Military Veterans

Shadows of War

The experience of war for families and the consequences of generational trauma is deep in my DNA.

My father, a gentle, intelligent, kind and patriotic man, volunteered in January 1940. He joined what was to become the New Zealand Division of the Eighth Army, fighting for five years, till afflicted with near-fatal dysentery, on the battlefields of the Middle East and Italy. He was in the front lines with the Survey Battery at El Alamein, Tobruk and Monte Casino amongst other conflicts of enormous trauma and ferocity. He emerged without visible injuries miraculously but suffered greatly through his long remaining life from the psychological consequences of such conflicts.

World War 1 and 2 veterans were of course supposed to do little other than suck it up in silence and put all the horrors of wartime behind them. But we often had deep conversations about his WW2 experiences, highly sanitised though they were I recognised even as a child, out in our backyard as he tended our gardens and fruit trees on the typical Kiwi post-war quarter acre block. His silent suffering, and some pride too in his service, made a considerable mark on me. Anzac Day for one, was a sour day in our household with its, as he saw it, too often false acclamation and too easy remembrance by those who send young men and women to combat.

For more than 15 years I have been using meditation, mindfulness and gentle guidance, to coach many former and serving personnel and their families, a number of whom have become close friends, through troubled waters to help them better deal with their duties and inter-personal relationships.