Bitterness and misunderstanding may mar the homecoming of your serviceman if you are not fully prepared to help him re-establish himself in normal living
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STACY HARRIS knows that, to a returned soldier,
home may be only a series of disturbing problems
instead of the haven about which he has dreamed.
Judged 4F by the U.S. Army, Harris got overseas
as an American Field Service volunteer, and then
finished out the African campaign with the British
and Free French Armies. Wounded, decorated and
discharged, he is now heard in many favorite NBC
dramas. |
By STACY HARRIS
AS TOLD TO THE EDITOR
There isn't a soldier anywhere who doesn't dream about coming home. Believe me, I know how you dream about it.
I dreamed too. No, that's wrong. It's not dreaming exactly. It's thinking. It's thinking constantly of the things you took so much for granted. At night, in some muddy hole, you'd think about a real, honest-to-goodness bed with clean white sheets and the warmth you could never seem to get where you were. When you ate, you always thought of the way tables looked at home, white linen, sparkling dishes and shining silver. And the food--you though a lot about that.
No, it's not dreaming. It's an obsession with every man at the front, the constant comparison between the uncomfortable, sleepless, changing present and the sane, safe and comfortable life he has left behind him. I think every soldier at some time has sent this prayer climbing to the steep: Dear God, let me get home all right and I'll never gripe again!
Well, I got home. I got home, and everything looked the same but it wasn't the same. I wasn't the same either, I guess. And this is no gripe. It's an attempt to tell you how the soldier you know may feel when he comes home.
A funny thing happens when you've fought in the war. You change. You grow up fast and get tougher--not mean, but able to take lots of things you couldn't take before. You get so you can stand on your own two feet. You learn that the lives of lots of men may depend on how well you can stand on your won feet. I learned that. All the men who've seen action and met the enemy have learned it the hard way and well.
Yet, all the time you're learning this, when you think about home, you think about its being the same as when you left. You think about how it will be. You think about how the things you'll say and do. You think about it a lot. Then you come home and it isn't like that at all. This is how it is. This is how it's been for lots of the soldier I know.
Men discharged for dependency reasons are perhaps the luckiest ones. Most people are anxious to help them locate jobs and places to live. There are always a few people who make remarks about their being goldbricks and getting out of the Army on false pretenses but not many. Such people usually have someone in the Army themselves and are a little jealous. Some people, of course, are too anxious to help, and that too can be bad. After awhile, these people begin to make the boys feel foolish or as if they need charity. Still, men in this classification are pretty lucky and get jobs without too much trouble or fuss. Most people understand and are kind.
But thousands of men are being discharged every month from the Armed Forces, and very few of them are released because of dependencies. The majority are men who have seen service in combat and who have been wounded or men who have suffered what is called
battle fatigue, or men who have turned out to be psychologically unsuited to the job of soldering. This last category is a tough one to be in, tough in all ways.
In the Army there are jokes about
Section 8, which is what the psychopathic wards in G.I. hospitals are called. It seems to me there are always jokes everywhere about psychopathic wards. It also seems to me that this is nothing to joke about, especially in the Army, because I know that many of the men who find themselves in Section 8--for observation, or because of battle fatigue--are not crazy by a long shot. The Army doctors don't think they're crazy or irresponsible and neither do their buddies. They don't get along in the Army, sure, and they are nervous and undependable under stress. But don't many civilians go to pieces when they're in the wrong job? And remember the Army is plenty tough job.
A Section 8 discharge, however, seems to be the worst kind to get. Like a guy I know. I'll call him Joe because that's not his name. Joe was a nice guy, not a goldbrick, and sincere about soldiering. But the first time he went into actual battle maneuvers he cracked--and not because he was a coward. The simulated chaos of battle conditions confused and bewildered him. He tried. The tried so hard he bit his lip through and sobbed and cursed himself at the same time. He had a job to do and fell down on it. The knowledge of his failure coupled with the shock he received broke him completely.
Joe was sent to the hospital and was put in Section 8. After awhile he was discharged. To tell the truth, most of his Company was glad for him. He had no business in the Army in the first place. They didn't think he was mentally deranged or insane. He just couldn't take it.
I ran into Joe a couple of weeks ago in New York. That was a funny place for him to be, because his home was in the Middle West. Joe was bucking that Section 8 discharge. His employers had questioned him when he went for his old job--and they regretted it very much but there was no job for anyone with--to put it mildly--and unbalanced mind. Joe's a quiet guy and he took that. He had to take a lot more of the same thing though, before he finally landed a job with a sensible employer who realized that the Army wouldn't release anyone who was insane, or incompetent, or dangerous.
That's a bad thank, that attitude toward Section 8 discharges. When I think of all the people in civilian life who are being psychoanalyzed and brag about it and tell you about their maladjustments and phobias all the time and hold down responsible jobs without anyone questioning them, I get mad. The men discharged from the Army because they couldn't make the necessary mental adjustments shouldn't be punished for something that isn't their fault. Some people can't make adjustments as easily as other. Some people never can become adjusted to certain things. And other people, who can make adjustments, use so much effort and so much nervous strain that they break down in the end too.
In an Army chosen the way ours has been, there are bound to be mistakes in selection and, if it takes a psychiatrist to weed them out later and leads to Section 8 discharges, the men so discharged shouldn't be penalized for having tried and failed. These men are not insane. Many of the them are a lot saner than some of those civilians who are running around being psychoanalyzed. They're perfectly capable of doing their old work, or learning something new. The only thing they can't take is being looked upon an mentally incompetent. And if too many people go on treating them as though they were to be shunned and feared, they are liable to become unbalanced. Who wouldn't?
When I think of Joe and of another guy I know who got a medical discharge and had such a hard time getting a job that he even went so far as to make himself out to be a hero in order to get a chance, I begin to think there's a lot of work for us here at home to do. It shouldn't be necessary for veterans to struggle so hard and to fight against so many odds in order to win for themselves a little self-respect and get back their places in civilian life. After all, they went into the Army willingly and were ready to do anything they could. You don't need me to tell you what they've done. We owe them all at least what they left behind if not a whole lot more.
Not that they want gratitude. There's nothing a returning serviceman hates so much as gushing gratitude. They hate sentimentality. They don't like having people make a fuss about them. They don't like people acting idiotically as though they thought each individual soldier had won the war single handed. They're smarter than that. They know what they did and what it was worth. All they want is to get back to normal living, to what they left to fight for--as quickly as they've got a right to expect.
I know a swell fellow, a mechanic, who was wounded and discharged. He got back to normal living but it took doing. He'd lost his left arm. He's grown used to the idea, and the way people react to it, but now. He talked about it to me at one time, though.
"It was bad in the beginning," he told me. "A mechanic needs his hands, both of them. I couldn't figure what the hell I was going to do. It kind of made me feel like I wasn't all of a man. That 's a lousy feeling. And after I was discharged, I'd walk down the street and people would look at me and sometimes I'd hear things they'd say and I'd want to slug them. My wife was good about it though. I worried about her the most, I guess. I sued to lie on that hospital bed and think of how her face would look when she saw me again and I'd go cold inside. But when she got her first look at me, it was all right. She looked in my face and I could see that she was glad and happy that I was back and she patted my should and said we'd fix it all right. That girl of mine worked with me. She didn't just talk. And now I don't miss it as much as I thought I would."
He talked more too. He said the hardest thing to stand was pity, people pitying him and doing things for him they wouldn't do for other men. They pity, the pampering, would bring back that feeling about not being a man any more. And he hated that. Almost as much, he hated the jovial people who slapped him on the back and pretended not to notice anything wrong. "An arm's a big thing not to notice," he said. "Hell, they've led normal lives. Why don't they just act that way? That's all I ask."
Everybody who comes back from the war isn't going to be wounded though. There will be lots of men returned, the vast majority of whom have nothing external to show for their long time away. They'll look pretty much the same as when they went away, maybe a little older, a little more serious. But they won't be the same. And it won't be anything they can change. You here at home will have to change. Your part of his war starts the day he comes back in to his home. Make sure he'll be glad to be back, and stay.
You'll be different to him too, of course. Things will have been happening to all of you. But it would be a big mistake to try to tell any of our returned soldiers how tough the war has been on civilians. It hasn't been so tough, not nearly as tough as in many other countries. And even if it had been ten times as bad, no one at home could ever match what they've been through.
We ought to be getting ready for this job now. Some civilians are already getting ready because they realize how important it is. Down in Louisiana, they're planning one hundred local information and referral centers, where homecoming servicemen can get advice on anything from educational benefits under Public Law 346 to help in finding jobs and places to live. The Louisiana State Department of Education, the Civil Service, Veterans' Organizations and labor unions, Office of Civilian Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs are all cooperating to make the plan work. In Connecticut, seventy-five local committee are already functioning, giving advice on job opportunities and aids and benefits, applying their help to war workers as well as veterans. In Fort Smith, Arkansas, the community counseling center is housed and finances by the local school system and also aids workers as well as veterans. Kansas City, Missouri, is planning a big downtown center to take care of all servicemen. In Freeport, Illinois, the Chief of Police is chairman in charge of help to all veterans with offices right in the City Hall.
This is a beginning, but only a small one. Many more communities are going to have to get together and plan for the future before this problem is solved. The fighting men have been away taking care of the interests, the well-being and the safety of the people back home. We've got to do a real job of seeing to it that they're not let down when they come home, that it will have seemed worthwhile to have fought. Making sure there will be jobs for them and that they will be able to find those jobs and get to them is something all of us have to do together, in larger or smaller groups.
As individuals, there are many things we must be ready to do, too. You've got to remember they've been through something you haven't, something you can't really understand or feel, no matter how strong your imaginations and emotions may be. You'll have to expect them to be changed. You'll have to learn how to behave toward them. This isn't something I thought up by myself. The Army and your government are very concerned about it. I can see why they are concerned.
The Army has made a list of rules that I think all civilians should learn by heart--and take to heart. Here is the list:
1. Be natural--don't strain and gush. Your man may be changed, but he's still a human being and wants to be treated like one.
2. Treat him as a responsible citizen. Now that he's home, he has a big civilian job to do. Don't patronize him because he's been away and doesn't know what's been going on. He'll have ideas.
3. Don't pamper him and don't pity him. He's entitled to real consideration but he probably knows more about standing on his own feet than you do.
4. Don't kill him with sympathy. He needs real help, not sentimental tears. Genuine kindness and genuine recognition of his contribution are the best attitude.
5. Don't urge him to talk. He'll talk if and when he wants to. Let him lead. Remember, you're not the only civilian who's curious.
6. Keep your poise. Don't be startled. If he's been crippled don't be either too curious nor too unnoticing. He knows you'll notice but don't stare. Try to be kind.
7. Be realistic. If he wants to talk about his problems and future, don't tell him he doesn't need to worry. The GI Bill gives him a lot of help but he'll still have to compete with civilians and other veterans for a long-term success.
8. Develop serenity of spirit. This applies to those close to the veteran. He may have thought you were wonderful--try as hard as you know how to be just that.
9. Don't brag about how well you've done. If he asks, tell him, but remember, he may think--and in some cases justly--that the war has given stay-at-homes an advantage.
10. Don't kick about how tough ti's been at home. It hasn't been and he knows it. Just let him know most of us have done everything we've been asked to do and have wanted to do more.
11. Help him in every way you can. Be sure he knows his rights, his opportunities for education, his preference for his old job. Help get your community organized.
12. And remember that
you face problems of adjustment too. Your non-war job may not pay as well. It won't be as easy to get a job. The veteran has a prior right to any of ours--he did give up time and opportunity.
Make no mistake about this. When all the Johnnies come home, we'll be hard put to help them back into the kind of life they fought for. It's going to take patience and understanding, kindness and work. It's going to be up to us to make home really the thing they have been thinking about while they were away. Home to them is something wonderful and great--a good place they've thought about and fought for. It's up to us to see that they find that place. It's up to us to start thinking and planning now to face what may be ahead for all of us.
-Radio Mirror (March 1945)
