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Westchester Learns What it Meant to Many to Kill on the Battlefield

The difficult question of how soldiers from diverse backgrounds deal with their pasts was examined in a screening and discussion of the film "Hidden Battles" at the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester in White Plains Wednesday.

  • Correction: The editor of the film is Bryan Gunnar Cole, not David Mehlman

A Vietnam veteran and firefighter. A female Nicaraguan immigrant living in the United States who fought in the Sandinista movement in the late 1970s. A former Israeli soldier, now a choreographer and dancer. A Palestinian member of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. A former U.S. Marine who served as a sniper in Somalia in the early 1990s.

What do these people have in common? They are of different races, different ages, and different genders, but they are all struggling in their own ways with their experiences on different battlefields, with the fact that they killed other human beings. And they all agreed to speak with Dr. Victoria Mills last year, a psychoanalyst and filmmaker who released Hidden Battles, a film that explores what it means to kill in the sanctioned theater of war. Mills and her colleagues spoke to many soldiers and former soldiers in preparing the film, but these five ended up being the featured players.

The film—directed by Mills, produced by Hayley Downs and Kathy Leichter, edited by Bryan Gunnar Cole with Danae Elon as the director of photography—was screened Wednesday at the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester in White Plains. The documentary was followed by a question-and-answer session with Mills and two other trauma experts, Ari DeLevie and Kenneth Reinhard.

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In visiting its subjects and at times accompanying them back to where they fought, the film was shot in diverse locations including the United States, Nicaragua, the Middle East, Scotland, and Spain, among other places.

In response to a question from a reporter about the lack of detailed discussion on actual killing—Mills said there was discussion among her colleagues on that issue, but ultimately it was decided that those details were not what the film was really about.

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“I could have put in everyone’s killing stories,” she said, “but we made a choice to make it about the process.”

Indeed, the processes that the featured fighters went through to move on with their lives, in some cases to help veterans of more recent wars, and to come to terms with their pasts, framed the interviews and gave the film its fascinating and thought-provoking voice.

Quotes that appear in the film are often powerful, poignant, and informative all at once. There is George, the Vietnam veteran, who says he “wasn’t the same person” when he returned from Vietnam, and he was haunted by the feeling “that I did something literally against God.”

Zachariah, the Palestinian fighter, says of killing, “the first time it’s difficult; after that it’s normal.” Aaron, the former Marine, discusses the promise he made to himself before he left for Somalia to not kill anyone, a promise that “didn’t last long,” that he “didn’t even remember” once he got to Somalia. Saar, the Israeli soldier, says at one point that “it’s weird to feel connected to something that you didn’t believe in.” Esmeralda, the former Sandinista rebel, after dealing with the emotion of returning to Nicaragua and facing her fears, ends up telling us “they were no longer fears, just things that happened.”

The Division of Gender and Cultural Issues of the Westchester County Psychological Association, in association with the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester, sponsored the event.

Dr. Andrea Garry, president of the Division of Gender and Cultural Issues, introduced the event and moderated the question-and-answer session that followed the screening. Garry, a Scarsdale resident with a clinical psychology practice in Hartsdale, came across the film through her work with Give an Hour, a program that provides one free hour of counseling per week to veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bart Worden, leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester, said after the event that he was happy with the turnout of about 50 people. He said the topic “bears a lot more consideration” in the future. “In general, [the Ethical Culture movement] tends to eschew violence in all its forms,” he said. “In this case, I guess we feel that there’s a need for more justice and compassion” for those that return from the battlefield.

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