Recently, I spoke to a midday session of the International Writers’ Festival in Ottawa. I projected images of veterans I have known onto a movie screen. Then, I told stories about the men’s and women’s nearly total reluctance to speak about their wartime experiences. It’s the subject of my latest book, “Breaking the Silence.” And I finished my talk this way:
“I’ve spent many of the past 30 years writing the stories of battle,” I said. “In this latest work, I’ve attempted to write about the battle to get the stories.”
In my talk, I offered several key illustrations of the way Canadian veterans have almost universally refused to share with their families and civilian friends the extraordinary moments of their war. Among the examples of this unwritten code of silence, I cited the story of my closest air force friend Charley Fox. Though he had completed 234 successful sorties in air force Spitfires and won two Distinguished Flying Crosses, he rarely spoke about his successful airborne attack on the highest ranking and most important German general in occupied France, Erwin Rommel.
Similarly, I recalled for that Ottawa audience the story of a Second World War vet who re-mustered at the start of the Korean War. Hal Merrithew, a lieutenant in the Royal 22nd Regiment, led a platoon of pioneer (mine-laying and mine-defusing) troops along the front-line at the 38th parallel. In one heroic operation, Lt. Merrithew had guided his men into a minefield to retrieve the dead and wounded from a night-time misadventure in No Man’s Land. The experience left Merrithew sobbing – I thought – over the horrific images of the rescue. But no, it turned out that his distress had come from his inability to reconnect – even after 50 years and despite every effort – with the men who’d shared that horrific night with him in Korea.
And towards the end of my talk, I shared with that audience a recounting of my face-to-face interviews with three Canadian veterans of the Afghanistan mission. All three had been at a place called Tarnak Farm, outside Kandahar, where on April 17, 2002, a U.S. fighter jet fired a laser-guided 500-pound bomb at the Canadians – killing four and wounding another half dozen in the so-called “friendly fire” incident. Each of the men I interviewed had vivid memories still haunting him; each had paid a physical and emotional price in his survival of the attack; and each recognized the incident had changed him permanently.
“I’d like to say it has affected me for the best,” one of them said. “I’d be lying if I said that.”
At any rate, following my talk I took questions. Several veterans wanted to know more about the airman I mentioned. Others were curious if the Korean War vets had ever re-united. And then a woman put her hand and asked a favour of me.
“My partner left for Afghanistan a month ago,” she said. “What am I supposed to do when he comes home?”
She stopped me dead. I wasn’t quite sure where to begin. In all my lectures, talks and media interviews I’d never been asked that before. I began by cautioning her that I was not a professional psychologist, nor an expert in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I said all I could do was offer her suggestions of things to consider upon his return: giving him time to sort things out, becoming as knowledgeable as she could about what her partner had faced, ensuring he knew that she wanted to understand his war experience, and choosing the right time and place to share it.
A few moments later another woman put her hand up. She explained that her husband had served in the Vietnam War in the 1970s and that he had suffered severe PTSD. She went on to explain that as a consequence of their experience, she had become a full-time certified trauma specialist
“What you just said to that woman,” she pointed out, “was exactly the right procedure in such circumstances.”
Late that Sunday night, as I travelled home, I reflected on the day’s events. I had related some of my own battles to get the stories of veterans. I had sparked some lively discussion on a difficult topic – veterans’ collective silence. I had even earned a bit of praise for offering constructive advice to the family of a soon-to-be Canadian veteran. But it all seemed for nothing.
That night we learned that another Canadian soldier had died in Afghanistan. And another family would spend the approaching Nov. 11 Remembrance Day mourning and fearing a different kind of silence – the silence of losing a loved-one.
