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The Soldier and P and John Wayne’s Movie, “The Green Berets”: Coping With The Psychological Trauma Of War
Catch up here -> The Soldier and P… and John Wayne’s Movie, “The Green Berets”
Our 8th houses commune here.
The movie played on and people continued to get killed in booby traps. There were a lot of impaled people. There were an “over lot” I thought, and there is one scene where the soldiers come upon dead people impaled or strung up on a fence.
“Now I know you’ve seen that,” I said. ‘Exactly what do you do think when you see something like that? How does it feel?”
“Oh, well it feels horrible. It feels awful when you see something like that and this is how I learned to put things aside the way I do.”
“What do you mean?” (swearing below the break)
“You know how we’ll be fighting and we’ll have all this other stuff going on at the same time? And I always say, why don’t we fight about this tomorrow? You always want to fight at the most inopportune time and I ask you if you would mind fighting when the conditions are better. And you usually say no, motherfucker. We’re going to fight right fuckin’ now and we usually do but I prefer to try to process things when there is time to process them properly if I can. And when you’re standing in the middle of a war - well that’s not the best time.”
“I see.”
“Yeah. So if you see something like that and try to think about it in the moment, you’re going to get killed so you learn to postpone it. If you don’t learn to do this, you’ll die for sure. It’s simple. Stop to worry about the dead people in the middle of a war and you’re going to be one of them for sure. You’ll wind up dead too, faster than you can spin. So you learn to overlook the things you see and stay focused on your objectives. You can think about what you saw later when you have the time and the chance and people aren’t shooting at you. Or they aren’t firing mortars at you or whatever else they’re doing.”
“I see.”
“But you do think about it, at least I do. You think about it a long time or in some cases, it may be you think about it forever because there are some things I just can’t seem to be rid of. But I do try to process everything, as much as I can, the best I can. I think about it. I feel about it. I dream about it and everything else you can think of, some things you maybe can’t think of but you do wind up having to consider everything, at least this is how it’s been for me. But in the moment? Forget about it. It can’t be done if you want to survive.”
“I get it.”
“Yeah, so you just walk right by stuff like that and you do it all the time. Every day. It is perfectly possible to see stuff like everyday for a year and if you’re going to react to it you are going to be in big trouble. So I learned to postpone my feelings and deal with them at a later date because I wanted to survive and also because I wanted to win the war. Because I was going to win the war no matter what. I wasn’t going to lose it, that’s for sure. Either I win or they kill me, there is no in between.”
Do you have skills to deal with trauma?
4 Responses to “The Soldier and P and John Wayne’s Movie, “The Green Berets”: Coping With The Psychological Trauma Of War”
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Yes, I’m very good at it with all my Scorpio but the Universe made it very clear early on I wasn’t supposed to deal in adrenaline rush activities like being a paramedic or emergency room type. Door slammed shut unequivocally!
My son’s school bus was hit by a driver under the influence of alcohol at the front of our house a few years back and it was instantly obvious the driver had died on impact…instinctively I herded all the children into my house passing around frozen vegetables and ice packs to put onto assorted knocks whilst calling emergency and the school..calmly..no problems…..yet my son was hit accidently on his head by his cousin with a golf club and I kept on feeling like I was going to pass out and I was no help what so ever…had to leave that to other family members..injury was insignificant….i think the skill to dealing with trauma may be (in my case) linked to how attached i am to the victim..Capricorn Sun with cancer asc.
My young son dislocated his elbow while on family vacation. The two family members who are trained medical went to pieces, my husband was also no help having to repeat all directions twice before he could move into action.
Four adults present - three whom went immediately into chicken head cut off mode.
It fell to me to get the child some help all the while I was noticing the incomprehensible to me actions of the rest of my family! Do What? Why are you people freaking & screaming???
YOU ARE NOT THE ONE HURT.
Let’s not frighten the child and move on into action.
I’ve also been on scene at a 4 dead car-accident site being the only calm head until the emergency crews arrived, so yes, although I of course don’t want to, I think I can handle trauma fairly well. No desire to be nurse/doctor/emt though.
“So I learned to postpone my feelings and deal with them at a later date because I wanted to survive and also because I wanted to win the war.”
I can sooo relate to this. I have never been able to articulate it before, so thank you Soldier! I have felt myself physically and psychically move into some sort of ‘zone’ during the incidents. Mars in Aries makes me feel a little bit like a soldier myself when the going gets tough.