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Home > Archive > Sep 27, 2007

Poetic Veteran Helps Others Heal
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
Many soldiers returning from war carry battle scars that cannot be seen. Retired Lt. Cmdr. Roberto Prinselaar, Navy and Coast Guard, spent more than 31 years in military service, traveling the globe in service to his country.
Like so many veterans, Prinselaar saw and experienced unspeakable things during his wartime service – the images and memories of which still haunt him today. But, like so many veterans, when he returned from war, Prinselaar, now a St. George resident, “put it all behind him” and went on with his life, never speaking with his family and loved ones of the things he'd seen. But though the memories of war were behind Prinselaar, they weren't far behind; eventually, they caught up.
“We'll be fine for quite some time, and then all of a sudden, we're in our 40s or even our 50s, and all of a sudden, one night we wake up with a horrible nightmare where we're reliving all the things we did,” Prinselaar said. “And people say, 'What's the matter with him? He wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.' That's why I put all of this stuff together. I wrote, because I was trying to save myself.”
When Prinselaar began experiencing flashbacks and night terrors – decades after his war experiences occurred – he began putting the images and emotions down on paper. His book, “Tears of Ink,” has been the result.
Filled with lyrical depictions of his war and postwar experiences, “Tears of Ink” was published, in part, to help other veterans, like Prinselaar, cope with the emotional remnants of the wars they've seen. Profits from the book are also being used to benefit various veteran's organizations. Prinselaar has already presented checks from his book sales to local veteran's groups, and he plans to continue doing so as proceeds from “Tears of Ink” continue to pour in.
Though the book was published only a month ago, Prinselaar has already sold out every copy he had from the first printing, and he has received grateful emails and comments from veterans all over the country who have read the book.
“That's what this whole book's all about – helping other vets and their families,” Prinselaar said, “because the problem is, families get these guys back from these places, and all of a sudden, Junior isn't Junior anymore – he's somebody totally different. Here's an 18, 19-year-old boy that's going out and killing people, and he's not the same as he was when he left home. He's changed, and we've all changed.”
Though it was hard for Prinselaar to bear his soul to the world in releasing his poetry in book form, he did so at the urging of both his wife and a counselor at the vet center in Las Vegas, in order to let other veterans know that they aren't alone in their struggles to overcome the psychological and emotional effects of war.
“I feel, and I've had other people tell me the same thing, that my ability to write these things is a God-given talent,” Prinselaar said. “I was a really tough bosun's mate – you know, one of these guys that, man, I was rough, tough and ready to fight at any moment at the drop of a hat. So poetry was not my forte.”
But Prinselaar was able to channel his traumatic memories into pages and pages of rhyme and verse, and he attributes his poetry to divine inspiration – three deceased soldiers who came to him one night and told him he needed to start writing.
It was the late 1980s, and Prinselaar was living in Fresno, Calif., when a traveling replica of the Vietnam memorial wall came to town. Still the tough soldier who didn't want to think about or talk about his past, he grudgingly agreed to visit the memorial at the urging of a friend. While he was in the park where the wall was being displayed, Prinselaar met a man from Veterans Affairs who convinced him to visit the local vet clinic.
“He said, 'Prinselaar, I've gotta tell you something.' He says, 'You have severe PTSD,'” Prinselaar said. “Of course, I didn't know what that was, so I said, 'There's no way ... I could have PTSD, 'cause I've had all my shots!'”
Though he was very resistant to opening up about his war experiences, Prinselaar began receiving counseling at the vet center. After several weeks, during one session the counselor finally got him to talk about an experience he'd had overseas.
“I only got one sentence out and now, all of a sudden, I was 10,000 miles away from there,” Prinselaar said. “They kept me there for three-and-a-half hours, because I had a flashback. It took a few of them to get me settled down, and I was totally unaware of where I was for three-and-a-half hours.
“It messed up the rest of my week. I was a wreck. I couldn't do anything. I felt like bawling all the time – it really messed me up, and after that I wouldn't talk.”
Prinselaar said it wasn't long after that that he received a visit in the night from three men he recognized as deceased soldiers.
“They were not white and they weren't wearing wings or any of that stuff. They shouldn't have been there, because I knew they'd died, but they were there, and they were telling me that I had to get up out of bed and start writing,” Prinselaar said. “I told them, 'Hey, forget it. This is just a dream. I know it's just a dream, and you guys better get the heck out of here, because I have to go to sleep, because I have to go to work.'”
But his three visitors wouldn't leave him alone, so Prinselaar finally gave in, got out of bed, found a large notebook and began to write. His early endeavors weren't poetic – it was just pages and pages of prose about his war experiences, but once he got started he couldn't stop, he said.
About three weeks later, the same three young men visited Prinselaar again and told him, once again, that he needed to write. For the second time, Prinselaar retreated to his den with notebook in hand, and this time a poem resulted – the first he'd ever written.
Many more poems followed, and for a long time Prinselaar carried the writings with him in his car, so his wife wouldn't find them and read them. But he finally shared the poetry with his wife, and he began sharing the poems with others, as well – his counselor at the vet center and other veterans.
He also began reading his poetry at school assemblies and before community groups, and, about six months ago, the idea of compiling the poems into a book came about.
Though he still experiences symptoms of PTSD – nightmares and depression – they aren't nearly as severe since Prinselaar began talking, writing and sharing his poems with others, and, in the process of sharing his writings, he's helping other veterans.
He said his advice to all veterans – both those who have served in the past and those who are returning from the present war – is to talk about their experiences and to write them down or find some other means of getting those emotions and memories out.
“You take your worst fears and your worst memories and you put them on paper, you write them down exactly how you feel them. And then you take them to a lonely place, and you touch a match to them and watch them go up towards heaven,” Prinselaar said. “It's just one more way. My way was the right way for me.”

“Tears of Ink” is available for purchase online at www.iuniverse.com, and it is also available online at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. To locate the nearest vet center, visit www.va.gov/rcs/ or call 1-800-496-8838.

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