By Margaret Wiltshire
Take a picture of General McChrystal and one of President Obama to photo shop and colored them both blue. Two men more alike then not. They got along like two positive poles of magnets.
Reality? General McChrystal was at war longer then anyone should be.
Spring, 1974. With the sun on his light brown hair shining gold, a skier’s suntanned face he moves carefully around the cliff face. Below us, a stream full of winter melt roared like a young fierce river.
Our backs were to the cliff and we were finding mere footholds to rest our heels in. I could see myself falling into the water below and my head being tossed like a basketball between the rocks in the white water rush. “Could you take my hand, I don’t feel steady here?” I asked. “No” he said. Okay, I thought, this isn’t a women’s lib issue, it’s a survival issue. Thanks a lot buddy.
We made it. The terrain eased and we found bigger rocks to cross the rapids. We climbed into a wonderful spring woodland, filled with the fall’s fallen leaves and the spring’s early wild flowers. We stopped to rest.
“Let’s wait for some critters to show up,” he said. We waited, and waited. “When I was young,” this thirty year old said. “Before ‘Nam, the woods were full of critters. Now it’s like it’s dead. It’s what I miss the most.”
“Why didn’t you take my hand?” He turned to look at me very seriously, looked away and remained quiet.
Then he said you know I have a total disability that’s why I could go to college and took some time off. “You don’t look disabled...at all!” I smiled back at him, but now I felt great concern.
“I lost two inches of bone at the top of my left arm, there’s a piece of steel in there and they saved the arm. I can use my arm and hand in front of me but I can’t reach back, not at all.”
“You are able to do so many things, you hike, ski. How come they say you are totally disabled?”
“There’s more,” he said and was quiet. We waited. One busy Chipmunk showed up.
This was my second meeting in a two week relationship with this veteran. The first was his going away party. He was on his way to Denver, hopefully to work for the FBI and do a lot of skiing and hiking.
He wanted to spend time with critters. I was a “surprised” blind date, arranged by his best friend. He was handsome and pleasant but the “surprise” made me shy. I went home as soon as possible.
About to head for bed, I heard drunken hollering outside my door. “I’m drunk,” he said “and I want to talk, please, please talk to me.”
“No, I’m going to bed.”
“Please, please I’ll be good, I want to talk, just five minutes.”
“Will you drink coffee?”
“Oh, yes, coffee, great, please.” We talked till 6 a.m.
He wanted to understand the anti-war hippies, why they hated GIs, what I thought about the war. He said he always loved the law and the draft was law, so he went. He admired Muhammad Ali because he took responsibility for his anti-war stand.
He told me about his family, life before the war and his best friend, our mutual friend. As a medic and body bagger, his friend had really suffered emotionally and now his work for the medical examiner was depressing him. With such an appreciation for other people, I felt honored to have him at the kitchen table.
After the hike we met a few more times before his “army pay” Corvette took him to the Rocky Mountains.
His full disability? Besides the two inches of arm, his stomach had been torn open, then pieced and stitched together like a quilt. Doctors gave him to 45 or 50, quality life.
After a year in the VA, he went to school. In college an angry “peace” hippie punched him in the stomach. This sent him to the floor in agony and back to the VA for another operation. He said it was the first time he wanted to kill someone.
This very ABLE man, was not the only warrior in my life. I grew up with warriors around the kitchen table. Support is listening and learning.
They often spoke of the “focus” in facing fatality in danger. The still, timeless, aliveness. This focused stillness, aliveness is available to us all and not just in life and death situations.
Some people misunderstand this experience. They think they are “getting off” on a terrible situation. It is an experience of focus. What you do with it makes you a warrior or a barbarian.
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