¡Colores!; 1008; Mayhem was Our Business: Memorias de un Veterano; Interview; Part 6

It's just a second though, kind of like a second. And I've just been locking it there. What do you think? Let's go. Rolling me out. Okay. That last mission was vicious. We were hit on that day by jet planes. The first time that the Germans had used them. And it was the first time we had ever seen them. And they flew so fast that they couldn't hit us. And they didn't bring any of us down. They scared the BGBs out of us.

Because in order to try to hit us, they had to fly either straight up or straight down. Because if they flew horizontally, they would shoot by much too fast. But it was a very, very weird and very scary. What happened when you landed on your last mission in order to do it? Well, I guess the ground, that was one thing. And I guess a feeling of peace, relaxation, and gratitude. A very powerful feeling of thanks. It was over. Well, yeah, just a little bit here.

I need you to say for me, when we landed, I kissed the ground. Just so I can have a complete statement. Okay. When we landed, I kissed the ground. I was back on terra firma to stay. Perfect. Let's cut for a second. When I was in graduate school, I belonged to a language fraternity. And I was chosen to go to Mulemberg in Pennsylvania to a national convention. And I tried to go by train. I didn't want to fly.

But it would take too long, more than, more time than I could afford. So I had to fly. And I was wearing on my lapel a little button, not the Air Force gave us, when we were released. And right over Pittsburgh, we were hit by a thunder cloud. And that was tossing the plane like comfetti all over the sky. And people were throwing their cookies all over the plane. And I felt my cookies coming up. And the first thing I did was remove the Air Force button and put it in my pocket so that nobody would notice that I had been an Air Force person. How do you reflect back on my whole experience of war?

Talk about the rights of passage. I think my stance in the Air Force and my experience in combat was a right of passage bar excellence. I think I grew up. I think I became a man. And I think my character was born and set. I think that I became in the war torn skies over Europe. The person I become and have been ever since.

Who was that person? The person that knew where he was going and how he was going to get there. What's your opinion of war after having experienced it? I am poor. The very thought of war. I detest the mutilation, the suffering, the tears, the sweat and fears of war. I hate the misery and the devastation of war. Did your experience in war help you better deal with conflict in life later?

Oh yes, I'm for sure. I don't know exactly how. But I don't know how it would have been if there hadn't been a war. But for one thing, I have never abused my wife, my son, my family, or even my dog. I think a respect for the decency of life and the value of life. It was established during the war. The war is not something that you hang in the closet and forget about it. The war is something you wear for the rest of your life.

I learned among other things how to take it, how to take adversity, how to accept what I couldn't change and how to live with what I had and how to be satisfied with what I obtained. You once told me about a terrible nightmare you had about a tornado. Did you tell me about that? Well, that was part of that combat fatigue that I told you about. When I came back from overseas, they gave you a 30-day leave.

It was one of the early veterans to return from the war. Everyone in the family and friends were inviting me out to dinner, parties, lunches, and I was having a ball. A certain uneasiness started creeping up, a certain nervousness. Even before my leave was over, I'd be invited out to dinner in my hands which started shaking so badly I couldn't hold my food. Or somebody would slam a door behind me and I'd go out to the window. And I'd wake up at night screaming, bathed in sweat.

And there was a recurring nightmare that kept coming. It's the same one always. It was a tornado that appeared way out in the distance, but it kept spiraling in, getting closer and closer and closer. As it got closer, I had the feeling that it was a tornado of blood and it was about to absorb me and that's when I wake up screaming. When I went back to the Air Force, they checked me and they found that I had severe combat fatigue. And I suppose that this combat fatigue, which they now call something else,

happened in other wars, but it was probably never diagnosed. And they thought that what we needed was good food and lots of rest. And that was worse. What we needed was action. Action to keep our minds off our own thoughts and our own memories. Tell me about your ping-pong battle experience in the ping-pong game. Well, first of all, I was assigned to, right here in Albuquerque, there used to be a girl school, Sandia Girl School. There was a very elegant, swanky school, but the Air Force took it over.

And it was using it for veterans coming back from overseas. And I was assigned to that so that I could stay home. And early in the morning, I'd report for duty. It wasn't duty. It was diversion for one thing. They'd take us horseback riding. They gave us cameras. And we shoot pictures, and we learn to develop them ourselves. And we take little pictures, little photographs, and blow them up. Right. I was enjoying it tremendously. But then two weeks or so, or after I got there, they Air Force closed it.

And I was in off to Santa Ana, California. And that was a hospital, a convalescent hospital. And there again, what we got was good food, and lots of rest, and lots of diversion. And I remember one time I was playing ping pong. And I don't know whether I told you or not. But the tracer bullets from attack fighter planes look like ping pong balls coming at you. Now I was playing ping pong. When all of a sudden that ping pong ball coming at me became a tracer bullet. I went into a state of fear. I was paralyzed. Some of the guys took advantage of the situation.

You see, they didn't know what combat fatigue was. So even the hospital personnel didn't know quite how to handle us. And some of the guys on purpose would be leading a string as if there was a dog at the end of it. And said, here, puppy, here, puppy, here, puppy. And the nurses and staff in the hospitals would see you doing that. And they'd go into shock. And they were doing that on purpose. I wasn't in the mood for jokes. What were some of the symptoms that you had? Well, the lack of appetite. I didn't think at the dining room they had a big table full of all the fruits that are produced in the United States and overseas.

And they had staff there just to keep replenishing them. All kinds of fruits, grapes, oranges, pears, anything. And then we would get gourmet meals in the dining room. We got to the point where I wouldn't even go to the dining room anymore. I'd go to the kitchen and they'd give me a chicken. And I'd take it to my room. And I had some fruit, some cheese. And I'd munch on those things instead of going to the dining room. And I was getting more and more depressed. And what I needed was some action. I begged them to assign me back to active duty.

And they finally did. And they sent me off to Laredo, Texas to train combat crews. And a lot of those symptoms disappeared. Somebody could read some of that. How about you? Well, I can't read. You can't see it, huh? No. No more looks to face. Keep going over. Keep going. There you go. Try what? I'm talking to me. But let's try to be more conclusive or more summing up about the idea of war. How would you sum up your experience in Lager? Many cut for just a second. Recorded.

I don't think about the war very often or very deeply. I don't have to. War is part of my being, part of my makeup. Everything I see, everything I say, everything I think is somehow filtered, somehow conditioned. But a war, by a war that happened a long time ago, far away from here. A war that I brought home with me, and that I keep inside of me,

has part of myself. You talked about how you never stopped wearing a war, was that it? You can't put the war in a closet. You wear a war. I can't repeat that. That's what I said before. A war is not something you hang in the closet and forget about it. A war is something you wear, you carry with you and is with you at all times. We have our ending.

We're about to run out of things. Thank you.