18 Vets Kill Themselves a Day: We Hail Them As Heroes Then Treat Them Like Garbage

[Victor_c3]

20. Thanks

Thanks for the kind words. I don't know how I could help a fellow veteran other than just letting them know that they aren't alone. I do post on veterans forums from time to time. I really feel sorry for the doctors at the VA who have to hear all of the horrors of war from guys like me and who see first hand how it affects not only the veteran, but their families too. It has to be a hard job.

My experiences in Iraq have spurred a very anti-war position in me. I mentioned this in another thread, but the one thing that appalled me the most about the violence in the war is that hardly any of it is shown to the American people. George W. was smart when he banned the press from taking pictures of coffins returning from Iraq. Displays and visual references to people dying in war is bad for its support. The ratio of civilians killed to soldiers killed in combat is a staggering 10:1 (straight out of wikipedia, I can find the link if anyone is interested in citing that statistic). If people in America saw first hand the dead and mangled women and children this war produced, the support would have vanished a lot sooner. As a veteran who is appalled by the war, I feel it is my duty to portray the realities of combat to people who have no idea what it is all about. I'm slowly coming out of my shell on talking about the war but I feel it is my duty.

I somehow ended up with a whole pile of pictures of dead and mangled people. After a firefight, I had to take pictures of the dead and submit them with my AARs (after action reviews). So I inadvertantly have a whole pile of this crap somewhere. I believe it is considered confidential material and I think it is illegal to distribute these sorts of pictures. I honestly don't know why I still have them. I just can't bring myself to get rid of them. They are rough and raw, but it helps to convey the brutality. For instance some guy decided it'd be a good idea to attack one of my Bradley Fighting Vehicles (BFV) while wearing a suicide vest. The only person who was hurt during the attack was the attacker (who obviously died), but I have a picture of a Sergeant looking really pissed off picking up pieces and stuffing them in a garbage bag with the blood-splattered BFV in the background. If it wasn't for the cold brutality of it, it'd be a funny picture.

I really loved the military, what it stands for, and the people I worked with. I'd say most people who are in the Army are good people and strive to do the right thing. However, there are people at the top who, in my opinion, misuse the Army. The bottom line, and this is something that I should have realized when I was 17, is that unless you are willing to deal with war, you should never join. The real kicker is you have no idea what war is really like until you actually experience it. You can read and watch all the movies you want, but it still is hard to portray just how devastating and traumatic war actually is.

It is a significantly emotional event when you pull one of your dead Soldiers out of a ditch and hold his cold hand while your medic tries to resuscitate them. It is even harder when you make it home and you talk to your Soldier's mother and she wants to know the details of her son's death. To talk about it is one thing, but to actually demonstrate how much it sucks and to get people to internalize it is the hard part.

I would love to write a book one day and I do have a couple of ideas, but I'm not ready for that yet for a variety of reasons.

As far as the community idea goes, I think that isn't a bad idea. I got back from Iraq in March 2005, but stuck around in the Army until October 2007. I managed to get a cushy job at Range Control to ride out the majority of the rest of my time where I helped units align their training objectives to a variety of live-fire training ranges. I really took that job to heart as I was a junior Captain and I saw a whole bunch of even more junior Lieutenants getting ready to deploy to combat for their first time and I wanted to prepare them the best I could for what the war was going to be like. Anyways, back to the community idea, I found that things weren't so bad for me and my PTSD while I was still in the Army. A lot of the guys around me were all dealing with the same issues and being around the military community was very comforting to me. Sometimes they'd be firing artillery from a firing position on one of the far sides of the training area, the rounds would fly over our building, and land in the impact area several miles away. We'd all be going totally crazy from hearing and feeling the sounds of artillery and just look at each other and laugh.

I've read some things recently that community service is of tremendous benefit to veterans recovering from their issues with the war, which ties directly into your idea.

The biggest hindrance to me and actually submitting myself to an intensive in house PTSD/war trauma program offered by the VA is I have a young family and I have bills I have to pay. I can't take that sort of time off from work.

The suicide part of war is tough.

Anyways, thanks again.