Coming Home, Coming Here

by Edd Conboy, head of BSM's Counseling Center

Much has changed since the days when the Viet Nam era “shopping cart soldiers” patrolled our streets and camped on our sidewalks in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. The military learned some hard lessons about the impact of the draft on society in a war of choice. The medical community learned harder lessons about the impact of trauma on the human psyche. Even the Veterans Administration – usually slow to change and slower yet to learn – began to see disturbing patterns and irrefutable similarities as soldiers returned from Bosnia and The Gulf War.

Those of us in the rest of society? Well, it seems our memories are short and our learning curve seems steep. We go to work to make a living, pay our taxes that equip these men and women to fight our wars. Some of us even wave a flag now and then as veterans pass by in a 4th of July or Veterans Day parade. Mostly, though, we’d just as soon not be reminded about what we send those young men and women to do in our name. We’d rather they just return home, put away their uniforms, go back to work and make a living. Return to normal. Most of the time that is exactly what happens - some three out of four returning veterans come home not too worse for wear.

And then there is the other quarter. What do we expect from these returning soldiers, the ones broken by what they have seen, and what we have sent them to do? In a sense we’d just as soon they disappear. We are not very good at the arduous tasks of healing those whose wounds are deeper than we can see on the surface. Wounds that reveal themselves late in the night when the terrors come. Or the wound that surface early in the morning as these walking wounded search out whatever is available to ease their pain.

Unspoken, we expect their spouses and families to do the yeoman’s work of caring for these men and women. And for a time most of them take on that work, making every effort to offer these loved ones the solace they crave. Much of the time they fail. They do not have the skills, or the temperament, or the resources to offer what is needed. Eventually then, these new shopping cart soldiers begin the slow, inevitable, predictable migration from small towns across America to our cities.

No parades greet them. None of us are waving flags welcoming them to our fair city. Now and again we may walk by one of these shrines to our failings as a society, drop a few coins in the paper cup situated like some sacred vessel on a concrete altar, and continue on our way. Most of the time, though, we look away, or even worse, pretend we are not looking away because we act as if is nothing to look away from. These homeless veterans become invisible, and so in that moment do we.

Over the course of the next few months, the next year or so, the experts tell us, they are coming. Five to seven years, they say, is when the migration begins to swell. The trauma that they have managed to manage through sheer determination or self-medication begins to have its way. And so they come to our cities where they can begin to disappear, where their numbers can dilute their shame, and where their camouflage can hide ours.

So what can we do? First of all perhaps we can see them. We can speak to them. We can tell them that on Wednesday evenings and Thursday afternoons there is a hot meal and welcoming people waiting to greet them here at BSM. We can tell them that there are warm clothes, some skilled folks who can listen, and other vital services available to them. We can tell them that there is hope. And in this city so named, we can tell them that there are people who will hold them in high regard, perhaps even love them.