The Tiger is Dead: Bob Worthington’s Story Copyright 2003 by Marc David Bonagura 732.224.2161 [email protected] 2 The Tiger is Dead/Bonagura 732.224.2161 PROLOGUE “The predatory energy has also found a way to mine the spirit, has found a way to mine our minds, it can even feed off the essence of our spirit.” John Trudell Stickman For Americans, there were more than twice as many casualties in World War II as in all the other wars of the 20th Century combined. Over 16,000,000 Americans served in World War II and approximately 300,000 were killed in action. Almost 700,000 Americans were wounded. Worldwide over 22,000,000 soldiers died on both sides of the conflict. These figures do not include civilian deaths: women, children, the elderly, victims of the holocaust and of the massive bombing raids, or even of the residual effects of the use of nuclear weapons – somewhere around 40,000,000 – bringing the worldwide number of casualties to 3 The Tiger is Dead/Bonagura 732.224.2161 over 60,000,000. The economic cost has been estimated at 1.6 trillion dollars.1 It is impossible to estimate the spiritual cost of the war. In the collective consciousness, World War II is thought of as a moral and just war – fought to save the world from fascism or the total domination of totalitarian forces – the war in which clearly, perhaps more clearly than in any other modern war, good triumphed over evil. Regardless of current political and military trends, this time in history was America’s shining moment in the eyes of the world. In fact, never before in human history were the collective energies and spirit of more people mined and focused than during World War II. Almost no one on earth was exempt from the struggle. The massing of resources and personnel, this mining of the spirit, exacted a high toll, but the first casualty in all war is always the truth. Everyone involved must submit to the lies and live with the deception – that war is a righteous endeavor – that war ultimately leads to peace or saves lives – that war can somehow be honorably fought – that the very enemy we seek to destroy isn’t actually within us all along. There is an undercurrent, not usually portrayed in the media or even in most historical accounts of World War II that expresses the true feelings and perceptions of the small percentage of soldiers who actually fought on the front lines. The reality of the War, spoken in plain terms from the people who know it best, is seldom if ever brought home. Out of the millions of soldiers involved in World War II, for example, most were employed in supporting roles and not on the front lines. The difficulty of brining the reality of war home to the civilian population, especially here in America, thousands of miles from the conflict, 1 Goralski, Robert. World War II Almanac 1931-1945: 425-428 4 The Tiger is Dead/Bonagura 732.224.2161 became intensified with the outpouring of public support for the cause, the perceived moral righteousness of the war, and the lack of any literal or figurative space where the veterans would be allowed or encouraged to talk about what happened to them. The press was heavily censored, films were unrealistic and jingoistic, and enemies were caricatured. For most veterans the best choice was simply to get on with their lives. One could spend years seeking the many reasons for this deception. Intricate conspiracy theories not withstanding, our economic dependence on the military industrial complex has never waned in times of war or peace, yet in many ways, the simplest explanation is sometimes the best. In the words of historian Paul Fussell, humans have a strong tendency not to examine any “information likely to cause distress or to occasion a major overhaul of normal ethical, political, or psychological assumptions.” 2 As I write this, war continues to be how many people and governments try to resolve their conflicts. Many of us have again slipped into a hollow unconsciousness about the reality of violent conflict – fueled by a whole new genre of Pentagon/Hollywood sponsored war films, “realistic” video games portraying war like a sporting event, and a press eviscerated by corporate and government censorship – all this as the futility of violence to bring about lasting change, security or peace becomes clearer every day. *** 2 Fussell, Paul. “The Real War: 1939-1945.” The Atlantic Monthly. August 1989: 32-40. 5 The Tiger is Dead/Bonagura 732.224.2161 The campaign for Guadalcanal is the Marines Corps’ longest engagement of World War II, and the individuals of the 1st Marine Division who fought there were truly warriors in every tribal sense of the word – they sacrificed their flesh for the greater good of the tribe. They took completely upon themselves the absolute brutality of war. They looked upon the atrocities and extreme deprivation of each day in combat the way the rest of us face the mundane tasks of our everyday lives because that’s what warriors since ancient times have always done. Though many were just teenagers at the time, they will forever be known as “The Old Breed”. There is certainly no modern equivalent of these soldiers, and for some of them, the battles never really ended. All war is an atrocity and many of these men brought the atrocities they had witnessed and committed back home with them. Some even became these atrocities – the modern medical term for this horrible transformation is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD is a syndrome affecting combat veterans, and, of course, anyone else who has suffered, similarly, the desecration of the human spirit in some extreme traumatic event or series of events. PTSD is a term coined after the Vietnam War, originally named “Post Vietnam Syndrome” as the Vietnam Era veterans were trying to come to terms with a delayed stress reaction to what they had experienced. Like a virus they had brought home from the jungles, something foreign seemed to be living inside their very cells, almost as if their DNA had been altered. The mystery was that the disease took years to manifest. Earlier and similar forms were called “shell shock” in World War I and “combat fatigue” in World War II. Only in the last 6 The Tiger is Dead/Bonagura 732.224.2161 twenty years or so have health care providers been able to understand this condition; even so, its impact on peoples’ lives is still largely a mysterious phenomenon for the uninitiated. In times of extreme stress the body switches into a state of hyper- awareness, a survival mode, altering every physiological and psychological response with only one objective – to endure the trauma. But this survival comes with a terrible price, and the longer the time period the person is subjected to the trauma, the more severe the damage. In such extreme circumstances, the rational mind shuts down, and the wisdom of the body reverts back to some long lost primal awareness. Survivors of sexual abuse, rape victims, those who lived through a concentration camp, people imprisoned and tortured, and some combat veterans, the small percentage who actually fought on the front lines, all these people have one thing in common: Their flesh stores a record of these experiences, and for the rest of their lives they must cope with permanent changes to their psyche and their physiology. In time the mind can forget, but the body always remembers. The resonance of the war, the energetic vibration of those battles, never left these people; rather it became a part of them. For Guadalcanal vets, malnutrition, anorexia, malaria, dysentery, jungle rot, the sight and stench of horribly mangled bodies, the stench of the living, the methodical, skillful, efficient killing machines that these human beings became –these occurrences became locked forever into every organ system and muscle 7 The Tiger is Dead/Bonagura 732.224.2161 fiber of their bodies. The men were never told this would happen and they were never given instruction as to how to cope with these permanent changes. The mystery is in the way the effects continue long after the trauma recedes, constantly bringing the survivor back to that state of hyper- consciousness necessary to endure the original conflict, and, unfortunately, reviving again the cellular memory of these events in a vicious cycle as if they were happening all over again. It is important to remember that this is not merely a psychological or mental state. It is a series of energetic memories that are as real as the day they occurred. In one sense there is no past, present or future – all these events are constantly and simultaneously recurring for the PTSD survivor. These survivors become trapped in this cyclic realm and will go to great lengths to quiet this process. Especially useful are drugs and alcohol, but the relative calm only lasts as long as the numbing effects of the high. Even if the memories in someone’s brain are repressed or removed, the memories in the body live on. Adrenaline is a powerful hormone capable of temporarily quieting memories. Bob Worthington, one such warrior, lived on that hormone for most of his life, constantly creating and seeking out stressful, dangerous situations from which he had to extricate himself. The more common coping mechanisms for PTSD survivors are withdrawing into silence causing an intensely personal, private suffering, depression, nightmares, and various chronic physical illnesses – causing intense suffering sometimes which is often masked for many years behind productive, seemingly contented lives.