Page 53 - A Soldiers Exposition

In my opinion, more soldiers experience life-changing events during a TDY mission than all other “non-
combat” assignments combined.

Witnessing the slaughter of women and children; the site of mass graves for their compassionate burial;
and the stench of decaying bodies leave ghosts in the soldier’s mind forever. It changes one's
perspective of mankind in an instant.

Who do you think dug those graves?

I have experienced such events and have had terror set in and influence my actions and alter my soul.

Do you think you could experience any of these without life-long images haunting your everyday life?

- The visual images: Blood, torn and broken bodies

- The sound: Crying and screaming, and

- The odor: (indescribable, at least by this soldier) of just one child whose body has
been left to decay on a roadside…

… In the course of a battle of warrior tribes in some faraway place, we can’t even find on a map.

Multiply that one child by the hundreds and add the children’s mothers.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe there are WOUNDS THAT DO NOT BLEED?

“Terror can make the soul flee the body. It is too dangerous to stay, so the soul leaves. But if you don’t
die, the soul gets stuck. It can’t go to the spirit world because your body is still alive. But it is too scared
to climb back inside.”

Edward Tick, Ph.D. War and the Soul