A healing in sharing war experiences

The Washington Post ^ | November 29, 2013 | Lieutenant General Bernard E. Trainor (USMC-Retired)

[2ndDivisionVet]

I was recently invited to be a panelist at a veterans’ symposium on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I sought to decline, saying that I never had PTSD and had no qualifications to talk about it. I was told that I represented an earlier generation of combat veterans and that my views and experience would be interesting. So I accepted.

Three other panelists had personal family experience with the traumatic aspects of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I restricted myself to the Korean War. As background for my views, I explained the generational context of my experience as follows:

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood of the Bronx during the Depression. Sympathy was not a hallmark of the time; stoicism was. Whenever I complained to my mother about a hurt, she told me to offer up my suffering to “the poor souls in Purgatory.” In short, facing life as it was was characteristic of my generation. Just get on with it.

All of the neighborhood kids a year or more older than I went into the service during World War II, including my brother. Many were in direct combat. They were coming home just as I was going into the Marines as a 17-year-old. I envied their wartime experience....

[driftdiver]

Having a beautiful north korean spy try to seduce me probably doesn’t qualify.

[Gamecock]

Today, troops fly home with the smell of the field still on them. They are plopped down into an unfamiliar environment with loved ones who had learned to live without them. It is often an uncomfortable and strained experience for both parties.

Those of us in Military Medicine (and Chaplains) talk about this a lot. We also speculate if this may have something to do with incidents of spousal abuse right after the homecoming. No good answers though.

[xzins]

I’m pretty sure that if you just get anyone talking about the details of an event that it will help them put it in context. You were in a car wreck? Information Questions: What time of day? What had you out? Where did it happen? What did you see? What did you hear?

Leave the pyscho-babble alone. “How did you feel in your soul at the sight of blood?” is almost a sure fire way to get people to shut up. Vets might get to that point with each other at spontaneous moments/triggers/reminders, but the odds of that with an outsider is remote.

My theory on the why of PTSD is that it’s the self-talk, internal post-mortem we all can’t quite get through after a crisis event in our lives. It’s a grief process internally by the person about who the person used to be prior to having gone through the crisis.

I’ve often felt that like the old fashioned “battle fatigue” for which the right answer was “3 hots and a cot” and not treating the troop as if they have a mental defect, that we can talk people into thinking there’s something defective and unfixable with them.

[blueunicorn6]

There is a related story at the Washington Post site about how PTSD might not be causing all the problems. I haven’t seen recent figures, but in the first few years of Iraq and Afghanistan, the majority of Soldiers returning home felt that their battalion commanders did not care about them.

[pacpam]

During early Vietnam, the family members left at home usually lived on base or close to one and bonded with those in similar circumstances. Friendships with older spouses who had been through separations before helped prepare newbies for the return home. That cohesiveness helped immensely. Later, into the 70s working spouses were not able to make time to share common experiences and a lot of comradery was lost. Coping alone isn’t healthy and apparantly that is what is happening.

[Gamecock]

A long boat ride home with one’s buddies provides those opportunities.

I remember in the late ‘80s we talked about the 3 hots and a cot method. Take them to the rear, give them a chance to vent, don’t put a diagnosis on it and tell them they will be fine and assure them in a couple days they will be back with their buddies.

[trebb]

Thanks for the window into your soul and God Bless for your service. I can relate to the depression era stoicism - in today’s society I would have been put on ADDHD (or something like that) drugs and been considered a statistical victim. Growing up in the ‘50s, I had to learn to deal with it and learn from the reactions of others whether or not I was controlling certain aspects of it.