I just came back from a very powerful and moving symposium about mental health treatment for Veterans who have, are, and will be returning from the war(s), most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The depth and extent of trauma in our returning service men and women is alarming to say the least, and they need our help now and even more in the near future.  In order for any human being to be able to survive in a war zone, our soldiers have to be trained in survival thinking and behavior that is necessary, but that comes only at an extremely high price….that price sometimes even being  the temporary loss of one’s humanity! 

Consider, just for a moment, what it would take for you to “pull the trigger” and take the life of another living, breathing human being… regardless of their age, religious beliefs, skin color, or any of the other minor transparent differences we like to mention or refer to so glibly these days.  Just imagine, if you even can, an 11 year old girl running towards you and your fellow service men & women, with C-4 explosive visibly strapped to her chest….  You only have a split second to decide… do you shoot and kill this person in order to save yourself and your fellows, or do you try to manage/negotiate the situation in some other manner.   The situation is basically, “it is either her or us”!  So can you, do you pull the trigger??  Remember, you have been trained for just such situations, to survive, and the decision must be made in an instant….  No time to reflect upon right/wrong, good/bad, or any other aspect of morality.  So you choose to live and to save the lives of your fellows which results in another person’s death.   In the moment, you may know or feel you made the right choice.  But what about when you are away from the danger and have time to reflect…..now what?  As a friend of mine described his first mission as an Army Ranger to me, being dropped behind enemy lines in a situation where he was personally responsible for multiple ‘kills’,  “it felt like part of my soul had been ripped out!”  He was changed to his very core forever at that moment.  This is the experience of death, war, killing, and the effect it usually yields on those who have lived in the war zone, a true and permeating trauma.  You and I are spared these gut-wrenching experiences because of the soldiers in our armed services doing their “jobs” and experiencing those things in the line of duty, trying as best they can to protect their own lives as well as those of their fellows and their families at home.  They suffer tragic realities like this, and often so much  worse, on an almost daily basis.  If you have not been in war, it is difficult to truly communicate these experiences.  If you have been, I need say nothing about it at all…. You KNOW! 

As one returning Vet put it, “right or wrong, it has nothing to do with politics….. it is about survival of self and our ‘band of brothers and sisters’ for whom any of us would readily lay down our lives!  You do what you have to, but you still have to live with it.” 

Then  finally, one day, the time you have been longing and praying about  for so long arrives, and you are told “the war is over and you are coming home!”  What glorious words….. what joyous emotions are felt now.  But is ‘home’ really the haven of love and safety as you have been thinking of it for these many months or years???  Or will it be something else, something ‘different’?  Sadly, for many if not most returning soldiers, they are simply being placed in a strange and different environment, but in this new world, the soldiers set of “survival tools” are not only useless, but more likely a hindrance to successful re-adaptation.  War zone thinking and behavior just don’t  work anymore!  Not with your spouse and your 2 young children.  They can’t understand why you are nervous and stressed when you go shopping with them at a mall.  They can’t understand why you have constant recurring nightmares of past war events, now that you are home, “safe” with your family and loved ones.  They can’t understand why just being with your 11 year old daughter makes you shake in terror and makes you violently sick to your stomach.  And you only wish to continue protecting your family, this time from the awful memories and experiences of war that your soul is marred with, and that will forever be a part of you!  No, you would not speak  of these things because the mere telling of such tragedies would damage those you love in untold ways, as it has you.

I have spoken to and listened to service men and women speak of the unspeakable.  These are things they have seen and felt first hand, that are the darkest and vilest of all human experiences…. The kinds of things that make you question the real value of humanity, and of your own as well.  Past values have been exploded into a thousand pieces, and you are left with just numbness and horror as you try to form some understanding or explanation that can help you get even a flimsy grasp on what you have done and experienced…… but only your brothers in arms can truly understand, and understanding itself is little consolation because war is hell! 

All I can do, for this moment anyway, is to stand with tears in my eyes and thank every one of these service men and women by my applause, saying how grateful I am to you for enduring all of the horrors that you have, which ultimately allow my children, family and myself to live here in peace, beyond the war zone.                       Mark Truett, LMHC