"War Neurosis" in the 1920s (Part II)
Francis Calderon barely survives a crisis
It’s March 26, 1928. Denver, Colorado. My lead character and narrator Riis Evans describes events.
Very late, well after midnight, Carmen and I are awakened by a telephone call. It’s her cousin Fernando. “You’d better come over! Francis is in big trouble!”
We arrive a few minutes later at Francis’s one-acre property and Francis is standing in front of his house, waving his gun randomly ahead of him. Fernando hides behind our motor car. “He’s been doing this quite a while. Yelling at ‘Hun’ and ‘Bosch’ to come out and face him like real men. His neighbor came out to ask what’s the trouble and Francis pointed his gun at his neighbor. The neighbor just made a call. The police will be here any minute.”
Carmen looks at me. “You talk to the police. I’m going over to talk with my brother.”
I’m alarmed and shake my head furiously. “No! Too dangerous.”
Carmen says, “it’s too dangerous to leave this situation up to the police.” Off she goes.
The police arrive. “Officers, that’s Francis Calderon,” I tell them. “He spent four years near the Western Front in the Great War. He has troubles at night. He relives the disturbing experiences he had in Europe. This is the most extreme his behavior’s been. He doesn’t know where he is. He thinks it’s a decade ago. He’s hearing the noises of the Western Front. He’s imagining he’s encountering German soldiers. His sister and I will talk him down. Please give us time. Please do not shoot him.”
Without waiting for a reply, I walk off to join Carmen. Moments later I join her in approaching Francis. His eyes are staring wide, he’s sweating profusely, he’s moving his head from side to side, and he’s yelling over and over, “nien!” He yells at the police officers, “Who are you?”
“Police,” they yell back.
“Come out, you Hun! I’ll give you no quarter.” He aims his gun at the officers. Amazingly, they do not shoot him. They duck behind their police car.
From there, one of the cops yells, “Mister Calderon, put down your gun!” Francis is heedless of anything being said to him. He keeps on wandering about, aims his gun wildly in the cops’ direction, and continues looking dazed and behaving like an automaton. “You killed my friend and I am here to shoot you and kill you, Bosch!”
Carmen begins her work. “Francis, this is your sister. Francis, I love you. Francis, wake up. Francis, come out of your fugue state. Francis, you are not in Europe. You are in Colorado. Come back to yourself. Come back to this night. Francis, it’s 1928. Come back to me, dear brother. I love you.”
At last, Francis seems distracted. He starts muttering incoherently to himself. “Where did you say we are?” he stammers. “Colorado?”
“Yes, my dear brother Francis, we are in Colorado. There are no Germans around us. We are safe.”
“Colorado,” Francis says haltingly, in a staccato.
“Yes,” she continues. “You are at your home. I’m here, Riis is here, Cousin Fernando is here. Your neighbor George, who cares about you. And those police officers, who are quite worried about you and want to keep you safe. Francis, my dear brother, we all need you to come back to reality, here, at your home, in Colorado, in 1928, and put your gun on the ground. Set your gun on the ground now.”
Francis complies. She hugs him and I put a hand on his shoulder. His hands are clammy and blue and he has a very fast heartbeat. His neighbor George heads back toward his own house. The two police officers walk over to us.
“Where am I?” Francis almost weeps out in anguish. “What was I doing?”
Carmen answers. “You were experiencing being in Europe again, sweetie, a decade ago. It’s over. It’s over. That nightmare is over.”
One officer stands next to Francis while the other officer pulls Carmen and me aside. “Look, we won’t charge him with any crimes tonight, but only if you promise me you’re taking him, immediately, to the psychiatric hospital.”
Carmen gives this a moment’s thought. “All right. We’ll take him now.”
Francis' bravado is intriguingly unlike the kind of WWI soldiers you find in, say, Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front, which in the artistic sense was a minor casualty itself of Remarque's pacifist aim. (the classic movie was fabulous, though: a true masterpiece) Or is it just a symptom of the shell shock? A lack of bravado in the actual war, now coming forth when it couldn't in the actual war? Still, I suppose a soldier close to the front but not in the trenches could find a way to hold onto the old bravado that led the first soldiers to enlist right away in 1914, before they - or should I say the survivors - lost it all.
I guess that's my way of saying I appreciate all the psychological nuance at play here. The Western Front was, in some senses, simple - charge, get obliterated, then do it all again in a different place, at a different time - so often, in WWI fiction, it feels like a less crafty Stephen Crane using a slaughterhouse to create a war as he used football to conjure up the Civil War. Even those who were in the war wrote like that. (Who, in the trenches, were far removed from the machinations of Foch or Von Falkenhayn, and too alienated from the effects of total war away from the trenches as Remarques character was on his leave) As valuable as their contributions were, in many ways the WWI veterans were too screwed up to tell the whole story. But there was, of course, a lot more to it than that.
I'm looking forward to reading more!
PTSD yes governments and all others slow to react there. Vietnam veterans didn't even get a parade did they? Any government that falls into war is a failure it's like having to fire an employee should be last resort and fall squarely on the incompetence of management. Police seem to favour or choose force over compassion and are ill equipped to be effective in matters of mental health