Last week we talked about D-Day in World War 2 and how the trauma from it influenced one p articular painter for the rest of his life.
Partly because of that, an American soldier named Audie Murphy has been on my mind recently. Most people who’ve heard of him know him as the most decorated American solider of WWII, the recipient of the Medal of Honor, or a movie star. He was all three.
Murphy joined the Army in 1942 after lying about his age. He fought in Sicily, Italy, and in Southern France and was wounded numerous times. In fact he was classified as 50% disabled by the time the war ended. After the war, he went to Hollywood and made almost 50 movies over a 20-year film career. One of the things I didn’t know before I started writing about him was that in the 1960s, he also wrote lyrics to country songs, some of which became hits for some famous singers. He also wrote poetry.
It may surprise you to learn that a lot of soldiers in WWII wrote poetry. In 1945, the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes published a volume called Puptent Poets that featured the poetry of American soldiers who, like Murphy, had fought through North Africa, Sicily and Italy. It was compiled by two corporals and illustrated by a sergeant. “Men in uniform who might once have regarded poetry as a matter for ‘long hairs’ and ‘softies,’” they admitted, “are writing poems themselves.” A great many soldiers discovered that they had “an interest in writing about the war as well as living it.”
Their poems addressed everything from the stresses of combat, to the memory of dead comrades, home, love, and the innumerable small frustrations of army life. Some are whimsical, some melancholy, some hopeful. A few poignantly address how difficult they anticipate a return to “normal” civilian life will be. As it was for so many of them, it was very difficulty for Audie Murphy. For the rest of his life he suffered from what today is called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Twenty years ago the National Endowment for the Arts and the Defense Department began a program called “Operation Homecoming” based on the idea that creative writing, including poetry, can help returning American soldiers deal more openly with some of the trauma of combat. Today, VA Medical Centers around the country still make use of “creative arts therapy” as one of the ways they help veterans cope with PTSD. The Arts Endowment has continued these efforts under its “Creative Forces” program, but whether the NEA itself will even survive the year is now sadly uncertain.
A poet named Marilyn Nelson explained that what motivated her to take part was her conviction that helping soldiers express themselves through poetry returns to them something fundamentally human that can counter, even in a small way, their wartime experiences. A book of soldiers’ writings was one of the results, along with two award-winning documentaries, including one that featured actors like Robert Duvall and Beau Bridges reading some of the works.
Audie Murphy wrote at least one war poem—about the agonizing stalemate at Anzio in the winter of 1944—that reflected his battlefield experience, although he destroyed several others without letting anyone else read them. When Murphy returned to civilian life, there were no programs to help veterans cope with the lingering stresses of the battlefield, and he was plagued by nightmares, insomnia, and a destructive restlessness. Nor did he speak of his trauma. Now, fortunately, there are such programs, and that the arts can play a role in this crucial enterprise speaks to their power and reach.
For five years, the program dispatched well-known writers like Tom Clancy, Mark Bowden, and Bobbie Ann Mason to bases and military medical centers around the country and overseas to conduct “expressive writing workshops” for veterans and active duty troops alike.
