Di Wood Revisits Winter Soldier II - 05/07/2009

First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
900 Mount Curve Avenue; Minneapolis, MN 55403; Phone 612.377.6608; Fax 612.377.2151

Summer Assembly Previews

7/5/09 “Remembering Winter Soldier 2: A First-
Hand Report”

Speaker: Diane Ford Wood
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Diane Ford Wood, granddaughter-in-law of Abe and Ida Kaufman, guarded “the box” at Winter Soldier 2 in March 2008 and heard every word of testimony from just a few feet away.
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Diane’s volunteer job involved securing the area directly in front of the dais where American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan war bravely told their tales to an international media audience. Pro-war protestors, angered that veterans would “air America’s dirty laundry in public,” worked hard to invade and disrupt the proceedings, creating a tense, even dangerous atmosphere.
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While Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and www.VetSpeak.org both did a thorough job, of reporting these events, most American media did not attend. Backed by a few veteran friends who were also there, Diane will tell what it was like from her perspective and what she believes to be the legacy and lessons of the event.

www.VetSpeak.org

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Winter Soldier Southwest follow-up: Together Then, Together Again...

40 years of tears and one Winter Soldier

By

Mickey Krakowski
USMC 1967-71
RVN 10/68 to 11/69

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It’s strange how some things in life fall together at most appropriate times. This year marks the 40th anniversary of my tour in Vietnam. The very recent reconnection with my brothers from VVAW after a 35 year lapse. The culmination of my struggles with the VA dealing with compensation and medical treatment and finally a reconnection with a woman I loved, that endured my deployment to Vietnam, that had in her possession a 100 letters I wrote while away. All these things felt to me as if they were predestined and that they have a purpose. I hope what I gained from the Winter Soldier gathering in Pasadena, held this past May 9, helps me heal and gives me purpose to continue the struggle against war.

A week before the conference I had a call from Jan Rhuman. He invited me to take part in the Winter Soldier Southwest and requested that I pick up, a friend from way back, in southern Colorado. I left for my journey on Friday May 8, I had to drive 170 miles to Durango to pick up a former friend and fellow revolutionary brother I haven't seen in 35 years, a fellow Marine, (Alfredo Cabrera….then Che and now Calixto). Calixto and I had 5 minutes to greet each other before we jumped into the car and drove almost a 1000 miles to Pasadena (we were so lost in our conversation that we actually got lost). The long trip seemed much shorter than it should have been as I reacquainted myself with my comrade and discussed politics as we always had. It’s always good to rekindle relationships that have a history in political and personal struggles.

We arrived early in the AM Saturday to rooms awaiting us at a hotel near the Pasadena College venue. The morning came early as Jan Rhuman (the perpetual VVAW organizer) had us up soon after 8 AM. He helped set up a Winter Soldier forum at Pasadena Community College along with Wendy Barranco of IVAW. Winter Soldier Southwest involved VVAW, IVAW and AVAW (Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan). There were also other groups that spoke, Military Families Speak Out and Gold Star Mothers (mothers who lost sons and daughters). VVAW was to start the event and supply security for the day (keeping those right wingers at bay if they came to disrupt the proceedings). Jan had assembled a crew of VVAW and VFP volunteers to guard the conference.

Jan, Calixto and myself were the first to address the auditorium about our experiences in the Vietnam war and how the conduct of war has remained unchanged throughout the years.

Jan started with the history of American conflicts since Vietnam and some of the history of the anti war movement and VVAW. Included were a number of wonderful quotes to embellish his speech. Calixto spoke next about his combat experiences as a leader of Marines and some of the events he had witnessed. His testimony was emotionally charged and at a few points he had succumbed to tears. I had to exert all the strength to keep reducing myself into a sobbing blob. My turn came next. This was the first time I ever had to speak to an audience of strangers, I was incredibly nervous and had difficulty trying to say what I wanted. I tried to speak of the unseen wounds that warriors bring home with them. I tried to explain about the frustration of a system (the VA) that disavows responsibility for our care. I felt my delivery inadequate, possibly because of my desire to not fall apart on the stage. I think now of what I could have said and hope for another chance to unburden my soul.

I wished I would have had the courage to tell what was really in the back of my mind. The pain I sometimes relive over and over during the years. A feeling of helplessness and rage.. I was a radio operator for a Battalion Landing Team 2/7 operating off of the LPH 10 Tripoli for the first half of my tour in Vietnam. The ship held 1000 marines and was capable of steaming anywhere along the coast and off load it contingent of Marines as needed for support or for operations. I directed air support, artillery fire, food and ammo drops and medivacs.

The medivac experience was my lowest point in my time in Vietnam. It had nothing to do with killing but of watching death occur. I had been out on a number of operations and had never experienced more than a few medivacs in a day.. Between November 20 and December 9 of 68’ we went out on an operation called Meade River. The purpose of the combined action was to move the inhabitants of nearly 141 small hamlets in the largest of the County Fair operations to date. We received incredible resistance along our route and paid a high toll for the numbers we killed. 500 marines wounded killed in a two week operation. We had only 1000 KIAs and POWs to show for it. A very high price to pay.

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On one particular afternoon we had been caught in a cross fire and had a high number medivacs of wounded and dead. I tried to make myself useful between incoming choppers. I helped in any way I could, triaging and holding the hands of the severely wounded. I held the hand of a new guy in our company as he lay dieing. I listened to what he wanted to tell me, all the time telling him everything will be alright. He told me things to tell his family, friends and loved ones. I didn’t have time to write these things down. He died while I sat at his side and I felt incredibly helpless that I couldn’t get him on a chopper and to the hospital for treatment of his wounds. He passed away before I even knew his name, my promise of relaying his wishes an impossible task. His life slipped away on a muddy rice paddy dike slick with blood. I was mourning his loss, my helplessness in aiding him and my failure in helping him survive. A deep rage started at the corps of my being, I was going to extract revenge any way I could.. The months that followed were filled with my anger and torment of my victims. The phrase we used was that “We leave no witnesses!”.

The operation was a horrific experience, I witnessed the inhumanity of war and our failure to serve the people we were supposed to protect. There were further events that occurred during that operation. We had difficulty moving some of the handicapped citizens. Many of the old men and women were unable to walk and carry possessions. It was expected of us to help out. What we chose to do instead was to turn the duties over to the ARVN forces accompanying us to this village. Rather that carry their own, they chose to take four of the old men into a hut and killed them, just to save time.

As I listened to the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan warriors tell their stories, my memories came flooding back. The story was the same for most of us, the background a desert not a jungle for the latter. Many wept at the podium and in the audience, I wept with them too. The soldiers let loose a torrent of stories each one more horrifying than the last. The stories of torture, murder and personal acts of revenge. Stories continued of watching comrades die and the rage that followed. A simple explanation of my PTSD is the things we do, not in defending our country or the country we liberate, but how we exact revenge for loosing friends in the field, and in the process, unleash an uncontrollable rage and vengeance. We are soldiers and we react to situations without process.

The thing that the audience could probably never understand is that these recollections aren’t just words expressing what soldiers feel. To a war veteran they are also combined with the sights, sounds and smells that coincided with each event. The smell of burning huts, the cries of mothers, sons and daughters mourning lives lost before their eyes. The screams of the interrogated as young American soldiers ask unanswerable questions in English. The sounds of gunfire and artillery nearby, thumping of helicopters and the attitude that the only way to survive was to waste and raze everything in our path..

The conference continued when MFSO spoke next. They all suffered the fear of an eventual knock on the door and expectation of the two soldiers outside bringing them bad news. Families of deployed soldiers suffer their own PTSD and continue to live the horror as they watch their children, after their return, sinking into drug and alcohol abuse and self destructive, violent behavior. They are driven to support their children’s choice of entering the service of the United States and live in constant fear of how it affected their children

The last to speak were the Gold Star Mothers, women who lost children. I couldn't attend because I knew I had left Vietnamese mothers without their sons. I had souvenirs to prove it, I collected ID‘s of the dead.. I could only imagine what it would feel like to lose a child far to early in life.

On my return drive home, Calixto, a Nuevo York, Puerto Rican, claims to have healed himself of his PTSD through his own beliefs in spirituality and meditation. He asked me if I believed him when he said he was cured, my answer was immediately and unequivocally, NO! I gave him the “Look“ over the top of my sunglasses. I have no doubt that he too would question his rehabilitation.. He never argued in his own favor, he just patted me on my shoulder and we continued the drive. We talked till we were both too hoarse, regaling in the good old days, talking revolution and telling war stories, we both cried together. We both wondered the same things, did any of our demonstrating and revolutionary work serve a purpose? Did we change any government policy? Not.

Did we help someone decide not to join the military and become a government pawn? Yes we did. Did we focus attention on our returning warriors and their immediate needs? Yes! It's frustrating we could do no more back in the 70‘s, and yet, we still wish we could do it again. I dropped him off in Durango, CO and after a couple of hours sleep continued the final leg of my journey home.

I leave behind my own trail of tears, in my lone drive over the mountain passes. Driving alone in my car I was able to express the grief I feel for all my fallen brothers. I cried while agonizing the burden the surviving warriors have to carry on for the rest of their lives. I also came to realize that the older we get the more we realize the impact we leave in our wake and how it will affect us until we are gone.

The words I write are 2 dimensional on paper, they don’t have the 3D effect that the mind produces when memories flood back. I wish I could just make them go away, I wished I had served not only my country better but that I had helped save an oppressed people. Instead my memories are filled with the oppression I delivered, the lack of compassion I could have afforded the frightened people of South Vietnam. War is Hell and many, including myself, have to contend with the fires of shame and regret every day of our lives. Our purpose now is to make others realize that our conduct in wars need to be addressed, our returning brothers in arms need care and support and that things need to change so history isn’t constantly repeated.

For this winter soldier the war never ends and the memories flood back with every news report and newspaper article. The truth is never completely revealed, only the soldier knows the truth.
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www.VetSpeak.org

Soldiering on in Pasadena at Winter Soldier Southwest, Iraq and Afghanistan

Pasadena, CA--May 9, 2009

By Horace Coleman

The energy level was high. The atmosphere outside the lecture hall where Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) held Winter Soldier Southwest, Iraq and Afghanistan was like a combination convention, music festival, major sports event and appearances by popular celebrities.

“Event staff” volunteers (security, facilities, registration) at Pasadena City College functioned as if a mini Rose Bowl Parade / football game was going on. Wendy Barranco, president of the LA chapter of IVAW that hosted the event, quickly moved from place to place checking and overseeing detail after detail, resolving the usual last minute glitches and changes.

Sound system working all right? Lighting functioning properly? Media checking in? Water and microphones in place and name placards ready for panelists? Tables outside the hall assigned to organizations and vendors who had pre registered--and paid--for space? Panelists present? Security assignments filled?

CDs, DVDs, books, flyers, newspapers and pamphlets were unloaded and set out. Programs were passed out. People mingled with old friends and met in the flesh people they’d only known by e-mail messages, a chat room or phone calls. New acquaintances chit chatted and checked out the location of bathrooms before the event, lasting from 1 P.M. until 8 P.M., began.

Seven panels and a spirited Question & Answer session were held. The first panel was “History’s Relevance (VVAW)” composed of Marine VietNam combat vets. Jan Ruhman led it. The other panelists were Mickey Krakowski and Calixto Cabrera.

Ruhman set the context and gave details about the awakening about, and resistance to, that war. Krawkowski and Cabrera focused on the personal awakening and odyssey they made as they tried to get the smoke our of their ears and lives and tried to become civilians when back in “the world.” All reconsidered and recognized the reality their war experiences had on them. Cabrea spoke movingly of his trip through PTSD.

He stressed that different paths and treatments can lead to healing after trauma and PTSD and each person has to find and follow the way that works best for them. But there is—after time and much effort—healed life after war. Because there is no draft and more people “support” the troops than become one, today’s warriors do repeated deployments and have a higher rate of PTSD than Nam vets and a high suicide rate.

Other panels were “Boots on the Ground (IVAW)”, “A Daily Sacrifice (MFSO)”, “Military Tactics in the Occupations” (Marine Iraq vet Jacob “Jake" Diliberto), Activists of Today (VFP)”, and “GI Resistance (IVAW).” Many panelists made very good points.

Ruhman quoted Donald Rumsfeld: “The Geneva Convention does not apply.” “That set the state for torture,” Ruhman said. Marine Iraq war vet Ryan Endicott read from a moving piece he’d written describing combats incidents and flatly stated “I can not mend what I’ve broken.” Diliberto spoke of his “journey of repentance” to Israel’s West Bank and northern Israel and how “my world view of these people [Arabs / Moslems] changed.”

Marine Christopher Gallagher served three Iraq tours. He mentioned not having body armor on one deployment and that “contractors were paid five times what I was.” “U.S. imperialism is wrong” Gallagher told the audience. “You can’t bring democracy through the barrel of a gun.”

On the “Daily Sacrifice” panel, Navy wife Paulina Brooks spoke frankly about the strains of military life, readjusting to a “new” husband every time he returned from a deployment (including eight combat tours in a 26-year career) and the drinking problem she’d developed and conquered. Her Lt. Commander, surgeon husband, David talked about the PTSD he’d developed and the RPG he’d been wounded by. It was fired at such close range it didn’t travel far enough to arm itself and explode but its impact did damage that later caused three heart attacks. That—and PTSD—ended his military career and his ability to do the work he was good at and proud of.

Tina Richards, a member of the same panel, told the stories of her two military sons. One, despite having been wounded in a mortar attack and having reached the end of his enlistment, was stop lossed and scheduled for redeployment. She begged, demanded, demonstrated, lobbied and pleaded with military and congress people. Finally, within days of military and VA personnel actually and seriously evaluating the situation, her son was discharged—with 80 percent disability. She shared accounts of having one-sided phone conversations with her other son. He would listen with the barrel of a gun in his mouth as she talked him out of suicide.

Arturo Cambrom told about his son, the most gentle and caring of his children, who planned to use his enlistment bonus to start a day care center. Home on leave before his second Iraq deployment began he began showing obvious signs of PTSD (including flashbacks).

A soldier with PTSD in a combat zone is a danger to them self, the people in their unit and to the civilians there. Such a person has intermittent diminished capacity. Consequently their actions, triggered or driven by a mind taking in information inaccurately, can be inappropriate. Or, bad judgment may lead to action that worsens PTSD--or gets someone killed.

Dangerous and devastating things can easily happen in any part of this cycle when there is easy or instant access to rifles, machine guns, explosives, helicopter or fixed wing gun ships, artillery and mortar fire, fighter / bomber and drone air strikes.

One Iraq vet testifying at Winter Soldier Southwest said that one night on guard duty a troop manning a heavy machine gun mounted on a vehicle swung the gun around to investigate a sound behind him. A sniper? A suicide bomber?

The weapon went off as he turned. When he looked back he saw that the troop who’d been standing nearby had been cut in half. The gunner knew him. On the spot he took out his sidearm and killed himself with a shot to the head.

Friendly fire is Milspeak for “My bad!” Here’s an example of unfriendly fire, given by the same person. It’s also about night guard duty. Some suspicious shadows with what might have been guns were approaching. Someone fired at the shadows. They turned out to be boys with sticks waving them in greeting at the Americans. There’s a military mantra that goes “When in doubt, take ’em out!”

One of the day’s many highlights was the “Activists of Today” panel VFP conducted. VFP past president Eliot Adams made two significant remarks. Adams gave a quote about war that he attributed to President Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of Western allied forces during World War II: “ . . . It’s brutality, stupidity and futility.” Adams said Obama “cannot create the change we need; we must do it. “

That statement made me think of another I’d heard: “We must be the change we need!” If you’re not, you’re just like the zeros in a number, place markers with more weight than significance.

That made me write this down: Don’t just protest! Affirm. Know history. Plan. Build coalitions. Revise and work your plan.

After a dinner break there were two more panels. One was on GI Resistance and was conducted by IVAW members Tracey Harmon and Jabbar McGruder. Practical and effective “resistance” is hard in the military. The organizational structure of the military is a pyramid with a narrow apex. Power and authority live there. Orders, commands and demands flow down to the pyramids broad base. The apex basically answers only to itself and the political figures funding it and directing the targets of its actions. If you want to change the military, change the top and change will trickle down.

The last panel was called “The Ultimate Sacrifice.” It consisted of members of Gold Star Families, parents who’d lost a child to war. Jane and Jim Bright (mother and step father of Evan Ashcroft, KIA in Iraq) talked about their son and the foundation they’d started to aid today’s war vets, honor Evan and keep his spirit alive. Jim Bright said he’s quit being an activist about seven times but always came back. Two other mothers spoke of the pain and loss they’d felt after their sons had been killed. One mother was still agonized by her decision to sign her underage son’s enlistment papers. But, how long would that have kept a young man determined to join the military out of a uniform?

You’d think that a day listening to what most people avoid acknowledging would be hazardous to your weekend. However, the crowd leaving after the Question & Answer session seemed uplifted. Perhaps it was seeing and hearing intelligent, articulate and informed war veterans who’d walked the walk and performed more practical patriotism in harsh conditions than most war hawks and arm chair patriots ever would.

Maybe it was people saying in front of God and every one that they’d drunk some government Kool-Aid, experienced pain, loss and fallen down but gotten up again and were moving on. It could have been the call to abandon partisan politics and unite to forward common goals good for the country.

The colonies that became an expansionist nation and then an empire have morphed into lifestyles and demographics dependent on credit cards and deficit budgets to pay for overreaching ambitions and delusions.

Reality wants its—now.

It will take more than puffing up your chest and chanting “We’re #1!” to change course on this ship of state. There are some battle tested patriots willing to accept the challenge, though.

Still, it all makes you wonder if the U.S. will grow up before it dies or . . . .

www.VetSpeak.org