Something About Truth and Fiction...

December 3rd, 2007

When I was an infant, my mother noticed that every time she laid me on my back I would cry.  She asked the doctor about it and he was able to determine that I had been born without any hip sockets.  For the next 18 months of my life, I wore leg braces.   When I tell this story I always feel that I am telling a made up story.  I have no memory of it and there is only one photograph of me in which you can barely make out the leg braces.

When I am doing counter-recruitment I often have the same feeling.  I have been told and worked on solving horrific problems in the U. S. Military for some years now.  People sometimes do not believe the stories I tell and sometimes—even though I know them to be true and not urban legends—I have trouble believing them too. 
I have a real horror of telling a story that is not true. 

The front page of the Washington Post on Sunday reminded me of this.  I have been told that people have been court martialed for trying to commit suicide.  I was always reluctant to pass this on because I do not like to aid in the spread of urban legends.  I complain about the ones the military spreads, for example, “If you go AWOL from basic you will get a dishonorable discharge.”  I don’t want to do the very thing about which I complain.

But the Washington Post story “A Soldier’s Office” tells the story of an exemplary soldier who faced court martial charges for attempting suicide. She was charged with among other things, two attempts of intentional self-injury without intent to avoid service.

What’s that cliché again? Something about truth and fiction?