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“The enlisted man, although stupid and oftentimes lazy, can be incredibly sly and cunning and bears considerable watching.”
-US Army’s Officer Handbook, 1898
Lieutenant Colonel Bugs sat in his chair and stared at the Department of Defense form in his hand. “Crazy,” he said looking at the Air Force major sitting across his desk. “You mean like certified crazy?”
“Sir, we don’t use the term crazy,” the doctor said.
Bugs squinted and raised an eyebrow as he looked at the major’s hair. That boy’s hair is way too long, even for Air Force regulations Bugs told himself.
“Well,” he said looking back at the form. “In my outfit we call it like it is and crazy is crazy.”
“You can call it what you want, but perhaps it would be better if we used the term breaking point,” the doctor suggested.
“Right, breaking point,” the colonel said echoing the doctor’s words.
“With this patient is not so much about the breaking point rather the past tense form of the verb to break.”
“You mean like broken?”
“Precisely,” the doctor said.
Colonel Bugs smiled. Doctors aren’t all that smart he thought. Especially, this long-haired major telling him one of his soldiers was crazy. “Yeah well it sounds like a bunch of funny business to me. I talked to him just yesterday and he’s a strong as an ox. There ain’t nothing wrong with him,” Colonel Bugs said.
“Yes, physically there are no problems with him. However, he suffers from what is known as acute combat stress psychosis.”
“And what does that mean in English?”
“It means that Specialist Fallon has experienced significant combat trauma as well as repeated head injuries. He can no longer distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary.”
“I don’t buy it,” Colonel Bugs said tossing the form onto the table. “He’s a smart one. A real clever college boy, but he ain’t crazy. Not in the way you think he’s crazy. This young soldier’s fooled you into thinking he’s crazy, but he ain’t crazy.”
The Air Force doctor shifted in his chair. “Colonel, I appreciate your appraisal of my patient, but I didn’t come here to ask for a second opinion. I came here to take Specialist Fallon back to Camp Victory where he can rest and then be sent to the States where he will receive the treatment he needs.”
“Well if you ask me…”
“With all due respect sir,” the doctor said interrupting the senior colonel. “I’m not asking you. I’m informing you that Specialist Fallon will be leaving with me when I return to Camp Victory today.”
“Is that a fact,” the colonel said with a smile.
Lieutenant Colonel Bugs didn’t like wasting time with anything that didn’t move his battalion towards achieving its goals. Some naive long-haired Air Force doctor telling him that one of his enlisted soldiers could somehow be crazy was by all definitions - a waste of time. Colonel Bugs knew what a broken soldier looked like. Two wars in Iraq and countless deployments in less than friendly places showed him what broken men looked like, mentally or otherwise. Colonel Bugs knew this young hotshot doctor sitting in front of him was wrong. The doctor may be plenty book smart, but he just didn’t get it.
There was no such thing as a breaking point. Not in the sense that this doctor meant. It was absurd to think that a soldier could somehow cross a line and then he was broken. Colonel Bugs knew it was more a gray area than a line. Actually, he thought of it more as degrees of brokenness. He thought of it sort of like a car. Sure maybe some parts were broken such as tail lights that were cracked or windshield wipers that didn’t always work, but the car as a whole was still drivable. When the engine started to clang loud enough or the transmission popped out of gear then the degree of brokenness was high enough to have a mechanic take a look at it. In Iraq, the level for accepting brokenness was much higher than back in the States.
It was much like driving through a bad neighborhood. Just because you could see a little bit of smoke coming out of the back didn’t mean you should stop to take a look. Colonel Bugs figured they were driving through a very bad neighborhood and even though Specialist Fallon admittedly had a few bald tires and perhaps a bit of smoke could be seen in the rear view mirror, he was still very much a drivable soldier. There was no need to stop, just maybe drive him a bit slower until the smoke cleared away and the engine cooled down a bit. No, the colonel thought to himself, we’re fighting a war and stopping to check the oil is not an option, not here anyway. The colonel picked up the receiver on his desk.
“You just sit tight doc, while I make a quick phone call,” he said.