by Weston Ochse
Jesse couldn’t make out his mom’s voice through the door, but it sounded like she was telling his Dad to leave him alone. The next thing Jesse knew his door was flung open. Jesse stared in awe, filled with an overwhelming sense of dread. His father hadn’t followed the rules: no rhythm of three, no rhythm of five. He hadn’t even kissed the door knob. What did he think he was doing? But before the universe could answer, he felt his father’s iron grip around his neck and he screamed as he was dragged through the door, down the hall, and up the stairs to the dinner table. His father slammed him onto his chair without even being able to circle it.
Unable to deal with the loss of rhythm, Jesse slipped off his chair and landed in a rumpled heap on the floor beneath the table. He curled into a fetal position and impossibly began to use all his rhythms at once. His feet, toes, hands, fingers, and teeth were moving madly to stop whatever juggernaut of doom his father had inadvertently set in motion.
“Just leave the poor freak there,” his father had yelled.
Then there was the birthday party his parents had arranged. They’d been very careful with the guest list. Although Jesse had no friends, he had a plethora of cousins. Jesse’s peccadillos may have been a secret to the rest of Signal Mountain, but his family, extended as it was, knew most of the details. All the cousins were strenuously lectured prior to the party regarding patience, understanding, and most of all good samaritanship.
Everything had gone well until it was time to blow out the candies. Jesse couldn’t remember ever having done it before. He was uncertain of the rhythm. Yet there had to be one. After all, there was a rhythm for everything. Sixteen wasn’t divisible by five, seven or three. It was divisible by four, but that number was reserved for his toes when he was in the water. His toes certainly weren’t able to blow. Unable to comprehend the appropriate rhythm, he just sat there.
And sat there.
And sat there, the minutes ticking by.
The cousins had been on their best behavior the entire party. They had exceeded even the wildest hopes of Jesse’s parents. They deserved medals. Watching Jesse sit, blankly staring at the dripping candies while his father tried desperately to cajole him into doing the simplest thing in the world, was too much, however. It started as a titter from one of Jesse’s younger girl cousins. It was joined by another, then another and then another. Until finally, all the cousins were laughing. It became an avalanche of hilarity. Jesse simply sat and contemplated the riddle of the candies. When Jesse’s father finally lost his temper, they just laughed louder. Finally, Jesse’s older cousin, Tim Whittaker, leaned over. After taking one deep comical breath, glancing at a pretty young girl cousin to show how easy it was, he blew out all the candles.
Jesse, deprived of any chance to find the sacred rhythm, was in anguish. He began to bleat like a sheep, using his favorite five rhythm. When they heard this, the cousins laughed even louder. Tim playfully punched Jesse’s shoulder to let him know it was just a big joke. He only punched him once. The insane rhythm of one. There was no such thing as a rhythm of one. When they finally pulled Jesse off him, Tim needed sixty-seven stitches.
Then, just after he turned eighteen, it had all suddenly and inexplicably ended. His mother called him up to dinner one evening. As usual, it was half an hour ahead of time. Jesse jumped out of bed and hurried up the stairs to the kitchen. He felt as if he had awakened from a great dream.
“Yeah, Mom,” he said, not even realizing the change. “Want me to set the table?”
His mom spun around and stared at him with wide blood-shot eyes. Jesse repeated himself. Numbly, she had nodded. As Jesse grabbed the plates, he missed the tears that had suddenly fountained down his mother’s face. Six months later he joined the Army.
They had asked the usual battery of questions. Lucky for him, his mother had kept up his home teaching. He had almost maxed the GED and had scored decently on the Army aptitude tests. The recruiter couldn’t have been happier when Jesse demonstrated his willingness to pursue a job in combat arms: infantry, armor, or artillery. Nobody wanted to actually fight anymore.
Jesse was thrilled. He immediately chose tanks. He’d remembered all the movies he’d seen. Subconsciously, he loved their rhythm. He remembered scenes of tanks sitting in line and firing one after the other, each salvo an algorithm of safety. Yeah. It would definitely be tanks.
The day he graduated from tanker school he remembered his father. As he marched by and saluted the grandstands, he could have sworn there was a smile on his father’s face. Jesse knew his father had felt cheated by his rhythms. Seeing him happy for the first time made his life seem complete.
“OKAY, GUYS,” said Sarge, bringing him back to the present. “We just got a confirmation of enemy assault-air in the vicinity. Going to MOPP 4.”
Going MOPP 4, or Mission-Oriented Protective Posture Level Four, was the highest protection against chemical and biological attack. Jesse hoped it was going to be for real, because wearing the suit and mask was a serious pain.
Enemy assault air meant a serious rise in tension. The North Koreans were countering threat with threat, playing a game to see if US and ROK forces would respond. It was a gamble, but things would probably calm down in the next twelve hours, as long as nobody did anything stupid.
Jesse hated changing into his chemical gear. Struggling into the pants and jacket in the cramped confines of the gunners hatch was a painful experience. The tank was protected against nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks, but it was standard to have redundant gear. After Jesse was sure his mask was secure, he pulled on his thick rubber gloves. He made certain to pull the edges under the sleeves of his charcoal suit to create an optimum seal, just as he’d been taught in basic training.
He felt the compulsion come on him, and he began gnashing his teeth in rhythm.
“What’s that noise?” grunted Sarge.
Jesse barely heard it as he concentrated fiercely to keep his increasingly uncontrollable rhythm under control.
“What the hell is that clackin’?” yelled Sarge.
Jesse realized that he was loud. Too loud. “Sorry, Sarge.” His mask hid the burning redness that had crept over his face. He allowed his thumb to gently arc back and forth over the fire button. He couldn’t feel it though. Knowing wasn’t enough. The glove was in the way. It was too thick. He could barely even tell that he was touching the gunner’s bar.
He tried again pressing slightly harder. He still couldn’t feel the button. Without being able to feel the rhythm, it wasn’t real. On his next rhythm the tank buckled.
“What the hell did you do gunner!” Sarge screamed.
Through the rangefinder, Jesse saw the enemy tank erupt in a shower of multiple explosions as the SABOT round punched through and found their ammo locker. Then to the left and right of his target, he saw similar scenes as his tank platoon followed his example. The earth shook with each explosion. Flames of destruction danced jubilantly before his eyes. Jesse smiled. His hands, fingers, feet, and toes began snapping off their own personal rhythms in concert with the explosions blooming up and down the line of North Korean tanks.
It was perfect.
It was a concert.
Right. Left. Left. Left. Right.
Everyone had found their rhythm.
* * *
Notes from the Author: I wasn’t sure if I was going to include this story. It’s not my best, although it was my best at the time I wrote it in 1997. This is one of my earliest stories and it shows. But this is a collection of my military stories and I thought it would be appealing to show the growth of my writing. And with all of its faults, Rhythm has some interesting merit. The type of OCD Jesse demonstrates is real. I can still remember, sitting in the parking lot of Methodist College, outside of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, circa 1995, listening to NPR interview a woman who had symptoms almost exactly like Jesse’s. It made me wonder how one could function
in society with such a syndrome. I also sometimes find it necessary to find rhythms in things. Although I have nowhere near the urgency that Jesse demonstrates, I’ve been known to use the rhythm of five on occasion. It started in my teens and continues to this day. I wonder what it means. I wonder what it says about me. Whatever it means, I for one am glad I’m not the gunner of a main battle tank.
My Thoughts on PTSD
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER is a very real and sensitive subject, but that doesn’t mean we have to tiptoe around it. Nor does it mean we should leave it alone because we’re afraid we’ll trigger something. I’ve spoken with and served with enough vets with PTSD to know that they’d prefer to deal with it head on if they could. Which was a major reason why I made it the central theme of my very first military science-fiction novel – Grunt Life (Solaris Books). The book’s characters are steeped in the realities of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’s most notable symptoms – suicide, and depression. The publisher was worried when I turned in the manuscript. And I get that. But then again, how many authors out there have my military credentials. As a military man with thirty years of military service and combat deployments, I know about PTSD first hand, and used all of my chops to give it the respect and spotlight it needed.
Still, it is a heavy issue and might turn some off. Despite that, I wanted it to be a central theme to Grunt Life. Not only am I trying to make readers understand what it’s like to have PTSD, but I’m also turning PTSD sufferers into heroes. Too often they think themselves the opposite. They feel broken and different. This is where I show them what their true value is, if only as a fictional construct, as active agents who are solely able to save planet Earth.
Grunt Life is a pro-PTSD novel if nothing else.
But let’s take a look at some facts about PTSD from the U.S. Veteran’s Administration:
About 7 or 8 out of every 100 people (or 7-8% of the population) will have PTSD at some point in their lives.
About 5.2 million adults have PTSD during a given year. This is only a small portion of those who have gone through a trauma.
Women are more likely than men to develop PTSD. About 10% of women develop PTSD sometime in their lives compared with 5% of men.
Also:
Experts think PTSD occurs:
In about 11-20% of Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom), or in the range of 11-20 Veterans out of 100 who served in OEF/OIF.
In as many as 10% of Gulf War (Desert Storm) Veterans, or in 10 Gulf War Veterans out of 100.
In about 30% of Vietnam Veterans, or about 30 out of 100 Vietnam Veterans.
Many PTSD sufferers, like the characters in my book Grunt Life, can see no way clear of their disorder and often take their own lives. This excerpt from Forbes Magazine is sobering. Almost once an hour – every 65 minutes to be precise – a military veteran commits suicide, says a new investigation by the Department of Veterans Affairs. By far the most extensive study of veteran suicides ever conducted, the report, issued Friday, examined suicide data from 1999 to 2010.
The data in the Forbes Magazine article was then compared with a previous investigation – primarily an estimation – that had been conducted over the same time period, and had found a suicide rate of eighteen per day. Many of these suicides involve older veterans; 69 percent of the suicides recorded were by veterans age fifty and older. But another way to look at this is that 31 percent of these suicides were by veterans forty-nine and younger. In other words, by men in the prime of life.
And then there are the shockingly common active duty suicides. Just two weeks ago, the military released data showing that suicides among those on active duty hit a record high in 2012. There were 349 suicides among active duty personnel – almost one a day. That means there are now more suicides among active duty soldiers than there are combat deaths.
I want to make it clear that Grunt Life is a work of fiction. I chose to have PTSD as a central theme because I see so many war-themed books out there who won’t touch it. Those that do tend to use a PTSD sufferer as a bad guy, shooting people, out of control, and nothing more than a cardboard character you’re supposed to hate. But there have been other books about PTSD and you probably didn’t even know it. Tolkein’s characters literally ring with the ramifications of their actions and what they have seen and done. The societal breakdown in Lord of the Flies is PTSD manifest, the ultimate desensitization and dehumanization of humans. Heinlein’s Glory Road, for all of its fantastical interstellar swashbuckling, is at heart the story of a PTSD sufferer returning from combat in a Southeast Asian country.
While the messages in these novels were more subtle, I’m using the sledgehammer approach in Grunt Life. There is no doubt that the characters have PTSD, which is why Solaris called the book the darkest science fiction book in the history of their publishing house. If my only success is to bring more attention to it, then good. But I think I’ve achieved more.
The popular website Pop Cults focused heavily into the PTSD aspects with an absolutely glowing review of Grunt Life. They actually got what I was trying to do, which means it worked.
‘With Grunt Life, I feel like Ochse was striving to write the kind of military narrative that Heinlein or Haldeman would have written. I am a huge fan of both authors, and Ochse is well on his way to joining their ranks, but I don’t think he is quite there. He is close, and he is on the right track — heck, he even acknowledges Haldeman at the end of the book. Ochse goes beyond the normal chaos of combat and asks the tough questions that we, as a greater society, are just starting to ask. In this novel, he addresses one of the biggest killers of our veterans these days: suicide. While the taking of one’s life has been addressed before, Ochse embraces it and integrates it into his story without making it the focus of the book or glorifying it. The book starts out with a suicide attempt, but it isn’t for the reasons that you would expect. Ochse was willing to get past the Hollywood and mainstream media explanations of military suicide and try to address some of the real reasons why veterans would be willing to end their lives. This is a subject that needs to be addressed openly and honestly, and Ochse was brave enough to risk turning some readers off to do it. I think that many of the readers who do get turned off by his frank observations on this subject might feel that way because it hits way too close to home. I don’t want this to sound like a challenge, but for some folks out there, this might be the book that makes them stop and think.’
My colleague in both writing and the military, the inestimable Myke Cole says that “PTSD is not a disease it’s a world view. War, disaster response, police work, these things force a person to live in the spaces where trauma happens, to spend most of their time there, until that world becomes yours, seeps through your skin and runs in your blood… PTSD is what happens when all that is stripped away. It is the curtain pulled back, the deep and thematic realization that life is fungible, that death is capricious and sudden. That anyone’s life can be snuffed out or worse, ruined, in the space of a few seconds. It is the shaking realization that love cannot protect you, and even worse, that you cannot protect those you love. It is the final surrendering of the myth that, if you are decent enough, ethical enough, skilled enough, you’ll be spared.”
It used to be, for the most part, that you had to be in a particular line of work to earn this world view. For one to get PTSD you had to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s not necessarily the case anymore. The internet has democratized PTSD opportunities, allowing viewers to watch beheadings, terrorists burning victims alive, people being shot, run over, and falling to their deaths. The very act of witnessing these things puts a person in that space that Myke describes when one realizes that life is fungible. Some are able to take it better than others. Because I’ve seen enough death in my own life, I don’t watch these. I’ve never watched a beheading and never will.
But many people do.
&nbs
p; Can you imagine what it does to them?
Have you watched these videos?
How did it make you feel?
Hs it changed you?
Would you even know if it did?
It’s also important to understand that the military isn’t the only high percentage group with PTSD sufferers. Police and fire fighters, as well as rape victims and victims of sexual abuse have a very high rate of PTSD as well. Nurses, doctors and paramedics have a high incidence of PTSD. You could literally spend your day interacting with PTSD sufferers and not even know it.
So at the very least, treat everyone with respect.
If you write about PTSD, do it in a positive and constructive manner.
And that woman in the middle of road rage or the guy not moving fast enough for you in the line you’re queued up in, they might be having a hard time of it, so maybe think about treating them that way.
You don’t know what they’ve seen.
You don’t know what they’ve done.
We all need to learn to live on this planet together.
* * *
Notes from the Author: I decided to include this article on PTSD because no volume of war stories would be complete without it. To write successful military fiction, one needs to know the effects of the actions their characters commit. They need to understand that some things can’t be unseen, some feelings can’t be unfelt. My behavior has changed since my recent tour in Afghanistan. I need things a certain way, I can no longer ride my motorcycle, and dozens of other small things I don’t want to get into. Am I broken? I don’t think so. But I’ve been changed by the things I’ve done and the things I’ve seen. I’ve tried, unsuccessfully at times, to inculcate greater patience in my life. I’ve tried to smile more. Because although I have PTSD, I also know this singular fact to be true – living is a terrific thing and the world is bright and full of wonder.
