shell shock (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The following is a work of fiction. No representation of persons living or dead is intended by it.

Dearest Catharine

I’m sorry. But if all goes according to my plan, you will be finding this letter after I am dead and gone. My prayer is that you will get over the loss in a few months and go on to a decent life. Your family have means, and you are an intelligent, capable woman. You’ll find a way. Tell the kids their dad died of a brain illness. That’s what it is. Or was, I guess, by the time you read this.

God, I wish there was some way to get out of this hell and not hurt you! 

But there is not.

I hid my pistol in the woodshed under a loose board, in case you are wondering.

The memory of that last time we fought, and I hit you with my open hand across the side of your head and put you on the floor has proved too much for my flimsy conscience to bear. Drunk again. After promising for the third time in 7 years that whisky and I were done. The truth is I have come to loathe myself. The much harder truth is that I know now I can’t change.

So this is good-bye. The one person in this life who really loved me and I have gone and hurt you again. But this time is the last.

   

                                               Canadian school children 1937

                                            (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

You’ll get over this, Kate. You’ll go on. Go to the Innisfail School Board. Or the Red Deer one. I am confident you can go back to teaching. And your income will not be quite as much as what we have grown used to but not far off. I wasn’t much of an insurance salesman. In addition, Dave Junior and Heidi are old enough now to help you in serious, useful ways. 

You are all better off without me. Of that, I am certain.

There are things I never told you about the war. My distinct impression was that you did not want to know. Not really. Not the ugly stuff, the stuff that made me drink. And I don’t blame you. No one really wants to know things like that.

I’ll tell you one. Aaron, my sergeant, was peeking over the top of a trench with a pair of spotting binoculars. Corporal Ward was standing near him. A sniper round came in with no warning and took Aaron’s head off. I, as a captain, was back one row of trenches, but I happened to be looking their way and saw what happened. It was an exploding round. I’m sure of it. We and the Boche were not supposed to use exploding rounds in small arms on the Western Front. But when the Germans who had been freed up by Russia’s surrender began arriving in France, I guess some of them had brought a few of the special rounds with them. For special targets, probably. Aaron was a very good sniper himself, though not officially assigned as one. The other side must have figured out who he was. That was my theory then, and it’s still my theory.

From a yard and a half away, with no warning, Ward was suddenly splattered with his friend’s brains. He began screaming, clawing at the wet tissue clinging to his face and shoulder. Then, with no preamble, he scrambled over the trench and ran straight at the enemy. They cut him down out in No Man’s Land, of course. All of this took place before my eyes in under ten seconds. Maybe, under five. I just don’t know.

I’d seen so many ugly things by that point. I’d been at the front, off and on, for nearly a year. But something about the – I don’t know – the arbitrariness of it, the suddenness of it, it caught me with my mind unguarded. The image stuck in my memory. I couldn’t shake it loose. Still can’t as I write these words to you.

Then, there is the one that is in my record that you think you know about, but you don’t. Yes, I was lost for two days behind the Boche line, but no, I was not hiding,  running, and fighting for my life the whole time.

No one knows this but you, and I’d just as soon you did not tell anyone ever. I only tell it to you because I am hoping to make you somehow feel the anguish (I guess is the word) that made your husband end his own life. Then, maybe, you will be able to forgive.  

   

                                     No Man's Land, World War One, France 

                                               (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

The truth is that for over forty hours I was doing nothing at all. I found a small cellar somehow left even after all the shelling, but with its entrance almost fully covered in mud and debris. It suddenly hit me that with a little extra material pulled over the one opening that I had found, that cellar would hide me from the war for however long I wanted to stay down there.

I had food and two canteens of water. I had a blanket and the closeness of the space meant that I would be warm enough down there to sleep. Even the floor was almost dry.

What happened to me during those forty hours is nothing. At least, not on the outside. I could peek between the shattered pieces of lumber and brick that lay over the entrance I had disguised and watch my fellows and the enemy pass quite near, fighting now ahead and now back three times in those two days. And I was safe. Nothing happened to me. Except in my mind as I watched.

I was sickened with shame after a while because I saw guys die not thirty feet from me. Two bayoneted that took hours to die, groaning in agony. But I was safe. A captain and I’d let my boys down. I was just so fed up with the dying. So I try to tell myself, anyway. It's a pathetic excuse.

That is the memory that haunts me the most. I did make my way, one night, back to our lines. I did make up a story about getting trapped behind enemy lines and fighting my way back. Only Major Mack looked at me - I guess, suspiciously – when I reported in, but he never said anything. But I knew that he knew.

The memory was made worse by the way events just followed each other in those safe hours. I watched young men just like myself, Germans too, just like myself. And a feeling I had been fighting off for months just would not be shut out anymore. Why were we there? We all knew that the tales we had been told about the glory of the Empire and the fight for freedom and the war to end war and so on …they were all lies. We were boys. Just boys. On both sides. Doing what elders we trusted told us to do. Killing each other. In every way we could devise. Sharpened trench shovels even.

And all that pain and death was just stupid waste. In the course of history, it would mean nothing. We were doomed in a few years to become an irritation, or a joke, or both, to the next generation. Like you, like the kids, they would not understand us or what we went through and would not want to. The sun is up, the sky is blue, the air fresh, beer tastes good, there are girls all around. I don’t even blame them. It’s just that all of those things are lies to me too now.

So what has happened? What made me cross a line and make the decision? It may not seem important to you, but for me as a history enthusiast it seems very clear. The goose-stepping clowns in Germany and Italy are not clowns at all. I saw the news reel at the Rialto last night. This is what I fear.

It is all coming again. I don’t know when. Germany will need time to grow some new men. But it will come. Between humanity and another war of even greater horror, I see nothing to block the path.

This all sounds over dramatic, overdone generally, I suppose. But Remarque’s book, which I read in about forty hours just this past March, with all the feeling it contained and all that it stirred in people all over the world, and the film I hear they are going to make of it, and all the vets like me, and all the mothers that went to Crazy and never came back, it all will not make a pinch of difference.

Exert your every ounce to keep Davy out of it. Or maybe, push and push him to follow his love of Mathematics. He will get a job behind the lines then. And hopefully stay out of the hot fighting zones.

I can’t bear it even as I write. Millions like Aaron and the money, time, and resources wasted. For nothing. The stories they will tell you on every side, I tell you now, they will all be lies. There is no purpose to war. Just pain and death.

It’s that that is making me do what I am about to do. As well as I can understand myself, anyway. The hitting you is just a symptom of a deep brain disease which is only going to get worse and worse. It is unbearable now, this feeling of emptiness. We are led by idiots who have no idea what they’re doing. Again, the men will fight for a pack of lies. I can’t bear this knowing.

                         Your David, now forever and ever, I love you Katie, truly,

                                                                                  D.

   

                                            Serre Road Cemetery no. 2 

                                       (credit: Gary Dee, from Wikimedia Commons)

                                 

                                                                        Vienna, 1890's 

                                              (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

“This voyage has been as pleasant in weather and sailing as we could possibly have hoped for, Dr. Jung.”

“You did not invite me for a stroll about the deck to discuss the weather, Professor. Please, sir, what is it that you wish to say to me?”

“I shall try one last time, Carl Gustav. We cannot end on such a note of mutual hostility. It is too painful to me and too absurd to reason that two men who have shared so much should part like this. In such acrimony. In addition, I cannot believe that you will forever remain so determinedly attached to these radical views of yours with regard to our young science. So I will attempt again to persuade you to the view that you know I hold, namely the view that these mystical intuitions of yours are nothing more than wishes.”

“One more sanctimonious lecture from a father to a son, is it? Is that what I must endure, Professor Freud? I am weary of the whole debate. Like you, I have made up my mind to follow truth wherever she may lead me. I simply differ with you on which phenomena of the many that are beckoning show promise of leading me to fruitful research. I will say it again: I think the fact that so many persons, men, women, even children, have reported experiencing events that cannot be explained by the normal laws of Science deserves at least some investigation.”

“But when we investigate each of these cases, every time we find that the visions and auditory hallucinations and tactile, olfactory, even gustatory components of these experiences are linked to matters that are integral parts of the patient’s mental state before the so-called ‘paranormal’ experience occurs. Does this not worry you? In layman’s terms, Dr. Jung, we see things we want and need to see. 

"The man who has been feeling ashamed for neglecting his mother in her final years, rarely visiting her and so on, will suddenly begin dreaming of her night after night in the most vivid imagery. He does not dream of seeing giant cats or smelling chemicals from the laboratory experiments he did in his undergraduate years. He dreams what his sub-conscious needs to be shown in order to adjust to the fact of her recent death. Or perhaps, he dreams of her scolding him for not visiting more often. But he does not dream of his property or investment portfolios. He does not dream of hiking in the Italian Alps, even though he very much enjoyed those times hiking with friends more than twenty years ago. I cannot conceive of how I could make this connection between the subconscious needs of our patients and the so-called ‘paranormal’ phenomena that they see and believe in more obvious.”

“There are far too many experiences that many individuals have had that are far too similar in content and that do not come from any memory of experiences in the patient’s past for us to write off all of these experiences as mere wishful thinking, Professor Freud. Too many people, without any prompting from any past memories, have had experiences of angelic creatures coming to visit them – even when they have never heard of angels. Too many who have seen, for another example, a benevolent woman beckoning to them in the dark, even when they have no such woman in their acquaintance. So also, there are the experiences of demons and animals, too alike in too many details for your dismissal of these people’s experiences to be acceptable as scientific. We must follow the phenomena that we meet with in our patients wherever they lead, surely? It is the relief of our patients’ suffering that we must aim for in the end. Some of that suffering looks very likely to be coming from sources that are not rooted in each patient’s past or recent experience.”

“Carl, Carl, Carl. These too, I have dealt with. The events that many seem to experience with no memories to which they apparently connect may be due to memories buried so deep that the patient cannot access them consciously. This is one of the main goals of psychoanalysis. We gradually bring the patient, by easy manageable steps, to full awareness of the demons from her past that are influencing and manipulating her daily life. Once she sees those connections, she can master them and go on to a normal, healthy existence.”

“There are still too many widely shared paranormal experiences that do not connect to any patient’s memories that we cannot explain, Herr Professor.”

“These too, I have dealt with repeatedly, Dr. Jung. Yes, many have experiences of benevolent and malevolent beings, to use your own examples, but these fit the needs of all humans. We long to believe that our universe contains angels who are watching over us and trying to assist and protect us. The real universe is a very cold and frightening place. So much so that having nightmares every night truly would make far more logical sense than sleeping soundly does. So we invent forces of kindness to enable ourselves to simply continue with our daily lives. Function and survive.”

“Then, in this view of yours, the demons make no sense at all?”

“Oh yes, they do. On them we can blame those of our actions that cause us shame and regret when we recall them. Did you spank a child, and now, in looking back, do you suspect that you were simply short-tempered at that moment because of an event earlier at work? It comforts the malefactor, in this case the father, to see a demon lurking near that child or lurking near himself. Then, the father can tell himself that he was not really responsible for his actions at the time. He can even release the memory of the action and choose to be kinder to the child from then on. So we assuage our consciences in all cases which cause us shame. As so many like to say in Europe, ‘the devil made me do it’.”

“And the thousands who have reported seeing the Holy Virgin – or being healed at Lourdes – or seeing Jesus – you claim these are all just common human needs, little understood and poorly expressed, running amok!”

   

                                              Freud's waiting room 

                                                    (credit: Wikipedia)

“Yes, Carl Gustav, yes. In their endless creative variety, these experiences could occupy all the psychological researchers in the world for all the rest of time. We could work at nothing else for generations. In the meantime, people would be suffering really painful symptoms in this real world, and getting no help from us. At that point, what would be our purpose here? I see none. A criminal waste of our educations and our energies. I cannot be part of it.”

“There are patterns and constants among the reports of these phenomena, Herr Professor. Patterns that simply cannot be written off so easily.”

“Patterns that can be explained. ‘Written off’ is not a way to characterize the manner in which I and so many of our colleagues handle these phenomena in the patients we see. The patient’s suffering or euphoria in every case is very real. To him! But in reality, the experience is an illusion. There are no angels!”

“You cannot say that, Herr Professor. The possibilities are many, and they need investigating. I myself have dreamt of future events and seen them come true. It is this, in the end, that separates us, I think. You are not an imaginative or emotional man. Thus, I now must depart your company. I will not seek it out again. This is the end between us.”

 “Then farewell, my young friend. I have never, and I will never, love another man as I have loved you.”

“You control the things you love, Professor. Then …they can never leave you. It is a common neurosis. Mostly found in women, as I know you are aware.”

“That self-serving diagnosis I cannot tolerate. This is indeed farewell.”

“People all over Europe report these experiences that we have been speaking of, you realize.”

“In the Orient, where cultures are so different and myth characters as well, these so-called ‘experiences’ are unknown. For heaven’s sake, does that not worry you?”

“Ah, but your reports are not accurate. In China, thousands do indeed have these same visions and dreams and so on.”

“Your reports are false, Dr. Jung.”

                                

                                                           Sigmund Freud 

                                                      (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

“So either I am a liar or my trusted friends are?”

“No. I do not say that. But they are seeing and even seeking out what they want and need, subconsciously, to find. There are no angels! Intelligent men are not somehow above this imagining we are speaking of. On the contrary, they’re the most creative at it of all those who make delusions for themselves. And the most determined.”

“So I am but an overpaid, well-educated dreamer? That really is the finish. Good evening, sir. From this time forth you are a distant colleague with whom I painfully disagree, but that I, nevertheless, treat with civility. I hope you can accord me the same.”

“This madness will destroy our young science, Carl!”

“So now I am a vandal as well as a fraud and a liar! Good night, sir!”

“Must we part this ….”

“Not another word, sir! Good night!”

“I am …. Will you walk away from …? Alright, then. Goodnight.”     

                                       

                                                                     Carl Gustav Jung 

                                           (credit: Wikimedia Commons)