A Greater Appreciation for Peace

Eric Hall hailed from the fine city of Jeffersonville, Indiana. Jeffersonville is a city located on the Ohio River, just north of Louisville, Kentucky. “Jeff”, as its inhabitants have affectionately termed it, is part of Clark County, which was named for General George Rogers Clark (brother of William Clark of the Lewis & Clark expedition). The city of Jeffersonville itself was named for Thomas Jefferson, whose grid design was used as the layout for the city. Some of the localities that Eric Hall grew up with, in Jeffersonville, are Schimpff’s Confectionary (where you can get some of the best chocolate in the country, in my opinion), the Howard Steamboat Museum, and Mick’s Lounge (where the Papa John’s pizza restaurant chain was founded). Eric went to school at Jeffersonville High School, and he graduated from it in 2002. A little while after graduating high school, Eric joined the United States Army, as did many others from small towns where there were few opportunities. He found himself in favor of the goals of the Iraq War and desirous of contributing to the cause. My cousin went to the same school (from first grade through high school) and was friends with Eric, and that is how I first became aquainted with the story of Eric Hall’s Post Traumatic Stress disorder and the events resulting from it.

In June 2005, the Iraq Occupation was in full swing. Eric Hall, now far from Jeffersonville, was traveling the streets of Fallujah in Iraq with fellow United States Marines. When a bomb suddenly exploded very near at hand to Eric and his fellow soldiers, Eric was severely injured, both physically and mentally. He had suffered a severe hip injury, a broken leg, and nerve damage to his arm. As his injuries in that blast were being sustained, he watched one of his fellow soldiers, and his friend, die right before his eyes, decapitated when the bomb went off. Eric Hall’s experience in the Iraq War left him not only suffering from physical pain, but from Post Traumatic Stress disorder as well, brought on by seeing the brutal reality of the war on the ground. Eric was in the hospital for thirteen weeks recovering from his injuries, but, even after that, he experienced pain and had to take pain medication for it. The amount of pain that he suffered from, both physically, and mentally (regarding his memories of war), is immeasurable.
When Eric Hall came home from Iraq and from the hospital, he had trouble getting proper care and benefits from the Veteran’s Administration, just as so many of his fellow veterans did. This is evidenced by the story on wounded veterans in November 2006, done by The Evening News and The Tribune (which proclaims itself as Southern Indiana’s award-winning source for community news), in which Hall was profiled, and he reported having trouble receiving full Veteran’s Administration benefits. All the while that he was struggling with the Veteran’s Administration, he was struggling with his own personal problems concerning pain and his post traumatic stress disorder. The fight with the Veteran’s Administration probably did not help his well-being, and it certainly did not help lessen the level of stress that he felt from the remembrance of his experiences in the Iraq War.

On February 3rd, 2008, Hall was back in the states and out of Iraq, although the memories of the Iraq War were doubtless still with him. His phyiscal pain, however, must have been getting slightly better, because he had recently taken himself off of his pain medication. Almost three years after his war experience, Hall was visiting a relative in Punta Gorda, Florida. Escaping his past and starting a new life was evidently the reason for going to Florida, judging by this statement from Eric’s father, Kevin Hall, “He was going down there to start a new life and get things together — which he was.” But Hall’s efforts to accomplish this were reduced to dust due to the events on the day of February 3rd. After playing a video game titled “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare”, which, I believe, is based on the Iraq War, Eric announced that the house was surrounded and that he had to leave. He was not joking, he was in earnest. Apparently hallucinating and having flashbacks from the Iraq War, he took off on his motorcycle, as though trying to escape invisible enemies. That would be the last time that anyone saw Eric Hall alive.
His motorcycle was found, on its side and still running, along a road. A search was launched around the general area of where the motorcycle was found (Charlotte County in Florida), but searchers were unable to find Eric Hall. Weeks of searching yielded no results. However, they did find a sophisticated “spider hole” dug into the ground, which contained some bottled water and which Hall had likely used as a shelter. Hall’s father, Kevin Hall, commented, “If he went back to full military mentality — he knows how to hide.”

And hide Eric Hall did. A fellow veteran and a fellow sufferer from post traumatic stress disorder, Jim Cannon, said about Hall, “I imagine he thinks he’s in a different place, somewhere in a different time and he probably thinks we’re the enemy looking for him.” Hall hid so well from the searchers that the way that searchers finally discovered him was by the strong odor coming from his decomposed body. It’s an unpleasant statement, but sometimes we have to be confronted with the unpleasant realities of the world. Eric Hall’s body was removed from the culvert, or the conduit used to enclose a flowing body of water, and he was identified using his military medical records.

And so ended the life of Eric Hall. His death was a casualty of the Iraq War, although it is a casualty that will never be recorded in the official record.

With every death that I hear of or observe, I attempt to draw some meaning, some lesson, from the life and death of the person who has died, because I so hate to see a life ending with no lasting meaning. What can we learn from the death of Eric Hall?

Eric Hall’s death can be blamed on a number of things: his lack of pain medication, the “Call of Duty” video game, his post traumatic stress disorder, or the inability to get sufficient help from the Veteran’s Administration. But, I think, looking at the larger picture, the blame should rest ultimately on the Iraq War and the fact that we are sending soldiers off to die or become injured in a war such as this in the first place. Prevention is the key to the solution, just as it is the key to so many other problems that we face. Why add to the suffering of the world, which is already so great, by having people suffer as Eric Hall and other veterans have suffered, in the name of an unjust war which could have easily been avoided? There is too much suffering in this world already without preventable things like this happening. We should be doing all we can to, first of all, stay out of war, and, secondly, if avoiding war is absolutely impossible (and avoidance of war is only very rarely impossible), then we should do everything in our power to help the returning veterans. Humankind and our nation, which is supposedly the first among the nations of humankind but which shows little indication of that, are better than this. We are better than fighting senseless, useless, preventable wars, and then further displaying our immaturities by discarding the veterans of our wars.

To derive one final lesson from the death of Eric Hall, let us return to the area where his life began. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Frasier Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. You should go, if you’re ever visiting near Louisville. The museum is about the History of Violence in the world. It has a room full of old guns and weapons, one of which being an old one-shot Derringer from the 1860’s that looks very similar to the one that killed Abraham Lincoln. They also present one-person historical reenactments of historical events, such as the Battle of Hastings (which took place in England in 1066 between King Harold and William, Duke of Normandy, fighting for control of the country). I’ve been to the Frasier Museum twice, while visiting family, and I have found it very enjoyable, although it is not because I revel in violence. There is a quote that I have seen on the lower floor of the museum that tells you the museum’s purpose and why the museum was originally founded: by presenting to you the history of violence, it is hoped that you will gain a greater appreciation for peace. May the events surrounding the Iraq War, such as the death of Eric Hall, give you a greater appreciation for peace.