Standing in the Shadows of War

By Cedric Orange, Sr

It was while in the Veteran's Hospital in Bay Pines, Florida that Cedric was taught how to properly put his thoughts on paper through journaling. Therefore, while in Bay Pines, he began journaling about his experiences in the Gulf War. “Standing in the Shadows of War” is the result. Cedric’s goal is to tell his story and inspire today's Soldiers to write their story, in hopes of perhaps preventing a few Ex-Military men and women from going down the same destructive path that he and so many others did while readjusting to civilian life.During his time in the military, Cedric never forgot the things that his Grandmother, Mrs. Leanna LaRue, back in Lufkin, Texas had taught him as a child growing up. For example, she taught him to memorize the Lord's Prayer, and also how important it was to attend and participate in Church activities. She told him many great Bible Stories, and during Cedric’s time in the Gulf War, she would send him letters and care packages, and never forgot to mention “read your Bible everyday”. ‘Aunt Dee’, as she was called, was Cedric’s biggest supporter, and he made several trips over the years back to Lufkin to visit Mrs. LaRue (Aunt Dee) until her death at the age of 99 in 2011.
Cedric currently resides in South Carolina and continue to write, paint and is active in group therapy through the Savannah, Georgia Veterans Center. Also, he continue art lessons at the Savannah Veterans Outpatient Clinic. He Is a member of the Beaufort Art Association Studio and attend classes taught by Professional Artists, Kenneth Martin and Margi Hershey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cedric Orange, Sr
• Release date: May 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301403578

Cedric Orange, Sr

Cedric L. Orange, Graduated from Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey CA. and Park University Parkville, MO. Retired Army and currently live in South Carolina. I have a passion for painting in the area's of realism and abstract art.

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STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF WAR

By Cedric L. Orange Sr.

Copyright 2013 Cedric L. Orange Sr.

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Disclaimer:

The contents of Standing in the Shadows of War are not the official views of, or endorsed by the US Government, the Department of the Army, the Department of Veteran Affairs, or the 24th Infantry Division. The views written are those of the author only, and do not reflect any branch of Government, Military Position, Rank, or Title.

Cedric L. Orange Sr.

(Sergeant First Class, US Army Retired)

Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

My Early Life

Real Roughing It

Living My Father’s Spirit

Plowing the Garden

Religious Upbringing

My Work Ethic

Socio-Economic Disadvantages

Leaving Lufkin, Texas

Adjusting to City Life

Teen Years in San Francisco

Junior High

Double Rock

School Years

The Move to Richmond

Working in California

City Life

Wrong Path in Life

Living on Skid Row

Crime Doesn’t Pay

Returning to the Classroom

Changing the Cycle

Fort Ord: 1979-1981

College Years

Second Tour in Korea

Fort Bliss

Fort Ord Again

Arrival to Fort Stewart

The Alert

Desert Shield

Desert Storm

After the Storm

Search for Lost Soldiers

Aftermath

Iraq

Lost Comrades in Arms

Spirits of the Highway of Death

After the Desert

Mind of War

Lip Service

Fort Bliss, Texas

New Life

Break Up

Coping with PTSD

Retirement

Revival

Personal Timeline

In Memory of

My Grandmother, Mrs. Leanna LaRue

Introduction

When I was just ten, I thought that my life was the normal way of living for everyone. My grandmother always made me feel like we were the same as anyone else, as if we were middle class. I didn’t know any better at the time.

Actually, we were very, very poor and lived on welfare. Our family received monthly commodities, known as government food. We ate welfare cheese, powdered milk, and canned pork and chicken. Nevertheless, my grandmother’s cooking made it delicious and filling.

Part of the struggle of living in Lufkin, Texas came from having no running water or indoor plumbing. Every evening, it was one of my chores to fill up two water buckets for the night and for in the morning. Then, after school, I had to bring in more water for cooking, drinking, and washing dishes. Our family walked to the outhouse in the far corner of the property to use the toilet, day and night. Bathing meant heating water up on the stove and scrubbing in a basin.

One day, I moved to California with my mother Grace, and my siblings Freda, Leo, and baby sister Carolyn. My other brother, Clay Gilmore, lived with his father in Dickinson, Texas. We shifted from country living to a new way of life in San Francisco. My impression of the streets of San Francisco was of constant bells from the streetcars, the sound of trolley wheels rolling metal to metal, just like the sound of a train rolling on tracks. I heard the buzzing sound of electric sparks, where the electric busses connected to overhead power-lines. It was a fast-paced mix of noise day and night, with the sounds of sirens, cars, bells, horns, whistles—clattering and clanging.

The only moment of silence was deep in the night. But this was broken with the sounds of garbage trucks in wee hours of the morning, and that transitioned back to the sounds of daybreak.

Every man for himself, was the unwritten code of the street, which applied daily.

To fit into my new surroundings, I suppressed the close-knit family way of life, which I had known while growing up in Lufkin, Texas.

I learned to ignore the morals, mores, values, and family traditions, which my grandmother instilled in me at a very early age. Going to church had been fun as a kid. We went to Sunday school at nine in the morning, and to Sunday Morning Worship from eleven to one. After moving to the big city, going to church became a very negative experience. None of my new friends went to church; most had never been to a church.

In Texas, my Uncle Fred would pick me up for church every Sunday, for as far back as I could remember. My Grandma would dress me in the white shirt, bowtie, black dress pants, and shoes that I wore only on Sundays.

Son, ready for church? my uncle would ask.

Yes, sir, I would answer.

Let’s go, don’t wanna be late.

As we walked, I would ask Uncle Fred, Can we sit on the front row when we get to church?

Yeah, I reckon so.

Once, when we arrived at the church a few minutes late, Uncle Fred found two chairs up in the front. The service was already in progress.

Uncle Fred whispered, Kneel down and repeat the Lord’s Prayer after me.

I whispered back, Yes sir.

After we rose from praying, we sat in our seats, and listened to the preacher’s sermon. The preacher looked at Uncle Fred and gave him a slight nod, as if to acknowledge, Glad you could make it, brother.

Sometimes during the services, before the congregation broke for Sunday school, Uncle Fred would give me fifteen cents, a nickel for each time they passed around the offering plate.

After Sunday school and morning church services were over, I would play outside with the other boys while Uncle Fred fellowshipped with other members of the church.

A few doors down from the church, a church member named Sister Blanch sold candy and ice-cold soda water from an icebox. She kept it filled with the coldest soda water I had ever tasted. My uncle and I shared a soda water and began our walk home.

In California, I adopted the street way of life and became a product of my environment. Unfortunately, I couldn’t manage to stay out of trouble, and lived a selfish, self-centered life, under dysfunctional conditions.

I joined the Richmond California Army National Guard. Later, I joined the regular Army and was trained how to be a leader of men through Army principles, values, beliefs and traditions, which rekindled the values and religious system taught to me by my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and uncle. The military beliefs, principles, and value-systems that I learned were patterned after a civilian leadership way of life.

In civilian life, leadership is about setting an example for co-workers and making progress toward a specific goal as a team.

In the military, leadership is designed to persuade a soldier to complete a task without question, in spite of the fact that superiors might be asking a soldier to kill or to put themselves in harm’s way.

I completed several overseas tours in Korea and Germany. I was also deployed with the 24th Infantry Division to the Persian Gulf. I served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm and eventually was promoted to the rank of Sergeant First Class.

I had a successful military career of over twenty years, and later suffered with Gulf War related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This book is about my life, my struggle, and my road to recovery. This book is more than just about Standing in the Shadows of War during the Gulf War. It’s about the Personal War I faced to survive throughout my life to the present day.

By Cedric Leviticus Orange

Acknowledgments

Welcome Home; Veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War. I want to thank you all for paving the way for a better healthcare system for our current warriors―those who continue to fight for our country today in Iraq and Afghanistan.

First, I would like to thank my mother, Mrs. Grace Thomas. She worked two jobs to provide food, shelter, and clothing for my sisters, brothers, and me until we were old enough to take care of ourselves. I also thank her for her continued support; she continued to share her wisdom and knowledge with me into my adulthood. I thank her for just being my mother. I also want to thank my father; Marvin Aldridge Jr. (deceased) for the time he spent with me. It was all too brief, but it was important to me. I am grateful that I had him in my life.

I thank my dear grandmother, Mrs. Leanna LaRue (deceased) for sharing the fruits of her labors though her love for gardening, and for the unconditional love that she showed our family, and the community. Her kind, humble, generous, and giving heart will live on in our family, through the example she set.

I am proud of my son Cedric Leviticus Orange II and daughter Brijunee Alex Orange just for being born, but also for achieving much more in their young lives than I did at the age they are now.

Thanks to the staff at the Veterans Center in Savannah, Georgia and the South Carolina Veterans Regional Office for their support. They gave me the tools through art and through writing this book to manage my life because of my disabilities.

I would like to thank the doctors, nurses, and administration staff at the Veterans Outpatient Clinic in Savannah, Georgia for their treating my overall healthcare, and for consistently holding art therapy classes as part of my treatment. The art classes, taught by Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Martin have been instrumental in helping me manage my disabilities.

I addition, I will never forget the members of the Pinellas Authors and Writers Organization (PINAWOR). In 2007, while I was in the Veterans Hospital in Bay Pines, Florida, representatives of PINAWOR came nightly to teach writing classes. This provided me with the first budding step into writing this book. Thank you all for inviting me into PINAWOR to become a member, and for your helpful critiques and encouragement of my poetry and for the initial abstract for this book.

I also thank my son, Mr. Cedric L. Orange II, and my daughter Ms. Brijunee A. Orange for continually giving me joy by being born. Finally, to all those people who I may have caused physical and mental pain, I can only ask for your forgiveness. I also forgive the people who have harmed me. That harm has strengthened me to move forward, because I love life.

In addition: Special thanks to Anne Younger for her dedication in overseeing a detailed editing of this book project. You can reach her at [e-mail]―Largo, FL

Cedric L. Orange Sr.

Author’s Note

Some events or situations may be portrayed differently from what actually occurred. I have changed the names of people, places, and family members for reasons of confidentiality.

The views expressed are those of the author only, and do not supersede official military documents, records, or publications.

My Early Life

In the winter months when I was a child in Lufkin, Texas, The whole family would gather in the living room to stay warm near the gas heater. I watched the bottom of the light blue flames fade to red as Madea turned the knob. As the flames grew higher, the color changed to light orange. I would sit staring into the heart of the heater and wonder why the waffle-shaped material built into the background would glow from the radiant fire in the heater, but wouldn’t cause a big house fire. It was a controlled flame, and the heat was reflected into the room, from the flame retardant ceramic-type material.

The other two rooms of the shotgun house had cracks in the walls. Flimsy doors that closed with a wooden latch separated the rooms. The latch was a strip of wood with a nail in the center securing it to the doorframe. The strip of wood was loose enough that I could turn it and secure the door for privacy.

I remembered lying on the bottom of my bunk bed, peeping through the ripped pieces of wallpaper, cracked tarpaper, and rotting slants of wood. I could see the frost on the ground outside as the cold wind whipped inside the shotgun house we called home.

I noticed that at about the same time each cold night, a mouse would crawl along the floor close to the wall from corner to corner of the bedroom. The next night, I put breadcrumbs with syrup just below the window, in the path of the mouse. The mouse stopped, sniffed the crumbs, and ate them. I continued feeding the mouse and it became my pet. Several weeks later, I left food for the mouse as usual, and went to sleep. The next morning, when I woke up, I looked just below the window to see if the mouse had eaten the food I left out. I found that it had died. I believe that it was so cold that night it had frozen to death.

Years later in college while studying psychology 101, I learned about Ivan Pavlov’s theories about conditioning.

His study reminded me how my pet mouse would come to the same spot looking for food on the nights I didn’t leave anything. The mouse would stand up on its hind leg looking around for food, and acted as if it was angry. I did not see any saliva from the mouse, but I saw the actions of the mouse. I assumed it wanted food, because on the nights I left food, it never stood on its hind legs.

Pavlov studied the gastric function of dogs by analyzing how they responded to food under certain conditions. I understood some of what Pavlov was trying to accomplish, except he used dogs. He noticed that dogs would start to salivate in anticipation before their food was delivered to them at a specific time. His theory was that the dogs were conditioned to be fed at a specific time, and the saliva was their reaction to the approach of that time. My mouse was anticipating that there would be food there, and reacting to there being none.

One time, I opened the backdoor to go outside for a bucket of water. Our only water source was a spigot out in the back yard. I turned the cold metal knob on top of the pipe that stuck out of the ground, and waited for the water to come out. The water in the pipe had frozen overnight. I walked back into the house with an empty bucket.

Cedric, you didn’t leave the hydrant dripping last night so it wouldn’t freeze, did you? my mother asked.

No ma’am, I said.

She said, I’m putting you in to soak. Soak was a mental punishment; it usually meant I would get unexpected whipping sometime that day before bedtime. Putting me in to soak meant she didn’t have time to deal with me right then, but I could look forward to retribution.