The effects of combat…human emotions and caring for animals

The effects of combat…human emotions and caring for animals


I am writing this so friends and people may understand a bit about me
in relation to caring for animals, as I receive posts about animal cruelty.

I ignore watching almost all posts about animal cruelty; it's depressing,
and from what I survived in Vietnam I came home numb. Emotionally
numb. Therefore, I try to protect myself from watching animals being
brutalized.

I watch more videos about people being harmed by police, or in Palestine
I'll watch the brutality meted out to Palestinians and their supporters.
And, I limit that, but not as much. I limit the bad because I believe it's
not good to watch too much. I know what can happen.

I also believe that spending too much time watching such videos can
lead to a sense of powerlessness. But, mostly, what happens to humans
bothers me much, much more.

I wasn't in Vietnam a month when another platoon member took me to
see a show, as it were. There was a huge pit, conical shaped that went
down about 30 feet or so that was used to burn/blow up trash. But, this
day other marines were spread out around the rim of the hole (a guess is
about 20 feet across.

There was an air of excitement amongst those already there. A marine was
at the base of the pit with a monkey, and he was teaching the monkey how
to pull the pin of a hand grenade. Once he felt the monkey got the idea he
ran up the sides of the hill and over the top. A few men had rifles trained
on the monkey in case he tried running up the hill.

There would be just one outcome, and soon enough we saw the explosion,
and as the speed of sound is slower than the speed of light, we then heard
the explosion. I may have felt a tiny bit bad, but to survive combat, or just
being in a war zone as a grunt (rifleman) I had to 'not feel,' or not have
feelings about such things. It's self protectection.

In war there are times when the choice is to do right, or wrong in relation to
people, their animals, possessions, home etc. That is doing the right thing
ethically, although I never thought of it that way, and was never confronted
with an order to burn down a family home. Thank God.

But, at other times there is a choice, that to me, was not about ethics, but
a choice between living and dying. In February, 1969, on a jungle ridge in
the A Shau valley at Fire Support Base (FSB) Cunningham my team leader
and I had to put our combat knives to the throats of marines in panic on our
first night.

They began crying, and saying "We're all gonna die they (North Vietnamese
Army NVA sappers - suicide bombers) get in the wire every night."

The third night two men came running towards our bunker in the dark, and
they were screaming "There all around us; we're gonna die..." Once again we
put knives to their throats to shut them up, and sent them back to their bunker.
We then had to listen to them scream as a sapper got into their bunker, and
began knifing them until his six second charge wound down and exploded
killing all three.

In the morning I had to wipe the bunker clean of human remains so the new
guys coming in by chopter wouldn't know. The hardest part for me was not
crying because I didn't want another marine knowing I had cried, so I stuffed
it way down deep. But, it is always with me, and will be till I die.

When I got out of the marines I shot a cat one night, and regretted it
immediately. But, there is a part of me that has insulated myself from feelings
because there is enough pain in me. I survived seeing and carrying the dead, or
being with a friend when his hand blew open, and more. But, what was essential
to surviving was not to let feelings interfere with keeping my senses intact. I'm
not the only one.

There is a buffer within that keeps pain from overwhelming me and rendering
me useless in a sense.

So, if I have a bit of milk with coffee I don't feel bad, but I am moving away
from it. I can use rice milk if necessary.

I love good quality fish and chips, but it is less than once a month. I'm
moving away from fish, not out of ethical concerns, but because I don't
trust eating fish because the oceans are polluted with radioactivity, and more.

You see, war left me damaged, but also with the ability to survive, and
an ability to balance what's bad to others with far worse that I've seen, and
a way to size up which is worse. Eating a chicken, or an egg. To me, eating
a chicken is worse.  But, I don't eat meat, and I try to live and let live.

I lived in Vermont for ten years; a hunter's paradise, but I never hunted
animals because there is nothing heroic about shooting a deer, bear, moose,
or anything with a high powered rifle with a scope.