeau, it turned out, had given him what he needed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102000446_pf.html
Second Reading:
Our second reading is by A.E. Housman, who wrote many poems honoring the soldiers of World War I.
HERE DEAD WE LIE
A. E. Housman
Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
“Welcome home, sir.” This is what the receptionist at the Veterans’ Center says to B.D., the veteran of Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic, again and again, prompting him to ask why she always says that. She replies that she doesn’t think veterans can hear those words too many times, that for too many returned soldiers the war is still raging within, and home doesn’t yet feel like home.
Cricket spoke last week about the power of story to heal, to challenge, to enlarge our hearts. The story of B.D., though fictional, rings true, and resonates with the stories from actual soldiers and veterans. In the article excerpted in our first reading, Gene Weingarten puts this character in the context of our usual daily comic fare:
[April 25, 2006.] On the comics pages that day, Dagwood fixed himself an absolutely ENORMOUS sandwich; Garfield kicked Odie off the table again; and in Beetle Bailey, the only military-themed comic strip, Lt. Fuzz accidentally dropped a glass of water and cussed in funny cartoon hieroglyphics.
In Doonesbury, this was the story: B.D., the football coach and Vietnam vet who went to Iraq with the National Guard and lost a leg in a rocket-grenade attack near Fallujah, has been shamed into entering therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder because he overheard his little girl, Sam, tell a friend that she'd become afraid of her daddy. On this day, B.D. will begin to relive the battlefield event he has repressed, the one that made him a moody, alcoholic paranoiac and that torments him with guilt and shame that he does not understand. Through the rest of the week, B.D. will retell what happened when his armored vehicle came under attack from insurgents and -- desperate to escape and save himself and his men -- he gave the order to flee through a crowded marketplace, mowing down civilians.1
In a daily comic strip, we have an almost savagely intimate view into the life and mind of one returned veteran. It’s ugly, it’s painful, it’s--funny. When B.D. calls to tell his wife Boopsie he’s lost his leg, he says: “Well, the good news is I’m down to my ideal weight…”
Americans are walking a hard line these days. I know I feel caught between, as Trudeau has said, “hating the war but honoring the warrior.” I see the commitment of our soldiers to our country, to each other, and to security and peace for the Iraqi people. And I wonder at our leadership, who puts these young men and women into the battlefield like so many chess pieces. Our soldiers are ready to sacrifice their youth, their lives, their limbs, for ideals—the ideals of America the free, of world democracy, of hard-won peace. The veterans we honor today are not just 70, 60, 50 years old. They are 30, 25, 18. Your son. Your granddaughter.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
The stories from our soldiers in Iraq are overwhelming. We live in a world of constant communication, and instead of two months between letters, or only hearing the impersonal news from journalists, we are able to receive immediate news straight from the soldiers’ mouths. Soldiers have weblogs and video cams. They leave the action on the streets and post a recount of their day on the internet. They take off their flak gear and put down their weapon and log on to an instant message request from their wife asking how to fix the toilet.
I could never presume to say I know or understand the soldier’s life, the veteran’s memories. I can only listen to the stories. Trudeau has created a weblog for soldiers to post their stories alongside B.D.’s story, called The Sandbox. One soldier wrote recently:
I wonder if people back home know about the nightmares we have while we are awake, the trauma that we have in our heads…. I jump, watching movies that I've seen 1000 times when there is shooting in them. I wonder if I will be able to drive back home without getting in trouble for driving in the middle of the road, and trying to explain to the cops that I'm worried about roadside bombs. It happened to me two years ago. And this time it will be worse. I've been hit multiple times by roadside bombs and…a car bomb. I don't know if I will ever be able to have a normal life again.2
Another soldier wrote:
…Since I am now short 30 days from leaving this mess, I can only say one thing: I can now truly appreciate living in the USA. We may disagree on religion, politics, race, but we don't blow each other to pieces because of it (well, not normally).
A sargeant writes that he is “twenty-five years old [and I] believe I’ve seen it all…”. Of his months in Iraq he describes “watching things die and tan and bleach out, and young boys grow and harden.” He jokes to his men about how they should spend their large government check for their service. “Don’t blow that blood money on cars, boys. Blow it on tattoos. I believe in the permanence of tattoos.”
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
When B.D. is finally able to share his story with the counselor Elias, Elias consoles him by saying “B.D., you have to understand you can’t heal without facing what happened. I know it’s painful to revisit that day, and it will probably always be painful. But you can choose not to be trapped there. You’re not controlled by your memories of Iraq—you can move away from them.” In the final panel B.D. says “To what? My memories of Vietnam?” and Elias says “If it relaxes you.”
Steve Mason was a decorated Army captain and Vietnam war veteran who was considered the poet laurate of the Vietnam Veterans of America. He returned from Vietnam dedicated to peace activism. Mason attended a Unitarian Universalist church in Oregon, and died last year of lung cancer, diagnosed as caused by Agent Orange, having written many poems honoring the warrior but hating the war. He read his poem, “The Wall Within” at the dedication of “The Wall”—the Vietnam Memorial in DC. He also wrote in his poem “History Lesson” of the hard conclusions he had come to during his battles with post-traumatic stress disorder:
there are things by which men
seem willing to live
and things, therefore, for which they
seem willing to die.
As for me (if I am a choice)
rather than lead one million boys to war
I would prefer to die alone for peace.
Such is the history lesson
of my inner war.
It may not be yours.
Our task is not to agree--
it is simply to add out truth
to the sum of all truth.
The stories of our soldiers, the stories of our veterans, the story of B.D—we are all trying to add out truth to the sum of all truth. Trying to understand our meaning and purpose and what we will fight for and what we will die for and what, in the end, what it is that we live for. One civilian nurse, working in a military hospital, has heard many stories of perseverance and pain. She writes in the Sandbox:
I will always remember the evening I held a 19-year-old man in my arms while he cried because he had lost both of his legs... I'll remember the woman I helped calm after a book fell off a counter and the loud bang … transport[ing] her back to the day of her injury…I'll never forget my soldier who lost both legs and an arm, who I later watched get married, downhill ski, and, driving his big truck, head off to college. For as long as I live I will remember the day I ran the Army 10-miler with nine amputees, five of whom I had taken care of.
There were so many times I held their hands, wiped their brows, their tears, and reached down into beds and stretchers to give them the hugs they so badly needed. I sat and listened to their stories of fear and horror because they needed to talk. And because I could do nothing more than listen, I would go home and cry for the ones who could not cry for themselves.
She calls herself a civilian, but she too, is a veteran of this war. On Veterans Day we honor all those people working for healing and for a vision, a goal of peace. The Unitarian minister Theodore Parker said that “the arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” We add together our stories to the sum of all truth, hoping that the sum bends towards justice.
There are many ways we can help our returning veterans, and the soldiers in the field. Fisher Houses are homes near military medical centers that allow family members and wounded veterans a free place to stay. They also use donated frequent-flier miles help families and the wounded be together. In 2005 alone they saved families over 7 million dollars in the costs of lodging and food during their loved ones recuperation. There are also ways to donate to vet centers, like the one B.D. goes to for counseling. There are also a number of different ways to send care packages—and important gear—to our soldiers, such as the organization OperationAC, that began by sending air conditioners to units, and now matches up sponsors and soldiers to send gifts from a soldier’s wish list—like new boots and uniforms they would otherwise have to buy themselves.3
While war gives us stories of fear, terror, and anguish, we also find so many stories of thankfulness, loyalty, and hope. When we add truths to the sum of all truth we find in many soldier’s stories a fierce gratitude for the blessing of life. One of the first soldiers Garry Trudeau ever spoke to was a 27-year-old MP named Danielle Green. Gene Weingarten writes:
She had been a college basketball star, a left-handed point guard at Notre Dame. Green had just lost that hand in Iraq. She'd been on the roof of a police station, behind sandbags, trying to defend it from enemy fire, when she took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade.
"This was an elite athlete, and she'd lost her whole professional identity," Trudeau said, "but that's not what she wanted to talk about. What she wanted to talk about was how her buddies carried her down, put her on the hood of a Humvee, where they stopped the bleeding, then went back up to the roof, against orders, and found her hand buried under sandbags. They took off her wedding ring and gave it to her. She's telling me this with a million-dollar smile. This was not about bitterness or loss. It was about gratitude."
In this spirit of gratitude, on this Veterans Day in a time of war, I pray:
May our soldiers be safe and may this war find its end.
May those who work for peace find lasting success, the creation of a safer, more democratic, and loving world.
May we hold in our hearts all those in this world who are suffering in places of terror and strife.
There are many ways to work for peace. May we each find our own small way, and do what we can.
Amen.
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1. To read B.D.’s story, you can go online to doonesbury.com for recent months, or purchase the two collections “The Long Road Home” and “The War Within.”
2. All stories from http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/
3. Operationac.com
http://www.va.gov/rcs/
www.fisherhouse.org