Another War Story

After weeks of unspeakable negligence, seriously wounded, Army soldier Michael Hervey was finally told he'd be moved to a hospital in Germany. The news was really another stalemate. In order to be actually, physically moved, the Army required that Michael take his gear with him. Retrieving gear while in the hospital is a bureaucratic nightmare. It can take weeks and months for that detail to be satisfied. Michael was prepared to wait through another series of indeterminate delays, but the next day Army soldier, Ryan Kohler showed up at his bed with his gear.

"How did this get here so fast?" Michael asked Kohler, "Did the doctor or someone push it? Did the supply clerk put through a requisition?"

"No," said Kohler, "Your mom called."

Brenda Hervey's ability to get medical attention for her step-son, Michael is a simultaneous lesson in triumph and tragedy. The triumph is her courage and persistence. The tragedy is help did not come from those who should have helped.

It did not come from the military or the military medical machine that constantly referred her to bureaucracy after bureaucracy. It did not come from state or federal legislators—whom Brenda contacted constantly--in Iowa or New York. Staff in Harkin's, Schumer's and Clinton's offices took the information, but never got back to her. The rest ignored her altogether. It did not come from any public proponent of the war, or any conservative faction waving a "Support the Troops" banner. Moreover, it did not come from Hollywood stars ubiquitously on the front-lines of anti-war marches.

Brendy Hervey's help came from the father of a son also stationed in Iraq. Via her own investigation, Hervey stumbled across Military Families Speak Out, a grass-roots group comprised only of real people with real loved ones who are really affected by the war. She found a friend in Tim Kahlor, who contacted his son, Ryan; and it was Ryan who went out of his way to procure and deliver Michael's gear.

How has it come to be that the sum of all the most powerful resources in the most powerful nation in the world could not get Michael Hervey to the hospital, but two men, already sacrificing far more than their share, were the ones who could and did? This is a reality and tragedy so fraught with deceit and betrayal that it is too much for most Americans to more than superficially acknowledge.

There is a sea of pain here that is so wide and deep that angels gulp and doubt whether eternity provides time to cross it. Each bleak and aching wave whispers the obvious question, "When will the pain matter?"

More specifically, the question is, "Whose pain matters?" The flat reality is that most Americans awaken each morning with no reflexive, visceral twinge over the war. Even most anti-war advocates will admit, when honest, they've never been startled from sleep because of it.

I have put this article away a hundred times now because I require myself to consider this, and I find the pain too unbearable. And, then I find it more unbearable to realize that if my imaginings are unbearable, how is it that we expect the world to heal from the realities that hundreds of thousands have faced in this war?

I imagine the frustration and fear woven through all the details slicing at Brenda Hervey's heart and mind this past year. I imagine her ear numb from holding on the phone, I imagine her stifling tears or anger as she writes down one more number or name. I see her walking a floor or rocking back and forth on a chair as she waits for a call back or pushes through a sleepless night. Eating something, drinking something, reading something, ignoring something, doing or not doing something as sunset after sunset bleeds into sunrise after sunrise; each delivering more questions than answers.

I imagine rows of beds as she walks into the hospital in Germany. I imagine white sheets tye-dyed with pink and orange and yellow and brown stains and smells and hybrids smells of medicine and waste of things human and inhuman. I think of the hallways of suffering she must pass through storing all those beloveds, and some not beloved enough, in chairs or on carts, before she can wrap her arms around her own beloved son.

And more painfully, far more painfully, I realize (as I know does she) that she is luckier than many in this sea.

And, because I am far too human, I cannot keep from imagining something else.

A flash of bright yellow comes through a sunny open door in my mother's arms. This is a memory. And, I remember what happens next. My mother places the sunny newborn baby in the yellow blanket on my lap, and, because it is my fifth birthday, she tells me it is my birthday present. The baby is rosy beige, and her eyes and fists are clenched. I slip my finger through a cluster of hers and believe she intends to grip me. I ask about the dried, brown, stem-looking thing on her belly, and as my mother explains it to me, the baby opens her eyes and stares into me.

"Is she really mine?" I ask in utter wonder.

"As long as you take good care of her," our mother answers.

She is fifty now, my baby sister, and she is a chief petty officer on the USS Stennis, which is positioned in the middle of the Persian Gulf. She is a mechanic, and she repairs war planes. She (who is in a position to know) and others (who are not in a position to know) tell me she is "relatively" safe in this war. It is that word, "relatively," that haunts me throughout these days. If she is "relatively" safe then she must also be "relatively" in danger. No matter who else says what else, I cannot not know this; and I can't stand it. I can't take care of her. I can't even know what her days are like there, because she cannot tell me. I only know she has seen the planes she has repaired take off with bombs and come back without them. And, because I know her to be compassionate and kind, I also fear what this is doing, and has done, to her heart and soul as well as what it may do to her body.

Sooner, rather than later, I will witness another dismissive shrug of "That's how war is." The irrefutable horror of the war will be splashed near some war proponent's feet, and this will be the response.

I don't dare deconstruct this response because it may tell me something I don't want to know. It may tell me that there is no story wrenching enough to motivate a sufficient review of our collective compliance with the persistence of this war. Even more frustrating, there may be no story to be told that will nudge even those who are academically opposed to the war to risk anything to stop it.

Other questions and comments and questions and comments like them I've heard made to others hit me harder.

"At least you don't have a child there."

"At least your sister isn't on the ground."

"Are you sure you're not using your sister to justify your politics?"

"Are you sure your activism isn't only about your own family self-interest?"

Like all words that hurt, the pain comes from a grain of truth they may hold. So I, like others, twist myself into a living illustration of the Kubler-Ross theory.

I deny. I deny her danger. I put my personal concerns away and in perspective. I don't have a child there. My sister is safer than some. I organize or help others organize efforts against the war. I don't have to worry about Jacky, she's probably going to be okay. I read, and I write, and I write. I write letters or emails or essays to Congress, to online forums, to the Editor, to other activists, to my friends, to my family, to my sister.

I bargain. If I work hard enough to stop the war, if I care enough about the pain of others affected by the war; Jacky will be okay. I spend every spare dime I have to stop the war. I go to Washington—a number of times. I go to Ft. Benning. I go to Tuskegee, Alabama, and sleep in a pew in a place where Dr. King preached. In January, I force myself to upload a chart of Iowans in the military who have been killed in Iraq on my group's website. It is an agonizing project that is accomplished through a flood of tears, several pots of coffee, and a pack of cigarettes before I'm finished. There are thirty-seven names, and each name I type tears me apart. I scold myself simultaneously for the grief I feel because it might be indulgent but also because I do not feel grief enough. There is no escape from this guilt because I cannot touch the endless grief wrought by each name I enter on the chart.

I deny while I bargain. This is familiar. I've done this before. I was an indefatigable AIDS activist during the 1980s and 90s to keep my life-long soul-mate friend Michael from dying—an endless parade of demonstrations in Iowa and Washington, symposia, lobby days, the Quilt, and funerals. The number of funerals is one I no longer try to count, funerals of other friends who owned less of a chunk of my heart than Michael, and all their mothers, sobbing inside my embrace. Michael still died, but I refuse to weigh this history in this mix.

Another Michael has entered my life, Michael Hervey, and his situation is present and urgent. His serous injuries may not be serious enough for the Army. He may be sent back to duty soon. There must be some way to stop this. His mother, Brenda and I, both Iowa members of Military Families Speak Out, have only met through email. Brenda sends me a journal entry and other information about her struggle. I am knocked backward by the scorch when I read more about the searing series of betrayals that created their senseless ordeal. Brenda bravely relates, only as a point of fact, that her husband and Michael's father, Bill, has died the year before. I sit on my sofa and sob.

I'm soon distracted by the breaking Walter Reed scandal. Bipartisan bull-roaring commences. I don't know why the story is breaking now. I do know the news is not new to anyone in Congress. Maybe they really don't read our letters. Jacky orders Ramen noodles online because the food Halliburton serves is that inedible. I come from a family who'll eat just about anything—you can tell this by looking at us. How bad must the food be? Congress knows this too. I am distracted by passage of the Joshua Omvig bill. Josh was an Iowan. I've known about him for some time, but this is the first time I read about him in the press. It takes an act of Congress to provide for round-the-clock mental health care for veterans, and the reach of the act is still questionable at best. Here at home, in what is often called "the People's Republic of Johnson County," I have yet to see one elected county official at a single Peach March, Rally, vigil or even at the opening of the Peace Center this month. There are now forty names on my chart. Joshua Omvig is not one of them. I stumble across a note I have of Grandma Shaw's memory of my Uncle Harold being killed in World War II. My family has yet to recover from this. My grandfather never comes home from the war. Driven by guilt for ordering his sons to enlist, he exiles himself to Arkansas instead. My father responds by enlisting too, lying about his age. He was 16. My mother's brother, Bernard, dropped dead from an aneurysm in the front seat of his car right after his last tour in Viet Nam. I trip over a snapshot of my best friend from college, Tom. Tom survived Viet Nam, even though his left arm was paralyzed, only to be killed in a car crash one year after six months of treatment at the Iowa City V.A. hospital. Some well-meaning jerk at Tom's funeral whispers to me that Tom's death is "a blessing in disguise" because of the many times we've coaxed him, trembling, out from under a table or bench every time a car backfires or a fire cracker explodes.

I interrupt my interrupting thoughts because it's time to do my weekly stint as a volunteer at the Peace Center. Afterwards, I stop at George's, my tavern hangout these past 35 years. Before I change the subject and talk with others about the Alberto Gonzales scandal instead, I tell a woman I've known for years of Brenda and Michael's story.

She says, "That's rough, but at least it's only her step son."

I am angry. I am very angry. I am sick of everyone who is sick of hearing about it. I am angry at everyone who isn't angry about this too.

I am angriest at myself. Adjoining the sea of pain is a bottomless reservoir of class bigotry, racism, rationalizations, excuses, dismissals, and apathy that feeds this sea. After all these years of dog-paddling in this reservoir, I have yet to find a way to drain it or even siphon off a little of its poison. Instead I watch its bacteria gurgle and grow like the immense vat of toxic waste it is.

"At least" have become the passwords for inaction.

"At least" we live in a country where you can complain.

"At least" Tina Richards can go to Washington and talk to a congressman about her son even if he did insult her for doing so.

"At least," Cindy Sheehan can buy land to stage her dissent.

"At least," your sister can order food online.

"At least" the women in Iraq got to vote.

"At least," it's only her step son.

How much pain is enough before people will do something? How close does the relative have to be? How horrible their stories? I consider telling all of them to "Go to hell," if only as a method to get them in the same room where we are. The foaming waste fills my nose and eyes and ears. It's in my mouth and strains through my teeth and burns my throat and tongue. "At least" I'm not swallowing it.

I'm angry even though I know anger is a particular problem because it's the ultimate indictment that permits the dismissal of suffering. E.g. "I can't listen to them because they have so much anger." And I have my own list of "at leasts."

At least one elected official might attend at least one peace event in my so-called liberal county.

At least one member of at least one board might be someone who doesn't believe they are superior to those they serve.

At least one of these people who dismiss these stories might hear one out before they throw it out.

At least we should be willing to sacrifice as much—our jobs, our wealth, our status, our lives—to end this war as what is being taken from those we send to fight it.

With due respect to Dr. Kubler-Ross, I am nowhere near acceptance. I cannot accept two more years of this outrage or even two more needless deaths because of it. I cannot accept elected leadership that cares more about the next election than the next orphaned child or grieving mother (or father or grandmother or grandfather, or sister). I cannot accept a citizenry that will accept leadership that accepts this. I need to believe we are waking up to our obligation to assume our roles as responsible citizens and as decent human beings. I need to believe our growing numbers of dissent will soon explode in every corner of human experience, that truth and justice will win, and that this travesty will end. Soon.

Michael Hervey's Story by Brenda Hervey is located on the School for Moral Courage website or by clicking http://www.schoolformoralcourage.com/michaelstory.html