'We Are Trained to Kill, so Civilian Life Is Tough'

[babylonsister]

'We Are Trained to Kill, so Civilian Life Is Tough'

In a remarkable and brave interview, Johnson Beharry reveals the daily torment he faces after fighting for his country – and explains why he is still fighting for his Army comrades

by Terri Judd


Two young men stood nose to nose on a south London street a few months ago, in a furious argument over a minor car accident so heated it had to be broken up by police.


Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry: 'If I fall asleep, I relive all the battles. I start sweating' (Teri Pengilley)

The scene would have been utterly common place, banal even, had one of the young men involved not been the country's greatest living war hero - Victoria Cross recipient Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry.

"I actually wanted to kill the person. The police had to come," explained the 29-year-old, who is one of only 10 living VC holders. "It was not about the car, it was not about the accident. I have been told that because of what happened to me {in Iraq} all my body can remember is defence. Any time something happens I go into a defence mode."

Cpl Beharry's gentle face is now familiar across the country. He is the quiet, solemn figure who stood behind 110-year-old veteran Harry Patch on Armistice Day. Since becoming the first living recipient of a VC for 40 years for "repeated extreme gallantry and unquestioned valour", the young Grenadian has been portrayed, somewhat patronisingly, as a humble, almost docile Caribbean soldier.

Cpl Beharry is a confident, self-possessed, yet modest, man, driven to make something of his life and help others. But he is also a soldier tortured by mental and physical wounds, who has had to learn to live with constant pain, nightmares, mood swings and unexplained rages. He has decided to speak out for the first time on behalf of the thousands of servicemen and women suffering in the UK, who are forced to turn to charities for help because the Government is failing them.

The soldier cannot remember the last time he had a good night's sleep. Almost five years after he saved the lives of 30 comrades in Iraq by driving through a series of ambushes - his head sticking out of the burning Warrior armoured vehicle "despite a harrowing weight of incoming fire" - he can get no rest.

"If I fall asleep, I relive all the contacts {battles}. I start sweating. Even thinking about it now I am beginning to sweat," he explained. "Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Iraq, training - it all blends into one. One minute, I will be in Iraq on top of a building and the next thing I am in Grenada with my friends during the same contact. I have been told I kick in my sleep and worse. I used to get a couple of hours a night but recently, I can't sleep again. I lie there at night, tossing and turning. I put on the TV. I try to read to get tired but I can't. You think the next night you are so tired you will sleep but you don't."

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/02/28-2

[patrice]

1. Believe me, I know it's NOT the same thing, but I think with economic pressures being

what they are now and for the forseeable future, American workplaces, to distinctly lesser degree, are having the same effect upon workers. We've all heard of "going postal".

Seems like there are an awful lot of people who are having trouble sleeping these days.

If this dynamic is this hard on non-Veterans, IMAGINE what it must be like to have been LIED into the HELL that Lance Corporal Beharry describes.

[acmavm]

2. All soldiers returning from a war zone need psychological counseling and

unlimited medical treatment for as long as it take so that they can make it when they come back home. No limits. Beef up the VA budget so that they get the treatment they deserve. No more of this shit where they're abandoned (without adequate training and gear) by our government when we send them to war, and abandoned and kicked to the curb when they come home.

[babylonsister]

6. There's lots in the new stim pkg. for Vets, though it probably

doesn't go far enough...

http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4887

[givemebackmycountry]

3. War is so FUCKING evil...

And God Damn every man who sends young men off to them only to come home like this.

[Journeyman]

4. My father enlisted on December 8, 1941, was steaming towards Guadalcanal only months later. . .

twice decorated with the Silver Star for action in the First Naval Battle at Guadalcanal, his gun crew was credited with shooting down two planes and was later, in action as a torpedo crew, instrumental in the destruction of a Tenryu-class light cruiser. The next morning, his ship provided escort for the Juneau, helping the crippled cruiser return to Espiritu Santo when a submarine put a torpedo in the Juneau's magazine. They say she rose clear out of the water, broke in two and sank in 20 seconds. Some 600 men died in the explosion; another 100 survived but were helplessly adrift on the sea. The other ships in the convoy -- my father's included -- fearing further torpedo attacks, steamed away, only to learn eight days later that all but 10 of the survivors perished in the sea, from wounds, from exposure, from shark attacks.

The war wasn't a year old. My father survived another three years in the thick of it, from Guadalcanal to Tarawa, Leyte Gulf to Corregidor.

He returned to civilian life . . . different. In the years after, he never quite recovered from what he'd seen and done. Perhaps if he'd talked about it, or if there had been more help available, his life might have been different. Instead, he swirled recklessly into a maelstrom of booze and violence. Like Cpl Beharry, he was beset with nightmares in his sleep, daymares while he walked, and never found the peace he fought so hard to attain for his neighbors.

And in his mind, the war was just. Those who've seen the other side of night in our present day "manufactured" conflicts lack even that emotional comfort.

We owe them more than a parade.

[babylonsister]

5. Thank you for sharing that, Journeyman.

How traumatic that must have been for your dad. At least WWII seems a helluva lot more 'just' than what our current soldiers have had to endure, a lot of them not quite believing they were doing the right things for the right reasons.