Veterans in Crisis (eBook)

JOE'S STORY Untreated Trauma in a Decorated WW II Veteran

Dr. Steve Lansing, Colonel B. Wayne Quist (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
240 Seiten
NEWTYPE Publishing (Verlag)
979-8-218-54123-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Volume Two of 'Veterans in Crisis' is a short memoir of World War II Private, Joe Haan. Everyone faces challenges in life. How we choose to confront our challenges varies and often determines the outcome. This unique book focuses on how Private Joe Haan coped with his PTSD-the severe trauma he suffered from an early age at the orphanage, trauma on the hated German farm, relief at CCC Camp, and the trauma of killing another man during fierce fighting in World War II as a decorated private soldier in General George Patton's Third Army. Through surviving essays, poetry and other writings, 'Joe's Story' reveals one man's struggle to overcome human tragedy on an epic scale. Growing up poor in St. Paul, Minnesota and orphaned at seven years of age, with time spent as an indentured farmhand to a cruel and sadistic farmer, Joe was very much alone in the world.

Steven Lansing, PhD, LICSW, is a Licensed Mental Health Professional, in Rochester, MN, with over 50 years of clinical experience. As a former Air Force Intelligence Analyst who spent two years from 1968-1970 in the Republic of Vietnam, Dr. Lansing has a passion for working with veterans and other individuals with trauma. Steve, in his interest in PTSD and complex trauma, has completed extensive training in evidence-based trauma treatment and more specifically cognitive therapy. He was trained and is certified as an approved provider by the architects of Cognitive Processing Therapy with over 50 hours of clinical training and ongoing education and clinical work with dozens of individuals suffering from complex trauma. In his work with veterans, Steve is the mental health specialist for the 3rd Judicial District Veterans Treatment Court as well as consulting with several veterans' organizations and involvement in a local PTSD support group. Recently he and his wife Ann were also certified in Cognitive Behavior Conjoint Therapy, a process of working with intimate relationships where one of the parties suffers from PTSD. Steve has advanced degrees in psychology, social work, and pastoral counseling with additional training in crisis and trauma treatment. He is also a member of the SE Minnesota Mental Health Crisis Team and cofounder of Veterans Empowered, Inc.

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Volume One of "e;Veterans in Crisis: Treating the Unique Needs of Those Who Served"e; illustrates the effects that war has had on soldiers from the beginning of time, well before the Bible-even before the written word-all the way through the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the potential for nuclear war in our time. Volume Two is "e;Joe's Story,"e; an analysis of the trauma explored in Colonel Quist's earlier book: "e;God's Angry Man: The Incredible Journey of Private Joe Haan,"e; published in 2010. "e;Joe's Story"e; is a loving tribute to someone author B. Wayne Quist knew as "e;Uncle Joe,"e; a man who triumphed over trauma and adversity, surviving a life filled with hardship that began at the tender age of seven with the death of his mother and the onset of the Great Depression. Volume Two of "e;Veterans in Crisis"e; is a short memoir of World War II Private, Joe Haan. Everyone faces challenges in life. How we choose to confront our challenges varies and often determines the outcome. This unique book focuses on how Private Joe Haan coped with his PTSD the severe trauma he suffered from an early age at the orphanage, trauma on the hated German farm, relief at CCC Camp, and the trauma of killing another man during fierce fighting in World War II as a decorated private soldier in General George Patton's Third Army. Through surviving essays, poetry and other writings, "e;Joe's Story"e; reveals one man's struggle to overcome human tragedy on an epic scale. Growing up poor in St. Paul, Minnesota and orphaned at seven years of age, with time spent as an indentured farmhand to a cruel and sadistic farmer, Joe was very much alone in the world.

Textauszug

A LIFE OF HARD-EARNED WISDOM

“I have seen the pain in Joe’s eyes when he talked about his father or mother, the Orphanage, the war.” – Joe’s friend Tim Carlson

 

• The story of a common man with uncommon vision and uncommon experience.

• Told thru 50 of Joe’s surviving poems, essays & songs.

• Written from 1938-1990, autobiographical commentary.

• Stark, gut-wrenching, self-revealing.

• Joe told the truth as he saw it.

• Traumatic death of his mother at age 7.

• Trauma of the Owatonna Orphanage.

• Trauma on a farm, indentured to a cruel, sadistic farmer.

• Self-education during the Great Depression.

• Riding the rails around the country with bums and hoboes.

• CCC Camp, one long boot camp preparing for war.

• A Private soldier in Patton’s Third Army in Europe, while facing some of the toughest fighting in World War II.

Joe wrote his classic poem, “Memories of Death,” as he waited to die, sharing a foxhole with a dead German soldier for three days in Alsace, France, November 1944, just before the Battle of the Bulge.

THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY OF PRIVATE JOE HAAN

“Sometimes man is so completely confounded by the enigma of life that he attempts to escape into a cocoon of myth and falsity, never to emerge into the light of knowledge.”

—Joe Haan, Notebook I – “The Last Iconoclast”

Nothing about Joe Haan’s life was “easy.” With little formal education, Joe taught himself everything he knew. Through his struggles, he was the ultimate survivor—growing up poor in St. Paul, forgotten in a lonely orphanage, living a slave’s life indentured to a cruel southern Minnesota farmer, serving as a private soldier during some of the toughest fighting in World War II.

For nearly ten years after escaping from the hated German farm, Joe was on the move. He rode the rails in boxcars with hobos and bums during the Great Depression, slept under the stars in the great North Woods as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and crouched in muddy foxholes as a member of Patton’s Third Army. Joe never slowed, and he never stopped fighting. Throughout it all, he coped with his trauma by becoming remarkably self-educated and expressing himself through his poetry, stories, and music.

Joe’s life was an extended crucible—a constant fight for the survival of the fittest. He was the ultimate survivor, like a primeval animal in the wild, stalking his next meal. Few were better at it than he was, for out of necessity Joe developed keen insights, intuition, and instincts. He informed himself in many fields of knowledge—from astronomy, archeology, poetry, and philosophy to farming, fishing, trapping, steelwork, and taxidermy. Like Leonardo, Joe was a “disciple of experience,” and he was a survivor.

Joe was a man who firmly believed that to live, to survive as a species, mankind must adapt and evolve in what he called the cosmic shooting “gallery of life.” Joe was appalled at the persistent tyranny of human stupidity, the ignorance that plagued the world. To Joe, chief among these tyrannies was organized religion, and he railed against authority from his earliest days. He was quick to temper and sometimes solitary. But he was also artistic, poetic, and had a dry wit. In his final days, Joe proudly proclaimed to everyone why he was truly “god’s angry man.”

“Joe’s Story” was composed and stitched together from Joe’s old letters from the 1930s and 1940s, historical documents, war records, Joe’s Army files, and recollections of Joe’s friends and relatives. Together, these materials paint a portrait of “god’s angry man.” The language of the narrative captures Joe’s spirit; the poetry and letters are pure, unadulterated Joe Haan, straight from his combat-damaged soul to his pencil and paper.

This is a true story of a Minnesota boy consigned at the age of seven to the infamous Owatonna Orphanage and indentured as a virtual slave to a cruel German immigrant farmer for eight long years during the Great Depression. Joe’s PTSD and his writings, based on the latest research into post-traumatic stress disorder, demonstrate the therapeutic value of art and poetry.

When Joe finally escaped the brutality and trauma of the farm, he rode freight trains around the country from 1936 to 1939 and soon discovered free public libraries in every city across America. That’s where he learned to read and write and keep a journal to express his inner feelings and to find release. Joe’s story is a biography of trauma, told through Joe’s gut-wrenching poems and essays.

Coming out of eighteen months in a CCC camp along the Canadian border in late 1941, Joe enlisted in the Army immediately after Pearl Harbor and emerged from the war a decorated hero from Patton’s Third Army in Europe. He was nominated for the Silver Star for Gallantry, awarded the Bronze Star Medal for Valor and the Purple Heart when wounded in hand-to-hand fighting with two fanatical young Nazi soldiers. At war’s end, Joe helped liberate a Nazi concentration camp in Upper Austria near the German border with Czechoslovakia.

Joe’s haunting poem “ Memories of Death” echoes his trauma. It was written in the fall of 1944 just before the Battle of the Bulge and describes Joe’s conflicting emotions about the German people, feelings of hatred first formed on the farm. But when he was trapped for three days in the same foxhole with a dead German soldier, expecting to die himself, Joe came to realize that both he and Corporal Friedrich Hofmann of the German Wehrmacht were common victims of tragic circumstance, that here was a young man like himself, trapped in war.

Joe wrote in his journal from France in 1944: “I wondered if those at home whom we represented here in this mud would ever realize and appreciate what mental anguish and physical torture we, their infantry, were living through, with only one thought uppermost in our minds, to survive.”

Later, while guarding German prisoners of war in 1945, Joe wrote of the trauma of war in his poems “Guard Duty” and “Soldier’s Lament:”

 

A violent thing I do today,

In futile battle men I slay

Who have been but a year and a day

In time that here they had to stay.

 

After the war Joe became a fearless union ironworker in Houston, Texas walking and bending high steel for 33 years, erecting skyscrapers and reciting his poetry at noon lunch breaks. Joe hated violence and social injustice, and on his last day on the job before retiring, Joe wrote a classic poem, “High Steel,” in tribute to his fellow ironworkers.

 

In all the world of adventurous men,

The high steel boy is one of them,

On gird or truss or bridging high,

Many a man has had to die.

Throughout his life, Joe loved to recite his poetry, as well as other materials he had memorized over the years. His writings vibrate with the tell-tale signs of PSTD, and his poems are enhanced when read aloud. Everyone who knew Joe remembers his lively recitations and commentary, especially when he was motivated with a little beer or wine, which was always present in the evenings after work.

When we would visit Joe in Houston over the years, he would invariably start his evening discussions—they were really extended lectures or monologues—by talking about the “big picture” of life and the lessons of survival he learned along the road of hard knocks he had traveled from 1918 to 1945.

Joe’s “Survival Lesson” is a good introduction to Joe for he firmly believed that to live—to survive as a species—mankind must adapt and evolve as new challenges are faced in the “cosmic shooting gallery of life.”

We owe a special thanks to the trauma pioneers who have helped the world better understand and counter the destructive effects of PSTD. We owe James Haan, Joe’s son, a special debt of gratitude for saving Joe’s poems, art collections, notes, and war materials and for carrying on the spirit of Joe in his daily life.

TO BE EMPOWERED, THE DOC SAYS…

JOE LOVED MARK TWAIN

“I NEVER LET MY SCHOOLING INTERFERE

WITH MY EDUCATION.”

“MARK TWAIN” (SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS 1835–1910)

AMERICAN WRITER, HUMORIST, ENTREPRENEUR, PUBLISHER AND LECTURER, THE “GREATEST HUMORIST THE UNITED STATES HAS PRODUCED.”

WILLIAM FAULKNER CALLED MARK TWAIN,

“THE FATHER OF AMERICAN...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 2.12.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-13: 979-8-218-54123-1 / 9798218541231