Back
in 2000, as ever while on a visit to see the family
in Massachusetts, I was seated on a stool and whiling
away the afternoon hours chatting to family working
behind the bar and sharing tales with some of the
Warren Lunch's many 'seasoned' locals. One particular
afternoon I had the good fortune of meeting a man
in his fifties who wasn't a dedicated regular, though
I had seen him from time to time. After a couple beers
and some light banter about differences between Australia
and America he gradually opened up and shared a little
of his background.
As
a youth, he'd had an adventurous childhood, falling
in with the local Irish mob in his teens and skipping
school so that he could deliver money bags across
town for an income that far exceeded what most local
Peabody folk could expect to be earning from the local
tannery. When the Vietnam War broke out, however,
he and his brother both volunteered to join up. Both
underage 'one sixteen and the other seventeen' they
believed the war would offer them an escape not just
from their working class surrounds, but from the criminal
life as well, something they felt was increasingly
threatening to swallow them up. But after managing
to fool the U.S. Army of their actual age, darker,
dangerous realities lay ahead.
Though
he shared details over the course of that afternoon
which I need not 'and would rather not' repeat, suffice
to say the two brothers, serving as grunts on the
ground in the thick of the Vietnam conflict, saw a
great deal and suffered a great deal. Friends were
made and lost in short spaces of time, so much so
that by the end of it all my bar'mate could not bring
himself to initiate friendships with new reinforcements
and additions to his platoon for fear of losing another
man he'd made a connection with. Everything we've
heard about Vietnam era troops rarely seeing their
enemy and, when they did, having trouble distinguishing
between civilian or combatant was confirmed in story
after story. Eventually both men were, in turn, seriously
wounded and sent back home to recover and rehabilitate
in military hospitals. The younger brother lost his
eye, and my drinking companion permanently injured
his right leg when he caught shrapnel from a landmine.
What
followed that afternoon was not a cheerful recollection
of war stories and heroics, rather it was the account
of a man still severely scarred by what he had seen
and experienced during the war. Like so many others
he returned to America unable to ever truly reconnect
with a normal life. He and his brother had since become
estranged, primarily because of the stark difference
between one brother's ability to cope with the trauma
of it all, and another's inability to do so. Indeed
he spoke with anger of what he felt were the insufficient
mental'health support mechanisms available for returning
soldiers to truly recover from their suffering in
the 1960's and 1970's. Instead, reduced to mainly
living off a veteran's pension and lost between jobs
and decrepit apartments, he had spent much of the
previous twenty'five years at a loss. Even as he had
recently begun meeting with a psychiatrist once a
week, he was still, so many years on, waking up in
the middle of most night's sleep covered in sweat
and haunted by the image of a young Vietnamese boy
he had shot dead in combat.
Beer
and spirits were probably the last thing my friend
had needed that day, or indeed on any day as he struggled
to cope with his past, however I think it was obvious
he had found a rare ear that afternoon that was willing
to listen. I'd never really heard such tales first-hand,
and certainly not accompanied with this kind
of anguish. So many of our grandfathers, just like
the other talkative old locals in my grandmother's
bar, had chosen to remove the anguish from their war
stories and talk instead of heady women, booze and
heroic pincer movements that took place across the
field of battle. Who could blame them? Some memories
are perhaps better left suppressed and, if at all
possible, forgotten. And why inform others of such
an ordeal in detail? How could they comprehend such
suffering? No, for most it was better that others
never have to know, and grim specifics would be glossed
over for them.
Still,
for one sad, troubled man seated in the Warren Lunch
that afternoon, he'd never taken that step towards
recovery. He couldn't suppress, and he certainly couldn't
forget.
In
the years since my visit I'd always remembered our
conversation and asked after him from time to time,
but especially since my grandmother passed away and
the bar changed hands it was harder to keep track
of folks that frequented the Warren Lunch. I can't
emphasise enough how much this man was in need of
healing, in need of a release from guilt and regret,
and liberation from sorrow. I hoped that one day he
might, somehow, be pulled out of his lonely misery
and become able to move on. But I wondered how much
of a chance he truly had, addicted to the bottle and
never going forward.
This
in mind, it was with such a sense of overwhelming
joy that I received my surprise email this week. Even
the most tortured of souls have a chance, and here
was a man with such a good heart that he wholly deserved
that opportunity. I wish him and his new wife nothing
but the best.
Ezy
Reading is out every Monday.
