A Hero’s Story: Susan Luz
Monday, May 31, 2010
Susan Luz says her father never talked about the war.
"He served under General Patton," she says, earning the SIlver Star and a Purple Heart, but adds that in the traditional family culture of her East Providence upbringing, her father was quiet about many things... especially war.
So she spoke to her father about it. And the silent stories that he'd kept to himself, the visions of battle and loss, of trauma and dislocation, made their way to one simple word: No.
Colonel Susan Luz can tell this story now, on the weekend that culminates the latest chapter of her 60-year life. The highest-ranking solider at the 399th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, recipient of the Bronze Star for meritorious service, this career battle nurse is home, retiring from military service, the author of a new memoir, and, proudly, the Grand Marshal of Charlestown's Memorial Day Parade, today at 1 pm.
Luz's story, from when she returned to her father at age 33 and convinced him she was ready to join the military, is told compellingly in her new memoir, The NIghtingale of Mosul: A Nurse's Journey of Service, Struggle, and War (Kaplan). When discouraged from military life after nursing school, Luz chose the Peace Corps, and went to Brazil. But, as Nightingale explains, she was raped and beaten while volunteering, and left unconscious by the side of the road.
Her decision to serve out her time, and her struggle to return to an open life after the horrors of her personal tragedy, add a personal connection to the psychological aspects of trauma, and a dose of realism to the challenges of regions whether at war or not. "There are a lot of places that are dangerous," she says. "Not just war zones."
And yet: Luz still wanted to serve in the military. At 33, armed with a graduate degree, she returned to her father and said she was off to serve. This time he didn't stand in her way. Luz began her military service as a psychiatric nurse with Project Hope in Brazil, then in Germany, delivering babies at a military hospital because, as she says, "In 1991 no one talked about PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome).
"A solider is supposed to be brave," she says. "They internalize it. That's what leads to alcoholism, drugs, divorce. You see these people coming back, active duty soldiers, back from many tours, and they're killing their wives. The anger and aggression... they always had to be on their guard in the war zone. They can't get it out of their system."
Luz climbed the ranks, all the way to Colonel, and was posted to a MASH-style unit, a battlefield hospital, in Iraq. Her book captures the raw, unswerving view of both surgery in the midst of war, as well as the psychological components of service. It's a clear-eyed view, with the compassion of a nurse who nonetheless does not stint on the details.
Today, though, her focus is singly on memorializing the men and women of war. "The fallen soldiers," she says. "I know it's wonderful to have cookouts on Memorial Day, to be with families," she says. "But don't forget the fallen soldiers. I will never forget my first fallen soldier."
For more on today's Charlestown parade, go here. For more on The Nightingale of Mosul, go here.
