To help veterans confront war: pen and paper

Writing about war memories is tough, but it's also therapeutic.

from the November 9, 2007 edition

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But in the weeks since, I am proud to say they have proven me wrong.

Oct. 3: our fifth meeting. This time I ask the group to "list three significant people from any time in your life. Childhood. High school. The service. Take a good look at your list. Then write about the person there who seems to be saying to you today, 'Remember me.' "

Taking up their pens, they set to work. Twenty minutes later, Dwight volunteers to read.

He looks up from his notebook, then back to the words he's just set down. The end-of-day sunlight, slicing through the room's bent miniblinds, turns the gray in his dreadlocks silvery. And in a voice as deep as it is gentle, he begins.

For the next few minutes, we are out on patrol in the jungle, walking stealthily – "like cats," Dwight writes – several yards behind a young man named Corporal Wilson. The corporal, coming upon what appears to be a booby trap, yells, "Stay back!" The group freezes. Wilson inches forward, jabs a mound of dirt in a cluster of grass with the butt of his gun.

"Why he did that, I'll never know," Dwight interjects, with a rueful shake of his head.

It is the last thing the corporal would ever do – his final act, ending in the explosion witnessed that day by the soldiers in Dwight's story, and now by all of us. One more war story among so many. Too many, any combat vet will tell you. But with stories such as this one, I'm learning from these veterans that it can take as much courage – maybe more – to pick up a pen later in life, as it does to carry a government-issue M-16 right after high school.

Dwight's voice tapers off as the end of his story nears, and the silence of our listening deepens into something more, a hush that holds within it the echoes of every shot ever fired, every bomb ever dropped, every anthem ever played. It is the kind of moment for which there are no words.

This Veterans Day, I have only these two to offer Dwight and all who have served: Thank you.

Sue Diaz is a freelance writer.

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