Chaplain's Corner

Military service is a touchy subject, especially in this area where many were conscientious objectors and many served as members of the Canadian Armed Forces. As a young man, I registered dutifully for the draft when I turned 18. I can remember the tension filled days leading up to draft day when I watched the news hoping that my birth date would not be drawn early in the lottery that would determine which 18 year olds would be called to go to Vietnam. I’ll be honest, I was scared, I have always been a gentle soul and don’t know what such an experience might have done to me or if I would have even survived a tour in Vietnam.

Friday is Remembrance Day, whether one of our relatives served or not, many men and women did and many gave their lives, literally, and those who came home were changed forever by those experiences. The propaganda machines that put out war movies and pumped out the news reels often pictured military service as exciting and action packed, as an affair for the “man’s man”. There are very few of those “man’s men” around, most were normal fellows who were conscripted or volunteered out of a sense of duty or patriotism or fear of what might come if someone didn’t step up and join the fight.

On Remembrance Day we need to remember much more than the fallen soldiers who are buried in foreign graves – these should never be forgotten. We need to remember as well the mental, emotional and spiritual carnage created by those experiences. The spiritual and mental wounds suffered by those who returned are often overlooked. Worse yet, those carrying these wounds are often looked down upon as failing to be the stalwart soldier that returns home, head held high. These are not failed soldier, they are wounded ones.

Many of us will never ever experience what many of our military men and women experienced. Many of us will not see the horrors some of them have witnessed and will never be awakened in the night terrorized by visions of long past events that they cannot purge from their minds. Many of us will never wonder why they can’t engage like they once did, why they never feel safe, why that sneaking feeling of impending calamity hangs like fog in the back of their minds. But there are many who have served in military action that just can’t shake the images, the sounds, the smells and the feelings that the trauma of war imprinted in their souls.

To these I draw special attention to this Remembrance Day. I have brushed shoulders with some of these. My father-in-law suffered deeply with what is now called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. When he returned from his war experience (he had seen battle in North Africa and in one of the bloodiest battles to take Italy from the Axis forces) he was not his old self, he was forever altered by the ravages of war.

Never again would he be a fun loving father or happy husband. He would live out his life doing little more than functioning, working but hardly relating: misunderstood by his wife and family who had no understand of what was wrong with this veteran they called husband and father. No one understood PTSD at that time. The family unit suffered and each member of the family was infected by second hand trauma as being traumatized by the spiritual and mental wounds that war left on the one who returned.

Whatever you do this Remembrance Day, stop and remember that although war has proven to be an inevitable human reality, there is a time coming when those who have looked in faith to God will remember war no more and when a healing so deep and so comprehensive will erase these wounds forever.