What War Leaves Behind

When I wrote about Holy Silence in the previous Note, I mentioned how the suffering people cause in the name of religion was something I had struggled to understand for a long time.

But religion is, of course, far from the only reason people go to war.

Power. Territory. Politics. Ideology. The reasons might be different, but the consequences for the people caught in the middle can be devastatingly similar.

And that was something I wanted to explore a little further with Art of War. Although this time, I wanted to look at it from a different perspective.

Not the people making the decisions. Not the countries involved, or the reasons they believe they’re fighting.

But the individual.

The person who actually has to live through it. And perhaps more importantly, the person who has to live with it afterwards.

I’ve read quite a few stories about veterans over the years. Watched documentaries, read books and listened to people describing their experiences and tried to understand what it must be like to find yourself in situations most of us will hopefully never have to experience.

Some of those stories are difficult to comprehend. Not necessarily because of what happened during the deployment, although that alone can be horrifying. But because of what happened when they came home.

And I think that’s something we sometimes overlook when talking about war. We talk about the fighting. The casualties. The destruction. The victories and defeats. Eventually, we talk about bringing people home.

And then?

What happens to the person who returns? Because coming home doesn’t necessarily mean that everything you’ve experienced suddenly stays behind you.

Sometimes, I imagine, that’s when an entirely different struggle begins. The aftermath.

It’s a word I’ve thought about quite a lot over the years. Not because I’ve experienced war. I haven’t. And I would never pretend that my own experiences are comparable to what someone might go through in combat.

But I do know something about trauma. About how a single event can change things in ways you never expected. How the consequences can remain long after the event itself has ended.

And how difficult it can sometimes be to explain those consequences to someone who hasn’t experienced them. I think that’s partly why these stories have stayed with me.

Because although the circumstances are completely different, there are aspects of living with trauma that I recognise. And there are other aspects I can only try to imagine.

A person might come home with physical injuries that everyone can see. Scars. Missing limbs. A body that no longer works the way it once did. Those injuries can be life-changing in themselves.

But what about the things nobody sees?

The memories that won’t leave. The situations that trigger reactions you can’t always control. The difficulty sleeping, relaxing or feeling safe, even when you’re somewhere that should be safe. Or simply the feeling that the person you used to be is no longer quite the person you are today.

I don’t think we always appreciate how much that can affect someone’s everyday life. And not everyone who returns from a deployment experiences these things, of course.

People respond differently. Some find their way back to ordinary life without the kind of lasting difficulties I’m describing.

But others don’t. And it’s their stories that made me want to write Art of War. Because there’s another part of this that I find particularly heartbreaking.

The families.

Imagine waiting for someone you love to come home. A partner. A parent. A son or daughter.

You worry about them while they’re away. You count the days. You look forward to the moment when you can finally have them back.

And eventually, that moment arrives. They’re home. But something has changed...

Perhaps they’re quieter than before. More distant. Easily frustrated. Perhaps there are things they can’t talk about, or things they desperately want to explain but can’t find the words for.

And the people around them might not understand why. Not because they don’t care. Sometimes they care enormously. But loving someone doesn’t automatically mean you understand what they’re going through.

And I can only imagine how difficult that must be for everyone involved. For the person trying to find their way back into a life that once felt familiar. And for the family trying to understand someone they love, while perhaps feeling that they’ve lost a part of them.

You can be home and still feel very far away. That thought became an important part of what I wanted Art of War to express.

Because the consequences of war don’t necessarily stop with the people who were there. They can reach into homes, relationships and entire families.

Sometimes for years. And then there’s the part that frustrates me in a different way.

How society responds. Or sometimes fails to respond.

I’ve come across stories of veterans struggling to get the support they need. People dealing with psychological injuries while trying to navigate systems that don’t always seem capable of understanding what they’re actually going through.

And I find that incredibly difficult to accept.

We can ask people to endure extraordinary circumstances. We can expect them to function under pressure that most of us can barely imagine. But when they return, we sometimes seem to expect them to simply become the people they were before.

As though coming home should be enough. As though time, by itself, will take care of everything. And when it doesn’t, the responsibility can end up falling on the very person who’s already struggling.

Or on their family.

I don’t think that’s good enough. Now, I’m not suggesting that every veteran is abandoned, or that nobody receives proper help.

There are people and organisations doing important work, and I wouldn’t want to dismiss that. But the fact that some people do receive good support doesn’t make the stories of those who don’t any less important.

Especially when the consequences can affect the rest of someone’s life. I suppose that’s where the title Art of War takes on a slightly different meaning for me.

Because there’s an enormous amount of attention given to the strategies, decisions and supposed achievements of war. We study it. Analyse it. Write books about it.

We even talk about the art of it. But there’s nothing particularly artistic about the suffering left behind.

And I wanted the song to reflect that contradiction. Musically, I didn’t want it to sound like a celebration of battle.

Quite the opposite.

I wanted it to be melodic. Emotional. Powerful in places, but also vulnerable. Because this wasn’t a song about winning. It was about surviving.

And those are two very different things. Surviving doesn’t necessarily mean you’re unharmed. It doesn’t mean you’ve made peace with everything that happened. And it certainly doesn’t mean the struggle is over.

Sometimes surviving simply means finding a way to get through another day while carrying things other people can’t see.

I think there’s a tendency to look for a satisfying ending to stories like these. The soldier returns home. The family embraces them. The music swells.

And everything is going to be alright.

I understand why we want that ending. I want it too. But life doesn’t always work that way.

Sometimes recovery takes years. Sometimes people need support for the rest of their lives. Sometimes relationships change in ways nobody expected. And sometimes there isn’t a neat conclusion at all...

That doesn’t mean hope is gone. It just means we shouldn’t confuse hope with pretending everything is fine. Coming home doesn’t always mean leaving the war behind.

Looking back, I think Holy Silence and Art of War belong together in a way that goes beyond their place in Chapter 01.

The first song came from my frustration with the ways people justify causing suffering. The second came from trying to understand what that suffering can leave behind in one person’s life. And in the lives of the people who love them.

Neither song was intended to speak for everyone. And Art of War certainly wasn’t an attempt to tell veterans what their experiences mean.

Their stories belong to them.

I was simply trying to understand a little more of what those experiences might involve, and to express why I think the consequences deserve far more attention than they sometimes receive.

Perhaps that’s also why I keep returning to subjects like these when I write.

Not because I enjoy writing about suffering. I don’t.

But because I find it difficult to look away from the people who are left dealing with it. Especially when the rest of the world has already moved on. And if there’s one thing I hope people take away from Art of War, it’s that surviving something doesn’t mean someone no longer needs help.

Sometimes the hardest part is what comes next.

People often talk about bringing soldiers home. Perhaps we should spend a little more time talking about what happens after they get there.