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According to a recent study by Rand Corporation ,
"18.5 percent of current and former service members contacted in
a recent survey reported symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress."
The number seems about right to me and
after three trips to Iraq, I've had a few quirky PTSD experiences.
The first was in 2005 driving from a
logistics area in Kuwait to the International Airport when I looked
over at the driver and asked if he could drive in the middle of lane
of the freeway. I had found myself eye-balling the sandy shoulder
for anything that looked like a roadside bomb.
The most recent was when I got home from
a month in Baghdad and I was acutely aware of man hole covers.
In Baghdad, the insurgents would pack
the man holes full of explosives turning the steel plate into a platter
charge that would rip through the underside of a Humvee.
I have found that these quirks fade with
time.
The young men I keep in touch with report
the same experiences. The first month or two are awkward, especially
for the reservists or those discharged shortly after a deployment.
Nothing is quite as surreal as coming
off a mission then 72 hours later being in suburban America. Which
is the outlier of reality--the Furat Market or Walmart?
Those who stay on active duty have structure
and their fellows from the same unit as a built in support network.
I feel that structure is an important
part in moving beyond the malaise and even more important is purpose.
A reserve Captain friend of mine, a bachelor,
says he likes Iraq because everything is so straightforward. He
keeps volunteering for deployments because the job at the bank is so
meaningless. In Iraq he has a purpose, a mission. At the
bank...not so much.
For the vast majority of the young men
and women, the mild PTSD will fade. Others will be permanently
affected by it. What I want see is a longitudinal study to track
those who self report symptoms and how they fade over time.
Those who get on with life--go to college
or trade school, settle into employment, or otherwise develop structure
and purpose will probably fair better than those who do not.
The group that has not been studied in
depth are the ones who seek out deployments. I know a Sergeant
on his 5th deployment. All he knows of his adult life is war and
he is more adapted to life in Iraq than at Camp Lejeune. I shudder
when I think of what he will be like when he is forced to live in the
United States. Those first few months will be very rough for him.
For a month, when driving, I intentionally
changed lanes to avoid man hold covers. Now, I barely see them.
To anyone with friends or family members
returning from a deployment--the first month is the toughest but it
does get smoother with time.
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Freedom isn't free, and neither is traveling to Iraq and embedding with our troops to present an in-depth look at their deployments.
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