What do we know about the wars that we are waging? The vast majority of us can choose not to pay attention, as if this choice is similar to choosing what toothpaste to buy or what television program to watch. What role does our distraction play in these conflicts? If we aren’t watching, can we be held responsible? When a war can last longer than a decade and requires neither our attention nor our participation, what does this do to our national identity? What do the words civic responsibility and service and sacrifice mean to those of us living in America now?
What does it mean to “support our troops” if our support is as simple and as meaningless as parroting an empty phrase? The faded bumper stickers on our SUVs are a band-aid that can’t cover our guilt, a Hallmark card we send to ourselves to ease the shame of ducking our responsibility, of sending others in our place and, for the most part, ignoring them when they come home.
I find myself wondering what real support would look like.
In June, just after the news broke that suicides are now surpassing combat deaths in the military, I visited Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. I met young men who had lost both legs, and young men who had lost both legs and both arms. One soldier, with his wife and baby and toddler, stopped to talk, in spite of the pain he was in, in spite of the list of painkillers he reeled off for me, in spite of the patches delivering pain medicine directly through his skin. This young man still had both arms and legs. The surgeons had managed to put his left leg back together, but the pain was so intense following reconstruction that even with all the meds, he told me he felt like screaming.
He told me the story of another soldier who had had the same reconstructive surgery to save his leg, and had given up and had his leg amputated because it was impossible to live with the pain. He was shaken by this story, as any of us would be.
I met fathers and mothers who were there to support their sons and daughters, a mother who looked much too young to have a son old enough to serve, a young man who had survived the impossible: a wound through his carotid artery. The doctors had created a new artery made of gore-tex and he was healing from multiple surgeries.
A mother stopped by whose son has been at Walter Reed for more than a year. He, too, had lost both arms and both legs. She told me that her son’s wife had left him and that her husband had also filed for divorce; they had given up. But there she was every day, taking care of her son. How, I found myself wondering, can she possibly pay her rent or her mortgage, or hold on to her job, if she has one, while being there for her son? What impossible choices is this mother faced with every day?
One father who stopped to talk told me how heart broken and angry he felt when he learned that his son had lost his legs. Eighteen months into his son’s healing, he said that seeing so many soldiers who had lost both arms and legs, and were somehow coping, was giving him the courage to be there for his son. We said goodbye and a few minutes later he returned with photographs. The photos show two handsome, fit, strong young men. The older brother had put his life on hold to be at his younger brother’s side for while he was at Walter Reed.
Why was I there? Inspired by my friend Siobhan Fallon, author of “You Know When the Men are Gone,” and with the amazing support of Perry Pidgeon Hooks, who arranges these events, we were giving away books that might be of interest to soldiers and their families. We gave books to young men and women soldiers, to their moms and wives and husbands and fiancés and girlfriends or boyfriends.
They all thanked us. For the books, for being there, for taking the time to stop and talk. And listen. I thanked them, shook hands when possible, watched as Perry talked to soldier after soldier, drawing out their stories. I approached individuals and families not wanting to intrude and was met with such warmth and gratitude. I will never forget it.
In spite of medical advances, in spite of heroic efforts by doctors and nurses, and the soldiers’ themselves, these losses are forever; these young men and women and their families will deal with the wounds we can see and those we can’t, for the rest of their lives. This is what we as a nation have asked of our soldiers; this is what the wounds of war look like. Most of us can live our lives not knowing what these soldiers suffer; we exist in a bubble, in a kind of willful, blind ignorance.
Something fundamental has shifted when 1% of our nation bears the burden of our wars while 99% of us have the luxury of living as though we are not at war. I think of my fellow citizens as fundamentally decent, and fair. But where is the fairness when so few sacrifice so much and so many sacrifice nothing at all?
I would like to know how a 22 year old wife and mother with a toddler and an infant is supposed to take care of her children, her husband who has no arms and no legs, and, in addition, go to work outside the home to financially support her family.
Who is going to help this young woman and the thousands just like her?
Will we come together to bind up these wounds? Will each of us recognize our deep responsibility to these soldiers and their families? Will we hire them, train them, raise money to buy the equipment they need? Or do we expect each soldier’s family to somehow shoulder these burdens on their own?
I don’t kid myself that a single visit to Walter Reed is doing much. But perhaps the first step is to pay attention, to acknowledge our responsibility for what is happening in the world, to bear witness to the suffering that our actions cause, both at home and abroad. What might the next step be? Dialogue? Protest?
I wrote Alice Bliss because I wanted to tell the story of the war from the point of view of the children and the families left behind. My next book is about the damage that comes home from the war. Perhaps I am shouting at the wind, writing stories in the hope that more of us will become aware of all of the costs – including the hidden or invisible costs – of the wars we are waging.
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