Posted on 10/10/2015 7:56:57 AM PDT by tired&retired
“Typically the minds ability to repress things degrades as one ages, usually in one’s thirties or forties.”
Very true. I work with healing traumatic memories in people every day. People have no idea how deep they go.
“Eisenhauer may also be suffering from a TBI”
Yes, he was. The building he was in when the truck bomb exploded was destroyed. It lifted the roof off the building.
I spent time with Josh while he was in the Warrior Transition Battalion. His PTSD was constant, not just arising occasionally. He was very nervous and hyper vigilant, asking me to close the blinds as a sniper could shoot us through them when we were in my home at the dining room table having dinner.
Josh was in prior to Obama taking office. When Obama came in the rules of engagement changed. This is when the suicide rate in the military doubled.
One of his men was court martialed for returning fire when shot at. He explained that the military began giving medals for restraint of fire!!! Another committed suicide out of frustration. Obama destroyed the military moral instantly.
Anti-depressants and anti-psychotics are far, far worse than benzos. It wasn’t until their advent that patients started suddenly shooting large groups of unarmed people.
I'd have a lawyer on this one in a heart beat
If anything, it's medical, not misconduct DUE TO medical
What a PC cluster !
Exhaling deeply. So much suffering. His sentence does not help, IMO, being in a public prison.
I wanted to ask you if a having faith in resurrection has been studied in this regards. It is a great source of comfort for me, especially knowing that the greatest love will be viewed by the Judge in highest regard.
Regarding your good point: “Eisenhauer’s first tour to Helmand was 15 months long. Marine’s tours are 7 months. In WW2 they were 4 years and didn’t come home for leave plus they were shipped home which took a month.”
Having studied WWII most of my life, you made a good point, however, for the US, for the Army, most of those did not deploy and face combat continuously for four years. There were times in between combat periods where they got rest, recovery and replacements. In the Pacific, there was usually a several month space between operations and the units involved didn’t go from operation to operation. See Robert Leckie’s books that recount his division getting such rest, and his recounting that soldiers that came up with combat fatigue, as PTSD was called, were quietly shipped home.
A late uncle of mine went from the invasion of North Africa to Sicily, then shipped to England for a year before Normandy and then fighting across France and Germany. I wish I could have talked with him this. And the stress of combat flying was why there were limits on pilots and bomber crews.
We have added in the factor of instead of being ‘there for 4 years’ but having guys go there for a year, coming back for a year and then returning to combat. thus one has 4 years of combat but over a longer period, and each of those years were probably as intense as any one year in the ETO.
Your story is touching, thank you. What a different world it was just a couple of decades ago.
No, it was worse in WWI, WWII, and Korea. No US serviceman has to endure days of shelling like they did in those wars. Yes, they see alot of action now but they are not isolated for days on end with no communication. They are also not facing a foe that is their equal in nearly every way. US service personnel do not endure close air or a well supplied well trained foe that attacks in mass. The German army was probably superior to US at the beginning, that was not the situation in Afghanistan or Iraq.
All those things are true. But human beings breaking under the stress of combat is still the same. And when they break, they break. In addition, today’s vets endured literally suicidal ROEs that earlier combat vets couldn’t even imagine having to fight under, which is a whole different level of stress.
Our troops are definitely more protected, yes. But they still fight to kill under extreme stress, and some of them break. Look at the sheer number of years some of these vets have been fighting, too - twice the length of the entirety of WWII.
My thoughts on this, being both a history fanatic as well as participant in some Middle East ‘vacations’, is that a lot of it has to do with how we came back from the theater of operations back then and now. In 1945, you got on a boat with a couple thousand others who had just been through the same thing as you, with nothing to do for several weeks except decompress and talk to each other about what you had seen and done. You got off that boat knowing that you were not alone. Now, you leave the combat zone, get on a plane, and a few hours later you are back home dealing with friends and family who have no idea or concept of what you have seen. You don’t want to talk to them about it, because they have no frame of reference, and you really don’t want to freak them out. You feel like you are the only one who feels this way. I think there was a better support structure for the troops in WWII era. Since so many of the men in that age group did serve, they felt comfortable around each other. Also, more jobs at that time had a more physical component to them, and doing hard phyical work all day helped sap some of the pain and frustration. Sitting behind a desk all day? Not so much. Did some back then have trouble adjusting? Definitely, but I also think we tended to hush up these sorts of things a bit more back then as well.
Obama changed the requirements to be diagnosed with PTSD.
People are now getting PTSD claims for sexual harassment. Combat exposure is no longer necessary. This gets them about $36,000 per year disability tax free, subsidized housing and free college tuition.
In the combat environment, benzos are the drug of choice... and painkillers.
They stay away from drugs that will get them removed from the military.
I think you and many others are missing a critical point here. During standard cut and dry wars the enemy could be named, pointed out, ROE simple and less complex. In short the world wars were cut and dry. Take hill, push through the lines etc etc. these are far different and a soldiers eyes are looking at EVERYONE with nervousness. I can’t imagine when just riding through a town that is supposedly peaceful the stress, twitchiness one must endure. Add to that a continuous second guessing of when and how to engage I find it far more complex and stressful under those conditions.
We are talking about roughly 6000 US deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan; that is easily one day in many US WWII engagements. Looking in on Normandy, Iwo, Tinian, Saipan, Okinawa filled one with greater dread. The shelling Marines endured at Guadalcanal or the army endured at the Bulge or Hurtgen Forest was not just psychologically damaging but the physical effects of concussion permanently rattled some.
I might concede Fallujah. Tasking Marines with 10 houses an hour was insane. Why they couldn’t level troublesome blocks is beyond me.
None of this stuff is a picnic, certainly. I still think early conflicts had it tougher with all but a few instances.
Have you read “The Long Walk” by Brian Castner? Great read about Air Force EOD in Iraq.
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