Nearby Firing Ranges Complicate Soldiers' Recovery From Stress

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Washington Post

FORT BENNING, Ga. -- Army Sgt. Jonathan Strickland sits in his room at noon with the blinds drawn, seeking the sleep that has eluded him since he was knocked out by the blast of a Baghdad car bomb.

Like many of the wounded soldiers living in the newly built "warrior transition" barracks here, the soft-spoken 25-year-old suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. But even as Strickland and his comrades struggle with nightmares, anxiety and flashbacks from their wartime experiences, the sounds of gunfire have followed them here, just outside their windows.

Across the street from their assigned housing, about 200 yards away, are some of the Army infantry's main firing ranges, and day and night, several days each week, barrages from rifles and machine guns echo around Strickland's building. The noise makes the wounded cringe, startle in their formations, and stay awake and on edge, according to several soldiers interviewed at the barracks last month. The gunfire recently sent one soldier to the emergency room with an anxiety attack, they said.

"You hear a lot of shots, it puts you in a defensive mode," said Strickland, who spent a year with an infantry platoon in Baghdad and has since received a diagnosis of PTSD from the military. He now takes medicine for anxiety and insomnia. "My heart starts racing and I get all excited and irritable," he said, adding that the adrenaline surge "puts me back in that mind frame that I am actually there."



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/02/AR2008060202983.html?hpid=topnews

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Really brilliant planning. :sarcasm:

[chknltl]

1. Military Intelligence???

Military Moranity is more like it... Sorry, I may not have a Phd in psychiatry but I am guessing that a partially retarded third grader could see the lunacy in sticking these wounded vets here. I suppose someone's gonna come along with their "...if a horse bucks ya git back on!", analogies but in this case... well never mind, I just ain't buyn' into it!

[TheWraith]

2. Oh, for fuck's sake. nt

[truthisfreedom]

3. Please, God, give them some peace.

We can do so much better.

[Apollo11]

4. How twisted is this?

almost as bad as asking a rape victim to go live in a whorehouse ... :eyes:

[bean fidhleir]

5. The coup plotters picked Smedley Butler to lead it because they knew that, of all the generals,

he was the one perceived by the rank-and-file as most trustworthy because he cared about *them* as real people rather than bloodless, fungible "headcount".

In today's military, I think the coefficient of smedleybutlerism hovers around zero, or perhaps a bit less.