So I have seen posts tonight regarding returning Servicemen...

[catnhatnh]

..Whence do they go?Tonight is a self indulgent post,just because I listen to music like old Collin's "Someday Soon"...Can they be re-assimilated or would they care to??? I'd love to have Iraqi Vets answer..

[alittlelark]

1. Not a vet, but I can say from familial experience

that just getting them to TALK is hard enough.

[Qanisqineq]

3. no kidding. hubby is an Iraq war vet

he doesn't want to hear about Iraq and he doesn't want to talk about it. And he was there when it was much calmer and was in a safer area.

[alittlelark]

8. For me it's a cousin - one I was close to.

He is in no way the same person he was. It's sad. He used to be soooo cool. He could be that way again if he could just shed the toxic shroud of emotions that are suffocating him now.

[Selatius]

2. Not a war vet. A Vietnamese person instead.

My family was scarred by the Viet Nam War. Given the history of that war, I can only guess some will be able to readjust back to civilian life. Others, well, not so able. I heard somewhere that one out of every four homeless people in America IS a veteran of that war. That war was a bad time for everyone. I hope more help is offered the second time around, and I hope those who fought in that previous war will get the help they need as well.

[Richard Steele]

7. You make a point which sums it up well.

About the HUGE percentage of homeless who are Vietnam Vets.

Although various studies disagree on the exact percentage,
there can be no doubt that they are much more likely
to be homeless than any other group their size.

And bear in mind- this is a group that also has the highest SUICIDE
rate in history.
The "homeless" numbers would certainly be much higher
if so many Vietnam Vets hadn't already ended their own lives.

[TahitiNut]

11. About 200,000 homeless veterans on any given night; 500,000 in past year

47% are Viet Nam ERA veterans ... not necessarily Viet Nam (in-country) veterans.

23% of homeless population are veterans
33% of male homeless population are veterans



Over 225,000 veterans held in Nation’s prisons or jails in 1998. Among adult males in 1998, there were 937 incarcerated veterans per 100,000 veteran residents - less than 1%. In 1998, an estimated 56,500 Vietnam War-era veterans and 18,500 Persian Gulf War veterans were held in State and Federal prisons.

[Richard Steele]

13. And those are just the ones who DIDN'T kill themselves. nm

[TahitiNut]

15. Commonly Accepted Fallacious Statistics

"Vietnam veteran suicides - 160,000 have committed suicide since returning from the war"

Derivation: A 1980 manual from Disabled American Veterans entitled APost-Traumatic Stress Disorders of the Vietnam Veteran@ asserted 58,000 suicides. This was 7 years before the first comprehensive study of Vietnam veterans= mortality was even published. This dubious statistic grew from there.
Actually: No one knows precisely how many Vietnam veterans have taken their own lives, nor exactly how many have died from all causes. But these oft-cited figures are impossible. There would have had to have been roughly 15 vet suicides a day over the last 30 years for the figure to be true. A brief literature search by veteran Michael Kelly (AOne Vet=s Mission to Set the Record Straight,@ Washington Post, Aug. 15, 1999) reveals that, based on a Centers for Disease Control estimate of suicides accounting for no more than 1.2 percent of veteran deaths, the correct number would be approximately 3,750 suicides (out of approximately 3.1 million Americans who served in Southeast Asia) as of 1999.

http://www.stats.org/record.jsp?type=news&ID=412

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TahitiNut]

18. Just what's your problem? Why the insults?

I never - not once - claimed you said anything. You brought up the oft-cited problem of veteran suicides.

I'm a Viet Nam veteran and have heard it all - about how we're homeless, suicidal, drug abusers, and emotionally unstable. For most of the 70s and 80s, I'd hear this crap at least once a week. It was almost always the rhetoric of division and marginalization. The message was "There's something wrong with them." Well, talk about self-fulfilling prophecies! Viet Nam vets became the symptom bearers for an entire generation.

The characterization of veterans as "guilt-filled" and "substance abusers" purely as a result of their experiences in a combat zone is self-serving blame-shifting, in many cases. People who cite suicides as mostly demonstrating that veterans "couldn't live with" something they did while in combat ignore the basic facts. If that's all it was, then why didn't they off themselves when they were there? It's one hell of a lot easier when you're constantly in possession of all manner of ordinance -- and around people who're willing to do it for you. Why wait until weeks, months, or years after they come back "home"? Those who adopted the "adjustment problems" reasoning tended also to put the burden on veterans -- usually ignoring the manner in which veterans were treated, often by their spouses and damned near always by co-workers.

The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the 2.7 million guys who served in Viet Nam overcame both the trauma of that experience and a lot of ill-treatment by their peers after coming home - becoming very hard-working, honest, and courageous members of our society. Was it shockingly difficult for most of us? You bet. In my opinion, going through that and NOT thinking about suicide might be more indicative of insanity. A guy's gotta consider all his options!

No ... I'm NOT claiming you've made these allegations. (Why must I point out the OBVIOUS?) I posted the fact above to forestall the typical misapprehensions regarding this topic. I don't fucking deserve a god-damned attack and vitriolic response for making a civil and objective reply!

[Toots]

21. I don't want to be in the middle of any dispute but I noticed one thing

You seemed to disregard PTSD as a reality. You ask why would anyone wait for weeks or months or years to commit suicide? Sometimes it takes a while to sort things out. I know many Vietnam Vets that will never ever talk about any part of their Vietnam Experience because they don't want to work through it. They just wish to bury it and that is fine as long as it can stay buried. PTSD is about that very thing. War is Hell and many many people just can't cope. You are one of the fortunate ones. I know others that aren't..

[TahitiNut]

22. As one who suffered from mild PTSD, I certainly don't ignore it.

It'd be very difficult for me to describe how almost totally clueless the professionals were at the time (1970-72). A diagnosis of "situational depression" and a prescription for Valium. (Whoopee.) The thing about PTSD that I learned is that it was typically precipitated by a somewhat covertly hostile life context. The reason I had nightmares and amplified startle reactions was that I'd been attuned to the hidden threat - the almost subliminal hostility of living in a combat zone. We humans are very adaptable - we survive by developing sensitivities ("sixth senses") that we don't even know we're developing. It's a lot like paranoia, I guess ... but the flashbacks had a verifiable reference: "traumatic" events.

So, what were those 'hidden threats' and subliminal hostilities that evoked combat trauma?
(1) The threat of being excluded from the 'group' - it's a very real threat in combat. One's survival is HUGELY dependent on the "buddy system" and the other guy "taking your six." The last thing any guy wanted was to be isolated and not supported by the guys around him. On returning to the "real world," guys that felt isolated or betrayed by their peers would experience the combat stress reaction to such a threat. That kind of isolation meant death. It's a threat.
(2) Hidden hostility and 'false flag' enemies. Charlie wasn't usually overt. Life in Nam was about surprises. The sudden night time rocket attack. The sappers. The ambushes. The occasional bomber. After returning to the "real world," guys were hypersensitive to back-stabbers and covert hostilities. It wasn't unusual. People in my office got their jollies for a while from making loud noises and watching me dive for cover - or start to. Folks would feign innocence (or ignorance) after dropping a big book or slamming a door, but that just added to the stress. Car backfires and firecrackers had me up a tree for years.
(3) Betrayals. Survival in Nam was largely based on trust. Officers that betrayed that trust could get fragged. In the "real world," such trust was vested in a spouse. Enough said.

Here's the thing about 'trauma' - it's an event or battery that's beyond the ability of the person to sustain resiliently. An emotional trauma results from some deficiency of coping skills vis-a-vis the perceived pain/threat. What may be traumatic for a child often ISN'T traumatic for an adult, due to the adult's more developed coping skills, learned over time. Furthermore, what might be traumatic to a person from one part of the world's population might not be traumatic to people from place where such events are more common. The way unaccustomed people cope with such events is to grab onto whatever behavior that "works" - often something primal or something that's recently indoctrinated. That's part of what military training is all about - developing a learned (unthinking) response. Then, after experiencing that event and grabbing onto a behavior that seems to ameliorate the stress/pain, the individual fixates on that response and tends not to develop more emotionally mature or contextually appropriate ones for similar events or events that evoke similar feelings. The later contextual dissonance of the fixated response often sets up a strong emotional conflict - a repressed reaction. That emotional conflict is seen as the 'disorder' - since the conflict is unresolvable given the person's 'learned' coping skills and framing.

This is the inherent problem in combat veteran reentry: there's no "basic UNtraining." The trained response, 'desired' in a combat context and fixated by it being 'successful' when activated, has analogs in non-combat stress situations. But the inclination ("survival mode") is to respond in similar ways. Repressing/suppressing such a response creates additional stress on top of the evocative stress. In other words, we choose to repress a trained response and, in so doing (in a "civilized" way), we add to our own feelings of stress rather than sublimate those feelings. Until we learn ways to cope with things that very, very few people know who've not had combat experience, that stress can be virtually unbearable.


This is a very clumsily-worded response - I'm not a trained psychologist or psychiatrist. (But I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.)

[Obamanaut]

24. I disagree with your tiny-print disclaimer. It's a good response! nt

[Richard Steele]

25. Apparently I misunderstood your reasons for posting that. I apologize.

on edit: I ALERTED on my above post and asked the mods to remove it.

[TahitiNut]

26. It's not that bad ... maybe at deep shortstop, not left field.

Gawd knows I'm seeing some real left field stuff!!!
Particularly some of the responses to my post here that seem like a rabies epidemic - TOTALLY uncalled-for.
That one still festers, I guess ... such unprovoked, clique-assed crap. :shrug:

You're very correct in saying that this topic deserves SERIOUS discussion, imho. That's the very reason I try to keep it real and forestall the typical hyperbole.

Thank you, sir. :hi:

[Dinger]

4. An Old Video I Saw On CMT, 1991-1992 I Think . . .

"This Is Me Missin' You" by James House

Powerful, and it showed how the soldiers' families are affected. NOT a pro-war video at all, and a neat sounding song.

[me b zola]

5. Are you thinking of "Anymore" by Travis Tritt?

I don't listen to country music often, but that video & song made me cry. It would have been about in that time period. The video was about a paraplegic vet coming home and being afraid that his woman wouldn't love him anymore.

[Dinger]

6. Here's A Link

http://www.cowboylyrics.com/tabs/house-james.html

[justice1]

9. My insurance agents son was injured

In 2005, he was in an unarmored hummer, with another soldier, when it was "hit". He lost 30% of his hearing, and the other guy lost one of his butt cheeks.

He suffers from "shell shock", and needs to walk close to buildings. He has gone back to college, and doing his best to move on.

[me b zola]

10. Yeah, different artists, different songs

Thanks for the link. I'll leave you with a link so that you can view Tritt's video "Anymore", it is very emotional.


http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/tritt_travis/artist.jhtml#

[Maddy McCall]

12. And service women.

[TahitiNut]

23. Women learn differnet things (skills) in our culture.

It's often noted that little girls are trained in relationships, and little boys are trained in rule-based games. It's a difference in the cooperate/compete skills development. After all, a boy would be called a "sissy" if, playing on a football team, he was "nice" to the other team.

Somehow, I think the gender differences in post-combat adjustments of veterans will be "interesting" to observe. There WILL be differences. We have differing 'expectations' placed on us in our society - that means a difference in coping skills.

[ingac70]

14. My ex-boyfriend got back from Iraq in November...

His mom tells me he is now on Prozac and Xanax, stays up all night, sleeps all day, stares of into space for hours at a time, and has yet to return to work. He says the doctors tell him he's having panic attacks.

[blonndee]

17. My ex-fiance and current best friend has been to Iraq and Afghanistan

and is going back to Afghanistan in March.

He's okay, but depressed. He's going to stay in the Army because he can retire in 8 years. He really loves the Army but the tour after tour has really exhausted him.

He's not infantry but, as he explained to me, everyone is "infantry" in Iraq. He had to deal with IEDs (he was in transportation)and attacks on his base when he was in Iraq, and the soldier who is still missing in action (Matt Maupin) was one of "his guys."

I've noticed he's been really nostalgic and missing his hometown a lot, but I guess that's probably normal for guys who have been away a lot. He did say that he's glad he's not going back to Iraq, but to Afghanistan, where he might be able to do some good "before they blow it up again" like what happens in Iraq.

He also mentioned a guy that went "stone-cold crazy" (whatever that means) who totally lost it...(when I started this post I had some more details but I decided to take them out. Maybe I'm paranoid but I don't want to get him in trouble and I don't want to deal with any fallout from it either.) Then he said he shouldn't really talk about that kind of stuff and we changed the subject.

I think he's one of the fortunate ones. I know a lot of soldiers have had even more to deal with than he has, and I can't imagine how much they've changed from that.

[KitSileya]

19. Well, I hope he does get to get out in 8 years.

But I doubt it. It doesn't seem likely that the army will let people retire just like that, they will do and are doing everything to avoid the draft.

[Solly Mack]

20. You know, not every single vet comes home crazy or with the urge

to gun down people...or to kill themselves.

Not every experience will be the same - even though there are some common factors with returning vets.

They all need counseling, yes. In varying degrees - for some are worse off than others.
But you can't make a vet talk - they'll talk about in their own time and in their own way - if they talk at all. Some suck it up and implode. Some talk a little each year. Some go crazy.

Mine is still letting things out.... and it's been almost 2 years since his return.