During spring break of 2015 – my sophomore year of high school – my father and I traveled to Snowmass Colorado for a ski vacation. When we arrived, our senses were bombarded with the reality of hundreds of disabled veterans staying at the same hotel as they attended the National Veterans Disabled Sports Clinic. Over the next four days, I enjoyed skiing and spending time with my father, but my lasting memories and takeaways emanate from my interactions and observations involving the men and women who came back from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan paralyzed, having lost limbs, sightless or mentally not the same as before. I spoke to a smart, funny, friendly guy in his twenties named Javier as we sat in the hot tub sharing stories about my day skiing and his day kayaking in a specially modified kayak. He talked about struggling to stay in shape in the years since returning from Iraq in a wheelchair. I rode the chairlift with a snowboarder who had lost both legs in Afghanistan. And throughout the week, I saw one veteran after another engaging in the camaraderie that comes from shared experience and an understanding of pain, fear, optimism and despondency that I have no business even trying to understand or describe. I left understanding for the first time what a true war story looks like. I did not have the term true war story as part of my vocabulary as I had not yet read The Things They Carried or begun reading Phil Klay’s redeployment. Nonetheless, as I look back, the days at Snowmass opened my eyes to the truth of war – a truth I had never before bothered to accept or even consider. War is graduating from high school as a pole vaulter or football player, with a summer job as a lifeguard or construction worker, with dreams of hiking alongside a future girlfriend or boyfriend and then having that future irrevocably altered in a split second. After reading The Things They Carried, I went to the National Veterans Disabled Sports Clinic website and sifted through images trying to recreate what I had felt in Snowmass exactly one year ago. During that week, I felt gratitude and admiration for the many volunteers who helped the men and women attending the clinic to ski, scuba dive, play sled hockey, snowboard and kayak, but my main reaction was to wonder how these disabled veterans found the incredible inner strength necessary to adjust to the unimaginable changes that war had put upon on them.
In the collage, I attempt to recreate the visuals that so impacted me and my perspective about the true nature of war. Any romanticized notion about fighting for one’s country was erased that week. War became the paralyzed skiers wearing their camouflage jackets, and the amputees and spinal cord victims being lowered into the pool to scuba dive or fitted on sleds to play ice hockey. It also stared back at me as I watched the double amputee smiling as he learned how to snowboard and the Vietnam veteran kayaking with one arm. I saw the extraordinary spirit emanating from their faces, and I asked myself then and I ask myself now one burning question. “Why?” Why did they have to endure this pain. Why did they have to be subject to these life altering tragedies? Why did they have to see best friends die next to them on the battlefield? When we contemplate who will be our next President, is there any issue greater than assessing whether that leader understands the gravity of what is at stake when one goes to war?
The image that keeps coming back into my thoughts and daydreams is the one of the disabled veteran in his wheelchair with his girlfriend sitting on his lap, staring at him with love while she wears his hat. Both of their lives have been dramatically impacted by his “true war story.” How many relationships and dreams and aspirations have been twisted beyond recognition by the violence of war? How many have not survived in the manner of hope portrayed in this photo? I can’t look away. I don’t want to look away. And when I look at the photo of the American flag underneath the banner celebrating this winter sports extravaganza, I am reminded that for me, the true war images at Snowmass that week were of the disabled veterans, not a flag or a banner. I would ask everyone who speaks abstractly or strategically or all knowingly about the reasons to fight a war to read as many true war stories and to look at as many true war photos as one can find and to experience an afternoon doing something similar to sitting in a hot tub with a paralyzed veteran as he talks about how much more difficult it is now for him to stay in shape than it was when he participated in cross country and track just a few years earlier when he was in high school.
Bibliography
Flickr. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
Klay, Phil, and Phil Klay. Redeployment. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2016
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762/
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. New York: Broadway, 1998. Print.
Yeats, W. B. The Wild Swans at Coole. New York: The Macmillan company, 1919; Bartleby.com, 1999
This post had a really strong connection to what we learned about in The Things They Carried when soldiers would come home and how life would be like for them. I like how you used your personal experience to show us just how hard it is for these injured war veterans to live a normal life. When you wrote that it is hard for you to understand the pain, fear, optimism and despondency it drew me in because we hear all of these terrible war stories, and there is no way that we could ever understand what they went through. I also liked how you made a collage showing different struggles that these different soldiers had whether it be swimming, kayaking, skiing, etc. When you say that this experience opened you up to a new truth of war, it shows me that during your experience, you saw a new side of the aftermath of war. Your piece does a really good job of showing what life is like after the war for soldiers.
ReplyDeleteThis gives a great perspective on someone who is just beginning to learn about the true meaning of war. The writer tells his own story that very clearly conveys the message of what veterans go through. I like how he sees some of these people and learns about the hardships they now have in life. He also asks a lot of great questions about how these soldiers are able to live and be happy after everything that has happened. The statement makes the collage a lot more meaningful and makes this message a lot more powerful.
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