I am determined to prove the facts that are in my story, and to work my way back into a real life again.
Until about nine years ago, I never made very much use of the writing skills that I have employed here to put forth this narrative. My serious writing began in the year 2000, when I was taking an English class at Dundalk Community College. I was also taking photography classes there, and, up until that time, ever since my discharge from the Army, I had not been able to do very much in life at all. It was decidedly dismal and deeply painful. I had some wild times, good times, but was never actually happy. Most of my post-military days were empty and dreary.
I have always known that I am a writer or at least that I wanted to be a writer, for my entire adult life, from all of the way back to when I was an eighteen-year-old Baltimore boy who became a bear hunting guide in Maine, up until now. Ever since I was experiencing them, I have known that my Maine adventures are a good story to write; and then when I was on Okinawa I knew that those times too would make a good written story some day. I have told my stories verbally to many people along the way in my life, now finally some of the stories are put down in writing. It has taken me nearly forty years of slow, painful healing time just to get myself back together enough to write this manuscript.
If it wasn’t for the depression, caused by my 30th Artillery Brigade experience, I know that I’d have had a lot of my writings and photography published during the past four decades.
I have rarely worked at my photography along the way from the springtime of 1971, when I ran out of supplies on Okinawa, up to today. I did get back into it seriously between 1999 and about 2003, when I was going to the community college, and I do some photo work now and then, but not often enough. I have a lot of other great photographs, which are not yet on the Internet anywhere, including more than a thousand unprinted/unscanned negatives sitting around waiting for me to get full-steam back into it again and really, finally pull it all together - just like it was when I arrived on Okinawa.
If it wasn’t for the depression, caused by my 30th Artillery Brigade experience, I know that I’d have been a successful, world traveling photographer and writer - during my entire adult life.
I don’t really know who the guy is who is writing this and who wrote the other stories about Okinawa and Maine that are on the Internet and the other written and photographic I've done. That man is real good at what he does, I wish I was closer to him. I do not feel like that person. I am hardly in touch with him at all.
I need to overcome this depression I am saddled with and do all that I can do in life. This writing takes me far too long and through too many rewrites to get it the best I can, but it still isn’t the best it can be. I need to write about a lot of things. I need to do as much photography as I can. I need to get out of my house and back into the outside world more. This depression must be relieved.
I am 59 years old, my health is failing at an increasingly faster pace, I live below the poverty line, in America, I am nearly completely withdrawn from all family and social contacts, so I don’t have very much longer to get this done nor very much money to do it with.
I am going to do everything that I can conceive of to make the Veterans Administration and the U.S. Army face these facts and to acknowledge them in my records.
It has hurt my family, and all of the other people who have ever been close to me and who were disappointed that this man whom they saw as good human being, an interesting conversationalist, a competent and accomplished outdoorsman, a fine photographer, an entertaining and informative writer would always fall into deep depressions and not continue to do the things that they loved me for and knew I could do and then be my full, wholesome self and to be part of their welcoming social world.
For the bulk of my adult life, my depression made me feel unworthy of the love and companionship of a good woman or any children. I have never been married; I would not allow any of the few fine women who had shared their love with me over the years to be permanently saddled with the weight of my problems. I certainly didn’t want any beautiful, innocent children to suffer along with me.
I did my best to make sure that no sweet lady who had been physically intimate with me got pregnant. I am one of those men who will never know though, because I lived all up and down the east coast during some traveling days back in the years between 1976 and the early 1980s, when I went hitchhiking around, or had moved to different states while looking for a real life. Let’s hope that no child of mine had to grow up not knowing their father, even though it may have been worse if they had known me but had suffered because I could not provide for them. I pray that no child of mine was born to live not ever knowing me.
There is one, new driving force in my life now that precludes me from allowing the lack of respect from the VA to continue driving me towards a sad ending to my life.
I don’t know what is going to happen next, but this written document establishes that I have tried and tried for over three devastating decades to establish the truth and to work with the Veterans Administration to heal my emotional wounds. I have never been treated for the cause of my problems.
About twelve years ago, I called the Gunner’s Gym on Okinawa, which is across the street from the underground bunker that he 30th Arty Bgde photo lab was located in, and I talked to the Marine on duty there (it is no longer an Army post). The underground bunker is not in use anymore and is closed up with a few strips of steel welded across its entrance door. If I could get some photos of the place, or a video, it may help my case. At least I have been examining every avenue to the truth that I can conceive of.
Hopefully, publishing this narrative will help me to finally establish the truth about my experience in the 30th Artillery Brigade on Okinawa, and to force the Veterans Administration to finally acknowledge this truth and to treat the cause of my depression, and give me some closure.
Then I want to work as hard as I can at my writing, at doing my photographic works, and at anything else that I’ve been wanting to do that I still can do for the rest of my life. I may never be able to do enough to be a great, world renowned success, but at least I’ll be busy, productive, socially active, responsible and happy.
David Robert Crews
2727 Liberty Pkwy
Dundalk, Md.
21222
ursusdave@yahoo.com
You can't completely judge this case until you know what I was like prior to becoming a US Army soldier. Fortunately, I have created a really neat web site about what my life was like before I enlisted into the Army. It compares my teenage days in the Dundalk suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland to the time in 1968 when I moved to Northern Maine, at age eighteen, and fit right in up in the woodland country; I became a Registered Maine Hunting Guide specializing in guiding bear hunters, and I was quite the country ladies' delight and had a lotta wild and woolly times with fun loving Mainer men. That web site is:
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