COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Casualties
The Major Sees an Epidemic on the Way
Bob Kerr, Providence Journal
August 6, 2006
One of
the best moments came after a firefight in Sadr City two years ago in
which he and his men and their Iraqi counterparts had been hit
hard with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. He and three other
Americans were wounded. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed.
"That was how we earned the respect of the Iraqis. My Iraqi executive
officer came up to me and gave me the traditional kisses on each cheek
and said, 'You are no longer Americans. You are Iraqi. You have spilled
blood for Iraq.' "
It was possible to feel like a soldier that day. It was possible to
feel that he would be able to do what he was sent there to do. He had
gone to Iraq with a small unit to serve with and train the Iraqis. On
that day, despite the losses, it seemed to come together.
Now, it is as if that intense, bloody battle never happened. It is as
if he never was the citizen soldier who thought he was doing the right
thing by going to war.
He thinks about it and tries to come to terms with the maddening,
twisted aftermath. He is in a place where he meets every day with
counselors and other soldiers who are also confronting this thing that
has wrapped itself around them and won't let them come all the way
home. It is the thing, he said, that has destroyed his life.
He hears about the people who volunteer to go back to Iraq for second and third tours. He thinks he knows why.
"It's a sign of PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder]," he said during a phone conversation last week from Pennsylvania.
"That's the last place life made sense. Here, they don't fit in. They're not part of anything."
Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Iraq, with its treacherous uncertainty, its
roadside bombs and maddeningly invisible enemy, makes more sense than
the familiar things of home.
To understand, at least a little, consider the homecoming of this man,
who is 44 and spent a lot of years as a cop and joined the military
because he needed some direction in his life. He is a major in the Army
reserve.
He left Iraq after nine hard months.
"We got back and nobody met us at the plane in Baltimore. I was
carrying the bags of guys who had been sent home before us, and on the
flight to Columbus, Ga., they wanted to charge us extra for the bags of
the wounded. We ended up renting a U-Haul to drive it down."
At Fort Benning, there was no real welcome either.
"It's part of the PTSD problem," he said. "What I did didn't matter."
He took a day to go home and visit his children in another state and was berated for it by a superior officer.
So it happens again, only worse this time. Remember how we weren't
going to repeat the mistake, how we were going to make sure that those
coming home from Iraq were not met with the same cold, even scornful,
rejection that awaited returning Vietnam veterans?
Well, don't look now but the PTSD clinics at veterans' hospitals are
filling up with people who are coming home to find that their war
isn't even on the far edge of awareness for many Americans. They go
through the hell of it and see the carnage and then come home to a
"ho-hum, where ya been?" reaction. They've darn near died and had
friends who did and not a lot of people seem to care.
So life back home makes no sense at all. There's a disconnect.
The major started drinking. He had been a social drinker before. Now, he embraced it as a refuge.
"It was self-medication -- push back the night," he said. "If I slept, there were nightmares."
Soldiers call it "bunkering in."
He was feeling flat-out rage.
"Little things set me off," he said. "It got to the point where I'd become somebody I was not."
A 2 1/2-year relationship with a woman he had hoped to marry was one of the casualties of this dark, questioning time.
"I wasn't showing up for duty. I drank. I was curled up in bed for four days."
He bottomed out and made an appointment with a psychiatrist. He was
sent to the psychiatric ward of a civilian hospital. His parents drove
down from Rhode Island to visit. The search began for a veterans'
hospital where he could be treated for his PTSD. Briefly, it appeared
he would be able to come to the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital
in Providence, but that didn't work out. He headed instead to
Pennsylvania. He doesn't want to be too definite about location.
"It's a good place, a good program. But it's underfunded and they're planning to cut staff even more."
There is an epidemic coming, he warns.
"There are guys out there with PTSD and they don't even know it," he
said. "The military needs to step up to the plate and admit this is an
issue. There should be PTSD training before deployment. Soldiers and
their family members should be able to see the signs."
The treatment program he is in runs for 12 weeks. He could sign
up for another 12 weeks, but he doesn't think he will. He thinks
instead he will head to Rhode Island to spend some time with his
parents and maybe try to deal with his PTSD on an outpatient basis in
Providence.
He is still putting his life back together and he isn't sure where he will go.
Could he be a cop again?
"I have no desire to carry a gun anymore," he said. "I want nothing to do with them."
bkerr@projo.com / (401) 277-7252
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