Where War Ends: A Combat Veteran’s 2,700-Mile Journey to Heal- Recovering from PTSD and Moral Injury Through Meditation
By: Tom Voss, Rebecca Anne Nguyen / Narrated By: Tom Voss
Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
A rollercoaster, brims with honesty and insight, and at the end? Why, there’s beautiful, shining Hope…
I honestly don’t know where to start. Does one take on the whole: Can you support the warrior but not support the war? Is Thank You For Your Service the best we can do for our warriors? Whether they see combat or not, how best to support warriors who have Voluntarily taken the burden from the citizenry’s shoulders to kill or be killed, to see best friends blown apart. And is a medal for killing people a good thing or is that only for the bestower of the medals, the public—because what is the cost for the individual who’s had to take that action?
I’ve been doing the We Honor Veterans coursework with the NHPCO, and while it has oodles of PTSD webinars, I’ve gotta tell ya, it seems like it’s only from the post 9/11 War on Terror that Moral Injury has entered the minds of clinicians and those in positions to assist Veterans as they return… from multiple deployments… having committed, witnessed, harm done to others… and have been expected to seamlessly reintegrate into a non-Military culture/society. Trust me, I’m hitting every single one of those webinars available, have been watching every talk given, class taught, am searching all articles on Moral Injury that I can.
But lemme just admit, here and now, that after listening to the stupendous and (Mostly) apolitical Sacred Duty by seething nutbag Tom Cotton, I’d honestly, truly believed I could approach the Iraq War with a sense of supporting WHAT our combatants fought for. Support the War, if you will, to best support the troops. DESPITE every. single. story of struggling Iraq War Veterans, DESPITE every. single. story of Halliburton and KBR, DESPITE every. single. thing coming out about the Burn Pits.
But no, gosh I still feel such rage at Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft… well, mostly Bush, Cheney… And that makes me feel lousy because I’m basically casting doubt on the Meaning of the Do or Die for Veterans of that War.
That said? At least Tom Voss, our narrator and co-author of this, Where War Ends, makes no bones about his disgust of Civilians, especially as he came home from Iraq and could NOT “get it together”. There’s a pact, he posits. Civilians get to say Thank You For Your Service, throw a few bucks at causes that support returning Veterans, all so that we don’t have to see just what happened, what was done in our name. We do NOT want to see the struggles, do NOT want to hear what those nightmares are like; our is a Pact that dictates: We send our servicemen and servicewomen to kill or be killed, and we wrap it all up, like it’s over, when the Veterans come home. Suicide? Too bad, just don’t tell us about it; set up a Fund, and we’ll toss a few shekels into the till and call it a day.
So I felt preeeetty uncomfortable when Voss was on a bit of a diatribe re: this pact; after all? M’ heart might be in the right place, but who the hell am I? And what have I done lately except cast aspersions on what was their Living Hell? Truly, I had to kinda remind myself that this was Voss’s Starting Off Point, and that he had a journey to tell us about.
Because Voss struggled mightily upon his return to the States; substance abuse, difficulty seeing the sense of any job he attempted, and while he did have the PTSD label? Well, it got nowhere near to addressing the exact sense of despair, guilt, he felt: His overwhelming anger at remembering a dead Iraqi civilian killed in the act of not following instructions, bloodied and riddled with bullets and crumpled on the ground. And a superior officer merely looking at the body and asking: Okay, are we done here? This, and instances like this, haunt Voss. Not being there when a good buddy was killed in an IED blast. And listening as fellow Veterans describe instances of times they had to drive by suffering on the streets of Iraq, of times they were unable to do anything to help a dying child, maimed and bloody.
And so, after a fevered talk with his sister who is also in despair of where Life’s taken her, Voss decides: He’ll see a buddy in California… and he’ll walk there, starting in Milwaukee, in five months. A fellow Veteran joins him, as does a film crew, oddly enough. The story takes off from there because now Tom is acting rather than just suffering, no hope in sight.
The trip is full of surprises and wonders. But tho’ it helps, Tom’s mind is still a jumbled, painful place to be. Tho’ he’s attempted meditation before, he’s given an opportunity to do a special meditation training geared specifically towards assisting Veterans grappling with PTSD and what they all now know is Moral Injury.
It takes. Whereas so very many things were attempted before, Tom finds true peace, and his journey goes from there; from the U.S. all the way to shaving his head in India. Interestingly, whereas shaving the head in the military strips the individual of his (I use the masculine as, to my knowledge, hair is cut, not shaved for women?) special identity in order to make him part of a stronger group where the individual has to rely on and protect the whole? Shaving the head in India is not that to Tom. Rather, he feels liberated, in touch with the world, accepted.
Tom narrates this himself and while his cadence is halting a bit at times, he’s very much in touch with what he wishes to express, and with how he wants it conveyed. Seriously, the bit about the Civilians? So very bitter that you’ll be shaking and quaking, filled with a disgust in yourself for the heads up that: Hey, ya ain’t doin’ a damned thing for anyone, so how do you sleep well at night? How can you turn your back on such suffering? But it’s by no means all diatribe; within the 7-hours and 44-minutes of Where War Ends, there is always the struggle of those who still have a bit of Hope to cling to, the searching all do in earnest and with singleness of purpose. This is Tom as he exposes his memories, holds them up to the light, fearlessly excavates and mines for meaning and lets go when, p’raps, no meaning is to be found. It’s just Life when Life got really ugly, really unfair, and the country he returned to turned its back on him and his comrades.
This book is that journey of Tom’s from substance abuse and a lack of Hope, through each step of his journey from Milwaukee to L.A., wise men met, courageous warriors walking a bit of the way, film crew shooting footage of painful step by painful step. Of the oh so partial healing after… but followed by… true relief, true acceptance, true joy despite a few setbacks along the way.
And Where War Ends has found such an open and willing audience, mostly from Veterans and the people who love them. Tom’s words are seeds planted in fertile ground, lives that have been teetering, oh so desperately needing SOMEthing, some guidance, some Hope. His is not exactly a step-by-step process of the methods he used and found to be liberating, life-altering. -But- hey! the man has taught it to Veterans in group settings, and workshops just for Veterans are being given. And Tom is known as The Meditating Vet and it’s easy to Google the heck outta him and find so much for guidance and inspiration.
Yeh, if you’re a Civilian, be prepared to see a mirror held up to you, and be prepared to see the warts and all. The best intentions are no help at all, but p’raps a: May I get you a cup of coffee and hear your story? would be a start.
Thank You For Your Service has been sounding so very inadequate to me for a few years now, but I’m continuing to learn. Dunno whether my back has been turned the whole time, dunno where I am on the Civilian Spectrum.
DO know that I wanna Be There, holding space, listening. There’s a tree I sit under in my mind, surrounded by Veterans from earlier wars who’ve passed. Between us all? ANYTHING can be brought to me by that tree; I’ll listen forever… and a day…
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