Liberated POW lives captive to his experience for the rest of his life

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Liberated POW lives captive to his experience for the rest of his life

I traveled with the Run for the Wall to Washington, DC, not only visit that monument for the first time. I went for personal reasons, and one of those was to return Eddie Livingston to Alabama to be buried with his wife.

Eddie was not only a POW with the Germans, but a prisoner of PTSD and the effects of self imposed isolation that can occur.





Danny Tindell/dtindell@dothaneagle.com

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By Lance Griffin

Published: May 30, 2008
I have always known that war is our ultimate failure, but war is an addictive thing. I became addicted, and now I am addicted to agitation. I have no way of knowing how crazy I am, I doubt if the psychiatrists would know. I made the fatal mistake of staying in combat too long, but of course I had no choice, had to stay. What we know does hurt us, it is what I know that made me the way I am.
-- Eddie Livingston, letter to Karl, June 6, 1965

Rick Hayden stumbled through the piles of paper, books, sheets and garbage that stood calf-deep above the rotting floor of what Eddie Livingston called home, off and on, for more than 50 years.

The concrete walls remain sturdy, but nothing else is as it should be in this house camouflaged more than 300 yards in the woods off Highway 52 East in Dothan. The bed in the back bedroom where they found his dying wife has fallen through the floor, but is not in much worse condition than the day they found her in July of 2000.

Paramedics were said to have cried when they took Helen Livingston away to the hospital.

Two calendars — one from 1968 and the other from 1965 — are still pinned to the wall in that bedroom. In an adjoining room, one from 1960 remains. Three manual typewriters and one electric typewriter are buried in the trash. There was no running water or electricity in the house for many of their final years there, after Eddie thought the utility company was charging him too much, and had it turned off.

Hayden leaned on a walking stick as he looked for solid footing in the front den. Hayden, a Vietnam veteran, said he suffers from severe chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He said he has been receiving treatment and medication for PTSD since 1995. While he said he is able to function from day to day, his life will never be “normal.”

He looked around what was left of the house, closed his eyes and dipped his head.

“My God,” he said. “There but for the grace of God go I.”

The first time I saw Paris, ironically, was also my last time. And that great city, that is renowned the world over, for her beauty and glamour and heart; was, at the time I saw her, an embittered, snarling, screaming, vengeance-crazed, hate-ravaged, old crone! Stripped bare of all her beauty, glamour, and heart by WW II ...

It was like the whole world had gone, mad! The hate-crazed mob seemed particularly anxious to use those sharp-pointed sticks. In my coffin-like cage, sick, bleeding, my stomach jumping and boiling. I wanted just one thing:
To, die! Just, die! I tried to will it, to no avail.
-- Eddie’s recollection of his WWII POW experience, registered with Writers Guild of America

Like many, Eddie lied about his age and joined the Army at 15. He was a paratrooper, assigned to the 82nd Airborne, 504th Infantry, 3rd Battalion, “I” Company. He fought in campaigns in Sicily, Salerno, Cassino, Anzio and finally at Normandy for D-day. He volunteered with the 504th Parachute Company to be among a group known as the Pathfinders, who were to be dropped behind enemy lines in order to set up beacon lights to guide the allied troops after landing on the beach. The group was unknowingly dropped in an area where the Germans were concentrated. Nonetheless, he alluded capture for almost four days.

He spent 11 months as a POW before being liberated. His own letters and conversations with relatives indicate he suffered severe physical and mental trauma. On one occasion, Eddie told friends and relatives German soldiers shot and killed three Jewish prisoners in front of him, then forced Eddie to dig their graves, and one extra.

“They had to watch Jews tortured and killed and, in his own words, he told me that he had to clean the blood off the walls and floor,” said his niece, Pam Baker.

His sister, Jean Livingston Brown, said Eddie told her he credited his survival in the POW camp to a childhood in which he was expected to contribute very early. Brown said Eddie plowed behind a mule when he was so young he could see the rows between the mule’s legs.

He received seven Purple Hearts, three Bronze Stars and two Presidential Unit citations. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, but it was never presented. He was furloughed for 73 days after the war. When he returned, he was deemed unfit for further duty and discharged. The Army awarded him $19 a month as compensation.

It is hard for me to trust people. I lost my faith in people in the war when my best friend stole my food and betrayed me to the enemy in POW camp. We were starving to death at the time and stealing my food almost cost me my life, then he told the enemy some lies about me and almost got me killed ...

I do not (know if) I will ever find any peace or happiness probably I would be better off dead. It really doesn’t matter and I do not care one way or the other. I just get so tired of things at times.
-- Letter to Helen, Aug. 1, 1966

After the war, Eddie spent much of the next 50+ years banging letters — thousands — out of the old typewriters. He wrote presidents, vice-presidents, congressmen, newspapers, magazines, friends and strangers.

His prose was both descriptive and succinct. He took on causes, including the Civil Rights movement, and wrote many letters promoting the movement well before it became popular to support it.

He directed much of his energy, however, to fighting for his V.A. benefits, which he finally received in the early 1960s.

Held prisoner by the enemy, betrayed by his friend and then dismissed by the organization created to take care of veterans, Eddie trusted no one. The survival instinct sharpened in the POW camp manifested itself fully. Most of the time, he disappeared into the woods and wrote letters. When he ventured out, he pushed a wheelbarrow to the edge of Highway 52, called a cab, went to the grocery store, returned with his groceries, placed them into the wheelbarrow and trudged back to the house.

“I’ve often thought — maybe — I wished he wouldn’t have lived beyond (the war). But yet there was still a side of him that was just brilliant,” said Brown. “He loved me dearly and I knew that, but he didn’t trust me and he didn’t trust my mother. He thought that, well, he just thought we were against him.”

Brown said she didn’t understand the rejection, at first. His actions were consistent with extreme Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But the term didn’t even exist until the mid 1970s. Before, similar symptoms were referred to as shell shock or battle fatigue.

“That just wasn’t Eddie. I know that now. I understand better,” she said.

I’ve never been very good. I’ve never been very brave. But when they gave me these, they said I was brave. So, maybe you’ll think so too. It’s not very much for a person to show for living 34 years. The nick in the wings is where a piece of flying shrapnel hit them the night we landed in Normandy - in France. But for them, I wouldn’t ever have met you. We always wore them over our heart.
-- Letter to Gerre, 1955, with his Airborne Wings enclosed

Eddie fell in love many times after the war, but married the woman who loved him most in December of 1966. Helen Livingston was an avid reader, belonged to the Book of the Month Club for many years, and loved Eddie unconditionally.

They existed there, in who-knows-what conditions, for the next 33 years.

And Eddie didn’t completely shut out everyone. Many tried to help him.
Toward the end of his time in Dothan, Eddie was placed in a mental unit temporarily. When doctors tried to perform a test for colon cancer, he refused, telling doctors he believed the tests were designed to kill him. He also feared that he would be killed if he was placed in the mental unit at the V.A. Hospital.

So Eddie skipped town, and arrived in California on a Greyhound bus to live with Baker, his niece. He had the clothes on his back and a manila envelope full of papers and nothing else. He lived with her for the next 18 months, before dying in 2002.

Since then, Baker had wanted to reunite Eddie and Helen. His ashes were sent across the country this week in conjunction with the Run for the Wall, a cross-country trek from California to Washington, D.C., involving thousands of motorcycle riders who use the event to bring attention to ex-POWs and MIAs. Eddie’s remains were then brought to Dothan for burial Wednesday.

Baker has dedicated a Web site to Eddie and said she would like to continue to be an advocate for veterans.

“This is not about pointing fingers and beating people up,” Baker said. “This is about raising awareness and asking questions and seeing what we can do now. There are others out there.”

Liberated POW lives captive to his experience for the rest of his life | Dothan Eagle
There is a video on the source page

http://www.eddiesplace.org