By Adrian Rivera, Co-Founder of Warrior Writers Fort Wayne
I was a fifth grader at a private Catholic school when the September 11 terrorist attacks happened. I can remember both fifth grade classes being called into the social studies classroom so we could watch the footage of the attack and subsequent aftermath play out right before our very eyes. We didn’t have class that day; I suppose that reading about history was taking a backseat to actually watching history play out on that primitive television in the center of the room. Being an eleven year old kid, I was pretty much oblivious to the whole thing, as shallow as it was, I can still remember wanting to get home and watch Dragonball Z on Cartoon Network. The reality of the situation really did not penetrate the childhood bubble that I was living in,
and I guess I can be grateful for that. I was lucky that way.
Later on that year, the fifth grade class began a pen pal program. We would write to local soldiers stationed overseas, likely with the hope that we would be bringing a piece of normalcy and home to them. I can remember writing my first letter to my soldier and it was the coolest thing in the world to get a letter
back. I was really excited to share the letter with my mom and family. Even after the pen pal program officially ended, and I think we only really had one required back and forth communication, I continued writing to him. I can’t remember what I was writing about, probably the kind of arbitrary, childish things that eleven year old boys write about or want to talk about with someone they have never met but idealized. I remember, though, that in one of his letters he mentioned that he was missing something. Something like Gatorade, cookies, or just the food from home that we have so readily available here. Whatever it was, after we received this letter, my mom and I packed a box of food, Gatorade mix, and goods from home for him, promptly sending it out. I don’t think he was expecting this, but he wrote back saying that he was genuinely grateful for it. He mentioned how he shared it with the other guys, who were kind of jealous of the extra attention that he was getting. We ended up sending another box with more of these items, in an effort to make sharing easier. This really was the coolest thing in the world.
I can recall that, in one of my many childish letters, like the eleven year old boy that I was, I asked him if he had killed anyone. I’m sure I didn’t think anything of this; I was genuinely interested in whether or not my soldier had killed any of the scary bad guys during his time over there. There was something different about his reply letter. Inside of it there was a letter for me and a letter for my parents, a distinction that had never been made before. I remember reading my letter, which was similar to all the rest that I had received from him, but I was curious to know what he was writing to my parents. It piqued my curiosity: it was almost like a game, a secret that I wasn’t privy to but one that I desperately wanted in on. I don’t remember if I received my answer then or if this revelation waited until I was older, but I would eventually get it.
The letter to my parents essentially answered my eleven-year-old-boy question: it turned
out that my soldier had killed someone during his time overseas. If I recall correctly, he stated one night that he was shocked while on duty. Someone attacked him, and in this situation where it was either him or the other guy, it ended up being the other guy. I believe he felt justified in doing it, and in the heat of the moment, he knew he had to make a choice. But this act and this realization did not make him feel good, though. In fact, he regretted it. Deeply. He hadn’t been able to talk about it yet, but he said at the end of the letter that writing about it was almost therapeutic for him. He felt better about sharing his experience with someone else, and I can see that this would have been the first step for him in the recovery process. Writing out his account offered him a kind of expression that spoken word failed to provide. I feel like this speaks to the power that writing can have when it comes to getting over a traumatic event, further validating the work and benefits of the Warrior Writers project.
Looking back, I see that my soldier did the responsible thing by not answering my question straight out. He included it in an addendum for my parents, allowing them the choice on whether or not they would share it with their sheltered, middle class eleven-year-old. I know that this killing, whether it was in self defense
or not, is something that he is going to have to carry around with him for the entirety of his life. It almost doesn’t seem fair that he is going to shoulder this burden, the burden of survival, to protect and take care of a general public that has no idea of who he is and what he has been through for their sake. Communicating with him and making this connection, though, even if it has fizzled out over the years, opened my eyes to the harsh reality of the world that we live in. People don’t just go overseas, do their time in the military, come home and suddenly blend right back into the lives that they left behind. They’re different, they’re changed. My soldier won’t be the same after his time over there fighting for us, no matter how hard he would try or how badly he would wish he could be. As I remember this period of my life, though, I feel good that my family and I were able to offer him something, whether it was the powdered Gatorade mix, the cookies, or just the nonjudgmental ear (or eyes) of a stranger.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Twenty-year-old Adrian Rivera, the co-founder of Warrior Writers Fort Wayne,
is an English writing major with a professional writing minor at IPFW. The Fort Wayne native enjoys karate and Pokemon.
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