Battle Fatigue, Trauma, and Magnetic Yellow Ribbons
3/17/5
Last week the population of Atlanta was frantic over a berserk murderer on the loose. Schools were in lock-down, and grown people were near panic. Everyone was terrified that they alone among a half million or so people might cross paths with the escaped madman. We were stressed out. What a relief when an anonymous woman he'd taken hostage calmed the killer down and he was returned to custody!

Compare this to a day in the life of a twenty-year-old kid in camouflage meandering down streets in some Iraqi town. His or her odds of being attacked are much, much greater than the half million to one we faced here at the end of last week. The soldier's next step could very well launch him skyward on the explosive lift of a bomb, or else bring him into the line of fire of a lurking gunman.

So take the apprehension we felt last week and multiply that by ten or a hundred. Then apply it to every day of your life for the next year or so. Sounds like fun, huh? Now double or square that, because this same soldier is apt to be sent back into the lion's den again after a few brief months back at home.

What the vast majority of people fail to appreciate is this: combat is a mode of existence so out of the ordinary that it borders on insanity. Other people are continually trying to maim and kill you by various nasty and vicious means. Civilians at home, driving to work or the grocery store can't empathize with a soldier on patrol, because the threat of being cut off in traffic doesn't compare with the hellish reality of roadside bombs. Even the fear of falling causality to a pink slip doesn't compare with the constant terror of being set out as GI flypaper for Ba'athist insurgents.

This kind of pressure leaves a mark. There will be nightmares in years to come, and there will be divorces. Sadly, there will be spousal abuse and problem drinking. The hurting goes on after the gunman has gone. That hurt will take a toll on the soldier's children too, so the poison will spill over generations.

 

War, even when unavoidable, is insane. Seeing the bodies of soldiers profaned by shrapnel and wound infection thirty years ago when I was a medic in an evac hospital showed me this. But there are some things more insane: sending soldiers into harm's way without an appreciation of what that's really asking -and calling that "patriotism"- is more insane, a delusion based on self-satisfied ignorance and jingoism; leading your country into war on a false pretense because you believe your veiled but righteous reasons justify the deception is insanity in the extreme, a sickness rooted in hubris and narcissism.