Many years ago Chaplain Ray Stubbe said to me that reunions help the "healing process." I didn't know what he meant; my physical wounds had healed and I thought that a hard-ass Marine like me didn't need to heal anything else. How- ever, over the years I noticed that sometimes, when I was talking about experiences I had in Vietnam I would suddenly and unexpectedly become choked up; sized by powerful emotion that would necessitate a pause to collect myself. I found that the subject didn't have to be about those experiences per se but just in some way related to them.  Occasionally I simply had to abandon the subject less I embarrass myself or others. 

Once, while I was teaching a first aid and survival course to Boy Scouts I started to say: "No matter how bad things may look, never give up." - I could barley finish the sentence and had to fiddle with some paperwork while I collected myself.  Only later did I realize the connection to my experiences in Vietnam.  Over the years I became less surprised by it and could even anti- cipate it occasionally.  None the less I worried that there was something wrong with me.  (Sound familiar?) 

 At the fiftieth anniversary of the end of W.W.II there were a great number of specials on TV that contained interviews with veterans of that war.  I noticed that almost all of them got "caught" like I did.  I remember one in particular where an Officer was describing an advance during which his radio operator was hit in the foot.  He mentioned the event almost casually and then was "caught" suddenly.  He paused and collected himself and said "I didn't know I was so upset about that, but I guess I was." 

 I saw it happen to many of us at the reunion.   At one point one of you (forgive me, I can't remember whom) mentioned the psychological phenomena of compartmentalization where we take something we can't (or shouldn't) deal with at the moment and isolate it in a box.  The thing put away isn't the memory, it's the emotion.  I though about this on the drive back to NH and struck on a corollary in physics: "You can't destroy or create energy, only change its form."  When our emotions were boxed up and put in the attic they became stored energy, never diminishing over time. While rummaging around in the attic and inadvertently lifting the lid of one of those boxes it comes out with all the power it had when we put it there nearly forty years ago.  It's confusing to us because the memory isn't necessarily (in fact, isn't usually) attached, just raw, powerful emotion. 

Col. Dabney mentioned to me that the hardest thing for him was that he couldn't show his emotions and still be an effective leader (I paraphrase).  The reunion has helped me realize that the last thing we should be about all this is embarrassed or ashamed.  It was a healthy, adaptive thing to do at the time.  Had we not, we would have become so angry, scared, distraught, or desperate that we wouldn't have been able to serve ourselves or our brothers-in-arms and we would have perished.  Further, having those emotions in the first place defines us, indeed confirms us as human beings.  So, now when I inadvertently knock a box top ajar I no longer feel there's something wrong with me.  On the contrary, I know it means I did the right thing back then.  Knowing that allows me to minimize any collateral damage that might be caused by that energy being released now.  So, this hard-ass (spell that: dumb-ass) Marine has learned that Chaplain Stubbe was right.

Tango Yankee Marines. 

PJ