The Wounded

"The Taliban knew it was Christmas Day and I knew they were likely to take advantage of that.  The next day we had about 27 IEDs (improvised explosive devices; roadside bombs) go off in five hours ... there were bodies everywhere.  I saw four of those explosions.
"The driver and crew commander both blew out the top of an armoured vehicle and there's a young reservist guy in the back and he blows out the top, too.  but he gets up and doesn't even check himself before he starts trying to pick up the pieces of his buddies and stay alive at the same time.  He was a true hero."

This, from a discharged member of Canada's military, Jamie Teather, who, along with his wife, Cyndi, another former member of the military, is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.  He was security manager at Forward Operating Base Wilson in 2008.  He was a sharp-shooter/sniper, a member of the Pathfinder squadron, she was a skilled technician in weapons maintenance.

He, four years after that deployment, suffers from chronic anxiety and has problems sleeping.  She finds herself deep into periods of emotional despair.  "I never wanted to take medication", she said in an interview.  "It's like you've crossed the line, like you're a loser.  There is a huge stigma in the military attached to taking meds.  But like I told the doctor, if Jamie and I are going to survive one of us has to be medicated."

Data was just recently released by the U.S. military, in the wake of their military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Their problems with returning members of the military seem to be no less severe than what is occurring with Canada's military returnees from the battlefield.  At CFB Petawawa, there are plenty of veterans in dire need of support for their mental fragility.  Suicides and attempted suicides have not been uncommon; the clinic there estimates up to a dozen attempts in a typical month.

In the United States, figures have been released indicating there is one successful suicide made each and every day, the fall-out of people returning from active duty abroad and bringing home with them severe depression, alcoholism, drug-addiction.  At CFB Petawawa three disparate units have been set up to deal with the health issues and emotional instability of veterans, under the rubric of Warrior Support Services. 

But, as it happens, there is a long wait for attention in the "trauma and stress support program".

Members of Canada's military are proud of their service.  Many have opted to return time and again to the field of action.  And they finally return, too many of them, mentally maimed, seeking help, desperate to find it, but feeling that the help proffered is inadequate to their needs.  Over 150 PTSD-diagnosed soldiers are currently receiving some level of treatment on the base, or at an Ottawa-based clinic.

These returned military personnel are finding it difficult to re-adjust to life back in society in war-free Canada.  They struggle with their inner confusion, inner rages.  Families are being torn apart, marriages disrupted.  Undoubtedly, it was ever thus during such times of stressful situations when a nation sends its young people to fight in a war that is, like all wars, brutal and transgressive of human nature.

Canada has invested hugely in new, more technologically advanced equipment to ensure that Canadian forces are well suited-out for their tasks at hand; defensive as well as offensive.  The critical problems of attempting to heal wounded psyches that have come too close and personal to the deadly effects of combat reveal that all societies are faced with an end-product of minds shattered by the wrenching experience of deadly conflict.