Diane Cameron - Never Leave Your Dead: A True Story of War Trauma, Murder, and Madness

Special Praise for Never Leave Your Dead

It is a privilege to meet Diane Cameron through this book. She has made her own heros journey and brought us back this boon. No sentimentality here!

Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD

Author of Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America

Wars never end for their survivors. Military trauma all too often devastates the lives of our veterans and those who love them long after armistice. With this poignant, timely, and unforgettable memoir of her own effort to comprehend, Diane Cameron issues a powerful reminder that mental trauma is an intricate, three-dimensional problemone that resists easy judgments and defies simple answers. Grounded in history, informed by psychiatry, and written with a rare blend of compassion and moral urgency, this is a powerful meditation on love, war, and our humanity. As our young men and women continue to return from Iraq and Afghanistan, may their familiesand our national policy makersread this important book and ponder its many valuable insights.

Brian Matthew Jordan, PhD

Author of Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War

Diane Camerons Never Leave Your Dead, unfolding like a good psychological mystery, is at once heartfelt and unillusioned. It asks the hard questions and considers the harrowing evidence about violence and its impacts on the soul but then looks to move past judgment. To understand the power of forgiveness we need to understand what things need to be forgiven. Cameron instructs us in both.

Sven Birkerts

Author of The Gutenberg Elegies and The Art of the Memoir

If you have ever wondered about and tried to understand what motivates victims of psychological trauma to commit acts of violence, this book is for you. Cameron takes you with her on her journey of discovery, finding records and talking to experts to put the pieces of the puzzle of her stepfather together. Never Leave Your Dead helps the reader to understand that sometimes perpetrators of violence are victims of, and witnesses to, the most horrendous indecency human beings can inflict on one another. I highly recommend this work as an effort toward a greater understanding of individuals suffering from PTSD who might commit acts of violence.

Victor Ashear, PhD

Author of Self-Acceptance: The Key to Recovery from Mental Illness

Part memoir, part history lesson, and part psychological mystery, Diane Camerons book educates all of us about the complexity of a single life, and she helps us to understand and honor our warriors, past and present. As a clinician who worked with traumatized veterans at the VA for many years, I am moved by the compassion in Dianes understanding of what it means to be a Marine and how the trauma of war can mold ones life forever.

Susan Griffiths, RN, MS

Clinical Nurse Specialist in Psychiatric Nursing

Diane Camerons book is a tour de forcewith the page-turning power of a world-class thriller. It is the story of one family members attempt to create a coherent narrative out of the mind-numbing shards of war trauma. Cameron is a fierce detectivedeeply well-informedand every page of her determined inquiry moves us closer to a nuanced understanding of the effects of trauma on us all. I simply could not put this book down.

Stephen Cope

Senior Scholar-in-Residence at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health and best-selling author of The Great Work of Your Life and Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

Central Recovery Press (CRP) is committed to publishing exceptional materials addressing addiction treatment, recovery, and behavioral healthcare topics.

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2016 by Diane Cameron

All rights reserved. Published 2016.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Publisher: Central Recovery Press

3321 N. Buffalo Drive

Las Vegas, NV 89129

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Name: Cameron, Diane.

Title: Never leave your dead: a true story of war trauma, murder, and madness / Diane Cameron.

Description: Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery Press, 2016. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015050654 (print) | LCCN 2015048731 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942094173 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Watkins, Donald K., 19111996. | Cameron, DianeFamily. | MarinesUnited StatesBiography. | Sino-Japanese War, 19371945Psychological aspects. | StepfathersUnited StatesBiography. | Mothers and daughtersUnited StatesBiography. | VeteransMental healthUnited StatesCase studies. | Post-traumatic stress disorderUnited StatesCase studies. | Mentally illFamily relationshipsUnited StatesCase studies. | MurderPennsylvaniaWashington CountyHistory20th century. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | PSYCHOLOGY / Psychopathology / Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). | TRUE CRIME / Murder / General.

Classification: LCC VE25.W38 (print) | LCC VE25.W38 C36 2016 (ebook) | DDC 616.85/210092dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050654

Photo of Diane Cameron by Cindy Schultz

Horrors of War card used courtesy of The Topps Company, Inc. For more information about The Topps Company, please see our website at www.topps.com.

Washington Observer excerpts and headlines used courtesy of the Observer Reporter.

Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. from COLD STORAGE by Wendell Rawls, Jr. Copyright 1980 by Wendell Rawls, Jr. All rights reserved.

Every attempt has been made to contact copyright holders. If copyright holders have not been properly acknowledged, please contact us. Central Recovery Press will be happy to rectify the omission in future printings of this book.

Publishers Note: This is a memoira work based on facts recorded to the best of the authors memory of her personal experiences with family trauma and PTSD. This book represents the experiences and opinions of the author, alone, and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the United States Marine Corps. Every effort has been made to ensure that events, institutions, and statistics presented in our books as facts are accurate and up-to-date. To protect their privacy, the names of some of the people, places, and institutions in this book may have been changed. This book is not an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.

Cover and interior design and layout by Sara Streifel, Think Creative Design