#74 Gypsy Biker by Bruce Springsteen

The obvious fatalities of war – someone’s’ son, someone’s mother, someone’s friend returns home as a body laid out in a flag draped coffin. The less evident fatalities are the soldiers returning home, alive and breathing, but now no longer the person they were. When the “greedy men who rule the world” have taken from them everything they can, they send them home left to wander around the coffin of their minds that barricades them from being the person they once were.

The gypsy biker had an identity – he was a free spirit, maybe somewhat of a rebel. Nothing could tie him down. He was driven to explore the world away from home. He could not stay in one place. This adventurous spirit was robbed. War took from him what he was. He returns home to stay, something he would have never aspired to do. He has no need for the things that used to fuel his fire, such as his beloved bike. He is no longer the same person. He is as good as a dead man – without desire – without the fiery passion he once survived on.

The tragedies of war are endless. They are often invisible to the rest of us. What goes on in the mind and heart of someone who witnessed and participated in the acts of war required of soldiers as well as in the hearts and lives of those they love and who love them, is a bottomless, tattered cavern of emotion that can never be fully repaired.

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