Can we squeeze the glory out of the word \u201cwar\u201d? Can we talk about savage irrationality and lifelong inner hell instead? Can we talk about the wreckage of two countries?<\/p>\n
Can we talk about spiritual cancer?<\/p>\n
In the extraordinary documentary On the Bridge<\/em> \u2014 an unstinting look at the reality of war and the terror of PTSD, directed by Olivier Morel \u2014 each of the six Iraq vets who opens his or her heart in the course of the film has a moment of deep, almost unbearable silence at the end, staring into the camera and through the camera at the viewer . . . and at the nation they are committed to waking up. In that silence, those are the questions that begin to emerge.<\/p>\n On the Bridge<\/em> bares the deep psychic wounds of America\u2019s returning vets \u2014 \u201cI liken (PTSD) to the comedic scene of opening a closet and stuff keeps falling out,\u201d Jason Moon said at one point \u2014 but it does much more than that as well. It puts these wounds into context: We are the aggressor nation, not simply at the geopolitical level, invading and occupying a nation and commandeering its resources, but at human level, with American GIs routinely dehumanizing and brutalizing Iraqis on the streets and in their homes.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was over there, a lot of saddening stuff happened,\u201d Moon explained. \u201cI couldn\u2019t process it \u2014 I couldn\u2019t cry. I\u2019d have been considered a pussy. You have to stay in the group. If you lose your position, it\u2019s dangerous. So you just kind of stuff it all down. Then you get home . . . \u2018we\u2019d like to talk to you.\u2019 You open that door to converse with an emotion \u2014 it\u2019s gigantic. Never (before) in my life did I have emotions I couldn\u2019t control.\u201d<\/p>\n But the reason for the enormity of these emotions \u2014 provoking endless thoughts of suicide \u2014 is because the vets are haunted by guilt over what they witnessed and what they did.<\/p>\n \u201cI laughed as I heard a story,\u201d said Ryan Endicott. \u201cOne of the platoons had strapped dead bodies from a gunfight on the hoods of their Humvees and then drove around the city for hours. . . . One (day) they brought in a car that had just been shot up. The driver\u2019s fully intact brain was sitting in the back seat of the car. I walked over to the body bag with the passenger in it. The bag began twitching and we could hear his body still attempting to breathe. We laughed as we stomped the bag.\u201d<\/p>\n And Moon: \u201cWe had some soldiers who would do some really nasty things. They played this game \u2014 if the kids come under the yellow tape, you\u2019re allowed to butt stroke them in the head. This is the standing rule. The kids know it. So the soldiers would take a $20 bill and they\u2019d bury it in the sand with just a little bit of the leaf hanging out. Then they\u2019d go hide behind the trucks and pretend like they weren\u2019t watching.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a month\u2019s pay, twenty bucks, for an Iraqi. So eventually some Iraqi kid comes and starts eying it up, and then as soon as he got under the tape they\u2019d come out with the butts of their rifles. It was like a game. They were trying to lure the kid in so they could hit him.\u201d<\/p>\n Moon, who was a convoy driver, also talked about the orders all drivers were given at one point: \u201cIf kids get in the road, we\u2019re ordered to run them over. Don\u2019t stop \u2014 it could be an ambush. I said I can\u2019t do that. I have a 3-year-old at home. I\u2019d rather die fighting insurgents than run over a kid. I told the chain of command \u2018I can\u2019t.\u2019 They heard \u2018I won\u2019t.\u2019 They stuck me in the rear of the convoy \u2014 the most dangerous spot.\u201d<\/p>\n Grappling with his incredulity at such orders \u2014 at how few of his fellow soldiers acknowledged that running over children, that mistreating Iraqi civilians, might provoke hatred and fuel the insurgency \u2014 he said: \u201cI literally felt like I was in an alternate universe. I was almost convinced for a while this was by design, that there has to be some mad genius (who decided) we need a perpetual war. How can we make this happen? . . . I started going numb.\u201d<\/p>\n Such truth-telling begins to get at the flavor of On the Bridge<\/em>. The film opens up the private consciences of deeply troubled, painfully articulate, young men and women. Also appearing in the film are the parents and sister of Jeffrey Lucey, a former Marine and Iraq vet who hanged himself in 2004. The family talked with remarkable candor about Jeff\u2019s ordeal, about the private hell that no one could penetrate.<\/p>\n As his father, Kevin, put it: \u201cPTSD is a cancer of the spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the horrors Jeff wrestled with was the fact he had killed two Iraqi soldiers at close range. He was ordered to shoot. They said, \u201cPull the fucking trigger.\u201d He closed his eyes and shot. For the rest of his life, he wore the dog tags of the two soldiers around his neck. \u201cHe felt personally responsible for their deaths,\u201d his sister said. \u201cHe wore the tags around his neck to honor them. It reminded him every day of what he did.\u201d<\/p>\n Vet suicides have been skyrocketing. According to a figure cited at the end of the film, they may be as high as 8,000 a year now. The VA is an inept bureaucracy, utterly unable to cope with a problem they can\u2019t fix in any case, because the problem plunges to the bottom of the American soul. The vets who take their lives are trying to atone for what they were told to do, what they were forced to turn into, in the name of their country.<\/p>\n __________________<\/p>\n Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound <\/strong>(Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.<\/em><\/p>\n