Here is a thorough and well-written article about Jess' military service that appears in the SUNY Fredoina alumni magzine:
http://alumni.fredonia.edu/Magazine/SearchArticles/tabid/188/ID/270/Coming-Clean-Former-Marine-tells-story-of-gathering-the-dead.aspx
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
Walking Forward
Jess just received a very heartfelt and encouraging message from Tom, a Marine whose war was in Vietnam. He writes that it's okay to look over your shoulder, as long as you are doing it while waking forward. Here is a passage from his email:
"
"
I am also a Marine, my war was Vietnam and even though my experiences were much easier than hers I carried them with me a very long time and all of us, be in Vietnam, Iraq or any other war, carry those things with us the rest of our lives. The key is replacing those experiences with many more positive ones, over a very long period of time. There is another side, it just takes a long time to process and deal with it. It is OK to look over your shoulder, just do it walking forward."
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
From Other Wars
This is from oregon.com:
Gathering the dead: letter to a WWII veteran
I have this image of my grandfather trolling a World War II battlefield in Italy, boots spattered with mud and blood and a dozen other kinds of filth, surveying a desolate reality.
It’s after the skirmish’s last shot has been fired. It’s his turn to work now. He and a few other U.S. Army soldiers weave between greasy fires and smoke that stains their clothes. They spot an American facedown in a puddle, head bobbing in what seems like flagons of blood.
Grandpa raises his hand up, beckons to an olive-colored transport truck behind him. It trundles over the uneven terrain and stops just before Grandpa and another guy pick the stiff up. The face is shredded, probably from a mortar blast, burning, thin razors of shrapnel buried in a dozen bloody holes.
Grandpa and the other guy hoist the body into the truck. Wet gears in the undercarriage shift and click. The truck moves on. The men follow.
The image isn’t quite a detail-for-detail factual account. Really it’s just a dramatized projection based on what little I know about Grandpa’s WWII service. I know he was in the Graves Registration Service, now called Mortuary Affairs. I know he and others in his unit were tasked with the collection, identification, processing and burial of dead bodies following battles.
I know, at one point, the highest incidence of post traumatic stress disorder was within GRS/MA ranks. “Shade It Black,” an account of just how far an MA soldier can fall, was published earlier this year. You can see an interview with author Jess Goodell here.
It’s interesting to know there’s someone else who fell down the same rabbit hole Grandpa did and is willing to talk about it. I want to know if anyone could make it all the way back up.
Not to say Grandpa couldn’t have; not to say he took the fall at all. He was jovial all 24 years I knew him. He never had flashbacks, never melted down at the sight of Old Glory during Fourth of July parades or military events. He never talked about his time in northern Africa or Italy at all. The lock on that part of his mind was some kind of high-intensity alloy no key or methodology could crack.
I have a theory about why. I have to imagine soldiers on the ground in that era saw glimmers of heroism and honor – little snippets of those things military recruitment ads would have us believe are constant and frequent – between the explosions and splashes of blood they saw daily. Grandpa got no silver lining. He only saw the bodies, what men looked like when they were broken and inside out and beyond fixing. Imagine seeing life’s complexities wither before you every day like that. Imagine having to tell families of so many strangers and friends their son or brother or lover or husband or father had died on a battlefield so far away.
I’d be left with two choices after three years of that kind of life: be committed or bury those memories so deep light would ever be able to touch them. I think Grandpa chose the latter, for his sanity and for ours.
And now, like most people in this journalism gig would, I’m left wishing I knew every appalling detail...I have all the letters he wrote to his folks during his military service, imparted to me after he died in 2007. I also have news clippings, old mess hall menus, yellowing 6-cent stamp books.
I’ll never forget this line he wrote in 1945 when the war was close to ending: “Sat in lawn chairs smoking cigarettes and almost felt like civilians again.”
I’m not sure any of the letters contain the really bad stuff he undoubtedly saw. Someday when I get the right amount of gumption, I’m going to take a trip back in time with every letter, try to get a few glimpses of what he did see and feel like sharing. I guess I feel like there’s not a whole lot I can do for veterans beyond genuinely appreciating their willingness to fight for their family and complete strangers, and the only thing I can really try and do is empathize with what I know. I’m just not sure any civilian can ever look a battle-scarred soldier in the eye and say, “I understand. I get it,” with honesty.
I feel we owe it to them to just listen.
It’s after the skirmish’s last shot has been fired. It’s his turn to work now. He and a few other U.S. Army soldiers weave between greasy fires and smoke that stains their clothes. They spot an American facedown in a puddle, head bobbing in what seems like flagons of blood.
Grandpa raises his hand up, beckons to an olive-colored transport truck behind him. It trundles over the uneven terrain and stops just before Grandpa and another guy pick the stiff up. The face is shredded, probably from a mortar blast, burning, thin razors of shrapnel buried in a dozen bloody holes.
Grandpa and the other guy hoist the body into the truck. Wet gears in the undercarriage shift and click. The truck moves on. The men follow.
The image isn’t quite a detail-for-detail factual account. Really it’s just a dramatized projection based on what little I know about Grandpa’s WWII service. I know he was in the Graves Registration Service, now called Mortuary Affairs. I know he and others in his unit were tasked with the collection, identification, processing and burial of dead bodies following battles.
I know, at one point, the highest incidence of post traumatic stress disorder was within GRS/MA ranks. “Shade It Black,” an account of just how far an MA soldier can fall, was published earlier this year. You can see an interview with author Jess Goodell here.
It’s interesting to know there’s someone else who fell down the same rabbit hole Grandpa did and is willing to talk about it. I want to know if anyone could make it all the way back up.
Not to say Grandpa couldn’t have; not to say he took the fall at all. He was jovial all 24 years I knew him. He never had flashbacks, never melted down at the sight of Old Glory during Fourth of July parades or military events. He never talked about his time in northern Africa or Italy at all. The lock on that part of his mind was some kind of high-intensity alloy no key or methodology could crack.
I have a theory about why. I have to imagine soldiers on the ground in that era saw glimmers of heroism and honor – little snippets of those things military recruitment ads would have us believe are constant and frequent – between the explosions and splashes of blood they saw daily. Grandpa got no silver lining. He only saw the bodies, what men looked like when they were broken and inside out and beyond fixing. Imagine seeing life’s complexities wither before you every day like that. Imagine having to tell families of so many strangers and friends their son or brother or lover or husband or father had died on a battlefield so far away.
I’d be left with two choices after three years of that kind of life: be committed or bury those memories so deep light would ever be able to touch them. I think Grandpa chose the latter, for his sanity and for ours.
And now, like most people in this journalism gig would, I’m left wishing I knew every appalling detail...I have all the letters he wrote to his folks during his military service, imparted to me after he died in 2007. I also have news clippings, old mess hall menus, yellowing 6-cent stamp books.
I’ll never forget this line he wrote in 1945 when the war was close to ending: “Sat in lawn chairs smoking cigarettes and almost felt like civilians again.”
I’m not sure any of the letters contain the really bad stuff he undoubtedly saw. Someday when I get the right amount of gumption, I’m going to take a trip back in time with every letter, try to get a few glimpses of what he did see and feel like sharing. I guess I feel like there’s not a whole lot I can do for veterans beyond genuinely appreciating their willingness to fight for their family and complete strangers, and the only thing I can really try and do is empathize with what I know. I’m just not sure any civilian can ever look a battle-scarred soldier in the eye and say, “I understand. I get it,” with honesty.
I feel we owe it to them to just listen.
Monday, August 1, 2011
From James Bingham
This appeared online in Airbornepress.com, July 29th, 2011:
I heard the author, Jess Goodell, being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR (National Public Radio) the other day. I have never heard anyone so soft spoken. Her voice was so soothing that literally you could hear the pathos in Terry’s voice—this amazing empathy. What a job Jess had.
Jess Goodell was a Marine In Iraq and worked as a mortuary officer, identifying the bodies of young Marines. She said something like, “We worked so hard to get every single part of the dead.” Interpreted, the body parts of every Marine blown up by an IED (Improvised Explosive Devise). One of her responsiblities was to diagram the body parts of the deceased. If the body parts were not found, she was told to shade it black.
Jess wanted to go to Iraq, so she volunteered for the mortuary job. She says it never got easier with time."I don't think I ever stopped smelling death when I was in Iraq...And at least for me, once I smelled that smell of death, I just couldn't stop smelling it.' After leaving Iraq, she had a hard time adjusting to civilian life. She now wants to help other veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. What a remarkable youngster!
Shade It Black
Death and After Iraq
James BinghamJuly 29 2011
 thecasemateblog.files.wordpress.com |
I heard the author, Jess Goodell, being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR (National Public Radio) the other day. I have never heard anyone so soft spoken. Her voice was so soothing that literally you could hear the pathos in Terry’s voice—this amazing empathy. What a job Jess had.
Jess Goodell was a Marine In Iraq and worked as a mortuary officer, identifying the bodies of young Marines. She said something like, “We worked so hard to get every single part of the dead.” Interpreted, the body parts of every Marine blown up by an IED (Improvised Explosive Devise). One of her responsiblities was to diagram the body parts of the deceased. If the body parts were not found, she was told to shade it black.
Jess wanted to go to Iraq, so she volunteered for the mortuary job. She says it never got easier with time."I don't think I ever stopped smelling death when I was in Iraq...And at least for me, once I smelled that smell of death, I just couldn't stop smelling it.' After leaving Iraq, she had a hard time adjusting to civilian life. She now wants to help other veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. What a remarkable youngster!
Does the President think about the words of those soldiers like Jess Goodell when making decisions about the future of Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe, because I think he is a compassionate man. But he’ll not be giving the weight to her words as much as the words of the generals and politicians.
I’m going to buy the book, Shade It Black. Unfortunately, Americans don’t want to read about Iraq or Afghanistan. We say we support the troops, but with one percent or less of Americans having a loved one in the military or even knowing someone wearing the uniform, reading about Iraq can hardly be on our radar screen.
Jess’s story is compelling and the country as a whole doesn’t deserve her sacrifices.
Radio Interview - J.O.B. San Francisco
Here is a link to an interview with Jessica: http://tunein.com/tuner/?ProgramId=191796&TopicId=35511764
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