by LA Enck
Trauma freezes a moment in time for those who experience it. Grief becomes a millstone anchoring the bereaved to a particular place and a particular time. What has been said is always being said. What has been done is always being done. What has been broken is always being broken. The cut will become a scar, but the scar always begins as a cut. He is both dead and always dying.
His mother and father agreed his name would be Joshua, and Joshua he remained; at least to them. Except when he wasn’t Joshua, he is Josh to his siblings, and it occurs to me: I don’t know if Josh has any siblings, but I assume he did because officers usually do. There are always stories of happy childhoods and friendly sibling rivalries – friends and brothers reflecting how Josh is the driven one, the one always putting in the extra reps after practice or extra time with the teacher. Or sometimes it’s the sisters remarking how Josh was always the first to their defense or showing up when others didn’t. So it was no surprise that Josh went and did what Josh does. Josh or Joshua is always Josh or Joshua to them and Lieutenant or Sir to us. An incoming phone call breaks the news and an incoming phone call breaks hearts. It leaves a void where once a heartbeat. Some know what the call means before they answer it. Some are blindsided with surprise. But everyone remembers the phone ringing.
It occurs to me that the bullet which entered Josh’s neck and ricocheted off his bone and severed his artery may still be in his rotting corpse. Sir’s body rots and Sir’s bones rot and Sir’s clothing rots until there’s nothing left in that coffin but the bullet that killed Josh. If so, the bullet received a 21-gun salute, and the bullet received a flag draped over its coffin, and the bullet received the playing of Taps. Long after Sir is returned to good earth, and no bodily remains remain, the bullet will lay in the dirt. A Vermont white granite headstone bearing Josh’s personal information may one day mark the burial place of a bullet. But maybe it was removed.
Fragments of metal remain to this day, and will remain present for children that have yet to be born – in bodies, in corpses, in good earth, and in living trees. In similar fashion, the pain fixing the moment to memory is always present if unseen: Josh always struggles for breath as his heartbeat grows slow and faint. Josh’s consciousness always recedes in dimming sputters and sparks as his brain depletes its last oxygen. The treating medic, Doc DeLeon, always gives up CPR and accepts that his Marine is dead. Josh’s face always contorts into an unrecognizable terracotta mask of agony. Doc’s eyes always meet mine, and his expression of absolute heartbreak always crushes me. My soul always sears in the white hot agony of witnessing a last breath and Doc’s absolute despair. It happened, and so it remains there in time; past but not passed.
The bullet enters Joshua’s body and the soul exits Joshua’s body; sublimates into void. A void that is nothing but contains everything: A Josh-shaped hole in his parents’ heart. A Lieutenant-shaped scar in the psyche of the men he led. And for those who survive, a writhing eel of what to make of it all: this everything; this nothing.
It is true that Joshua always wanted to be a Marine and to lead Marines in battle. Dying in a firefight in an iconic battle sounds great as a sometimes notion, but who doesn’t choose just a little more life when presented with the option? Only his to know in those final moments, but his pain remains. From the void we hear shouts of valor and praise – martial celebrations of sacrifice beating the heartdrums of freedom and heroics. Some of Lieutenant’s men and friends and strangers who never knew him will say he died a brave death, he died in service to his nation, his death was noble, for how can such sacrifice equate to waste?
The meaning tries to make sense of the loss. The fixed moment remains inalterable, and some go to great lengths to try to escape the pain of the closeness and immediacy of the grief. And so, we receive this desperate need to distract from closer scrutiny. It pulses through newspapers and pundits and their cultural commentary, it seeps into conversations and confessions and politics, it blots entertainment and music and movies. Memorialize their memory. Celebrate the freedom their death and dismemberment has purchased. Speak no ill of the politics or apparatus that sent servicemembers to their death for it transfers to them.
To speak of the waste, the fraud, and the death of innocents tarnishes the valor of our servicemembers. To question the senselessness and the destruction of war diminishes the sacrifice and death of those who served. To recognize the pain of those who survive, the destruction unleashed on those occupied, and the interests ultimately served in this aggregate of human suffering can inject shame into military service. If the choices are pride or shame, who would choose shame? This binary demands that Sir’s death was not in vain. It commands us to believe Josh’s death was for a glorious cause, but it didn’t feel that way to me.
A humvee departs with Lieutenant Palmer’s body – bound for the playing of Taps and the six-foot-deep gash of earth and the trifolded flag handed to sobbing or stoic parents. I won’t see any of it as we who remain must continue our deployment. So I sit in a makeshift command post waiting to debrief. Lieutenant Palmer’s contorted face and Doc’s expression sit on the inside of my eyelids; appearing every time I close my eyes. I ache and I yearn for tears to wash away the scene – to wash the image far, far away from me. But I cannot cry. I am frayed, exhausted, malnourished, depleted, and unbeknownst to me, it’s not even halfway into the First Battle of Fallujah. There is a debrief, so I give up trying to make myself produce a mournful response that won’t manifest.
Drunk, sober, happy, high, sad, or grieving a veteran brother’s suicide, I remain unable to cry for another six years.
Those six dry years later, I am at the wedding of a former platoon mate, and after the wedding party, it’s the after party, and I am drunk. We are on the other side of our twenties; most of us with beards or longer hair or the bellies of men. I am on my hands and knees sobbing white hot tears for the Iraqi baby boy that we couldn’t save while former comrades-in-arms put their hands on my back and assure me that it’s not my fault. In the darkness of pinched-shut eyes and tears, I see the dead baby and Lieutenant Palmer’s dead face and Doc DeLeon’s dead stare.
But that beautiful baby boy doesn’t have his head blown open until a firefight that happens after Fallujah, months after Lieutenant Palmer dies, and the me sitting in the makeshift command post providing mechanical answers to the after-actions debrief, the one who cannot cry for Lieutenant Palmer, does not know how much worse it can get.
That younger me doesn’t even know how much worse the next day or the next two-and-a-half weeks will get. He doesn’t know how many more deployments await, let alone how many more Private First Classes, Lance Corporals, Corporals, Staff Sergeants, Gunnery Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains, Docs, and veteran suicides and overdoses he will grieve. He doesn’t know how many more families will hear their phones ring. He doesn’t know how many moments remain etched behind how many eyelids. He doesn’t know how many times his own phone will ring, how many times his own heart will break, how many white hot cuts will sear his soul, or how he will get up from his hands and knees with so many millstones anchoring to so many moments.
He doesn’t even know what it was all for. He doesn’t know.
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LA Enck is a writer, educator, and speaker living in South Philly. He writes in a wide array of genres and formats. He speaks on mental health recovery and veteran moral injury as a public health concern. LA is a former basic infantry-person in 1st Battalion 5th Marines having served three deployments in the Invasion of Iraq, the First Battle of Fallujah, and Ramadi. Additionally, he spent four years working for the U.S. House of Representatives and holds a JD degree from the Drexel University School of Law; however, the greatest title he’s earned is Dad.
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