Suddenly
You are in Iraq, or Viet Nam…or Corriegidor, or Korea, or the fields of Flanders…and battle, any era. This place is not charted, the territory of heart and mind unknown. This “place” is beyond anything you thought was the world, the city, or civilization.

You arrive without fanfare or realistic preparation, you find out, for the vivid, surreal events you will encounter.

This is how it happens, from one zone to the other, unaware that you are really leaving one experience for another totally different one. For moments, perhaps even a while longer, you try to make the events fit into how you have believed the life and the world really is. This is the beginning of learning to live with, if you survive, the thing that you never once dreamed existed.

No one’s talking. The heat hits you, then the smell. No one’s talking! What are you supposed to do? A whirring sound whizzes past your head. You can’t place the sound. Yelling. Pandemonium. People shouting and screaming and running around. Then the slow motion begins.

What’s your next move grunt? You do not see when you cross that line. Suddenly you begin to know…..

THE RULES:

RULE #1    SURVIVE!
Do that NOW. Your body is talking. Do not die. Do not get maimed. Or hurt. Let no thing or person interfere with this. Stay alive. It is imperative. Protect your body and your “fucking” mind, man.

You are enacting the first of eleven primitive rules learned in combat.

You have stepped into a new territory of the mind and the heart. You face raw existence. The oldest and most primal intelligence in us is now aroused, taking you by surprise the very first time it roars out of you. Cold, impersonal and powerful now keeps you alive without you thinking about it. It’s a body thing.

Rule #2    Kill or Be Killed
Stop absolutely and forever anything that threatens to kill, main or hurt you. Fast. The roar in your body is moving faster than you are. Effectively prevent any threat of annihilation. Do not equivocate. Do not think twice or you’ll never act again. Do anything it takes. You learn this or you don’t. If you don’t, goodbye.

You have overcome the last taboo.

This second and instantly learned primitive Survival Rule, is one never learned at mothers’ knees, and it one rule that makes post- traumatic stress symptoms harder than hell to deal with — for the people who love you—once you’ve warred.

It’s the rule of either-or, them-or-me, and do-or-die. It’s the harshest and most unforgiving Rule that is totally demanded and fitting for battles in war and totally unfit for peacetime situations…most of the time.

RULE #3    USE FULL POWER
Go full blast. Hold nothing back. Be swift and precise. Use every method possible, anything you can get your hands on, all your energy. Go all the way, no half measures. All stops gone. Use is openly, boldly, always. You and your body are one now.

This third Survival Rule insures that you keep surviving. A “balls-to-the-walls” Rule that always shoots your wad of adrenaline over the top—until you become addicted to having that letting-it-rip-rush whenever you sense a threat to your existence.

Or, you just need a way to feel alive once more—now that you are home.

These three rules are just the beginning of what is unconsciously learned during combat. They are so basic, so taken for granted that men who have warred don’t even have to think about them. You who have not warred know them, too. It’s the bottom line. But men who have warred didn’t abstract this bottom line-- they lived it. They always come from this place. You, however, do not.

This is how the Rules begin to be laid down. This is how the other map of reality begins to be formed. It happens quickly, unconsciously. Few people could tell you this is happening. Most folks don’t even guess that what is going on here will change you forever. You, grunt, are going to end up knowing things like few people know them.

Etched into your nervous system are these and eight other Rules that worked to keep you alive. The details of surviving become the certain kind of psychology the war gives you. It appears to be a universal consequence of warring.

These Rules fit together and bounce off each other. As your life goes on, anything that appears to be dangerous to your existence, whether real or imagined, will drive eleven Survival Rules into play all over again. At home they are called symptoms.

Each of the Rules become patterns of interaction, reaction and thought once you are home, back in the world. They may not show up right away, but you feel them inside you with moods, attitudes and odd, sudden sensations that come and go at will. You will put all that behind you, you think, and get on with life as you had planned but it won’t be as planned after all. There is this thing, this memory, a dead certain learning that makes you feel odd. Not like yourself, and maybe not like others want you to be.

These are harsh Rules. It is useful to know how to think about them.

The Rules are the keys that help change war’s legacy of pain. They also point to the powerful lessons of life and the positive resources buried in the terrible knowledge that this experience brings.

This site is based on the upcoming book, TEARS OF MEN: WHAT WAR DOES TO MEN AND THE REST OF US, now in its final editing.