Stephen Sherwood returned from Iraq
in the summer of 2005, along with the rest of his brigade combat team which
included the 506th Infantry Regiment. You know of this regiment from the
mini-series "Band of Brothers."
"Longtime friends said Sherwood came back from Iraq a
changed man. After a few days, he took down the American flag in front of
his house and scraped the SUPPORT OUR TROOPS sticker off his car. On the
day of the argument [with his wife, 03 August 2005], Sherwood's wife told him
about an affair she had started while he was in Iraq. Hours later, he
shot her five times in the face and neck, then killed himself with a single
shotgun blast. In his pocket, police found a newspaper clipping stating
that 30 percent of troops returning from Iraq developed mental-health
problems. Fort Carson assured the media it carefully screens every
soldier and Sherwood's postdeployment health assessment did not indicate he was
"high risk." - "Lethal Warriors," David Phillips, pg
97.
Sherwood's screening didn't indicate
that he was high risk because he, like many (perhaps most) in his unit and
others, lied on that screening. Some senior soldiers suggested that filling
the screening out truthfully would give Sherwood and his comrades a one-way
ticket to the shrink, that they would be denied their block leave, and perhaps
be kicked out of the infantry. It was also perceived as being contrary to
the Soldier's Creed.
I am an American Soldier.
I am a Warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of
the United States and live the Army Values.
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and
proficient in my warrior tasks and drills. I always maintain my arms, my
equipment and myself.
I am an expert and I am a professional.
I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of
the United States of America in close combat.
I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
I am an American Soldier. [Emphasis added by author.]
The Soldier’s Creed makes it hard to
ask for help. If the creed doesn’t, the
motto of the 506th is "Stands Alone." By all accounts, this
motto was taken to heart by the soldiers of the 506th. But there are some things during which our
soldiers shouldn't stand alone. Are we failing our combat veterans?
Are we giving them the support they need when they return from doing what it is
we sent them to do; to kill and be killed on our behalf? I ask myself
these questions daily.
I have been doing a great deal of
reading about combat stress injuries, or moral injuries as Dr. Jonathan Shay
calls them. Or PTSD, as you likely know it. This began, ostensibly,
as research for character development for a novel that I’m writing, and that's
what I continue to tell myself. The more I read, however, the more engrossed I
became in the subject, and convinced that we need to do more.
As an aside, the problem with the
name PTSD is that it suggests that it's simply a disorder. I don't think
it's a disorder. I think, as do many mental health professionals, that it
is an injury. And like a shattered leg, it should be treated, and treated
comprehensively. Unfortunately, you can't see moral injuries at first glance.
But the hell they wreak on both the returning combat veterans and society is
readily visible. Or at least it should be, if only we were looking.
Very few seem to be looking. In his book, quoted above, David Phillips
shows us what it’s like when we do look. Maybe that scares us and we continue
to pretend that everything is well. Maybe combat veterans scare us.
All part of the same problem, no?
You don't have to understand what
it's like to be in combat (or have been in combat) to understand how a man or
woman can be changed by that experience. You don't have to have
"walked a mile in his shoes" to be empathetic. To suggest that
would be foolish. But I feel that it is our duty as Americans to at least
try to understand and empathize. I don't want you to patronize veterans
with shows of faux sympathy. But you should try to understand.
You can easily see the missing limbs
and burned skin from IED attacks, but as it stands right now, we can barely
recognize the legitimacy of the psychic scars that many of our veterans
bear. They could by lying after all. They could be
malingerers. They could be trying to shirk their duty. They could
be, as we called them in the Marine Corps, “shitbags.” If so, they should
be ostracized and discharged. Better to err on the side of caution,
right? To banish them? To cast them off?
Here is an SNCO talking to a junior
enlisted man:
"Soldier, you got hit by five IEDs, countless ambushes,
and saw your entire squad killed. Your best friend bled out and died in
your arms. You couldn't tell who the enemy was; everyone there seemed to
hate you. But other than the brain fluid that seeped out of your ears
that one time your Humvee was launched 10 feet in the air by a buried 155mm
round, you didn't suffer a scratch. You're fine. So you have
nightmares? We all do. Suck it
up. Don't be a wimp. Here's a fat reenlistment bonus. Go get
drunk and get laid and blow off some steam. Oh, and by the way, we're
going back in 8 months. Dismissed."
Suck it up. But what if they can’t just “suck it
up”? What happens when they are in
distress, psychologically and emotionally, and the above SNCO is their support
system? The answer is: Nothing positive.
Consider this: If you're going to
tell yourself and others that these men and women are protecting your freedom
and protecting your way of life, you should want understand that the
ramifications of them doing that duty go far beyond physical
disabilities. Shouldn't you?
We have this image of victorious
WWII veterans returning home and stoically and smoothly transitioning from
warriors to peaceful civilians. That vision, through decidedly rose
colored glasses, is the gold standard. The problem is it's not really
true. Moral injuries were present in WWII veterans (just read some of the
autobiographies of the aforementioned Band of Brothers) and have been present
in returning veterans since antiquity. In fact, Homer's Iliad and the
Odyssey, which I take from Dr. Shay, could be interpreted as a brilliantly
crafted metaphor for moral injuries. This is not a new phenomenon, but is
instead as old as warfare itself.
Furthermore, it is nothing to be
ashamed of, and we need to change the way we think about moral injuries.
We're doing this. We're getting there. But we're not there
yet. I don't know if we'll ever really get there, and I offer no
solutions other than to ask that you inform yourself and your loved ones, even
if they haven't been touched by the long tendrils of war. I offer no solutions
because I, well, I'm not that smart. But this is a burden that we all
share, like it or not. And we, like our veterans, should shoulder that
burden.
Not all combat veterans have moral
injuries, PTSD, combat stress injuries, etc. I'm not saying that.
So all you uninformed arm chair generals (and even a few of you combat
veterans) can refrain from telling me that our warriors are just that; WARRIORS
with no room for such touchy-feely mental weakness ("OOH RAH, HOO AH,
STANDS ALONE!"). I don't want to hear that and I won't hear it
because it's not weakness. It's reality. If you don't believe that
combat changes the brain, and in turn the man, I simply point you to one of the
dozens of studies that show real, concrete changes in the way the brain works
after prolonged exposure to combat and other stressful situations. Some people
are changed more than others, and rarely is this change for the better.
Inform yourself. Read. Learn. We all stand to gain from it.
If you are a veteran and you feel
like there is something wrong, but don't understand what, educate yourself as
well and seek help. We haven't always done enough for you, and those like
Stephen Sherwood and countless others, as well as their families, have paid for
it. But help is out there. I ask that you stop worrying about what
it will do to your career, and worry about what it will do to your existence as
a human being.
What to read? Where to
start? There are thousands of books on this subject. Some better
than others. My recommendations, which I've personally read, are as
follows, in no particular order.
- "Achilles in Vietnam" and "Odysseus in America" by Dr. Jonathan Shay.
- "On Combat" and "On Killing" by Col. David Grossman.
- "An Operators Manual for Combat PTSD" by Dr. Ashley R. Hart II.
- "Lethal Warriors" by David Phillips.
When you're done reading them, check
out their bibliographies. If you want more suggestions, contact me or
your local Veterans Advocate.
