Warrior to Spiritual Warrior - Jess E. Weiss

I just completed the above titled book by Jess E. Weiss, a 91 year old veteran of World War II. He was in the second wave of the Omaha beach landing on D-Day. I strongly recommend this book (available on Amazon) A few excerpts:

The beach was congested with the dead and wounded. . . . There wasn't a pebble to hide behind. I crawled under the bodies I'd piled . . . . I waited frozen and afraid, thoughts racing, Am I dreaming? Am I dead? What does being dead feel like?

On PTSD:

It's the residual effect of being afraid all the time and pretending you're not.It's the killing, the death, and the dying around you. Your mind turns into a camera taking pictures and storing negatives in your brain stem, but you don't develop them. . . . the real you down in the base of your brain is dormant, waiting for the right sound or sign to trigger something berserk. You clamp down on that guy. . . . And that just makes the berserker more berserk when he does break out. And he will. He will. You're a real fun guy to grow up with.

Long Lasting PTSD

They thought they had locked up the memories and thrown away the key.
Talking meant remembering, so many veterans of World War II didn't speak about the scenes of carnage and combat they saw more than 60 years ago. Not even to their wives or children.
Suck it up, lock it away -- from an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer - 7/16/09

World War II veterans are still exhibiting symptoms of PTSD 65 years after the end of the war. Of the 2.5 million WWII veterans still alive today, estimates range from 20 to 30 percent of them suffer from PTSD. Some of them have had PTSD symptoms ever since the war, but many are recently experiencing them - some because of loss of a spouse, others due to retirement, and a number due to dementia, wherein long ago memories remain, while the short term memories are difficult to retain.

The WWII veterans should be helped and in doing so, more information will be available to help the subsequent group of veterans, especially the large number of Vietnam vets who are already in their sixties.

Click on title for link.

Soft Spots - Universality of the Combat Veteran's Trauma

I completed Soft Spots by Clint Van Winkle. It is a wonderfully written book, weaving war experiences in Iraq with his continuing flashbacks after he returns home. I found especially enlightening what he wrote about his World War II grandfather, since it mirrors what my WWII veteran father told me about the lasting impact of war, even World War II, the "Good War"

Excerpt from the book:

My grandpa never talked about World War II to anyone. The family knew he had served in the Army but not much else. After I became a Marine, he started to tell stories about his war to me. It was a "good war" -- the other "war to end all wars" that didn't end any wars. I found out he served overseas for three years, dug fighting holes in occupied Berlin, got into bar fights in France, and spent time in Wales. He talked about going and coming, his Army buddies and training, but never got into the stuff I really wanted to know. Had he ever killed anybody....

When I got back from Iraq, and saw my grandpa, we talked about war again. However, we talked about it in a different manner than we had years earlier. We talked about the places we saw and the friends we gained. We bypassed the death and shooting. Our wars were sixty years apart but weren't really any different. It didn't matter how many years separated our wars or where we traveled to fight them. Blood still dried the same way around wounds and charred bodies still crusted over the same as they always have. It didn't matter that he'd fought in a "good war" and I fought in a controversial war; because the effect turned out to be the same: Neither of us could find anything praiseworthy about combat.