Lost at Sea

Much attention has been given recently to the struggles of veterans returning from the Iraqi and Afghan wars. While the effort is commendable, the discussion usually focuses on the lack of mental health resources available to the soldiers upon their return. Unfortunately, this focus is misguided for the problem does not lie in the lack of resources being thrown at the problem because it is not one that can be fixed by psychiatrists and medication. The problem lies, rather, in the unfortunate fact many soldiers come home from war only to find out that there is no longer any home to come back to. This post will attempt to explain why.

The conventional image that comes to mind when people think of soldiers returning from war is this one, taken in Times Square in 1945, at the end of World War II:


Unfortunately, while the initial joy illustrated in the photo may be genuine, what is not shown is what will happen in the coming weeks, or months, or years for that is when real problems will emerge and the elation of coming home can no longer compensate for it.

As any loyal reader of this publication is aware, films are a passion of the author and oftentimes used to illustrate points. Consistent with established precedent, it will be done again....

In the final scene of The Outlaw Josey Wales, the man who has been hunting Wales across the country recognizes him outside of saloon despite the fact that the locals refer to him as "Mr. Wilson" in order to protect his identity. After all the effort spent in tracking him down he decides to let Wales go on his way and to let him live his life as a free man. In a conversation before the patrons who protected Wales' identity the man says, "I think I'll go down to Mexico to try to find him..I think I'll try to tell him the war is over. What do you say to that, Mr Wilson?" Wales looks at him, spits in his usual way, and says, "I reckon so. I guess we all died a little in that damn war."

Japanese kamikaze fighter about to crash into an American ship

The death that Wales refers to is not a result of the fact that combat is stressful and intense. Mankind has been waging war for thousands of years and many people are well-suited for it. And many of those warriors routinely fought and then returned to daily life on an on-going basis. The explanation as to why that was the case justifies an essay in an of itself but at this point it must be summed up by saying that as warrior cultures, the societies at home knew how to bear the circumstance of occasional violence and were less apt to fall apart. The warriors, then, were able to come home to some semblance of what they left, assuming they survived.

In contrast to ancient times, soldiers now return home to find their own homes as ravaged as the battlefields they've just left. At that point, regardless of whether one has sustained injuries or not, the war has exacted a heavy personal price. This, I believe, was what Erich Maria Remarque was referring to when he wrote the dedication to his classic World War I novel, All Quiet on the Western Front:

"This book is dedicated to those, who though they were not killed by its' shells, were destroyed by the war."

German soldier in World War II

There are many reasons for the destruction that soldiers come home to and it is impossible to describe them all. It suffices to say, though, that whether it is karma, the prolonged separation and distance (physical and emotional) from loved ones, or the result of bringing the Beast home from the battlefield into the living room, it is impossible to participate in the conduct of war free of personal cost. Spouses disconnect, children find replacement father figures, and friends have a hard time reconnecting because of the substantial discrepancy in experience and perspective. The end result is a break from the old life that had once existed and a descent into isolation that, if unchecked, only feeds itself.

The isolation has a dark face and oftentimes is accompanied by alcohol, drug abuse, and flirtations with self-destruction. In not too long the will to live and prosper subsides and the typical response to a dangerous situation that would otherwise elicit an response grounded in self-preservation looks something like this:

Captain Nathan Algren played by Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai

It is at this point that suicide, murderous rampages, psychotic breaks, and all the other "symptoms" of what used to be referred to as "Shell Shock" appear. The term Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has entered the common vocabulary and has been used to refer to this phenomenon but, unfortunately, as the name implies, it leads people to believe that the trauma induced the stress when, in fact, it is the other way around: the stress on the their lives and their subsequent destruction causes the trauma.

Once this is understood, it becomes strikingly clear why despite all the efforts at suicide prevention, post-deployment mental health screenings, and the availability of mental health professionals, combat veterans are killing themselves and self-destructing at an alarming rate. This is because it simply doesn't matter if you're in the parking lot of the Johns Hopkins E.R. if you get run over by a bulldozer.

Dead soldier caught in barbed-wire in No Man's Land in the First World War

In a society like ours, a far cry from a warrior culture in which men and their families were raised to endure the stresses that war brings, we are simply not prepared to bear a burden such as the one we have for the last 9 years. And that is certainly the case when the burden is shouldered by only a fraction of a percent of the population.

German and Soviet troops exchange fire in the Battle of Stalingrad

In the end, no allocation of resources for post-combat assistance will remedy the problem and give those soldiers back what they've lost. Many of those things are lost forever. Rebuilding their lives from scratch is something they will have to do themselves and, unfortunately, lacking the proper myths, role models, and expert assistance, many will never make it. It is this publication's hope, though, that if the real problem is better understood, less effort will be wasted on futile solutions and soldiers returning from wars may one day have a better chance of actually coming home.