Being willing to die should never end up being "wanting to die", but for too many, that is where they end up. There is a noble reason most enter into the military. Having the compassion to care and the courage to act are vital pushes to enlist. They know when they do, they could very well die doing it, but they are willing to lay down their lives for the sake of the country, doing what is asked of them, pushing themselves physically and mentally for however long they are needed to do it. They don't pick which enemy to fight, which mission to go on, anymore than they pick the day they will be wounded or a knock on the door will inform their families their soldier is not going to walk thru the door ever again.
When the wound is deep within them, there was a time when no one was talking about any of it. It was a sign of being "defective" in someway. Less courageous when PTSD wounded were shot for being cowards. Less than all the others in their own minds, they tried to hide the pain allowing only anger to surface so everyone would think they were tough, above feeling, above grieving.
Those days ended a long time ago and now the only people left to feel any shame are those who stood in the way of these men and women from getting help to heal. What motivates anyone to remain so uneducated they will not understand especially when Generals have come out publicly and proudly admitting they sought help to heal? There is no shame in being human when it is their humanity that prevents the slaughter of innocents on a massive scale as was done in the ancient world.
Read about reports of warfare from the Bible and see that it was not just the enemy being killed but entire communities being slaughtered. In our own history we have Native American tribes being killed off including women and children just as they killed settlers meaning them no harm.
In recent history we have Vietnam and Mai Lai showing both sides of what humans are capable of.
Mai Lai Massacre
Like a lot of the American forces in Vietnam in 1968, Charlie Company was in a demoralized state. It had suffered casualties by sniper fire, machine-gun fire, mines and other forms of attack. Earlier that year the “Tet Offensive” had shown just how tenuous the whole concept of the war had become.
When Charlie Company entered Mai Lai they encountered no resistance from Viet Cong Soldiers, yet three hours later there were over 500 civilian Vietnamese, men, women and children, dead. Lieutenant William Calley, for whatever reason, ordered his men to kill, burn and destroy everything in the village. By late evening the American Army Headquarters was claiming a victory, with 128 Viet Cong and some civilians killed. It was to take over a year and numerous investigations before the full horror of Mai Lai was to emerge into the public domain.
Mai Lai Heroes
Later of course the American public and the world was to learn that just as the villains of Mai Lai were American soldiers, so too the heroes of Mai Lai were also American Soldiers. Hugh Thompson, Army helicopter pilot, with his door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My Lai. According to Chief My Lai prosecutor William Eckhardt, “When Thompson realized what was happening he put his helicopter down, put his guns on Americans, and said he would shoot them if they shot another Vietnamese.”. Both the American public and Vietnam veterans owe a debt of gratitude to these heroes of Mai Lai.
Mai Lai and its Legacy
One group, pushed by the fact there were no assured "friendly" villagers anywhere and at any moment a woman or child could turn against them, pushed them to do what normally they would never think of doing. Another group, maintaining a sense of right and wrong, stopped the slaughter. They were able to maintain their compassion as humans instead of warriors.
We see this played out over and over again in Iraq and Vietnam. The majority of the servicemen and women maintain compassion while on mission even though they are aware the people they think they can trust can turn against them. This happens with some of the people the troops tried to train as policemen in Iraq and they ended up killing the trainers. This happened in Afghanistan when people they thought they could trust ended up wanting to get close enough to kill as many as possible. What stops all of them from wanting to just obliterate everyone there? Training? Hardly. How can you train to be betrayed? It is the sense of right and wrong, the ability to feel compassion stopping them from turning into animals.
Compassion is pretty worthless without action. Being able to act out of compassion requires courage. Without it, a man will stand watching a fire destroy a home as children scream instead of being willing to rush into the home and save them. Compassion requires courage to stop someone from killing more people as a police officer with a gun facing off a criminal with a gun. If they did not care, they would not be doing what they do and the same holds true for the military and National Guards. Without compassion they wouldn't want to give up so much and without courage, all the training possible would do no good. Smart people realize this, understand this and appreciate the fact the PTSD wounded are wounded because they cared enough to feel in the first place. The deeper they are able to care means the deeper they are able to feel and as a result, the deeper they are wounded by all they have to endure.
Every family speaks of how the veteran changed into a stranger was always caring, the first person to offer help, loving, compassionate and understanding as well as being forgiving. They are also the last person to forgive themselves.
There is no shame in being wounded any more than there is shame in having a bullet or a bomb wound them. Carrying this wound is a sign that they have the courage to act on the compassion that drives them and there is nothing shameful about this at all.
Military suicide response hinges on erasing stigma against seeking help
By Bruce Alpert, Times-Picayune
January 15, 2010, 6:00AM
The news about suicides in the U.S. military just gets bleaker.
The Defense Department is expected to report today that the Army last year recorded a record number of suicides by active-duty troops. At the end of November, the number stood at 147.
'Who’s vulnerable? Everyone,' Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said.
Earlier in the week, the Veterans Affairs Department reported that the suicide rate among 17- to 29-year-old male veterans jumped 26 percent from 2005 to 2007.
'Hiding his feelings'
Families of several Louisiana soldiers agree with research that military training that emphasizes toughness and coolness under fire fosters a mentality that soldiers shouldn’t be seeking help for “personal problems,” even when they are back home after their assignments in Afghanistan and Iraq are done.
“He definitely was very good about hiding his feelings,” Kristen Fabacher said of her husband, Luke, 35, an Army sergeant from Lafayette who took his life in 2008 after an Iraqi deployment. “The military trains them well to kind of get hold of their emotions during war, and sometimes that holds over when they return.”
Fabacher “loved the military,” his wife said, and would have signed up for another tour in Iraq or Afghanistan “if he didn’t have a wife and young child at home.” She said that when her husband did open up, he expressed guilt about the “eight friends of his that were killed in Iraq.”
“He said the loss was overwhelming. He felt guilty about it,” she said. “I knew he was depressed and I tried to nudge him to seek help, and we did go to counseling, though he really wouldn’t open up about his feelings.”
Lisa Anthony, the stepmother of Justin Treadway, 28, of Independence, who took his life in 2008 after serving with the Army in Afghanistan, said her stepson faced painful flashbacks of military battles.
“He was gong to the VA Hospital in New Orleans for treatment, but he never wanted to talk about what was troubling him,” Anthony said. “There was no doubt he was depressed.”
Vandra Jervis Brescher, whose son, Army Sgt. Keith Aaron Brescher, 28, took his own life in 2008, said he came back from his third deployment to Iraq depressed and suffering from flashbacks. Sometimes, she said, he would go through the motions of cocking his gun, as if he were still on the battlefield, instead of his home in Hammond.
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Military suicide response hinges on erasing stigma
