VetCare 2023: When Our Warriors Return

Editor’s note: Retired Green Beret Greg Walker has joined the Soldier of Fortune team as Contributing Editor for Veterans Issues. Here is the next installment of Greg’s column, VetCare 2023. Greg begins with the thoughts of a Nez Perce elder, and interweaves this warrior’s observations throughout.

VetCare 2023 by Greg Walker, U.S. Army Special Forces (Ret)

“They said that I would be changed in my body. I would move through the physical world in a different manner. I would hold myself in a different posture. I would have pains where there was no blood. I would react to sights, sounds, movement, and touch in a crazy way, as though I were back in War.” – Thoughts of a Nez Perce Elder

I met Dr. Ed Tick in 2007 while attending Portland State University under the VA’s Chapter 31 vocational rehabilitation program, and at the same time undergoing recovery and rehabilitation care and treatment at the Portland VA hospital. I’d read Ed’s first book “War and the Soul” and then attended an evening’s seminar in downtown Portland where Dr. Tick spoke on the topic of wounding and identity.

READ MORE of VetCare 2023, from Greg Walker

We became fast friends, and when I joined the SOCOM Care Coalition as a case manager and advocate in 2009, I lobbied the folks in Tampa to bring Soldier’s Heart, Ed’s non-profit organization, on board. In 2014, Tick’s second book, Warrior’s Return – Restoring the Soul after War, was published. I was and remain honored to have been asked to contribute to this important resource for our war fighters, veterans, and the families of those who serve. The following is from Ed’s book.

Moral Wounding in Recent Wars

“We commonly say that a person was ‘injured in an accident’ but ‘wounded in battle.’ Injury comes from the Latin in juris, meaning not fair or right. It connotes damage or harm done to us as victims of circumstances or others’ actions. A wound, on the other hand, connotes violence done by or to the sufferer. War causes moral wounding and moral trauma as well as ‘injury’ because it results not from happenstance but from the violence that human beings do.”

Wounding in War is Inevitable

“Invisible wounds are as inevitable to warriors as are visible ones…they may occur as readily after a warrior’s return as they do while in harm’s way.”

“Ancient and indigenous cultures recognized that psychic and spiritual wounding is inevitable and ubiquitous, if not universal. It was known and anticipated. Societies provided warrior models, roles, training, behavior, values, and practices to protect their warriors’ psyches from excessive wounding – and they tended the [warriors] afterward. As Joseph Campbell summarizes: 

“After episodes of battle, special rituals are enacted to assuage and release to the land of the spirits and ghosts of those who have been slain…Such ceremonies may also include the rites for toning down [the] war mania and battle heat of those who have done the killing…There may be also special rites enacted to re-attune returning warriors to the manners of life at home.

Our Wounding Becomes Part of Our Identity But is Not Our Identity

“Invisible wounding can inhabit and dominate the psyche…The wound controls us to the degree that we embrace it as our identity and it crowds out the rest of our lives.

“Wounding and our response to it must become an accepted, embraced, solid part of the new identity that is continuous with warriorhood and the military identity.” 

Nez Perce Elder and Vietnam veteran Wilfred “Scotty” Scott (L) with Greg Walker, above. Walker received his tribal name, “Black Scarf,” from the Nez Perce at the April 2021 Chief Red Heart Band gathering at Fort Vancouver, Washington State. Credit: G. Walker

Retired Green Beret veteran Greg Walker offers the following of his own experience. “To reach meaningful recovery and your ‘new normal,’ you have to truly demand everything of yourself that’s available. When I came face to face with my own wounding and its effects in my life and the lives of those around me, it was initially devastating. However, by embracing my spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical wounds and injuries and determining even at my weakest that I would not give in or accept defeat of my soul/spirit, I reengaged….”

“They said I would be wounded in my thoughts. I would forget how to trust and think that others were trying to harm me. I would see danger in the kindness and concern of my relatives and others. Most of all, I would not be able to think in a reasonable manner and it would seem that everyone else was crazy. They told me that it would appear to me that I was alone and lost even in the midst of the people, that there was no one else like me.” – Thoughts of a Nez Perce Elder

Wounding and the Community

“Without public involvement, reconciliation between warrior and society, and restoration of the broken social contract, the warrior may collapse. Collapse may come from the weight of carrying the collective wound and responsibility for war alone. By sharing the wounds, we return [the] responsibility for our warriors, how they are used, and the tending of their wounds to the citizenry where it belongs.”

“They warned me that it would be as though my emotions were locked up and that I would be cold in my heart and not remember the ways of caring for others. While I might give soft meat or blankets to the elders or food to the children, I would be unable to feel the goodness of these actions. I would do these things out of habit and not from caring. They predicted that I would be ruled by dark anger and that I might do harm to others without plan or intention.” – Thoughts of a Nez Perce Elder

Earning the Warrior’s Eagle Feather

The Combat Infantryman Badge – a Star represents the second award of this modern “Eagle’s Feather”

“Dr. Glen Miller is a psychology professor who was a long-range reconnaissance team leader in Vietnam. He met me [Dr. Tick] at the door to the auditorium on his Pennsylvania campus where we would hold a conference on veterans in college. Before saying hello, he pointed to his suit lapel and asked, ‘Is this okay?.’ He was wearing a miniature pin of the CIB, the Combat Infantryman Badge, earned only for significant time spent in the combat zone, the most highly honored award for ground troops. It simply declares, ‘I was there.’

“I hugged Professor Miller and said, “Of course, brother, it is your eagle feather.’ I reminded him that Native American warriors commonly wore eagle feathers in camp so their communities could readily distinguish their warriors…Wandering and wounded warriors need a tribe waiting to receive, hear, and tend them. If we are that tribe, they will come home and serve the greater good.”

A Soldier’s Heart

“We treat PTSD. We heal and restore [a] Soldier’s Heart. When we think of [PTSD] as a communal and spiritual wound that we all share and for which we are all responsible, we love and support, listen to, engage, and restore survivors, work together with them to repair our wounded world and live together in empathy.

A Soldier’s Heart “…is a permanent wound, but we can transform its impact and how we carry it. As combat veteran John Fisher said:

“There is a part to a soldier’s heart that doesn’t go away, no matter how well the soldier is able to sleep at night. It’s the part that shudders with the sound of fireworks on July Fourth, sheds tears during a war scene in a movie, feels the horror of combat when another KIA (killed in action) is announced on the news. That portion of the soldier’s heart is different from the rest of the population’s, except [to] another soldier’s heart. This is the brotherhood that soldiers, veterans, and warriors feel for each other. The crying is from the pain stored in that other part of the heart. 

“Warriors will always be different.”

“They knew that my Spirit would be wounded. They said I would be lonely and that I would find no comfort in family, friends, elders, or spirits. I would be cut off from both beauty and pain. My dreams and visions would be dark and frightening. My days and nights would be filled with searching and not finding. I would be unable to find the connections between myself and the rest of creation. I would look forward to an early death. And I would need Healing in all of these things.” – Thoughts of a Nez Perce Elder

Greg Walker is an honorably retired Green Beret. His awards/decorations include the Combat Infantryman Badge with Star (El Salvador / Iraq). A Nez Perce warrior-brother, he arranged for his Special Forces unit to be adopted by the Nez Perce during their deployment to Iraq in 2002/2003. Today Greg lives and writes from his home in Sisters, Oregon, along with his service pup, Tommy.