pain was about dealing with rejection and the internal emotional pain of adjustment to the new physical reality and the new self-image.
For some, there was rejection by families who could not adjust to these new realities, or broken engagements by fiancees. There was the self-image adjustment. Up to that point in our lives, most of us at Valley Forge had gotten a lot of our identity from what we had been able to do physically. Physical identity is a big thing for soldiers. Small-unit proficiency in the combat branches of armor, infantry, and artillery is very demanding, and strength, endurance, and raw physical courage count a great deal. If it had not been for whatever happened to bring us to Valley Forge, we would have gone on in life doing physical things to earn our living and to make our way. Now most of that ability was gone. That was the tough adjustment. The hospital tried to help, with social services counselors, VA counselors, counselors from the Disabled American Veterans. The professional staff encouraged amputees to help themselves and to help each other: no elevators, open your own doors, no wheelchairs unless absolutely necessary. They arranged sports, wheelchair basketball, amputee skiing, and amputee golf instruction.
All that worked in our tight amputee family unit there at Valley Forge, but sooner or later we all had to deal with the adjustments to life and try to go on. I was fortunate. I had family, and a profession that might take me back. Some had neither.
Worst of all was the perception in the United States that what the troops had done was all for nothing. The war in Vietnam was going badly. Americans were sick of it, and were losing faith in the nation's commitments there. The tragic consequence of it all was loss of faith in the warriors.
Making the transition back into that society was going to be hard enough, but this rejection would double the difficulty.
Not long after the amputation, I was in the lobby of a shoe store in Reading, Pennsylvania. I was on crutches with my pant leg pinned up. A woman approached me and asked, 'How were you hurt?' And I told the story: I was wounded in combat action in Cambodia and my leg was amputated. 'What a waste,' she said, with pity on her face. 'You did all that for nothing. You and all those boys did all that for nothing. What a waste.'
All the amputees had stories like that. They all got the same question, and they all got the kinds of responses I got. It wasn't exactly what we wanted to hear. Wounds in combat action against an enemy on the battlefield were a badge of honor, or so I guess we thought. It began to seem to me that something was horribly wrong.
Though in time most of them learned to handle those situations, still, the overall adjustment was hard and ripped at my heart when I heard the stories. Some of them made up tales, rather than say they were wounded in combat. Made up stories! 'Well, I was hurt in an explosion in a paint factory.' Or, 'I was hurt in a car crash.' Or they would just avoid the question entirely… because none of them wanted to deal with the terrible reality that they had gone away to a distant country to do what their country had asked them to do, and then they had been rejected by their fellow Americans when they came home. It was not supposed to be like this. These were sons of the World War II generation. They'd heard all about those experiences. So when they'd been drafted, they'd gone, just as their fathers had gone twenty-plus years before. Their country needed them. They went, pure and simple. That's the way Americans did it. Now this. Why? What the hell was going on here?
Americans couldn't separate the war from the warriors.
The soldiers couldn't help it that the leaders had fouled up the strategy and adopted tactics that did not accomplish their strategic objective. The soldiers had gone out and done what they were asked to do. They were point men and stepped on a mine, or got wounded in an ambush or a firefight. Why blame them?
I kept asking myself, Why? Why in the hell blame them? Where are all the leaders now, telling these soldiers thanks, telling these soldiers that their sacrifice was worth it? During all of my time at Valley Forge, only one officer above the rank of colonel, General Bruce Clarke, visited those young soldiers to let them know their country was grateful. I never saw any elected officials. Maybe others came when I was on convalescent leave, but I never heard about it. None.
The leaders abandoned the warriors. I could never forgive that betrayal of trust.
Volunteer organizations did come around, God bless them, people from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, from the local community, people of all ages and from as far away as Pottsville. The Salvation Army came every Monday night for
But there were no leaders to tell them what they badly needed to hear from them alone: 'Thank you, your country's grateful.' These soldiers had trusted those leaders. Where were they now? I was a graduate of West Point and truly believed in duty, honor, and country. So did these soldiers. Were we all fools for believing in those things?
Among the amputees, I was the senior officer. There were a few captains, but most of the other patients were junior enlisted soldiers. When I was with the soldiers, at parties or just sitting around, some of them would pour out their stories to me, because I was the 'Major.' I was the old man, I was part of the establishment, I was supposed to be able to help. But as time passed, I was one of them. We were brothers. And what they said choked me up. It broke my heart. I vowed then I would do something about it. It lit in me a flame of commitment to soldiers that went far beyond any I had felt before. It was an inner rage that only the restoration of trust could calm.
Though I was helpless to make up for the absence of senior leaders, as the months went by, I grew ever more determined to do something more for those soldiers than they were getting. I wanted to help, somehow, to make it clear to them that their lives — and their loss — had some meaning. I wanted a fulfillment of their sacrifice. I wanted to make sure, if our country ever went to war again, if young men and women ever had to go answer duty's call, it wouldn't end up this way.
For all of my own personal loss, I knew — after the amputation — that I was going to be just fine. Though I was aware that I had to adjust to a permanent change right down there at the core of my self, and that what I had given up would never come back, I had my own family. I was a professional soldier. The Army might not take me back — there was a question about that — but I had an identity that would survive everything I had suffered over the past months. But what about these other young men?
And so there was lit what I still call the 'Hot Blue Flame.' I had a burning resolve to do what I could, in whatever my circle of responsibility, to see to it that soldiers never again found themselves in a situation where trust was fractured. That Blue Flame resolve has stayed with me since then. I felt it in Desert Storm. I still feel it.
Many of us go through serious life changes. Though the popular impression has it that such changes have to be both religious and sudden — an overwhelming flash in the night sweeps you out of consciousness and you wake up a changed person — that is not always the case. I have nothing against experiences like these. People go through them. But most conversions are slower. They take more time. And not all conversions are even religious. A conversion often results from a severe setback overcome, or from wisdom gained out of pain. So it was with us.
Without so much as a real awareness, I passed through a conversion experience at Valley Forge. It was not religious, though I consider myself a religious man, and it didn't hit me suddenly. It took years. I and my family had a severe setback in our lives, and we overcame it and then pressed on toward new missions.
After Valley Forge I was not, on the surface, a very different man. I was still confident, assertive, and willing to take risks physically; I still worked hard at professional excellence; I was still sensitive to other people; and I cared deeply about other soldiers and liked to be around them. If anything, most of these qualities intensified. I think my inner intensity, my drive, actually increased.
But now I was also a much wiser man, with a changed perspective about life. I now had a never-before- experienced inner peace and a new passion for excellence, and for the trust between leader and led. It gave me the inner steel to grab onto when I needed it, to fend off external criticisms and hostility in the face of what I knew to be right. After Valley Forge, I was a man with what you could almost call a crusade, a calling, a burning desire to do something about the terrible betrayal and tragedy that had been thrust upon my fellow soldiers. I was not alone in this among my professional peers, but I determined to see it through.
The wisdom and peace that came from those experiences were not only about soldiers. They manifested
