ysabetwordsmith | Poem: "Soldier's Heart"

ysabetwordsmith

This is today's freebie. It was inspired by prompts from

rix_scaedu,

see_also_friend, and

mama_kestrel. It also fills the "high pain tolerance" square in my 8-1-23 card for the New Adventures Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics.

"Soldier's Heart"

[1866]

The War Between the States
left lives and families shattered.

The North had lost many good men,
and the South had lost so many
that it struggled to function at all.

Numerous women were left widows,
children were left orphans, and
girls had few marriage prospects.

The men who survived the war
were often broken in body and
spirit by the wounds that they had
sustained in combat or otherwise.

Many of them could no longer work,
left with missing limbs or weak chests.

Soldier's heart was a common affliction,
its skittering pulse and shortened breath
turning once healthy men into invalids
ashamed of their faltering health.

Others had learned a little too well
how to ignore their body's complaints,
so they could no longer tell if they had
been burned or cut or otherwise injured.

One fellow went hours with a broken arm
before noticing that it no longer worked right.

Everything was in turmoil. Some Southerners
wanted to move north where it was less damaged,
while some Northerners went to take advantage
of the ravaged land and economy to the south.

Some industrious women decided to try
solving the problems simply by putting
the pieces together in a new configuration.

There were not enough men, they reasoned,
so the women could share what men they
had and that would be better than nothing.

The wounded men needed help doing
many things, but they could still contribute
to a household in some other ways.

In Boston, line marriage was legal.

So the young maidens got together
with older widows who had lost
their husbands, brothers, and sons.

They gathered up veterans who
had lost their health in some way.

In this new relationship, there were
enough women to care for the men,
and enough men to do their duty
for the women who wanted children.

The oldest of the wives became
the memory keepers of the line,
telling stories to the children so
they would know where the family
had come from and what it meant.

It wasn't always easy, but they
found that in time, they could
hold each other hard enough for
their broken pieces to stick together.

* * *

Notes:

"Soldier's heart" is an old term for PTSD from the Civil War era.

The War Between the States is one name for the Civil War.

Extreme casualties caused problems in both the North and the South, although the South was hit much harder. Women found it harder to get married, and even the surviving men weren't always fully functional.

Per "The Pursuit of Happiness," line marriage first became legal in Terramagne-Boston, Massachusetts.

Current Mood: busy

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From:

komadori

This is very touching. I really liked all of the historical details.

From:

acelightning73

One of my students lived in the next town over from Gettysburg, and one time he took me for a ride through the battlefield. I had to ask him to stop the car so I could throw up. In the Battle of Gettysburg, the main injuries were from cannonballs. A cannonball's force creates terrifying damage to human bodies. And they had no medical treatment at all. No pain relief, nothing to prevent massive infection. So most of the soldiers who died at Gettysburg died in indescribable pain, raving with feverish delirium. This is why I threw up. He was checking how strong my shields were - but I hardly ever use them. You're basing the stories of the women who survived the Big One on the history of women who survived the Civil War.

I have known a few women who were born big and strong enough to do men's heavy labor - one of them was a dock worker, a "stevedore" lifting hundred-pound sacks of stuff onto loaders. There were women who could chop down trees, turn them into firewod-size pieces, and then plow a field. And then there are those of us who understand how stuff works, and make the most out of our limited physical strength by using leverage and gravity and whatever came to hand.

Edited Date: 2023-08-02 09:06 pm (UTC)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> One of my students lived in the next town over from Gettysburg, and one time he took me for a ride through the battlefield. I had to ask him to stop the car so I could throw up.<<

Yeah, that figures.

>> In the Battle of Gettysburg, the main injuries were from cannonballs. A cannonball's force creates terrifying damage to human bodies. And they had no medical treatment at all. No pain relief, nothing to prevent massive infection. So most of the soldiers who died at Gettysburg died in indescribable pain, raving with feverish delirium.<<

Well, it depends. The wider context of time and place had a variety of pain relief options including opiates. The armies had medics. The question is whether one was able to get supplies, how long they'd last, and whether the medical tent had been shelled, on any given occasion. Also triage was in very early stages, which meant the wounded were often sorted by rank rather than severity; and so was medical neutrality, which meant the medics weren't necessarily safe and often wouldn't pick up enemy casualties. So while some people got decent-for-then treatment, many did not.

It also depends whether you're talking about a solid cannonball, exploding shell, chainshot, grapeshot, or "Fuck it, we're outta ammo, shovel some gravel down the barrel." Solid cannonballs rarely leave survivors, but grapeshot at much beyond point blank range is intended to maximize casualties.

... my dad's a history teacher, I grew up reading this stuff.

>> This is why I threw up. He was checking how strong my shields were - but I hardly ever use them.<<

A logical but far from compassionate test. I tell people "Think of a place you find 'creepy' and go there. Blink your shields on and off to see if you can feel a difference." It's usually enough to detect but rarely enough to harm.

>> You're basing the stories of the women who survived the Big One on the history of women who survived the Civil War.<<

Yep, I've done that, although not just that war. I've used a variety of refugee experiences to color the Big One diaspora.

>> I have known a few women who were born big and strong enough to do men's heavy labor - one of them was a dock worker, a "stevedore" lifting hundred-pound sacks of stuff onto loaders.<<

I know the type.

>> There were women who could chop down trees, turn them into firewod-size pieces, and then plow a field.<<

Lumberjills! Terramagne has a good tradition of them.

>> And then there are those of us who understand how stuff works, and make the most out of our limited physical strength by using leverage and gravity and whatever came to hand.<<

Also true. Spotted a few taking that tack in the Bear Tunnels.

From:

acelightning73

I think the point is that the way the Civil War was fought, battle casualties often died racked by physical pain and terrifying fever dreams. And with no misericord to end the suffering. So there are more Civil War ghost stories than from other wars - a spirit that departs engulfed by agony and fear leaves a more perceptible revenant.

Okay, boys, we've run out of cannonballs. See those rounded rocks over there? I think one will fit down the barrel of this gun... (sound of black powder being poured into a cannon)

Edited Date: 2023-08-03 01:18 am (UTC)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

More for the numbers, too. You want misery, look at the Indian wars. We visited the battlefield of the Little Bighorn / Greasy Grass on the anniversary. The ghosts were dancing in the fog. Everyone else was too terrified to leave the visitor center. Hell, we live with houseghosts, we weren't about to miss walking the grounds. Interesting day.

From:

acelightning73

Ghosts? Why should I be afraid of a ghost? It's dead, it can't hurt me.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Depends on the ghost, the context, and the person. Some ghosts are harmless. Others really are not. A battleground, especially on its anniversary, is among the more mystically hazardous places. Some people are better equipped to defend themselves than others -- or to pass unnoticed, or even present as a nonthreat. The more staunchly mundane someone is, the more likely they are to pass without notice, but that's not quite a guarantee.

From:

acelightning73

Most of the ghosts I've met have been more afraid of me than I was of them.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

LOL yes, I know that feel. Our houseghosts are companionable. And the ghosts at Greasy Grass? Were primarily tribal, and had no problem with us at all. *ponder* If there were soldier ghosts wandering around, yeah, they probably stayed the hell away from us.

From:

acelightning73

At Gettysburg, it wasn't even ghosts. It was just the lingering echo of pain, delirium, terror, and severe bodily trauma. I have, quite deliberately, never visited the "footprint" of the old Twin Towers. And I have no reason to ever visit Auschwitz or Pearl Harbor. Why should I seek out suffering like that?

From:

see_also_friend

I wouldn't like to spend eternity with my mortal enemies.

Hm, I wonder if soldier-ghosts might have gone elsewhere due to different death rituals or beliefs, i.e. the warrior ghosts staying on their home ground to defend their people, but some of the soldier-ghosts attaching to graves or something.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> I wouldn't like to spend eternity with my mortal enemies.<<

Neither would I, but some people are really into that. Stone Fist pounced on the chance to become Channing's spirit guide, just so he could scream at the guy.

>> Hm, I wonder if soldier-ghosts might have gone elsewhere due to different death rituals or beliefs, i.e. the warrior ghosts staying on their home ground to defend their people, but some of the soldier-ghosts attaching to graves or something.<<

Any of them are free to partake of whatever options they have prearranged, are offered then or later, or can access by whatever means. But if you kill hundreds of people on a field, you tend to get a wide range of responses -- it's quite common for enough to stick around, or leave strong enough imprints, to create a "field of ghosts" effect, even if most of them actually moved on.

From:

see_also_friend

>>But if you kill hundreds of people on a field, you tend to get a wide range of responses -- it's quite common for enough to stick around, or leave strong enough imprints, to create a "field of ghosts" effect, even if most of them actually moved on.<<

Fair enough. I still think you might get different proportions, depending on personality, faith, home ground, etc. If, say 2x as many of the local ghosts decided to stick around because they are local, that would skew the sample.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

That matches my observations.

From:

see_also_friend

Statistics!

From:

acelightning73

I know my shields are weak, because I never wanted to block stuff out, I wanted to absorb as much of the magick as I could take in. I mostly do a "mirror sphere" shield - anything that comes towards me bounces back in the direction it came from, and also recharged my own battery a bit. I learned that from a mad swordsmith who worked at Princeton University's Fusion Power Lab. (The one time I picked up a knife he'd made, I could feel it trying to adjust to my hand.)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>>I know my shields are weak, because I never wanted to block stuff out, I wanted to absorb as much of the magick as I could take in. <<

Out of grounding, centering, and shielding I've noticed that almost everyone is good at one and bad at one; the third can be good, middling, or bad. I'm good at shielding and centering but not grounding.

You might try material resources for shielding, and given your preferences, I'd go with an artifact that you can physically take off and put on as desired. Pendant, ring, that sort of things. Plenty of shielding jewelry to choose from.

>> I mostly do a "mirror sphere" shield - anything that comes towards me bounces back in the direction it came from, and also recharged my own battery a bit.<<

Suitable for most purposes, but won't stand up to a heavy hit.

>> I learned that from a mad swordsmith who worked at Princeton University's Fusion Power Lab. (The one time I picked up a knife he'd made, I could feel it trying to adjust to my hand.) <<

That is so awesome. :D

From:

acelightning73

I"m pretty good at grounding - I'm the Woman who Made Friends With Electricity - I can ground better than I shield. I wear a lot of magical bric-a-brac, and at least one of my tattoos is the on switch for a shield. I'm not really good at striking out "offensively". And I have absolutely no ability to heal people or animals, but I'm really great at healing machinery. (And also at diagnosing it.

The mad swordsmith was actually a Vietnam vet whose PTSD got tangled in his magic. He died of some kind of cancer related to having been exposed to Agent Orange. But, gods, when his magic was in full flare he was MAGNIFICENT!

From:

see_also_friend

>>Out of grounding, centering, and shielding I've noticed that almost everyone is good at one and bad at one; the third can be good, middling, or bad. <<

If I am an empath, I wonder which one(s) I'd be good or bad at.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Could be any, but empaths often struggle with shielding. And by struggle I mean I've seen a public, communal meltdown of an audience that was about 1/3 untrained empaths at a graduation ceremony.

That explained a lot about the state of America's mental health system, because it was for the Psychology department.

From:

see_also_friend

So, centering is connecting tou oneself, grounding is connecting to the universe, and shielding is blocking out unwanted interference from the [nearby parts of] universe?

If that is the case, maybe I am bad at shielding.

I wonder what the symptoms of being unshielded around incompatible or toxic people are? Probably like dumping toxic waste on your soul, ugh.

From:

see_also_friend

Oh, and someday I'd like to see the Q-verse attitude to jewelry as magical focii.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I'm sure they have abundant brightware, feel free to ask for that in any relevant prompt call.

From:

see_also_friend

Brightware?

I might just do that...sounds like an interesting possibility.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Hardware, software, brightware -- magical jewelry. I came up with the term, gosh, decades ago now and it has since escaped into the wild.

From:

see_also_friend

Makes sense. I hadn't heard it before though.

From:

see_also_friend

>>I have known a few women who were born big and strong enough to do men's heavy labor - one of them was a dock worker, a "stevedore" lifting hundred-pound sacks of stuff onto loaders. There were women who could chop down trees, turn them into firewod-size pieces, and then plow a field.<<

I've seen a couple of works that flip gender roles for whatever reason, and it is interesting seeing a setting where men are considered delicate and to be protected while the women are the expendable folks who do the heavy labor.

>>And then there are those of us who understand how stuff works, and make the most out of our limited physical strength by using leverage and gravity and whatever came to hand.<<

I do this...cleverness and stubbornness.

From:

greghousesgf

Fascinating.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I'm glad you liked this.

From:

acelightning73

The state of emotional exhaustion brought on by being in combat was called 'shell shock" in World War I. They believed the vibration from a shell going off nearby cause a subtle brain injury. In World War II, it was called "Combat Fatigue", which was a little closer to what was actually happening. Today we have effective strategies for helping these emotionally wounded people recover.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> The state of emotional exhaustion brought on by being in combat was called 'shell shock" in World War I. They believed the vibration from a shell going off nearby cause a subtle brain injury. In World War II, it was called "Combat Fatigue", which was a little closer to what was actually happening. <<

There's a fairly long list of terms, and different clusters of symptoms, that change over time and often do incorporate the signature injuries of a given war. When I'm writing historic stuff, I try to look for a term from or near that timeframe. Shell shock as in concussive injury from nearby blasts is a real thing -- you see it from the Middle Eastern theatre, sometimes from IEDs. It can cause subtle brain injuries. Combat fatigue is also real; troops wear out after successive deployments even without PTSD, but also the rate of PTSD goes up sharply with the second or third deployment to an active war zone. Then there's moral injury, which people are just starting to look at in this society. And all that stuff is tangled together, often comorbid, so it can be really hard to distinguish physical from mental causes or effects.

>> Today we have effective strategies for helping these emotionally wounded people recover.<<

Well, sort of. We have things people can try, if they can afford care and if anyone believes their problems worthy of attention. There's some stuff that works well for a fair number of victims. But there's not nearly enough studies to pin down evidence-based treatment reliably and widely. Then there's the newer things that people haven't had time to test thoroughly yet, like the idea of using Tetris to assist brain-filing functions to prevent or relieve PTSD (actually any stacking-sorting game can help). Still, traumatic stress in its various forms is often intractable, even with help. People just haven't put in enough research, and it's a slippery topic to begin with, and it needs a lot of things that modern society and conventional medicine are just plain bad at. Then of course, there are the things that work but aren't permitted such as LSD, cannabis, or other psychedelics. It's just a patchy field.

Now if you're tribe member, it's different. Some traditions there have had good fixes long since, because the warrior cultures needed ways of repairing the warriors they broke. Once in a while, a tribal veteran would invite a white buddy, and word leaked out, so sometimes you see references to things like a sweat lodge.

From:

acelightning73

I hear a lot of PSAs on radio and TV for various organizations that are organized by veterans to help other veterans regain their emotional balance after coming back from a war. I'm sure that cannabis is one of the best treatments for helping someone re-balance themselves (I have had a lot of experience with that particular one of Nature's gifts.) Basically they all set out to give the veteran reassurance that he's not the only person suffering these things, but if we sit down and tell each other our stories, we wind up feeling less anxiety and confusion later on. And things like cannabis (and drugs with similar actions, like peyote or even LSD) help a person analyze why they feel and behave in certain ways, and what can be done about that. Although a good hypnotist can do it without giving the person any drugs.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> I hear a lot of PSAs on radio and TV for various organizations that are organized by veterans to help other veterans regain their emotional balance after coming back from a war. <<

A lot of people are trying to help. Some succeed more than others. I suspect that groups by and for veterans may have a higher success rate than civilian therapists; they know what they're talking about.

Terramagne has the Gentle Life communities that treat traumatic stress and other challenges with lifestyle changes. Not everyone wants to make big changes in their life choices, but for those who do, it works quite well.

>> I'm sure that cannabis is one of the best treatments for helping someone re-balance themselves (I have had a lot of experience with that particular one of Nature's gifts.) <<

Sooth.

>> Basically they all set out to give the veteran reassurance that he's not the only person suffering these things, but if we sit down and tell each other our stories, we wind up feeling less anxiety and confusion later on. <<

Normalization helps. However, PTSD is one of those problems where talking about it can make it a lot worse. Depends on whether a person finds that talking helps them file the memories correctly, or amounts to rumination. The widely recommended exposure therapy is especially high-risk, and needlessly brutal given the alternative of counterconditioning.

>> And things like cannabis (and drugs with similar actions, like peyote or even LSD) help a person analyze why they feel and behave in certain ways, and what can be done about that.<<

True. Cannabis especially, like chocolate, is good for generating mellowness. LSD and peyote are good for taking the frame off reality, which can help heal moral or soul injuries.

>> Although a good hypnotist can do it without giving the person any drugs.<<

Well yeah, that's hacking directly into the operating system. But you have to know how it works and what's broken before you can fix things, and not a lot of people know that much. It's a fantastic option if you can find a good hypnotherapist -- for anyone who's a good trance subject. There are three talents in trancework (trance induction, montoring, and entering trance) and not everyone is good at entering trance.

From:

acelightning73

I'm very good at entering trance, but the person hypnotizing me was somewhat telepathic, which made it a lot easier.

From:

acelightning73

The Wounded Warrior Project is helping a lot of veterans adjust to disabilities, become able to support their families, and possibly even go for an advanced degree because going to school will help them make the world make sense. And they're doing this for EACH OTHER, because they all feel they are brothers and sisters with similar problems, and maybe one person's problem can help someone else untangle their own problem.

From:

acelightning73

I think that if we all just sat down and told each other our stories, that would eliminate many of the world's worst problems.

And I can pop into trance with a blink of my eyes. Sometimes when I was driving on a night of the full Moon, I'd have to keep thinking, "Not right now, Lady - I have to drive the car." And once in a while I'd just pull over and enjoy it.

From:

see_also_friend

>>I think that if we all just sat down and told each other our stories, that would eliminate many of the world's worst problems.<<

Yup.

From:

see_also_friend

>>When I'm writing historic stuff, I try to look for a term from or near that timeframe.<<

I was trying to think of how a particular fantasy setting I am trying to write would call PTSD-and-similar-trauma, and I think I might have finally figured out a good term. (None of the historical ones I know would work - shellshock and soldier's heart both rely on war, and the main traumatic circumstance isn't a war.)

>>Some traditions there have had good fixes long since, because the warrior cultures needed ways of repairing the warriors they broke.<<

It might be worth it to look at historical traditions from other warring societies. I'd suggest starting with the European knights and Japanese samurai.

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