Side Effects

For every cure, there is a side effect. That’s what they told me in the day. It’s too bad my day has long passed. Now, I’m just another old dude with a limp, a bad case of the dry heaves and a story to tell.

I was once in the military. A long time ago. I was an army man through and through, fighting during the war in Korea. Of course, the war in Korea wasn’t really a war, which led to all kinds of quandaries that I still can’t quite unravel.

When I returned to the good ol’ U.S. of A after my time in K-Town, I was confused and befuddled. My family and friends didn’t want to hear anything about my experiences, they just wanted to move on and for me to move with them. So I put all those feelings and emotions and thoughts away, and locked them up tight. I figured it was for the best, after all, who really wants to hear about a war that wasn’t a war.

I found a job at a factory and met a woman there. Eventually we married, as that’s what I was supposed to do. I never told her about my days along the 38^th It was easier than talking about things that I couldn’t control. Things were okay, never great, but we managed. Before I knew it, we had a mortgage, a baby and bills up the wazoo. I would sit up late at night, smoking Marlboros and drinking Jim Beam. I could hear my wife snoring softly in the bedroom, as I poured shot after shot, trying to numb the memories. But all I could see was the smoke plumes rising off the end of my gun after each shot and the bright spurt of red across the way.

Every night, I would sit there, trying hard to forget, able only to remember. I knew that despite all appearances, I was totally alone.

In the morning, my wife would cook me breakfast as I got dressed for work, battling both my hangover and the demons in my head. She would pack me my lunch, and I would secretly pack my flask, and off I went to the factory. Making little parts for little machines. Who would have guessed that in the years to come, all the jobs like mine would go elsewhere. Overseas, to places where little kids with nimble fingers could do the job for pennies, leaving men like me jobless.

By the time my son was in High School, I was barely keeping it together. One day at the factory, I somehow managed to get my uniform caught in the cogs of one of the machines. It tossed me to the ground with a sound that still rings in my ears. My left leg caught the pole and shattered, while my ass hit in such a way that I broke a couple of bones in my pelvis. When I got to the hospital, they noticed the alcohol on my breath and noted it on my chart. As a result, I never got any kind of benefit, since they said I was drunk on the job and that was the reason for my injury.

My wife, well, that was the last straw. She and my son took off, leaving me with the house and the unpaid mortgages. When the bank foreclosed, I had nothing and no one. Nothing, that is, except the memories of the smoke plumes, blood spurts and the sound of my leg shattering.

An old army buddy of mine took me to AA, and helped me to get sober. But sobriety didn’t stop the side effects of the war. After decades of silence, it felt like my insides were rotted through by the memories and faces of my youth. I had lost everything, but it didn’t matter all that much, as I never really cared for anything after the sound of that first shot and the sight of that first red burst.

We’re still sending boys to war. At least they call it a war now, instead of some bullshit action like I fought in. Even worse, now they’re sending girls too, so they can come home with the nightmares that have haunted me for decades. Isn’t it funny how most of our leaders have never killed a man in war? Without knowing that guilt, how can they condemn our children to live with it? After all, I know from first hand experience that the side effects of war leave a soldier changed forever.

By:  Lauren J. Walter, April 23, 2008