War Wounds

New article from incarcerated anarchist Noah Coffin out of Texas.

We live in a world perpetually at war. If you want to know the horrors of conflict, just switch on world news and listen or watch for a time. All you need is a few moments before you’ll learn of some travesty or another. Children orphaned and people’s lives snatched from them in wars they often want nothing to do with. But I want to open your eyes to how deep the wounds of war penetrate.

We may be unconscious of much that many nations face when it comes to wartime, as American conflicts are fought abroad. When the remnant of war returns to our land, it’s a silent shadow of destruction which haunts the victims called soldiers and bleeds through into every life connected to their own. Just ask any child raised in a home where post-war fathers or mothers struggle to maintain any semblance of normalcy, often damaging the children in terrible ways.

When we consider damages of wartime, things like missing limbs or lives lost come to mind, however the damage which effects the most people runs much deeper than flesh and bone. A person disturbed by the carnage of war and the stress of military training will cope with it in many ways. Some will fall into depression so absolute that nothing short of substance abuse could be effective enough to drown out the memory. Others try to maintain sanity by keeping up the mechanical process of military discipline and pushing it onto the family. That discipline was not meant for children, but for creating minds of a single focus while disregarding things like emotion. This discipline is needed to train people to charge out into a hail of bullets, but in the home it destroys families.

What’s the cost of war? Look at the vagrant population and you’ll find 1 in 6 homeless are veterans. I can guarantee you that 99.9% of them are substance abusers and most if not all of them became so following enlistment. Vietnam was notorious for turning young men into casualties, amputees, and heroin addicts too. Opiates are brutally addictive and the physical withdrawal alone can kill. This article is to expose the many lives that were destroyed in one home by the ugliness of war.

The Degen brothers were raised in a WWII veteran’s home. Dad coped by keeping up the harsh and emotionless military discipline and pushing it at home with an iron fist. George escapes the physical and emotional punishment by running away. As children, we all want only to please our parents, and in a desperate attempt to do so, George Degen volunteers to join the Vietnam War. During this time, young Richard remains at home, suffering military discipline while racked with emotions that he must bury while his brother and best friend has gone off to one of the most terrible wars in history.

Like many who returned from ‘Nam, George came back haunted by the conflict and hopelessly addicted to heroin. That addiction led to another tragedy, which destroyed so very many who were then unaware that such a destroyer even existed: H.I.V. This killer sucked the life out of George Degen, who never knew the monster lurked inside the loaded needle which held the only escape from his personal hell. But this is still not the end. This destructive path which trickled down from WWII and saw the despair of yet another war, claiming life along the way, still continues to haunt even now.

My dear friend Richard Degen has borne all the turmoil and carries the wounds of wars which he never saw, didn’t want and cannot shake. He’s still struggling to keep the memory and love of George Degen alive and share the tragic story of George’s stolen life while he himself is on the laughable “government assistance,” can barely keep his tortured and damaged mind straight, and is facing another New York winter ahead as “government assistance” can’t seem to approve him for housing, leaving him homeless – some assistance that is!

My name is Noah and I’m a victim of another kind of war. A class war, a domestic war and I’m a P.O.W. languishing in a Texas prison, which is where I write these little rants. My request for you today is that you consider the war victims of the world. Most of all the Degens…

We all in some way suffer from the greed and corruption of the elite who never fight the wars they wage, nor do they suffer from them. What will you do to help to push back against the tyranny, or help to aid in the aftermath?

In Love & Rage, Noah Coffin

Love and support Richard at:

Richard Degen
PO BO 1581
NYC, NY 10276

Even just a call at (347) 989 7507

Love & support to me:

Noah Coffin #1795167
2665 Prison Road #1
Lovelady, Texas 75851