Combat Veteran code of Honor, continued:
Death whispers in your ear; “Nothing matters outside my touch, and I have not touched you…YET!”
Death never leaves you – it is your best friend, your most trusted advisor, your wisest teacher.
Death teaches you that every day above ground is a fine day.
Death teaches you to feel fortunate on good days, and bad days…well, they do not exist.
Death teaches you that merely seeing one more sunrise is enough to fill your cup of life to the brim –
every day alive is sufficiently satisfying unto itself.
Death teaches you that you can postpone its touch by earning serenity.
Serenity is earned by a lot of prayer and acceptance.
Acceptance is taking one step out of denial and accepting/allowing your repressed painful combat
memories, and repressed coming home disappointments to be re-lived/suffered thru/shared with other
combat vets – and thus de-fused.
Each time you accomplish this dreaded act of courage/desperation:
the pain gets less;
more tormenting combat demons hiding in the darkness of your gut --
which you can feel but cannot language because they are out of sight down below the level of your
consciousness --- are thrown out into the healing sunlight of awareness, thereby disappearing them;
the less bedeviling combat demons, the more serenity earned.
Serenity is, regretfully, rather an indistinct quality, but it manifests as an immense feeling
deep inside of fulfillment/satisfaction:
from having proven your honor under fire;
from having demonstrated to be a fact that you did your duty no matter what;
and from being grateful to Higher Power/your Creator for sparing you.
It is an iron law of nature that such serenity lengthens life span to the max.
Down thru the dusty centuries it has always been thus.
It always will be, for what is seared into a man’s soul who stands face to face with death never changes.
WRITER’S NOTE (1)
This work attempts to describe the world as seen thru the eyes of a combat veteran. It is a world
virtually unknown to the public because few veterans can talk about it.
This is unfortunate since people who are trying to understand, and make meaningful contact with combat
veterans, are kept in the dark.
How do you establish a rapport with a combat veteran? It is very simple. Demonstrate to him out in the
open in front of God and everybody that you too have a Code of Honor – that is, you also keep your
word – no matter what!
Do it and you will forge a bond between you.
Do it not and you will not.
End of story. Case closed.
I offer these poor, inadequate words – bought not taught – in the hope that they may shed
some small light on why combat veterans are like they are, and how they can fix it.
It is my life desire that this tortured work, despite its many defects, may yet still provide some tiny sliver
of understanding which may blossom into tolerance – nay, acceptance – of a Warrior’s perhaps
unconventional way of being due to combat-damaged emotions from doing his duty under fire.
