The Opinion Pages|Op-Ed Contributor
The Things She Carried
THE injury wasn’t new, and neither was the insult. Rebecca, a
combat veteran of two tours of duty, had been waiting at the V.A. hospital for
close to an hour when the office manager asked if she was there to pick up her
husband.
No, she said, fighting back her exasperation. She was there
because of a spinal injury she sustained while fighting in Afghanistan.
Women have served in the American military in some capacity for
400 years. They’ve deployed alongside men as soldiers in three wars, and since
the 1990s, a significant number of them are training, fighting and returning
from combat.
But stories about female veterans are nearly absent from our
culture. It’s not that their stories are poorly told. It’s that their stories
are simply not told in our literature, film and popular culture.
Women have the same issues as men
upon return, from traumatic physical injuries to post-traumatic stress
disorder. One young combat veteran told me a harrowing story of crushing a
little boy beneath the wheels of her speeding Humvee. I am sure she hears the
sound of that vehicle hitting his small body every day of her life.
In addition, as many as a third of all women serving in the
military are raped by fellow soldiers during their tours of duty, compounding
whatever traumas they may have experienced in combat.
And yet Rebecca’s experience at the V.A. hospital is common. I’ve
talked with many women veterans, and like all soldiers, they’ve recounted the
firefights, moral confusion and compassion for those whose lives are torn apart
by war.
Each had a different experience, and each bore her pains
differently. But there was this simple, common thread: their stories of being
unrecognized at home, which always carried with it a separate kind of frustration
and incredulity.
Male soldiers’ experiences make up the foundation of art and
literature: From “The Odyssey” to “The Things They Carried,” the heroic or
tragic protagonist’s face is familiar, timeless and, without exception, male.
The story of men in combat is taught globally, examined broadly, celebrated and
vilified in fiction, exploited by either side of the aisle in politics.
For women it’s a different story, one in which they are more often
cast as victims, wives, nurses; anything but soldiers who see battle. In the
rare war narratives where women do appear, the focus is generally on military
sexual assault, a terrible epidemic of violence that needs to be revealed and
ended, but not something that represents the full experience of women in the
military.
Homecoming isn’t easy for anyone,
but traditional domestic expectations can make it particularly challenging for
women.
Feelings of wanting to be alone, of alienation, are more
difficult, as women are expected to be patient nurturers who care for spouses
and children. Parenting under the best circumstances can test a person’s
patience, but parenting after life under fire is more than most of us could
take. Studies show women experience elevated anxiety about caring for their
families upon homecoming, including an increased fear that they may hurt their
own children.
Lack of recognition is also a problem. I’ve stood next to my
uniform-wearing brother, a veteran of two tours in Afghanistan, in a grocery
store while three separate strangers approached to thank him for his service.
Women veterans are rarely stopped by people who want to shake their hands. Even
wearing fatigues and boots and carrying duffel bags standing in a bus station
or at the airport, somehow they go unrecognized as returning warriors.
The sense of emptiness that can follow unacknowledged
accomplishments and unacknowledged trauma makes women soldiers feel invisible
and adds yet one more insult to injury. Depression, drug and alcohol abuse,
homelessness and suicide do not just affect male soldiers, though theirs are
the stories we see. Women who have served in the military are three times more
likely to commit suicide than their civilian counterparts.
I can’t help but think women soldiers would be afforded the
respect they deserve if their experiences were reflected in literature, film
and art, if people could see their struggles, their resilience, their grief
represented.
They would be made visible if we
could read stories that would allow us to understand that women kill in combat
and lose friends and long to see their children and partners at home. They
would be given appropriate human compassion if we could feel their experiences
viscerally as we do when reading novels like “All Quiet on the Western Front,”
or seeing films like “The Hurt Locker.”
Society may come to understand war differently if people could see
it through the eyes of women who’ve experienced both giving birth and taking
life. People might learn something new about aggression and violence if we read
not just about those fighting the enemy but about those who must also fight off
assault from the soldiers they serve beside or report to.
Female veterans’ stories clearly have the power to change and
enrich our understanding of war. But their unsung epics might also have the
power to change our culture, our art, our nation and our lives.
Cara
Hoffman is the author of the novel “Be Safe I Love You,” about a female
veteran.
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