"Her skin just felt really weird...Like rubber, like an animal..Like she wasn't real"

[yodermon]

Dear God what have we wrought.

"Just staring at the wall really"

(snip)

"No, sir, I don't really sleep. Well, maybe an hour or two, then I get up. I don't want to dream," the soldier said to us. His name was Staff Sgt. Johnson. He was a good soldier, and you could tell when you spoke to him. He was a man of honor. He was ashamed to be speaking with us, but his leaders had insisted. He had served three combat tours as a squad leader in a line unit. His body and his hands shook during pauses in his speaking and he stared at us, and sometimes past us, with a wide-eyed look of hyper alertness. He had just returned from leave and two guys in his squad were killed days before his return.

"You know, I think I thought, or...you would think, that each time you lose someone in combat it would be easier, but it's not. It's not." He shook his head and looked away from Maj. Johns and down at the floor. "It's not," he repeated as he stared at the floor. He looked back up at me nervously, still shaking his head. When he finally stopped shaking his head, his body erupted into a tiny tremor as he tried to keep still. He pressed and rubbed his palms against his knees as he sat, presumably to try and stop his hands from shaking. "Every time someone dies, I relive all of the other deaths. Over and over." He shook his head and looked back down at the floor and the tremor began again.

"That's a very normal response," Maj. Johns said. I nodded and Staff Sgt. Johnson nodded back at us sadly, and then looked away.

"You know, I think going home on leave really told me how bad I was."

"What happened on your leave?" Maj. Johns asked.

"Well, not too much really. Well, the first few days were good."

"What did you do the first few days?"

"I checked into a nice hotel and got a bottle of scotch and I didn't come out for about four or five days. It was great. I didn't get drunk. I just sipped, you know?"

"What were you doing in there all that time?" Maj. Johns asked.

"Just staring at the wall really," he answered, and then drifted his gaze past us as if remembering. "I didn't turn on the TV or anything. I just stared at the wall. Well, for the first three days anyway. I know it sounds weird but it was really great."

"Then what happened?"

"Well, then my girlfriend came. And don't get me wrong. I love her and she's a great girl and all but it just wasn't the same after she came. She's great though. She's so understanding."

"How did things go with your girlfriend? Did you get along okay?"

"Oh yah, we didn't fight at all. No, we got along. But..." he looked from Maj. Johns toward me and hesitated.

"But what, man?" I asked.

"Well, I couldn't do it, you know? I mean sex. We didn't have sex at all. Her skin just felt really weird. You know what I mean?" He sort of squinted and cocked his head to the side slightly when he asked if we knew what he meant.

"No, not exactly. What did her skin feel like to you? Describe it to us," Maj. Johns replied.

"Like rubber, like an animal," he crinkled his cheeks as he remembered, as if it were repulsive to him. "Like she wasn't real."

http://www.fresnobeehive.com/iraqlife/2007/05/just_staring_at_the_wall_reall.html
found via ThinkProgress at http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/24/what-the-war-is-doing-to-our-soldiers/

[Warren DeMontague]

1. So the Bush war machine has made him into someone who can kill... but can't have sex.

Sounds like "mission accomplished". :eyes:

[magellan]

2. OMG, why would this be?

Is it part of the desensitization that comes from having to dehumanize everybody to survive??

[Horse with no Name]

4. Yes. n/t

[Zensea]

7. sounds like a symptom of depression to me

speaking from personal experience

[Maru Kitteh]

11. This sounds a whee bit past depression I'd say. And please don't think

I'm minimizing depression in any way. I've got a bottle of Trazadone in my purse.

This sounds like a conditioned response and some sort of stimulus generalization. What the hell are they doing to these guys?

[yurbud]

8. yep

[rucky]

9. Or nerve damage? n/t

[The Doctor.]

17. Almost.

The mind has to develop mechanisms to deal with trauma. It wasn't 'dehumanization', it's 'derealization', coupled with 'anhedonia' - the inability to enjoy otherwise pleasant activities.

Derealization is not an uncommon symptom of PTSD. Part of the defense mechanism in the case of seeing horrific things is to 'take the edge off reality'... it will likely be a decade or more before things feel 'real' again to this man. He will likely also experience the recurrence of those symptoms suddenly, severely, and periodically for the rest of his life.

[magellan]

18. I've never heard of either of those things before

Thank you, Dr. E.

:cry:

[The Doctor.]

24. It sucks.

I have nothing but contempt for the warmongers and profiteers.

Part of me hopes that they suffer the fruits of their machinations.

Keep fighting.

[TahitiNut]

25. Yep.

'Life' seems a bit like a well-done animation. Almost 2-D. Contact with it is both tense and mechanical - on edge. Tactile senses are strange but olfactory senses trigger sense memories. Loud, sharp noises had me moving before I had a chance to think.

[The Doctor.]

28. How profoundly Germaine.

Thanks for that.

[tridim]

3. Holy crap that's freaky stuff..

This guy is every bit a "casualty" as a soldier who had his limbs blown off. Apparently the DOD doesn't understand that the brain is an organ too.

[Solly Mack]

5. How many more lives have to be ruined for political gain?

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. Deriving pleasure from just quietly staring at a blank wall for three days

This man's expression of pleasure over the lack of any visual or auditory stimulation for three days in that hotel room gives me just a small notion of what psychological trauma this urban guerrilla war is causing.

[pacalo]

10. Send this to the AWOL frat boy who got a note from daddy to leave NG early to campaign.

(Like sending this to the sociopath would touch his wooden soul...)

[rwork]

12. Could someone send this

to Keith?

[Bucky]

13. "Welp, hope you enjoyed your R&R, Joe. Now back off to the fightin' with ya!"

In a sane world, this guy would be listed as WIA.

[BlueIris]

21. Uh, help out a civilian here: WIA?

[Bucky]

23. Wounded in Action. It's a Vietnam vintage military term. Not sure they use that anymore

The Pentagon is always renaming things (like calling paratroopers the "nocturnal vertical insertion of personnel"). But WIA is the term they used in the 70s for the last group of guys who got asses full of shrapnel to secure profits for Texaco.

[lady lib]

14. It sounds like depersonalization to me.

You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

[file83]

19. Definitely some form of dissociation - a common symptom of PTSD.

It's a defense mechanism - dehumanizing humans to lessen the pain from losing friends and witnessing the horrors of war.

[Swede]

15. "My daddy's lost" on the previous page.

"My daddy's lost"

"You know your son sort of had a bad day today," my wife said over the phone. It was late at night in her time zone and the kids were asleep.

"Oh yah?" I replied.

"Well, not really a bad day I guess, but he was talking about you a lot in day care," she replied.

"Yah?"

"Yah. I guess he kept saying, 'My daddy's on the airplane' and the day-care workers would ask, 'But where did he 'go' on the airplane? Where did he go?' Then he said, 'He's on the helicopter' and so they said, 'yes, but where is he now? Where is your daddy?' So then he said, 'My daddy's lost.'"

My wife told me she tried to explain to him that his daddy wasn't lost, that I was in the Army and that I had a very important job helping the soldiers. "Daddy isn't lost," she told him.

She didn't ask me what I was thinking. If she had, I would have said that I was wondering if he might be right.

[yodermon]

16. oh gah.

thanks, i think.
i really can't fucking stand this anymore.
:(

[nam78_two]

20. The poor soldier-K&R.nt

[undergroundpanther]

22. That's what trauma does to human beings

It creates a wall a wall that is invisible,but for the PSTD sufferer makes things that should be good bad,things that should inspire joy treacherous and unreal.

I wish there was a way to end human made sadistic traumas. To make man made trauma go away,be it war, school bullies, pedophiles, rapists criminals or abuse.The only way I know is to learn to detect,not tolerate and if we have to eliminate the psychopaths bullies among us..

This world is broken and everyone is afraid to deal with that fact.We all are locked onto a planet with murderers child abusers rapists warlords..What can we do to stop them if we refuse to recognize the pain they cause? Because of the fewer humans that walk among us live with no conscience, heart or shame ..They keep breaking the people around them into a billion fragments.The bullies bosses and petty tyrants will not stop their wars,torture,rape killing,abusing, and crushing of people's minds and future lives to bits ..All of us suffer for the power abusing betraying, greedy dominator types to get away with getting what they want..we all suffer them but we refuse to contain them..and defy them and take power away from them. Why?

[Jed Dilligan]

26. Dammit

A really serious post, when the title made me think it was going to be about Paris Hilton.

[frogcycle]

27. back in 1967

I was working in DC while in college. My roommate's high school buddy was brought to Walter Ree from VN. We went to see him. He had no physical injuries.

We stayed about an hour. They wheeled him out into a visiting area; my roommate and a couple of his friends who were in town took turns trying to get through to the guy - to get his attention. He just stared.