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Note: I had originally written a variation of this essay as a blogpost for a now-defunct blog of mine. Major Tammy Duckworth's story never loses its shine for me. Re-reading it, re-posting it under a different title each time...is how I stay connected. Major Tammy's photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons License.
How does a person develop dogmatic beliefs? I have a notion.
Most of us, when overcome by feelings of disconnectedness from our surroundings, experience a sense of inner agitation. When human affairs are pressed beyond the ordinary, such as when at war, these moments of disconnectedness steer us to identify things that are “right” or “wrong.” Soon these moments turn into beliefs. Then we become emphatic about these beliefs. Then we suddenly find it easy to relate our normal day-to-day occurrences to these beliefs.
But this disconnect, the inner agitation, doesn't go away. It seems to persist despite our emphatic beliefs of right and wrong. This feeling, instead of getting resolved, dissolved, disappear and reassure us in the staunch positions we take on the issues of political importance, seems to go right past our ordinary day-to-day beliefs and is still left dangling, in search of home.
Where is the home for this feeling, for this disconnect?
Those who saw “Conversations with Soldiers Wounded in Iraq” on C-SPAN (originally aired March 10, 2005, with subsequent repeat broadcasts) would likely have experienced a glimpse of the very such home. When this happens, when that metaphysical home is found for this disconnected feeling, one can't help but feel how pallid the exhortations of globalization, and of the "world citizen" are, compared to the experience of this home.
You don't have to see that C-SPAN show to relate to what I write here. I am writing here of what I saw: a celebration of life at its most intense and its most fullest reach. There you watch how the soldiers have very nearly died in the mess and blood of war, but who brought a renewal of life into our experience without the ugly melodrama and narcissism that a more self-conscious narrator of the drama, for example a modern day blogger, would bring.
To see what I mean, let's start with a simple question: “Where were we on Nov 12, 2004?”
Because on that day Major Tammy Duckworth, of Illinois Army National Guard, was on a free fall, her Blackhawk helicopter shot over the skies of Iraq. From her own narrative of the events of that day, “It was actually end of the day, we've been flying missions across Baghdad, mostly transportation of equipment. Had a great lunch, bought some christmas ornaments from the post exchange (it was middle of November). We were ten minutes from getting back to the base when an RPG shot by the insurgents hit the chin bubble (a Plexiglas window under the pilot seat of the Blackhawk.)”
She sat next to her husband with the C-SPAN interviewer. Her infectious smile, dark beautiful eyes and a gentle face would have you believe she may have just escaped with minor bruises, what's the big deal and wouldn’t "those army folks" be prepared for these sorts of things anyway?
Initial charge exploded between her knees and nicked one of the Blackhawk's blades. Instantly they lost the electronics, and the Blackhawk started to descent. Tammy immediately attempted to land the aircraft, little realizing that she lost the foot pedals and her legs. The control panels were gone. When she woke up in the emergency room the right hand was broken. The last thing she remembered was that she saw that the grass on the fields, coming through the chin bubble as they landed, was about 6 ft tall and she remembered thinking, "Wow, that's really beautiful green grass" before she passed out. Tammy lost her right leg. Lost her left leg below the knee to amputation. Her right arm bones were crushed and broken the moment the Blackhawk hit the ground. Doctors at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where this C-SPAN interview was taped, rebuilt the arm using metal pins and screws and grafted the tissue taken from her stomach.
And then there is Cpl. Michael Oreskovic - US Army, 23 years’ of age at the time of this interview. Lost his left arm from shoulder on: "Flopping around somewhere like a chewed up hamburger." He went through eleven surgeries and now uses a bio-electric arm.
This is a group of people who describe things that happen to them such as ripped arms, detonations in front of their faces, warm blood pouring down their faces, soaking their clothes, with a gentle smile on their faces. Not a hint of self-pity, not a hint of a loss, just a strange serenity in their faces, a jaded tiredness but a permanent light in their eyes: "Tough situations brings you closer.” He waits until the question is asked: "Was anybody else injured at all?" "Yeah, my squad leader died instantly"
The casual approach, the self-effacing manner in which these soldiers speak is maddening: "Tying the shoes and pulling the zipper are the hardest things to do."
Q: "What do you do when you get frustrated?"
A: "Go work out"
"I wanted to go back to my unit, but everyone says no." He describes the possibility of not being in the army in the words of, "They probably won't toss you out the window if you are a special force."
This phrase, "toss you out the window," speaks volumes of the loyalty they feel towards their unit. I cannot help but feel that this phrase is exactly that longing to find a home for that disconnected feeling, to find a home where a human being involuntarily experiences a whole body of emotions such as love, sacrifice and looking out for each other. It appears to me that this is what prompts a soldier to go back to serve.
There is not a hint of wasted thought, wasted emotion, in these soldiers' thinking. Perhaps it comes from being so close to life and death. Here there is no room for thoughts that scrape the bottom of the "about-ness," no room for the worlds of you and I where we build protective edifices of opinions and ideas of what is right and what is wrong, protecting from the action-at-a-distance.
After all, isn’t this distance, this disconnect, this tragedy-less tin-box of clutter in our minds, is what we are all searching to find a home for?
