Elephant Speak: A Devoted Keeper's Life Among the Herd Interior Layout

Leonard preferred to live with her displeasure than deny his
duty. Before leaving home, he made seven-year-old Roger man
of the house and told him to take care of Myra and Virginia.
Roger possessed a child’s rudimentary idea of war, his
knowledge based mostly on snippets of overheard adult conversations
and radio broadcasts. His daydreams were full of
images of his father heroically leaping out of trenches and
charging into battle, or rolling through a city in a tank, or
patrolling the sky as a fighter pilot. It never occurred to him
that Leonard could be wounded or killed. Roger’s father was
his hero. As such, he was indestructible.
Despite the long odds, every man in Roger’s family that
enlisted came home, but they returned forever changed by the
horror of the battlefield. Funny and affectionate Uncle George
suffered from night terrors and took to hiding in a closet
whenever an electrical storm swept through. Leonard’s usual
quiet reserve developed into a deep internal silence, a well of
dark depression from which unexpected fits of withering criticism
or uncontrolled anger flashed at the least provocation.
What was then called combat stress reaction, battle fatigue,
or shell shock is now better known as post-traumatic stress
disorder. In those days, the condition carried a mark of shame,
as if those who suffered from it were weak, cowardly, and
lacked moral fiber. No treatment existed other than for those
affected and their families to live with it as best they could.
Roger didn’t understand why his dad changed, but he
quickly learned to deflect the brunt of Leonard’s outbursts
from Myra and Virginia onto his own narrow shoulders, and
it wasn’t long before the ridicule and rage undermined his
confidence and self-esteem. Difficulties in school only made
things worse. Never a strong reader, he floundered and to his
shame was held back to repeat a grade. If not for the intervention
of his mother’s sister Dorothy, he might have eventually
24 ◆ Elephant Speak: A Devoted Keeper’s Life Among the Herd