I’m Prepared to Talk About the Things I Did in Iraq. Are People Ready to Listen? By Russell Worth Parker – New York Times
… Fourteen years later, after more than two decades of military service, I still find myself stumbling when I try to talk to people about my experiences — as if I am once again standing before a stranger, punching keys on a machine I don’t understand, in a vain attempt to find a useful phrase that might bridge an ever-widening gap between me and him. Long before I went to war, I read Guy Sajer’s account of his service as a Frenchman conscripted to the German Army to fight the Russians during World War II. “A day came when I should have died, and after that nothing seemed very important,” he wrote in one passage. “So I have stayed as I am, without regret, separated from the normal human condition.” I feel that way sometimes. It’s as if the time I spent in that expanse of desert left me speaking a different language from my fellow Americans, a language that sometimes seems to have no translation…
Ironically, that common understanding is both the thing we most need from each other as veterans and the thing that keeps some of us from effectively reconnecting with civilians, a critical factor as we become civilians ourselves. Sajer’s notion of remaining separated from the human condition, though he claimed not to feel regret, is nothing less than self-imposed exile. Just as I felt when I stood before that Iraqi policeman, it is my responsibility to say something, to find some sort of connection. I just ask that you not get frustrated or awkward and turn away if the translation comes haltingly, or if the truth proves to be more than you wanted…