by
Chaplain Kathie
No matter when all the troops are pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan, when there are no more wars to fight and no more dying in combat, there will still be casualties of war being added. This we must all understand and prepare to fight a new kind of war during peacetime.
If you need a better idea of what happens when they come home, read any story about a Vietnam veteran still trying to come all the way home, or a Korean veteran or talk to some of the remaining WWII veterans, and you will see it in their eyes as they think about their days while they risked their lives. They were once civilians just like the rest of us, but when they were sent to fight our military battles, they became veterans of war. While they may have returned physically the same, they knew they were different, unlike everyone else they live with because so few have ever experienced what they survived.
We may have thought it was all over when we stopped sending them into other nations, when we stopped paying for the deployments and weapons, when we stopped feeding and clothing them as well as training them, but for those we send, wars never really end. They are part of them.
As high as the numbers are of the PTSD wounded, the fact is, less than half seek help for PTSD, which means, we really don't know how many more there are. We don't know how many more are carrying torment PTSD but are trying to hide it, how many have mild PTSD believing they will just "get over it" instead of being aware not treating it is like having a time bomb ready to blow with another traumatic event in their life or how many will end up so severely wounded, their family ends up with PTSD as well from living with the mood swings, angry outbursts, overblown responses and nightmares so harsh the whole family is losing sleep. What is worse is that we don't know how many could have been spared most of it had they received help in time.
We read about suicides yet we never seem to come to terms with the fact the only reason people commit suicide is they have no reason to hope. Once hope is gone, hope of a better day, hope that the pain they feel will go away, hope for anything better, there is no reason to carry on. We all live with hope in our hearts or none of us would do anything at all.
If they were all helped as soon as they came home, you would see less suicides, less divorces, less domestic violence, less drug and alcohol arrests, less crime and less homelessness. Imagine if the older veterans were helped when they came home what their lives would be like today as well as the lives of their families for generations. Families carry on the burden of what their veteran brought home but no one really talks about this either. Each generation carries on what they live with. For most of them, they have no idea of what "it" is. Dismissing what they never understood, what they never paid attention to is easy. They view what the veteran does without understanding it and then blame the veteran instead of wondering what was behind all of it. Wives blame the veteran and then they blame themselves. Kids blame the parent and then blame themselves. These thoughts are carried on into every relationship they have and it is all carried onto the next generation.
Talk to the children of veterans as they have grown up with no understanding and you will hear about the father that didn't care, the mean dad, the drunk, the coldness and how nothing they did was ever good enough. They see how their parent acted but never understood why they acted the way they did. All they knew about war was what was written in history books because they never heard any real life experiences from their parent or grandparent. They are detached from it while living with it.
When the military leaves Iraq, when the military leaves Afghanistan, they will come home with these nations in them. We have yet to treat all the veterans of the past wars and these newer veterans will be added to the secret casualty count along with their families. Communities will be dealing with the result of many PTSD veterans for generations to come unless they come together to help the veterans heal.
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington
We see this in many parts of the nation but we also see how many others are still dismissing this wound of war. The Vietnam War ended in 1973 officially but the deaths went on until 1975. at least the acknowledged deaths. We still lost more after the war was declared over than we did during it. They died because of Agent Orange, this more easily acceptable than when they died from suicide and they are still dying. We lose 18 veterans a day from suicide. Another 10,000 a year attempt it. None of this has to happen as long as we all understand that just because a war is over and they are back home, too many are still fighting for their lives because they went to war.
