Time Can’t Heal

David Weddle’s article about the horrors endured by a generation of American soldiers who served our country in World War II, and the inevitable psychological scars these men suffered, was perhaps the best article I have ever read in The Times, or anywhere else (“Secrets at the Bottom of the Drawer,” July 22). Weddle’s central thesis--that the sanitized, nostalgic version of the “Good War” has not allowed these veterans to confront or admit their own humanity--is very compelling. And tragically sad. I feel deeply for these men.

Charles Hammond Jr.

Irvine

*

Weddle has written so powerful an indictment of what happened that his article moved me to tears. When will we ever learn? Seemingly unaffected men now are shown not only to have been traumatized by their experience, but never to have forgotten it. I would like to thank Weddle for showing me and countless others the ultimate tragedy of war.

Albert Cohen

Sherman Oaks

*

Perhaps my father did not witness the barbaric crimes described in Weddle’s article, but he saw plenty of hellish war in Europe, as did my father-in-law in the Pacific. Some traumatized veterans may have returned to become violent alcoholics; most did not. Instead they worked hard their entire lives and were devoted fathers and husbands. But all of the veterans have one thing in common: sacrifice for their country in the face of evil.

How sad that Weddle hides his father’s Bronze Star and that he mocks the gift of a commemorative gun from his father. The war had a profound effect on veterans, and some indeed were flawed. But they are all part of what I still consider “the greatest generation.”

Mary Curtius

Carlsbad

*

My father was an infantryman in World War II for four years. He saw 11 battles in Africa, Italy and France and received three Purple Hearts, among numerous other citations. I too remember family parties in California with tiki torches and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I also know that my father had a horrible temper, was furious when things were not clean and chain-smoked Lucky Strikes (no filter). He seldom spoke of the war, but he did give hints of horrible events: a buddy stepping on a land mine in a minefield, and my father having to watch him die, unable to do anything. He died prematurely of cancer when I was young. His only instructions to my mother were, “make certain that the boy never enters the armed forces.” I never have--too young to serve in Vietnam and enjoying the hard-fought peace others have won.

Robert Ley

Fullerton

*

Weddle’s article confirmed so much of what my husband experienced during three years at the front--in Africa and Italy--and in the half century since then. One can never deny nor wash those [war] memories away. The government was grossly negligent in not debriefing the soldiers, but simply expecting them to take up civilian life, which pushed down the darkness.

Charlotte Markman Stein

North Hills

*

I was an Army infantryman and scout in Belgium, Holland and Germany during World War II, and I thought I had survived relatively unscathed from my hand-grenade and mortar wounds with only a few scars, a plate in my head and fragments in one leg. But I agree that no one survives combat without persistent psychological wounds--even those who weren’t hit. It isn’t humanly possible--except, perhaps, for those who reacted normally in combat, expressed normal emotions, and instead of getting up and advancing across a field of fire, stayed in their holes, “crying like a little kid.”

S. Davidson

San Clemente

*

Weddle concludes from his father’s experience that many came out of the war emotionally scarred by their ordeals. Too true. Life is a series of challenges. For many of us, the war was a challenge that dwarfed all others. Most of us came home stronger, better people. We knew that we had done our duty for our country, and we moved forward in our lives without stopping to build monuments along the way. As children of the Depression, we were willing to work for something better, and we succeeded in getting more for ourselves, lavishing on our children what we had been denied.

William Cramer

Pasadena

As one combat veteran who was shot down over Germany, roughed up and semi-starved for a number of months, I will venture my anecdotal guess that in a rigorous study we’d likely find as many crotchety, disagreeable 70-plus-year-olds among lifelong civilians as among combat-worn veterans. As a matter of fact, I would find it difficult to include a significant number of friends with whom I endured POW life. They are just too normal, and I’ve been meaning to speak to them about it!

James B. Gregory

Long Beach

*

Aspects of the damage [wrought by war] are common to all wars. I grew up with an emotionally distant but irascible father, a World War I British Royal Navy officer who saw four years of action on the North Sea. His one admission of weakness was never eating shrimp. (Men brought up with grappling hooks after a torpedo attack had shrimp already fastened on them.) I wrote a poem about him. Whenever I read it to a group, some Vietnam veteran says afterward, “I have those reactions too.”

Pat Layne

Oxnard

*

As a combat veteran of the “forgotten war” [Korean War], this old soldier finds it harder with the passing of years to cope with the base reality of war. Time dulls some senses. But never of combat.

Curtis W. Lint

Los Osos

*

I believe that my father’s rages, abuse and paranoid episodes are a direct result of his outstanding and highly decorated service in three wars as a Marine. All my life I have longed to know the man inside the military persona. Now that may never happen; my father died in July after a long, difficult entanglement with Alzheimer’s.

Thanks to Weddle for having the courage to refuse to support our country’s blindness and for opening a public discussion about the legacy of fear and anger that our defense [system] leaves in its wake. Combat training, even without serving in an actual war, teaches young men to be violent and to override their consciences and natural respect for life. Perhaps it is necessary to some degree, but we must face and tackle the consequences, and stop pretending they don’t exist.

June Gerron

Via the Internet

*

The media-hyped and glowingly whitewashed nostalgia for the “Good War” is a clear signal that national amnesia is setting in, making us ripe for a run at yet another “splendid little war.” I hope that Weddle’s article will serve as a small cautionary brake on all of the deliberately deceitful hoopla.

Ann Calhoun

Los Osos

*

There are no good wars, only good causes. The psychological trauma caused by having to kill another human being is debilitating and permanent. But the cost of freedom is impossible to value. From 1939 to 1945 a terrible evil was unleashed on the world, the extent of which, to this day, has never been understood. When the smoke cleared, millions had died. Many innocents--women, the elderly, children--had perished in death camps, from bombings, from poison gas or sheer brutal cruelty. Make no mistake: It stopped only because men like Weddle’s father, carrying weapons and using them as they had been trained, defeated a tenacious enemy that threatened Western civilization.

Weddle’s father gave him a .45 revolver not to commemorate the people he or his fellow Marines killed, but to venerate those who died or gave a piece of themselves, both physical and psychological, as the price of freedom. It was a terrible price, but it was a good cause--just not a good war.

Jay P. Cooper

Corona del Mar