Among combat veterans acronyms possess an almost prophetic identity. The very spare lettering conceals the pain and spiritual agony once the meaning is clear. BNR(body not recovered), KIA (killed in action, MIA (missing in action), WIA (wounded in action) and SIW (self inflicted wound) are all standard military connotations dealing with casualties of war. As a combat medic in Viet Nam I had total responsibility for the lives under my hands and none of the power to save them. The current wars are invisible to the American public, just as we the warriors are. This detachment from the killing ground, this abandonment of us is the root cause of the suicide epidemic among returning Iraq and Afghan veterans. It has also re-invoked the ghosts of Viet Nam and as a national remembrance fired the discussion of the Civil War.

The American Civil War (1861-1865) happened as a result of the self inflicted wound crippling the nation at birth. The US Constitution enshrined chattel human slavery in its document and thus knowingly and consciously prepped us for bloody conflict. James Madison, a founding father and President remarked that slavery was a time bomb waiting to explode. The explosion when it came was almost apocalyptic for the nation. The highest loss of life in any American war, 625,000 dead and the first total war waged not only on the battlefield but in the towns and cities. Washington DC, Richmond, Atlanta, Vicksburg and Fredericksburg all were besieged and shelled. On a single day in September of 1862 at Antietam (Sharpsburg) Md. 23,000 Americans killed each other. It is still the greatest loss of life in battle for Americans of any war. Like many Americans raised in the crucible of war time I visited Civil war national battle fields as a child with my family. Gettysburg was one. As an adult and father I took my children to Manassas (Bull Run) and Antietam. These visits were after my own participation in war. It was Bloody Lane at Antietam that conjured the ghosts of Viet Nam. I could hear the cries of the dying and see the faces of the dead I knew. It is these wounds that never heal.

In my unit during my tour in Viet Nam we had several suicides and self inflicted wounds. The SIW’s were done in the attempt to get home, alive. One of my comrades pointed the muzzle of an M-16 at his foot thinking to blow off just the little toe. He failed to remember that the rifle barrel is beveled to cause the round to tumble and inflict maximum damage. It took his foot off. I am confounded by the psychology of maiming oneself to escape untenable conditions, but I have seen it over and over. Pain, physical or spiritual, can cripple our thinking, and thus magnify injury. In order for us to heal there has to be an admission of wrongdoing. We have to look in the mirror of our history and accept that the Constitution was warped and that we need to set it right.

Dave Ionno
Veteran for peace and against all wars

It is called the hurt locker. This is the place that all members of the military eventually visit. Combat veterans spend more time in it, but all veterans and especially medical personnel, are familiar with its infinite pain. The more skin you have in the game the deeper the hurt.

I am still in the hurt locker. I spent 16 years in the US Army. Thirteen years as an Army brat and then a 3 year enlistment as a volunteer for Viet Nam. I was a medic with the 23rd Infantry, infamous for its killing of over 300 Vietnamese men, women and infants. My war has come from behind me to sit now every day in front of my face. 

Ft. Hood is the latest revelation from the hurt locker. The Major who killed and wounded his comrades was chained in the hurt locker by his pain and rage. The pain was absorbed from the comrades he aided and the rage was fed by inability to stop the pain. Hunters have discovered traps with the gnawed off limb of an animal still in it. This is an apt description of the hurt locker.

Charlie Liteky and Hugh Thompson are perhaps the best two examples of veterans who escaped the hurt locker and somehow preserved their humanity. Charlie Liteky was a chaplain with the 199th Infantry in Viet Nam in 1967. During a firefight he personally dragged 20 men to choppers while under constant fire.  He received the Medal of Honor. In July of 1986 he returned and renounced the Medal of Honor. He left in a brown paper at the Viet Nam Veterans Wall in Washington DC. He was out of the hurt locker. 

Hugh Thompson is the Cobra Gunship pilot who leveled his mini-guns on Capt Medina and Lt. Calley at My Lai in 1968 and promised he would waste them if they didn’t immediately cease firing on Vietnamese women and children.  He was ostracized and forgotten about until he was awarded the Soldiers Medal in March of 1998.  He has since died of cancer. 

These two veterans walked out of the hurt locker by retaining their humanity and resisting the killing and pain that surrounded them.  The US military is being used and abused by its general officers and the civilian leadership of this country.  I fear what is hidden and yet to come out of the hurt locker. 

Dave ionno
Veteran for peace and Viet Nam veteran against War

Jeff Bartos from the CT chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War discussed his path to anti-war activism and his experiences at the G20 protests in Pittsburgh.

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RadioActive takes you to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Hartford, CT where the IVAW of CT staged a protest called Operation First Casualty.

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