POEMS FROM A P.T.S.D VICTIM AND SURVIVOR
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country: Bertrand Russell, attributed
Glantz wrote about Cloy Richards, who lives in rural Salem, Missouri, and has served two deployments in the Marine Corps in Iraq. The military lists him as 80-percent combat disabled.
His mother says he has knee and arm injuries, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder, and currently has a claim pending with the Army for a traumatic brain injury.
After interviewing his mother Tina yesterday by phone ~ I find that she recently had to literally camp out in Washington, D.C. for three months to keep Troy from being shipped back to Iraq for active duty.
This despite the fact that he has had three serious suicide attempts.
Tina has a website that graphically documents her story to save her son from himself as well as the Marine Corps ~ who were determined to send him back to Iraq www.grassrootsamerica4us.org
What touched me, in my interview with her, was how Cloy's poetry has been a vehicle to slowly push himself out of his Black Hole of guilt, despair, aloneness and unworthiness ~ which are the common characteristics of P.T.S.D
Here are two of his poems ~ appropriate now as we approach Memorial Day.
WHY I FIGHT FOR PEACE
by Cloy Richards USMC
Because I can’t forget no matter how hard I try.
They told us we were taking out advancing Iraqi
forces,
But when we went to check out the bodies
they were nothing but women and children
desperately fleeing their homes because
they wanted to get out of the city
before we attacked in the morning.
Because my little brother, who is my job to protect,
decided to join the California National Guard
to get some money for college and
they promised he wouldn’t go to Iraq.
instead three months after enlisting
he was sent to Iraq for one year.
Since he has been home for the last six months,
he refuses to talk to anyone, he lives by himself.
the only person he associates with is a friend of his,
the one other man out of his squad of thirteen men
who made it home alive.
He called me a few weeks ago for the first time
And told me he’s having nightmares.
I asked what they were about and
He said they’re about picking up the pieces
Of his fellow soldiers after a car bomb hit them.
Because every single one of the Marines I served
with,
the really brave warriors, even when some friends
and people
they looked up to got killed or lost an arm or leg,
they wouldn’t cry, they just kept fighting.
They completed their mission.
Every one of them I have spoken to since we got
home
has broken down crying in front of me,
saying all they can do since they got back
is bounce from job to job, drink and do drugs,
And contemplate suicide to end the pain.
Because I’m tired of drinking, bouncing from job to job
and contemplating suicide to end the pain.
Because every time I see a child,
I think of the thousands I’ve slaughtered.
Because every time I see a young soldier,
I think of the thousands Bush has slaughtered.
Because every time I look in the mirror
I see a casualty of the war.
Because I have a lot of lives I have to make up for,
the lives I have taken and
Because it’s right.
That’s why I fight.
Because of soldiers with wounds you can’t see.
Survivor's Guilt
By Corporal Cloy Richards
I stare at this paper and don’t know what to say
I don’t feel right saying “happy memorial day”
I don’t find anything happy in the price you’ve
paid
We’re both just pawns when this game called
war gets played
My body came home but my spirit just stayed
That hot Iraqi day when you were slayed
Watching my back so I could sleep unafraid I
heard the explosion from where I laid
And instantly I watched the skies go grey
I watched my life just float away
How could things go this way
You were my brother in arms and you took my
place
But not like the way that car bomb took your
face
And blew off your limbs
When I think about it my head starts to spin
I get noxious when I think of your family
I want to tell them I truly am sorry
I’m sorry your son died protecting me
This isn’t the way things were meant to be
You see that day your son took my duty
Your brother sacrificed four 4 hours of sleep
So he could go guard a gate for me
Your fiancée took my fate from me
I’m sorry your father took my place for me
I’m sorry I can spend memorial day with my
family
Today should have been a memorial for me
At least then the survivor could have lived guilt-
free.
