You hear it a lot: Men and women soldiers went to war. When they came home, they would not often speak of what they’d done and seen.

Many in media have tried to lionize entire generations of vets for ‘not speaking,’ remaining silent, ‘stiff upper lip…’ These were touted as signs of character. ** And they can be in certain instances.

But for many vets who seldom told their war stories, the media’s enchantment with ‘the strong silent type’ as an ideal of perfect manhood, amounted to a broad misinterpretation: Silence equals stoic strength. This distortion overshadowed the greater and far finer underlying psychological motives for many vets ‘not speaking.’

I come from a family of refugees, and I’ve worked with war vets for 4 decades. I’m a military wife, husband in for 21 years USAF. I’ve seen and heard the real stories of soldiers and families from the inside as participant, not from the outside as ‘visitor.’

There are many reasons why soldiers coming home —and refugees and detainees and ‘displaced persons’ and citizen survivors of war— do not often speak of war.

–It is true that some who have been in blood cannot tell the stories they have lived without losing their hold on the now.
–And it is true that some must, for the sake of so much, write, unleash in creative works, everything they know and remember to the best of their abilities.
–It is true that many vets tell only other vets, and only others they love and come to trust the most.
–And it is true that some solders born as introverts did not speak much before the war, and will remain true to personality after war as well.

–And it is true that most vets will gang together now for life with their shipmates, squadron-mates, not to re-live the war, not to try to live the life they missed while at war, but to pump up the Life Force inside each veteran with everything they’ve got…to make new stories together now, ones they all can tell freely…
–And very sometimes over the years, when the time is right, and for good purpose, a vet will tell the story of those they remember, those ones who were not able to come back home.

It is true, if you have been to war, afterward, back home, some persons who seem to have seldom been to war themselves… will try to pump the vets for ‘heroic stories’ … somewhat resembling people who feast on sit-coms or soap operas or exciting films.

Some inquirers mean well, but most soldiers can’t and won’t accommodate on the spot. They especially despise their stories being exploited by politicians to further the politicos’ bragging rights… some vets call those ‘bragging wrongs.’ Many vets have learned that being cajoled by some in media ‘to have the chance to tell your side of the story,’ is just that, a cajolement.

Certain vets who carry the deepest stories, have become wary and weary watching what has been done to other vets via the tag team of certain media and political string-pullers. If vets did not know before, many know now the grave psychological peril to themselves, ‘the thinging’ of their war experiences that a media maw can do in its rush to add to the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ list of pop icons.

Real heroism and real stories that have loose ends, that are far from fairy-tale perfect, are buried by these floods of media scat. U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman’s death being grotesquely exploited by carpetbaggers plundering sacred ground for personal gain, will never, ever be forgotten.

But beyond all of these matters, far away in a field where no one calls out bad on the other side, far away, there is the abiding reason why so many soldiers once back home do not speak of war. Lieutenant Commander Holly Harrison nailed it, said it better than any of us struggle to say it. She is the first woman awarded the Bronze Star by the U.S. Coast Guard, and in a convening of women veterans a year and a half ago, she said …

that less than three years prior, she didn’t know what it meant to risk her life against an enemy.

“But that all changed as my shipmates and I steamed up the Khawar Abd Allah River into Iraq,” she said. “I now know what it means to be a veteran…”

Lieutenant Commander Holly Harrison said that both of her grandfathers and father were in the military, but never talked much about their wartime experiences. She said she now understands why.

“When I got back from Iraq, all my friends and family wanted to hear stories about what it was like over there. But I wasn’t in the mood to tell stories. I figured it was because I was burned out. Yet, even now, I still hesitate to tell stories about what happened in Iraq.

“To talk about some of the things that happened…I simply can’t do them justice,” she said. “I can’t explain in words what it was like and to try to do so cheapens it somehow.”

That is it, right there: the finer underlying measure. Silence caused by caring deeply about doing justice to the souls involved in all those stories. These are not just any stories dreamed up by scriptwriters. These are stories that are told as a holy endeavor.

Not wanting to accidentally cheapen the preciousness of life by too quick a telling, or to not realize that giving out the stories freely… well, that some listeners will miss the sacredness and instead will turn them solely to entertain themselves… or to tell others, the way a biddy looks for shocking gossip only.

The vets who carry deep stories want to think things through, find the right time and place. To speak for ‘reasoned reasons,’ not for others’ petty curiosities. “F curiosity!” as one of my vet patients used to say, “Give me meaning.”

All those “no-words-for-it stories” that many soldiers carry: They will find the special words; they will tell the stories. They will. On their own timing. And to whom they wish. But they prefer the stories to be understood by all listeners as a precious currency that’s meant to be spent in honorable and proper use: for healing, for meaning, for memory of… not for idle mongers, nor to feed the war machine.

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**For generations of war vets, ‘not speaking,’ remaining silent, ‘stiff upper lip’ was touted also as the ‘cure’ for what would be later identified as PTSD, Post-traumatic stress disorder… a condition which many higher-ups in the military claimed did not exist. For generations, it was said by those ‘not in the know’ that vets who experienced ‘shock’ were weak. The vets were not and are not weak. But that is a story for another time.

“Why Soldiers Back Home Seldom Speak of War: Woman Veteran Nails It”, © 2007, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved, is printed here under Creative Commons License.