Page 127 - Firehouse Pond

“Now the war is over, my war charms lie abandoned in my bedroom, leaving

me with death on my shoulder and a monkey on my back. Peace seems to
allow little space for belief in destiny, fate, God or ghosts.”

Anthony Loyd
My War Gone By, I Miss It So

POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

As you already know, my father served in the U.S. Army during World War
Two. My mother often told me stories about my father being a different man

when he returned from the war. He was drafted, saw combat, and was sent
into Nagasaki, Japan soon after the dropping of the atomic bombs. His unit
participated in the clean-up after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

My mother told me stories of the soldiers being issued cans of beer at each
meal to help “ease the horror” of what they were seeing. I would learn, later

in life, the hard way, that an alcoholic stupor does not erase what the mind
perceives.

It would be years later before I fully understood that my mother had been
telling me the truth about my father. But the damage was done. I grew up
loathing my father for the way he was and the awful beatings and emotional
abuse my mother endured from her husband.

Knowing what I know now and having researched World War Two and
written a book about veterans of that war. I better understand the impact of

what my father must have witnessed and how those events changed him; just
as my mother had described.