All Americans should take the time to honor our passed and fallen service people...
Combat Veteran Code of Honor
As a combat veteran wounded in one of America’s wars, I offer to speak for those who cannot. Were the
mouths of my fallen front-line friends not stopped with dust, they would testify that life revolves around
honor.
In war, it is understood that you give your word of honor to do your duty – that is – stand and fight
instead of running away and deserting your friends.
When you keep your word despite desperately desiring to flee the screaming hell all around, you earn
honor.
Earning honor under fire changes who you are.
The blast furnace of battle burns away impurities encrusting your soul.
The white-hot forge of combat hammers you into a hardened, purified warrior willing to die
rather than break your word to friends – your honor.
Combat is scary but exciting.
You never feel so alive as when being shot at without result
You never feel so triumphant as when shooting back – with result.
You never feel love so pure as that burned into your heart by friends willing to die to
keep their word to you.
And they do.
The biggest sadness of your life is to see friends falling.
The biggest surprise of your life is to survive the war.
Although still alive on the outside, you are dead inside – shot thru the heart with nonsensical guilt for
living while friends died.
The biggest lie of your life torments you that you could have done something more, different, to save
them.
Their faces are the tombstones in your weeping eyes, their souls shine the true camaraderie you search
for the rest of your life but never find.
You live a different world now. You always will.
Your world is about waking up night after night silently screaming, back in battle.
Your world is about your best friend bleeding to death in your arms, howling in pain for you to kill him.
Your world is about shooting so many enemies the gun turns red and jams, letting the enemy
grab you.
Your world is about struggling hand-to-hand for one more breath of life.
You never speak of your world.
Those who have seen combat do not talk about it.
Those who talk about it have not seen combat.
You come home but a grim ghost of he who so lightheartedly went off to war.
But home no longer exists
That world shattered like a mirror the first time you were shot at.
The splintering glass of everything you knew fell at your feet, revealing what was standing behind it –
grinning death – and you are face to face, nose to nose with it!
The shock was so great that the boy you were died of fright.
He was replaced by a stranger who slipped into your body, a MAN from the Warrior’s World.
In that savage place, you give your word of honor to dance with death instead of run away from it.
This suicidal waltz is known as: “doing your duty.”
You did your duty, survived the dance, and returned home. But not all of you came back to the civilian
world.
Your heart and mind are still in the Warrior’s World, far beyond the Sun. They will always be in the
Warrior’s World. They will never leave, they are buried there.
In that hallowed home of honor, life is about keeping your word.
People in the civilian world, however, have no idea that life is about keeping your word.
They think life is about ballgames, backyards, barbecues, babies and business.
The distance between the two worlds is as far as Mars from Earth.
This is why, when you come home, you feel like an outsider, a visitor from another planet.
You are.
Friends try to bridge the gaping gap.
It is useless. They may as well look up at the sky and try to talk to a Martian as talk to you. Words fall
like bricks between you.
Serving with Warriors who died proving their word has made prewar friends seem too un-tested to be
trusted – thus they are now mere acquaintances.
The hard truth is that earning honor under fire makes you a stranger in your own home town, an alien
visitor from a different world, alone in a crowd.
The only time you are not alone is when with another combat veteran.
Only he understands that keeping your word, your honor, whilst standing face to face with death gives
meaning and purpose to life.
Only he understands that your terrifying – but thrilling– dance with death has made your old world of
backyards, barbecues and ballgames seem deadly dull.
Only he understands that your way of being due to combat damaged emotions is not un-usual, but the
usual, and you are OK.
A common consequence of combat is adrenaline addiction. Many combat veterans – including this writer
– feel that war was the high point of our lives, and emotionally, life has been downhill ever since.
This is because we came home adrenaline junkies. We got that way doing our duty in combat situations
such as:
crouching in a foxhole waiting for attacking enemy soldiers to get close enough for you to start shooting;
hugging the ground, waiting for the signal to leap up and attack the enemy;
sneaking along on a combat patrol out in no man’s land, seeking a gunfight;
suddenly realizing that you are walking in the middle of a mine field.
Circumstances like these skyrocket your feelings of aliveness far, far above and beyond anything you
experienced in civilian life:
never have you felt so terrified – yet so thrilled;
never have you seen sky so blue, grass so green, breathed air so sweet, etc.; because dancing with
death makes you feel stratospheric – nay – intergalactic aliveness.
Then you come home, where the addictive, euphoric rush of aliveness/adrenaline hardly ever happens –
naturally, that is.
Then what often occurs? “Quick, pass me the motorcycle” (and /or fast car, thrill-driving, drag race,
speedboat, airplane, parachute, extreme sport, big game hunt, fist fight, knife fight, gun fight, etc.).
Another reason Warriors may find the rush of adrenaline attractive is because it lets them feel something
rather than nothing. The dirty little secret no one talks about is that many combat veterans come home
unable to feel their feelings. It works like this.
In battle, it is understood that you give your word of honor to not let your fear stop you from doing your
duty. To keep your word, you must numb up/shut down your fear.
But the numb-up/shut-down mechanism does not work like a tight, narrow rifle shot; it works like a
broad, spreading shot gun blast. Thus when you numb up your fear, you numb up virtually all your other
feelings as well.
The more combat, the more fear you must “not feel.” You may become so numbed up/shut down inside
that you cannot feel much of anything. You become what is know as “battle-hardened,” meaning that
you can feel hard feelings like hate and anger, but not soft, tender feelings (which is bad news for loved
ones).
The reason that the rush of adrenaline, alcohol, drugs, dangerous life style, etc. is so attractive is
because you get to feel something, which is a step up from the awful deadness of feeling nothing.
Although you walk thru life alone, you are not lonely.
You have a constant companion from combat – Death.
It stands close behind, a little to the left.
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