War Wounds Run Deep
Dealing with grief
Henry here. The local paper carried a story headlined: “We now know where they are.” It seems an allied plane which was carrying weapons to the polish resistance was shot down in 1944.
The wreckage was only found last year and the funeral ceremony for the airmen held in Krakow a short time ago. The 52 year-old woman who wrote that headline was not even alive when the plane was shot down, yet this service was very meaningful to her. This brings two things to mind.
1) Grief can take a lifetime to be dealt with. In fact as I listen to some old Celtic songs I can hear the tragedy and sadness built into them from hundreds of years ago.
2) The war has been over for over six decades, but many scars still remain. Parents who were involved in battle or in war work often had little or no time for their children and the children can feel that even today. So despite their best efforts the children grew up with a hole in their ability to relate to others, often especially in their ability to relate at depth to men, since their fathers were gone.
So some people, now in retirement, have gone through their lives with what is often an unconscious wound. Something critical was left out in their developing years and they have often never understood what it was.
How much more will this be true for veteran’s children of the Gulf war? Like the Vietnam War, many civilians look down on the conflict as a waste of time, money, and lives. Just the way that vets are being treated indicates how the country sees them and their sacrifices. In my view, the scars from the old wars continue and the new ones are just being formed.