THE PRICE OF FREEDOM is an award-winning film to be shown on PBS over the Memorial Day week.
It tells the story of seven WWII veterans who fought together and were captured together; their “bonds go far beyond surviving combat. The men have joined forces 50 years after the war to conquer a final foe.”
“Despite the brutal ordeals of being a prisoner, many POWs saw their capture as a personal failure, and carried their silent burden for decades.”
Now for the first time, seven of these men who lived it, tell their unique stories and reveal how they have come together to restore their senses of manhood, of selfhood
PBS goes on to say:
Intelligent and heartfelt, this is an emotional and inspiring …[film] sure to resonate with viewers across America, especially soldiers and veterans of all conflicts. Especially now.
What some have well-meaningly named “The Greatest Generation,” could also, in a far clearer reality… have been righteously called “The Silenced Generation.” This includes the soldiers and nursing corps and families and civilians who suffered so deeply in war…
‘Observers’ with few observation skills or little experience with the night thoughts and terrors of veterans, have said in the long ago past, that those who have been to war were ‘brave’ for not speaking about their ordeals afterward. There was little timely intervention for people traumatized by war. And, if there was therapy, it was kept nearly secret from most everyone, further isolating the person ’til they could be ‘rehabilitated’ back into society again.
“Rehabilitated,” as one of my patients who is a veteran and former POW said, “rehabilitated, that’s what the enemy wanted us to be too.”
Something about ‘stiff upper lip’ once back home, being some kind of badge of manhood/ honor. Silence often touted as a superior behavior by those very ones who were not POWs, those who have rarely or never been in hand to hand combat, never tried to operate in a field of blood, never tried but failed to save a life, no matter their rank, or lack of it.
One of my dear friends, John, an ace WWII pilot, now white-haired and one of the last of the truly gallant men on earth, says, “We never suffered in flying, no matter how or what we engaged, like the boys did on the ground. We were the lucky ones.”
Back then, observers and self-appointed behavior-setters, were not skilled and were not paying attention to how the psyche, if sealed off from leaching expressions of trauma will, like a radial tire, develop a bubble in the sidewall and blow out in a different way. Alcohol, anger fits, drugs, isolation, inability to bear social interaction, controlling others, instability, violence, abuse, uncommunicativeness, and other addictions gradually build up to ease the pressure from deep trauma.
Those who say it is somehow superior not to speak of grave matters as they affect the human soul and psyche, are wrong in most cases. What is brave is to speak of what one did/ saw/ thought/ felt… as each person chooses, and without fear of being exiled for being somehow less a person. How could a solider, nurse, family member, civilian who was in the midst of blood witness and war, ever be thought ‘less’?
Perhaps for those who remain silent because they have no demons riding nightly through their skulls, that is the right way for them. But that should never be confused with those who have remained silent and done their damnedest all these years, remaining silent, because they felt that if they spoke even a few sentences about these matters, it might throw them to their knees weeping to the sky.
It is brave to say out loud what a culture ought hear when done with war… all of it—rather than enjoining the most superficial aspects of culture which are giddy to wash their hands of it all, wanting only to feast now and be happy and return to ‘your regular programmed episodes,’… leaving out of their ‘happiness equation’ the depth quotient of those who went away to war mostly whole, but came back not weak, but also no longer all of a piece… or peace.
If the culture can stand to go to war, it has to be able to stand to stay near to hear the stories of war afterward, the real ones that live on in people’s very cells, the ones that would make most of us want to fall to our knees and weep to the sky.
It makes no sense to allow those who suffered for us once, to suffer for us twice, and ad infinitum…because we let them suffer in silence, alone.
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM, seven POWs break their silence and tell their stories: showing May 26, Monday KBDI TV in the Rocky Mountain market. Check your local listings