What is an internal affair?

My father told me that he was glad to leave the copper mines, and had been just itching to go to war, and defend his country and family. He enlisted, was allowed to return home to say goodbye to his father, Ed Callahan dying of miner's lung and not yet 50 years old. Halfway to the South Pacific my dad got a telegram that his father had died. I have the letters he wrote to his mother, Nora -- I'm her namesake. They are sad indeed.

I've briefly explained my father's penchant for war stories, but there is more to add. I think that part of the problem that civil servants have, is due to the policy that converts military and combat service particularly, into domestic and other kinds of civilian and international policing. And so, I continue my story.
My brother, Gary had lots of friends when we were kids, close friends, and was adored by both our mother and father. Mostly because he deserved it -- he was a good brother, protective and chummy -- both responsible and loving with three younger sisters. We moved often and made new friends. Gary kept old friends, too. Some of Gary's childhood friends stayed with our family for entire summers. One friend, Steve Bennett spent six summers with our family. We had great times.

Preparation for the Marine Corp and Vietnam began the summer before his senior year. I was 12, and we spent about half the week in river rapids in upstate New York while our mother picked whatever berry might be in season. I knew that he was going to war, so was never sure why my mother dropped the dish she was drying and sobbed, when Gary came in and said he enlisted in the Corps. That night my father told war stories, my mother cried on, and I was 13.

Gary wrote as often as he could while in Vietnam. We all wrote him back, the nightly news filled some horror into the blanks, and the 13 months he hauled a mortar gun in an infantry company was hard, for him, our family, and the Vietnamese his unit encountered. Most of men he served with were teenagers, most of them died, all of the survivors disabled last count.

I expected that when Gary got home, he and my father would swap war stories far into the night. We greeted the plane that brought him home. I determined to stay up, be quiet and would be able to hear Gary talk about what brief, hurried letters couldn't tell about his experiences. An anti-war movement was vocal and present, inside and outside my high school, all over the news. I'd heard a lifetime about World War II, was 15 years old, and my big brother was home from the war in Vietnam. The brother that couldn't kill a deer had killed people. I wanted to hear about it.

Gary spent most of his 'leave' with immediate and extended family, all now living in southern California, but my clear memory brings only World War II stories pouring out of my dad. I distinctly remember my father trying to explain to my brother why his war was harder and worse than my brother's war -- simply put of course -- his was a real war and more was 'at stake'.

My brother would begin to tell my father about an experience, and my father would interrupt him with a war story I'd know by heart. It seemed a contest, and my father was on the only side. My mother was too busy cooking food Gary had missed, and women mostly cooked back then anyhow, and around our house, had a hard time getting a word in edgewise anyhow. During my brother's leave, my brother was a good listener, my father got over Vietnam, and everyone gained ten pounds.

Gary was sent east, then honorably discharged and home to San Diego where he stayed living with the family. He was markedly different, and only a few months had gone by since he'd returned from Vietnam. He stayed living with all of us for about a year, attended college, then joined the border patrol.  Uncomfortable comes to mind -- he was extremely ill at ease. He wouldn't sit to talk with others in the evening like he enjoyed before Vietnam. Unless he was behind a locked bedroom door, or out in the little camping trailer he bought and parked in the driveway -- he was restless, even though he was doing all he planned, and more.

If he was in the house, he would be in his room entertaining one of his new 'quirks' -- fashioning small clay figures and, with a needle embedded in a pencil, spend hours in the evening hurling the pin into the clay people. "Thunk, thunk, thunk," thousands of times most nights. He didn't sleep much, and his subtle noises often woke me.

Our Uncle Lorne, my father's brother came for a week or two visit. Gary and my uncle stayed up past my father, and Gary talked about the war. I had this one uncle, he was Border Patrol to Immigration like my father, had served in the Navy during World War II, but not in much direct combat. He was kinder and gentler than my father was, but I loved how they were different as night and day.

My uncle left a book of poetry with me, and I'd promised to type it. Gary had a typewriter in his trailer, so that became the place where I'd hear a war story now and then. In the trailer, he'd talk -- and 'gruesome' comes quickly to memory. I heard about dismembered, screaming buddies, and about his friends who died right next to him. He talked about all night battles, being hit twice, once with a concussion grenade that landed near him and then with a mortar, of headaches and scrap metal coming out of his skin for weeks. He'd tell me about ambushes, and battles. I saw utter animation in his eyes, sometimes alarming intensity. He would not be ill at ease, uncomfortable or restless -- he came alive. It is the same with him today.

Other new 'quirks' he came home with was the inability to deal with what we have come to call, 'everyday stress.' He would leave -- sleep in his car -- somewhere. Drive fast, all night and end up -- somewhere. Drive back. He had lost the ability to talk, and work through stressful situations -- even insignificant ones. This was distinctly different about him. He could no longer negotiate - and he had always been a willing and effective family negotiator.  I sensed that he could 'go off' and he went off, but not on anyone, just away to be alone.

I remember these times vividly - they were particularly miserable ones. Our mother would often blame me if Gary left, saying that, "I just got my boy back from the war, now you've gone and drove him off."  I was seeing gastrointestinal doctors for over a year by this time, one problem surgery cured, others never diagnosed. Collectively, we blamed mom's menopause for everything.

Gary was in college, got a part time job, and a small sailboat, but I didn't sail with him often. He'd go too far out to sea, take too much wind, and preferred to be alone. If we talked about his life-long friends, that he'd seen 'back east,' he'd tell me they'd changed. Aloof comes to mine, but doesn't describe him. He was less engaged in people around him. He continued to go everywhere armed with at least one gun, and began collecting them. He did not stop wearing his starched Marine Corp fatigue hat, or his jungle boots, even as the anti-war movement grew, and more in government officials and citizens joined it.

My brother learned to track and ambush enemy soldiers in Vietnam. He joined the Border Patrol and was assigned to the U.S. Mexican border where he tracked and ambushed people.

Both raising young families, we spent at least end of year holidays together. He appeared content, took much pleasure in his children, but risky behavior continued in obvious ways. On days off, with an out of town guest, he might join in a police chase or dangerous apprehension. Not living near the ocean, he would spend vacations sailing dangerously, then added deep sea diving, and collected more guns. He worked in the dessert, roamed it armed on days on and off with his sons. He never stopped wearing the fatigue cap and jungle boots, either.

In 1985 my brother took a leave of absence from the Border Patrol, his family that included a wife, and three young sons he adored, to go to South Africa where he tracked and honed ambush techniques under the tutelage of the Bushman Battalion of the South African Army. At war with Angola, my brother went to the border area to experience it.

Returning from Africa he continued to track and ambush smugglers. I think that he believed himself to be some kind of 'warlord' in that desert area for a long time. He would seek out armed smugglers and go after them with or without backup. This was delusional behavior.

When a soldier is fallen in the King's service, how doth the King respond to his wounded servant?

By the time my brother has left for Africa, PTSD was on scene. What were those good ole boy, cronies -- his Supervisors -- thinking about this behavior that should have been glaringly odd, raising a few red flags, etc, & all ad nauseum.

If a law enforcement agency is recruiting primarily from the ranks of combat trained, tried and true killers, and a syndrome appears -- why not a review of civil service records, and referrals for possible diagnosis at the very least?

What is an internal affair?

So, that said, for the first time in a public forum, I'm glad to have some of it off my chest. I sigh a heavy sigh, and a reader might ask - why? Why is this woman telling us all of this? I beg permission, dear readers, to reveal my reasons as my story unfolds. But will share one of them tonight.

Our law enforcement agencies will be recruiting combat veterans in historically high numbers. I'm a mother, a grandmother and we don't usually get a say in things, as the saying goes. I intend to. I'll share another reason in my next entry, thanks for following along.

In Struggle,
Nora Callahan