trauma

Foreword to The Sword of the Lord. I met Andrew Himes in 2004 through his masterful film, Voices in Wartime, a profound exploration of the experience of war.

An amazing book I read recently was Worshipping the Myths of World War II, written by Edward Wood, a combat veteran of World War II. Wood was an 18-year-old thrown into battle in France after D-Day in June of 1944 with virtually no military training.

In 2005 I produced a documentary film, Voices in Wartime, that uses poetry to explore the trauma of war, and over the past few years I have spent many hours talking to people about their experience of war. I’ve talked to classrooms full of students, and I’ve hosted community dialogues on war and trauma, and I’ve facilitated audience discussions after screenings of films about war.

Thirty-five years ago the Vietnam War came to a cataclysmic end as Saigon fell to the victorious armies of the People's Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Provisional Revolution Government of South Vietnam (Vietcong). That event was the capstone to many years of needless killing and mindless destruction.  Human fatalities included including 3 to 4 million Vietnamese from both sides, between 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians, and 58,159 U.S. soldiers.