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2005-04-08 - 1:25 a.m.

On Tuesday I saw former senator Max Cleland give a talk titled �Pathways to Recovery from Combat: Needs of Returning Veterans�. It was pretty thought-provoking. He�s really inspirational. Cleland was senator from Georgia from 1996 to 2002, when he was unseated by some crazy right-wing clown. Before that, he was Georgia�s secretary of state and before that Pres. Carter�s head of the Veteran�s Administration.

He�s a triple amputee. No legs, only a left arm. In Vietnam, a grenade (apparently dropped by a fellow soldier) went off under him. Sacrifice for your country? Top that. He faced tremendous uncertainty about readjusting to life back in America, from practical questions (how will I live?) to more abstract, but no less real, ones (am I still a man?).

Everyone has internalized an idea of military service that goes back to the Iliad. Part of the warrior ethic is �come back with your shield or on it�, whole or dead. But veterans come home (and as one vet he quoted said, going to war was easy � coming home was the hardest thing I�ve ever done) with something wrong, even if they�re not physically hurt. The night sweats, the panic, the flashbacks. They know they�re not whole. Where do they fit in the warrior ethic?

Of course, this has always been the case. �Soldier�s heart� is my personal favorite term for it from after World War I. That�s probably why a lot of the Lost Generation was so, well, lost. But it wasn�t given an official diagnostic title until it was conceived by the VA under Cleland: post-traumatic stress disorder.

Personally, I confess that I�ve never really understood the need for names. Names for �types� of MS are purely descriptive, for example. Relapsing-remitting MS if it�s episodic. Progressive MS if there�s a continual decline. My high school Latin teacher once said: �Eh, I don�t believe in doctors. You go to a doctor, tell him what�s wrong with you, he translates it into Greek, and charges you 80 bucks. Well, I already know Greek.�

However, to know there�s something wrong and for there to not be any �official� term for it, well I can see how that�s pretty upsetting. It can make things easy for others to dismiss. Ah, suck it up. Get over it; what�s your deal? But it�s very much for real and a growing concern now. The Providence VA Hospital treats 1,200 PTSD cases a month, seventy in the two days before the talk. Some of them were getting ready for second and third tours of duty.

Counseling is a critical part of reintegrating into society. Certainly, I know myself how hard it is to accept that a physically different me is still the same person. And no one shot at me; I have no combat trauma. (This actually disturbs me sometimes. I did nothing brave to become disabled, it just happened. Does this mean I didn�t �earn� it? I mean, I know disability isn�t like a merit badge, but I still wonder about this.)

The soldiers in Vietnam were draftees, male and single. The soldiers in Iraq are volunteers, both genders, maybe married with kids. A lot of them are called-up reservists or National Guard folks, not necessarily the best prepared for combat. Because of this awareness that you�ll be called to active duty, enlistment in the reserve has plummeted (I can�t find the exact figures � 42%?).

Winston Churchill reflected on his military days and said that being shot at was �invigorating�. Of course, he said this decades later over after-dinner brandy. Things tend to become more glorious with time and brandy. There is nothing inherently invigorating about being shot at. It just sucks.

Whether you see the occupation of Iraq as necessary policy, for which some will unfortunately have to face danger, or as an unneeded and politically-motivated move, putting people in harm�s way to prove what a �tough� administration this is, the fact remains that a lot of people like you and me are coming back with psychological damage. This is how war is, how it�s always been. Working to heal those returning is as integral a part of the effort as anything.

� 2005 Geoff Gladstone

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