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Iraq |
'Emotional rollercoaster' hits war hero |
2006-12-03 |
by SHARON COHEN (AP) - Spc. Ashley Pullen wasn't thinking about the dozens of Iraqi insurgents who had just ambushed the convoy. Or their piles of guns and grenades or the bullets ripping through the air around her. Her bloody comrade lay on the road south of Baghdad, and she had to help the gravely wounded soldier - fast. So she hustled as quickly as her short legs would carry her, ignoring the heat, the ferocious battle and her heavy gear. She ran 100, 200, 300 feet - the length of a football field. |
Posted by:.com |
#1 Her father does, too. "He says just forget it," she explains. "I say, 'Dad, you can't forget it. You just have to learn to live with it.' ... He doesn't want this to haunt me and hold me back the rest of my life - being just 22 years old." It hits every generation that experiences the environment of close combat. That is why from primitive societies till the Vietnam period the clan, the village, or the community celebrated the return of its hunters/warriors. It was a cultural means to ‘cleanse’ the individual of their experience and trauma. Father doesn’t understand because in the male environment, you don’t complain about injury because the hunting group will not take you out to perform your evolutionary function. There were no medics out there when the moose fell on you or the boar sliced through your leg. So you take it like a man. When you grow older, then and only then, do you bear your scars and tell tales of great hunts or battles among your peers. You recite the names of your comrades now gone. That is when you purge yourself of the fear and scars that haunt you. No one explains this to you, because most of them don’t understand the process either. They just live it. However, the parasites of society have taken positions of power and now for decades have actively sought to marginalize and rid the community of its watchdogs and protectors, who not only keep the bear away from the village but who also stand in the way of total rule over the community. So they remove the social mechanisms that have worked among human social groups for millennia to permit its protectors to properly reenter the daily existence of life. That is the true evil you see today as the parasites steal not only the fruit of you and your comrades blood, but deny you the real grace from the trauma and chaos that you so willingly place yourself into for us. |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2006-12-03 09:03 |