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Fort Hood shooting
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Posted November 9, 2009
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The John Wayne Syndrome, or War Assisted Homicide
PS The picture I have uploaded is of two members of Chapter 03 (Bangor, ME) of the Veterans For Peace group I marched with in 2005. After that year, I got too upset about the war and my own personal situation, isolated in a small hamlet up by the Canadian border with inadequate Department of Veteran's Affairs mental health support, became very angry, and pushed everyone out of my life. I enclose this picture, because it was a happy day in my life. I think that the only parade I could ever march in would be one wearing Veterans For Peace garb, because it expresses my distaste for war! I am a veteran, who is generally opposed to WAR FOR GREED, who also has ambiguous feelings about murdering other people!
The John Wayne Syndrome, or War Assisted Homicide
An interesting post by by Shakti9Dream, about her feelings of loss concerning her Uncle, a Korean War veteran, who went OFF THE RAILS and killed her family members, made me think of my second cousin who I never met.
My Mother and her cousin, from her broken family in depression era Wisconsin, were both US Navy WAVES during WW II. People from distressed families are often enticed in to enlisting in the military service, as a way to GET AWAY FROM A BAD FAMILY SITUATION, and also to adopt another, larger family, called the US military.
I read that Harold Russell, the non-actor who won an Academy Award, playing a Navy Vet who had both hands amputated in the post WW II movie, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, stated that he joined the Army in WW II because he hated himself. I have heard and read about many vets who joined up when jilted by a girlfriend, and in a major funk, looking to redeem their self esteem by going off to war.
Harold Russell spent his life, with hooks for hands, giving uplifting lectures about how to overcome disability. Russell never went off to war, but lost his hands in a WW II training accident, while he was teaching others the use of explosives.
I had my Mother buried at Beverly National Cemetery in 1999, and everybody was surprised by this, as nobody much connected my Mother with military service. Her whole life, she used the nickname of DECI, because when she was a secretary for Roger Revelle in the US Navy during WW II (who later was involved in the Glomar Explorer, a secret ship to locate sunken Russian submarines), people in Washington thought her name was Deci, because she used the word as an abbreviation for the word, decibel. I can only assume that Revelle was involved in submarine, sonar research during WW II, and she told me that I was named Roger, because of her admiration for this man.
My Mother spent most of her life, isolated from her broken family. Her four year old sister, Mildred, had burned to death, after catching fire at the stove, in front of my Mother, when she was three. Her older sister, Pearl, went to live with her Mother, and she was raised by her paternal grandmother in Clintonville, Wisconsin, and then passed around from relative to relative as she grew up. She later told me that she thought she might have been afraid of her Mother, after her middle sister burned to death in front of her.
I didn't see too much of my Mother's family growing up, although I loved them. My feelings about rural Wisconsin was part of the reason I moved to rural Maine. I missed that lovely time of my childhood, living amongst extended family in rural Clintonville (where they made fire engines to replace the WTC disaster).
After Vietnam, and after the bicentennial celebration in 1976, PATRIOTISM, with a large P, got popular again, leading to the election of Reagan in 1980, and the rebuilding of the US Navy. My life was falling apart, slowly, during this period. My Mother got to know her cousin again, who started visiting with her husband, a Colonel in the US Air Force.
During one visit, I stopped around, and then left the large party going on at my Mother's house. Later, I came back, and we were sitting around in an informal manner, some people watching television, and my Mother's cousin said, out of the blue, "Roger! What have you done for your country lately?" This happened about 1978.
My Mother had already informed me that her cousin's middle son, a Vietnam Veteran, was having troubles like I was, and lived at home, unemployed. I was unemployed, but not living at home, but in a similar fix. Obviously, this type of patriotic harassment was what my Mother's cousin did to her son, on a regular basis.
Her oldest son and her youngest son had escaped the Vietnam War by going to college, but her middle son had served in Vietnam, in the US Navy, like his Mom did during WW II. Often, parents have problems with the children who are most like them?
I turned around, looked at her, and said, "I served two tours of duty in Vietnam for my country today? What did you do for your country today?" She didn't say a word! ......LOL
It was a form of backtalk to an older relative, who I hardly knew, at a party, and I imagine it was something her son would never dream of doing to her, but then again, I don't know. Her husband, the Air Force Colonel, looked very pleased that I had expressed those feelings, as obviously, his wife was pissed with her middle child, the Vietnam Veteran, because he had not gotten his life in order, and resumed it in the way it was before he went off to war. Apparently, she expected her son to have the same kind of life as her other sons, who had escaped the war by going to college.
Within a few years, I had become homeless, living in a tent, and then living in a Section 8 apartment building with SSI government disability assistance, despite having a Associate Degree in Accounting. I had refused treatment at a VA hospital, due to my feelings about the nasty, professional baby killers who ruled the military and the VA (the professional officer corps who looked forward to killing people for a career). Any suggestion of psychiatric weakness will result in a label of PUSSY, for a man claiming that coerced military service (trying to kill people you have no grudge against) upset him. I am no longer concerned about such labels, and people can label me however they wish.
About 1985, I asked about my Mother's cousin's son, the middle child who had served in Vietnam, while his brothers escaped the war by going to college (like Dick Cheney or Bill Clinton). My Mother quietly told me that he had taken his Dad's (the Colonel's) handgun, and shot himself in the head. Apparently, she didn't tell me about it when it happened, for fear I might kill myself, also.
The only person I have had ACTUAL PLANS to kill, and tried them out on, unsuccessfully, a few times, was myself. Suicide is HOMICIDE OF THE SELF. Some people kill themselves. Others kill themselves and other humans at the same time.
We are generally much more satisfied with a suicide, than a suicide/homicide, for obvious reasons. Not too many people would have been upset if Major Hassan had just killed himself, WHICH IS PROBABLY WHY HE TRIED TO TAKE OTHERS WITH HIM (failing to kill himself, as his his life is being saved, so we can judge him, question him, and then kill him for good).
We would all be much happier if Major Hassan had killed himself, and left the rest of us in peace! If he wanted to make a public statement, he could have set himself on fire in public, like the angry man did, outside of Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara's office, during an anti-war demonstration, circa 1966.
I, myself, have had hundreds of fantasies of setting myself ablaze in public, perhaps wrapped in an American flag, and while in Vietnam, I thought about setting myself ablaze on the US Capitol steps. If you remember, many of us watched two Vietnamese monks setting themselves on fire during public demonstrations in Vietnam, on CBS nightly news (circa 1964), and even the war protestor (a Quaker) did this outside of McNamara's office, which affected McNamara deeply, as he wrote about it in his book, many years later.
Killing of the self is much more acceptable than the killing of others. I think that there were many factors in my second cousin's suicide, but I can easily understand how the stress of war may have added to the stress of life, and perhaps pushed him over the edge. How would you feel if your Mother harassed you with questions of, "What did you do for your country today?", when in truth, you were the one of three sons who served in a war?
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