THE WARRIOR’S CODE OF HONOR
As a combat veteran wounded in one of America’s wars, I offer to speak
for those who cannot. Were the mouths of my fallen front-line friends not
stopped with dust, they would testify that life revolves around honor. In
war, it is understood that you give your word of honor to do your duty --
that is -- stand and fight instead of running away and deserting your
friends. When you keep your word despite desperately desiring to flee the
screaming hell all around, you earn honor. Earning honor under fire changes
who you are.
The blast furnace of battle burns away impurities encrusting your soul. The
white-hot forge of combat hammers you into a hardened, purified warrior
willing to die rather than break your word to friends -- your honor.
Combat is scary but exciting. You never feel so alive as when being shot at
without result.
You never feel so triumphant as when shooting back -- with result. You never
feel love so pure as that burned into your heart by friends willing to die
to keep their word to you. And they do. The biggest sadness of your life is
to see friends falling. The biggest surprise of your life is to survive the
war. Although still alive on the outside, you are dead inside -- shot thru
the heart with nonsensical guilt for living while friends died. The biggest
lie of your life torments you that you could have done something more,
different, to save them.
Their faces are the tombstones in your weeping eyes, their souls shine the
true camaraderie you search for the rest of your life but never find. You
live a different world now. You always will. Your world is about waking up
night after night silently screaming, back in battle. Your world is about
your best friend bleeding to death in your arms, howling in pain for you to
kill him. Your world is about shooting so many enemies the gun turns red and
jams, letting the enemy grab you. Your world is about struggling
hand-to-hand for one more breath of life. You never speak of your world.
Those who have seen combat do not talk about it. Those who talk about it
have not seen combat.
You come home but a grim ghost of he who so lightheartedly went off to war.
But home no longer exists. That world shattered like a mirror the first time
you were shot at.
The hurricane winds of war have hurled you far away to a different world --
the Warrior’s World -- where your whole life is about keeping your word or
die trying.
But people in the civilian world have no idea that life is about keeping
your word -- they think life is about babies and business. The distance
between the two worlds is as far as Mars from Earth. This is why, when you
come home, you feel like an outsider -- a visitor from another planet. You
are.
People you knew before the war try to make contact. It is useless. Words
fall like bricks between you. Serving with warriors who died proving their
word has made prewar friends seem too untested to be trusted – thus they are
now mere acquaintances. And they often stay that way because, like most
battle-hardened Warriors, you prefer not to risk fully trusting anyone whose
life is not devoted to keeping their word, their honor.
The hard truth is that doing your duty under fire makes you alone, a
stranger in your own home town. The only time you are not alone is when with
another combat veteran. Only he understands that keeping your word, your
honor, whilst standing face to face with death gives meaning and purpose to
life. Only he understands that spending a mere 24 hours in the broad, sunlit
uplands of battle-proven honor is more deeply satisfying to a man than
spending a whole lifetime in safe, comfortably numb civilian life with DNA
compelling him to anguish endlessly over whether he is a brave man or a
coward. Only he understands that your terrifying – but thrilling – dance
with death has made your old world of babies, backyards and ballgames seem
deadly dull. Only he understands that your way of being due to combat
damaged emotions is not the un-usual, but the usual, and you are OK.
Although you walk thru life alone, you are not lonely. You have a constant
companion from combat -- Death. It stands close behind, a little to the
left. Death whispers in your ear: “Nothing matters outside my touch, and I
have not touched you...YET!”
Death never leaves you -- it is your best friend, your most trusted advisor,
your wisest teacher. Death teaches you that every day above ground is a fine
day.
Death teaches you to feel fortunate on good days, and bad days...well, they
do not exist.
Death teaches you that merely seeing one more sunrise is enough to fill your
cup of life to the brim -- pressed down and running over!
Death teaches you that you can postpone its touch by earning serenity.
Serenity is earned by a lot of prayer and acceptance. Acceptance is taking
one step out of denial and accepting/allowing your repressed, painful combat
memories to be re-lived/suffered thru/shared with other combat vets -- and
thus de-fused. Each time you accomplish this act of courage/desperation: the
pain gets less; more tormenting combat demons hiding in the darkness of your
gut are thrown out into the sunlight of awareness, where they disappear in a
puff of smoke; the less bedeviling combat demons, the more serenity earned;
serenity is, regretfully, rather an indistinct quality, but it manifests as
a sense of honor, a sense of calm, and gratitude to your creator – which
lengthens life span.
Down thru the dusty centuries it has always been thus. It always will be,
for what is seared into a man’s soul who stands face to face with death
never changes.
Writer’s Note:
This work attempts to describe the world as seen thru the eyes of a combat
veteran. It is a world virtually unknown to the public because few veterans talk
about it. This is unfortunate since people who are trying to understand, and
make meaningful contact with combat veterans, are kept in the dark. Those who
wonder why they cannot connect with combat veterans need look no further than
these few lines to understand why this is so. How do you establish a rapport
with a combat veteran?
It is very simple:
Demonstrate to him out in the open in front of God and everybody that you too
have a Code of Honor --that is, you also keep your word -- no matter what! Do it
and you will forge a bond. Do it not and you will not. End of story. Case
closed.
I offer these poor, inadequate words – bought not taught – in the hope that they
may shed some small light on why combat veterans are like they are, and how they
can fix it. It is my life desire that this tortured work, despite its many
defects, may yet still provide some tiny sliver of understanding which may
blossom into tolerance – nay, acceptance – of a Warrior’s perhaps unconventional
way of being due to combat-damaged emotions from doing his duty under fire.
Signed, a Purple Heart Medal recipient who wishes to remain an unknown soldier.
Life Member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart (MOPH), member number
L63550. Life Member of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV)