Posted on 01/27/2019 1:48:45 PM PST by Kaslin
May this vet rest in peace.
Funerals without ceremony or anyone at all attending except for honor guard are not isolated incidents.
Many are by choice which is PTSD related. PTSD is a very complicated subject few know about beyond the nightmares which not all PTSD vets have. Many withdraw from family and friends and wind up being very lonely and often homeless as a result.
Mental heath issues such as this, along with the various diseases vets get and the battlefield wounds are reason we should get out of these endless, winless wars that do nothing more than keep the swamps military/industrial complex alive and well.
Related thread...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3723314/posts
I pray this dear Vet gets a wonderful send off.
RIP and thank you for your service.
Fort Hood is there. He will not be alone.
Exactly!
I predict a couple thousand!
Amen
Damn, I cannot read this - my screen suddenly got all blurry. RIP, soldier.
I ate at that Rudy’s over the holidays. If any of you FReepers go, I highly recommend that as your meet-up spot before and after.
R.I.P.
There are multiple foolish ingrates on this forum who believe PTSD is just a scam.
But it really does destroy lives, mostly as you mentioned.
Withdraw. Isolation. Alcohol and Drugs.
They can’t get along with anybody and don’t want to.
The late Rev. Dr. Jerry Falwell once told a gathering of regional clergy that his church staff would call members of the church to ask them to attend Funerals of members who had no family.
Very thoughtful!
I know, I’ve engaged a couple of them. One claimed to be a multiple tour combat vet that does not have it. PTSD depends on the stressing event and the person affected.
Constantly fearing for your life and seeing up front and close someones brains chasing a bullet as it leaves the skull really isn’t a memory a person wants to reminisce over just before going to sleep.
The vet’s brain is forever rewired, something that just cannot be helped. The self medication with drugs and/or alcohol only worsens it, something else that just cannot be helped.
I had a coworker die at a distant vet hospital last year. No notices in the paper, no funeral. Just buried in a vets grave yard like the subject of this article. So sad. And the man was very proud of his military service.
“Constantly fearing for your life”
Psychopaths have no fear. None.
Ever.
And like Sociopaths they have no human empathy.
They make great war heroes.
Neither gets PTSD because they don’t experience psychological trauma.
Of course then there are the combat vets that were never really under serious threat.
You sound like you are either a counselor or been there done that.
I read Dr Robert Hare’s “Without Conscience” and learned a great deal about psychopaths. And with the understanding I got from that read, yes I can see where a psychopath would not be bothered.
Brutal war would be a paradise for Ted Bundy types. We are watching a Netflix documentary on this guy right now. Just brutally beating to death random young girls is really hard to grasp.
PTSD has been around as long as wars have been fought. During the Great War, The First World War it was called Shell Shock. In some cases men suffered from hysterical blindness, some lost their hair, or their turned white. The mind is wonderful and powerful, and we do not understand our mind’s potential. It is probably greater than we can imagine.
My Grandfather was a WW1 vet. Army combat infantry.
His way of dealing with the experience was to never talk about his time in France. It did affect him.
I’ve participated in a couple of groups to get my mind right.
“... the vets brain is forever rewired, something that just cannot be helped. Self medication only worsens it whether it be all or a combination of withdrawal, isolation, alcohol or drugs.”
As an old shipmate says; “no one knows what’s going on in your head”.
Two excellent book on combat trauma are “Achilles in Vietnam” and “Odysseus in America” by Jonathan Shay. Well worth the read if not kept handy for re-reads. Dr. Shea was perhaps the first to advocate treating combat trauma as an injury and not an illness or disorder. In treating combat trauma, Dr. Shea also pioneered the concept of “moral injury” which may be loosely defined as; a betrayal of what is morally correct by someone holding legitimate authority in a critical situation.
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