Survivor's Guilt: Problems of Oral Histories of Veterans

          There are cultural expectations shaped as much by mass consumption entertainment as they are by lived experience. The collectives that societies form normalize attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that are enforced, consciously or otherwise. People that live with the memories of something too far outside of those expectations can find themselves silenced either by trying to speak to ears that refuse to hear, to minds that can not understand, or sometimes with mouths that are unable to express themselves. Military veterans, by the very nature of service, might find themselves on the wrong side of cultural expectations.

          Three veterans returning from World War II gaze out of the nose of a bomber flying to their home town, the rolling countryside slowly becoming more familiar to them as they get closer to home. The Navy Petty Officer Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), demonstrates the use of the hooks that have replaced both of his hands by lighting the cigarettes of the Air Force Lieutenant Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and Army Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March).¹ After disembarking the three share a cab back to their old lives, or whatever they could make out of them; Homer not able to bring himself to embrace his sweetheart. Al Stephenson, unrecognized by the doorman at his own apartment, surprises his wife and children, but quickly finds out that his kids have grown up significantly, and his wife's social circles have changed. While dealing with mental traumas, Fred attempts to find the woman he married just before he departed, but when he does his marriage quickly sours as they party away the last of his savings. He is reduced to taking up his low paying pre-war job in a drug store, his military experience having no bearing on the civilian world. The film The Best Years of Our Lives might look a bit dated to a modern audience, as the acting and narratives of 1946 were more stylized than today's viewers are used to, but at the time it was praised for its realism.² The basic narrative of returning veterans trying to put their lives back together is made more poignant by the two-Oscar-winning portrayal of Homer by Army veteran Harold Russell (Best Supporting Actor, and a special award for “bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures”).³

          Fitting with modern sensibilities about what a realistic film might be considered, The Present Trauma, a 2013 short-film for HBO's Project Greenlight, presents a jarring image of a Marine dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Survivor's Guilt.⁴ The tight editing that jumps quickly from one disjointed, barely related scene to the next drags the audience into the realization that for Keith (Patrick John Flueger), the past is an immediate part of his post-war life, but instead of being a mere memory, it is a visceral reality that intrudes upon his daily activities. In The Best Years Fred has a recurring nightmare about a bombing mission that went badly, which he can't put out of his mind even though his wife insists that he put the war behind him. In The Present Trauma Keith's significant other, Denise (Bre Blair), gives him the ultimatum to resume a treatment of “meds” that he complains make him lethargic.

          Fred's inner conflict is resolved only when he is divorced from the wife that cannot understand why he is unable to put the war behind him. He finds work scrapping the very types of planes he used to fly, and in the final scene of the movie proposes to Al's daughter at Homer's wedding. Keith's conflict, which places him moments away from committing suicide, comes to a close when a stray dog he took in brings him back to the present moment by licking his face.

          In a television commercial by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) a modern uniformed solider arrives into an empty airport, rides a vacant subway, and alone walks through uncharacteristically still New York city streets until finally he is greeted by a fellow veteran.⁵ With a handshake the streets come alive with crowds of passers-by. The three depictions are all narrative fictions that allow the audience a cathartic release. Films and commercials are highly intentional works of art that ought not to be taken at face value. What we might consider realistic today, might seem antiquated or forced in the near future, because what an audience finds “authentic” changes with each generation.⁶ Beyond how the audience receives a given narrative lies the author's intentions, and in the case of films there is a host of people involved in the approval and production process. Having something worth presenting requires that the message be cloaked in a story people are willing to pay to experience; “[w]hen Goldwyn decided to spend $2 million on Best Years, he not only wanted to tell the story of returning veterans, he wanted to make his money back.”⁷ Likewise, The Present Trauma was produced in the hopes of winning the financing to make a feature-length film from Project Greenlight, and Alone was an advertisement aimed and getting returning veterans to join the IAVA. They tell us something about the veterans' experience, but they are not unbiased and unmotivated. They help shape how each generation understands their veterans.

          Films and television are far from the only media to impact the collective understandings. However, even when turning to works written by witnesses themselves, the act of writing carries with it a set of normalized behaviors, things which the author likely knows the audience expects, “chronology, description, characterization, dialog, and above all, perhaps, the invention of a narrative voice” which forces disjointed memories into what seems to be a sequence.⁸ Lawerence Langer suggests that the narrative voice, with its teleological interpretation of memories, allows the split observer of personal memories, the part of the individual that remembers and the part that relates the memory, attempts “to recreate a moment held hostage by time” in order to “retrieve” the truth.⁹ However, in the process of writing a teleological narrative there is a separation between the “abstractness” of the story and the “concreteness of an experience moment.”¹⁰ This can be seen in the survivors of other traumatic historical events, like the Holocaust. Even in the middle of her historical present recollection, writing as if at the time she was standing in a concentration camp, in attempting to understand her own story Charlotte Delbo's narrative voice ascribes back onto that memory of the camp her current meaning of her past actions in Auschwitz in the form of a inner monologue affirming that she would survive.¹¹ This kind of retrospective appeals because it is what is expected. However, it is not the truth, strictly defined, and Delbo rejects the constructed reality the narrative voice makes out of the memory in her very next statement: “And this would be false. I did not say anything to myself. I did not think anything.”¹²

          Much like with Holocaust survivors, veterans attempting to communicate the “truth” of their experiences cannot help but examine the memories from a far distant vantage point of the present and are forced to speak with a split voice. No truth can be told without it being re-imagined by the speaker, which will change the content, but that does not mean that witness testimonies are less valuable than factual reports.¹³ Splitting all information into “fact” and “fiction” categories encourages the receiver to think that anything that is not strictly factual is fantasy, but the truth is something that is constructed by the mind, by psychology and the facts, and it must be interpreted.¹⁴

The author, the storyteller and the audience are all familiar with the social conventions of providing closure to a story. A hard-luck marriage proposal filled with both acknowledgement of future difficulties and true love. A stray dog licking the disoriented veteran back to the present moment. The handshake of a brother-in-arms bringing day-to-day life back into the picture. The post-hoc conclusion of a past destiny fulfilled by the very paragraph it is recorded in. Each provide a means to communicate that no matter how dark the journey might have been, there is hope. This is a important tool for the narrative as it provides the audience a safe return to the normal from the dangers encountered within the mental framework of the tale.

Most American have never been caught up in warfare as civilians. Thus it is hard for most of us to grasp the effect of combat duty—of continual danger and anxiety—on the human body and the human mind. Many of us may never fully know what it must feel like to face death in a situation, other than illness, over which we have little if any control. … To understand these veterans' reactions … to understand the narrators of this history—it is important to put ourselves in their shoes. … In Achilles in Vietnam, [John] Shay asks his readers to “respond emotionally to the reality of combat danger in order to make rational sense of the injury inflicted when those in charge violate 'what is right.'¹⁵

          While it might seem like common sense that researchers ought to try to understand individuals through their own experiences, the disparity between normality and extreme situations requires that the researchers shift their points of view beyond any of the normal conventions. With a written text there can only exist a one-way communication from the page to the reader, which forces the reader “into silent collaboration with the narrative,” but with an oral history two-way communication allows the interviewer to impose an interpretation onto the narrative.¹⁶ Langer highlights the effects of preconceptions and “culturally nourished moral expectations” on a Holocaust survivor's testimony when a pair of interviewers talking with Hanna F. concluded that she had lived through the Holocaust because of “pluck” and “guts” against her insistence that she had lived because of “luck” and “stupidity”.¹⁷ Their outright dismissal of her adamantly held belief that she was not, in effect, the hero of her story, ended only when they laughingly stopped the interview. She had violated cultural expectations, and they rejected her truth in favor of their own comfortable explanation.

          For transitioning veterans the body of films sets some of the cultural expectations about the difficulties they face returning home. Combined with the expected culture shock, veterans carry with them the ever-present memories of the often violent past, the realities of of combat dangers, which Shay encourages readers to emotionally engage with in order to understand. However, civilians, intellectually fed by a stream of facts about military and conflict, may not be prepared for the truths veterans bring with them.¹⁸

          “'A dead buddy's some tough shit,' quips an unnamed soldier in Dispatches, 'but bringing your own ass out alive can sure help you get over it.' Rarely within these works is appreciation for life or gratitude for survival mentioned without a corresponding reference to the dead.”¹⁹ Jen Dunnaway argues that the dead take on a complex role within the oral history, where they function not only as a sort of purified wisdom, but as living people resurrected within the narratives and “are able to exert a continuing presence” because of the stories.²⁰ As our memories make up a portion of who we are, how we self-identify, veterans feel the lingering presence of the dead, not just in their stories, but in their own selves, even when survival allows them to “get over it”.

          Accounts made for popular consumption, like movies and television ads, form expectations about veterans that do not generally include a “dead buddy” living within the memories. Those that do present them as a mental illness, as Keith's flashbacks or Fred's nightmares. If this is the cultural lamp directed into the darker recesses of veterans oral history, then the living presence of the dead will rob the veteran of an appreciation for life, as the laughter of Hanna's interviewers took the legitimacy of her own voice. The silent or silenced voice can carry serious consequences, as the suicide of Norman Bowker demonstrates.²¹

          Bowker approached Tim O'Brien, as soldiers they served together in Vietnam, about recording his story.²² Because of the war Bowker felt that he had become unable to relate his experiences in any way, and needed help. O'Brien feared the project and dredging up his own memories, nevertheless he committed to the first published version of “Speaking of Courage”. Feeling that he failed to capture the experience completely, he sent a copy to Bowker anyway. Months later Bowker killed himself. O'Brien's own interpretation was that his apparent failure caused Bowker's death. Dunnaway contests that telling, offering that “Bowker was suffocated by his own silence, his inability to be heard either through his own initiative or through an appointed storyteller.”²³ Dunnaway's view might lend some insight into how important the autonomous voice of the witness and survivor can be, but it can also be seen as a culturally biased understanding of O'Brien, both as a storyteller and a veteran. He violated the cultural expectations in his narrative by claiming responsibility of the death of his brother-in-arms, and he gained another “dead buddy” that exerts a living presence in his narrative.

          Whether it is factually accurate to say that O'Brien's failure caused Bowker's death doesn't matter as much as the meaning that O'Brien gives to the event. In the end, because it “can never be absolutely realized,” O'Brien insists that his collection is a work of fiction.²⁴ Like The Best Years, The Present Trauma, and Alone, the act of telling a story is never fully unmotivated. Bowker wished to be heard. Despite his own misgivings, O'Brien decided to assist his buddy. There is a limited perspective that any document can present, and a reason for it to be made. What falls to the interviewer is that the autonomy of the person providing an oral history be respected.

          The difficulties of military service continue to shape the lives of veterans for as long as they carry the memories, like the survivors of any traumatic chapter of history. The further from normality their military experience, the more difficult it might be for them to relate their stories back into a society that has not shared the same hardships. This can be made exceptionally more difficult when memories of dead buddies not only live as a part of the identity of the veteran, but when it is also bound to their appreciation of life. To respect the autonomy of veterans while attempting to record their oral histories necessitates that the interviewer approach the topic with ears that are willing to hear, and minds that are open enough to try to understand as best as possible. To respect the veterans' welfare requires that the interviewers not dismiss their apprehensions.

Bibliography

Alone. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. 2008; New York City, NY: Ad Council. Streaming Video. Accessed March 7, 2015, <https://youtu.be/fDbqLul97Fg>.

The Best Years Of Our Lives. Directed by William Wyler. 1946; Hollywood, CA: The Samuel Goldwyn Company. Released by Warner Home Video. DVD.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. “Harold John Russell.” Accessed March 9, 2015, .

Kozloff, Sarah. The Best Years Of Our Lives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan on Behalf of British Film Institute, 2001.

Langer, Lawrence. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.

The Present Trauma. Directed by Mark Manalo. 2013; New York City, NY: HBO Project Greenlight. Streaming Video. Accessed March 1, 2015, .

Soldier Talk: The Vietnam War in Oral Narrative. Edited by Paul Budra and Michael Zeitlin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Stacewicz, Richard. Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997.

1 The Best Years Of Our Lives, directed by William Wyler (1946; Hollywood, CA: The Samuel Goldwyn Company, released by Warner Home Video), DVD.

2 Sarah Kozloff, The Best Years Of Our Lives, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan on Behalf of British Film Institute, 2001), 8-9.

3 Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, “Harold John Russell”, accessed March 9, 2015, http://www.britannica.com/Ebchecked/topic/860661/Harald-John-Russell.

4 The Present Trauma, directed by Mark Manalo (2013; New York City, NY: HBO Project Greenlight), streaming video, accessed March 1, 2015, http://www.projectgreenlight.com.

5 Alone, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (2008; New York City, NY: Ad Council), streaming video, accessed March 7, 2015, https://youtu.be/fDbqLul97Fg.

6 Kozloff, 9.

7 Kozloff, 83.

8 Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 41.

9 Langer, 42.

10 Langer, 42.

11 Langer, 42-3.

12 Langer, 41.

13 Soldier Talk: The Vietnam War in Oral Narrative, edited by Paul Budra and Michael Zeitlin, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 28.

14 Soldier Talk, 29.

15 Richard Stacewicz, Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997), 3-4.

16 Langer, 63.

17 Langer, 63-4.

18 Soldier Talk, 29.

19 Soldier Talk, 40. Italics in the original.

20 Soldier Talk, 40-1.

21 Soldier Talk, 44.

22 Soldier Talk, 44-45.

23 Soldier Talk, 45.

24 Soldier Talk, 45-6.